He shrugged his shoulders to ease the tension in them, and walked across the meeting room to the door opposite. No sounds came from other side of it, nor scents either, and his instincts remained quiet. The wood didn’t give at all when he pressed against it, but that could be the quality of its construction showing.
Proactively, he licked the door, but the taste was simply of wood. Grimacing afterward, he spit out the rock dust now coating his tongue. This one had been even dustier than the other.
Hong Fei got into a kicking stance. He paused before taking action, yet there continued to be no warning from his intuition. So he nodded to himself, and his foot lashed out—only to be immediately rebuffed as if he’d kicked a mountain.
He hopped away from the door on one foot. The force of the blow had rebounded back into his own muscles, joints, and bones. Carefully, Hong Fei set his weight on the newly injured limb and winced. The ankle was sore even after he sent essence into it.
That’s both ankles weakened, he thought with annoyance.
The door had splintered where he’d kicked it, yet it stubbornly still stood. So Hong Fei got out the chisel he’d used earlier and—bang—he drove it into the door, then leveraged a chunk of the wood free. Twice more he dug out chunks of the wood until a layer of speckled stone behind it became visible. The damn thing’s reinforced.
When Hong Fei struck the stone with the chisel, it left a mark but didn’t chip the barrier. Magically reinforced, he corrected, with earth-aligned qi.
If the pattern from the other rooms held, then there was likely a bedroom on the other side. The same was probably true for the metal-qi trapped door, which meant a total of four sleeping quarters.
Assuming the empty room had belonged to Blue Fist, and the one with the brazier was Scarlet’s, then that left two other Qi-Blossoming realm enemies, one of whom was earth-aligned and the other metal.
No, Hong Fei cautioned himself, I know that the metal-qi-aligned fighter is Qi Blossoming from the evidence left behind from their duel with the duchess, but the earth-qi aligned Tiger Mask may be of a higher realm.
His mouth went dry at the thought. Still, Hong Fei’s duty demanded he continue, so he took a step back to consider the unopened wooden doors. The one made from iron would be left alone for the time being, since it would likely take extra measures to crack it open. Still, that left two. As a last resort, he could call Auntie Ling to break down one of the bedroom doors. She’d likely die in the attempt, however.
Hong Fei sat on the table. He stroked his beard as he thought, his gaze moving from door to door and back again. His ankles were glad of the break. His burned hand still stung, and he did his best to put the pain out of his mind.
Ah, I’m thirsty too, he thought. A jug of cold water would be welcome right now. Unfortunately, there’d not been enough time to drink some after the fight against the One in Charge. Auntie Ling and he had needed to rush to ambush the Tiger Masks who’d gone to return the waste pots.
He shook his head free of distractions to focus on the task at hand.
The imperial army provided experts for dealing with enemy strongholds defended by magical arrays and formations. Sometimes, Hong Fei’s unit had even been assigned one. Other times, they’d had to improvise. This is definitely an improvisation moment.
The most straightforward approach would be to toss something at a door to see if that triggered the trap. It often worked for simple ones, the kinds that created localized effects like gouts of flame or billows of poison gas. As long as one stayed out of range of the effect, no harm would be done.
The problems started when a trap’s effects were more esoteric, for example like being cursed, teleported into an extradimensional maze, or becoming invisibly marked so that the trap’s creator would always know one’s location.
Looking around the meeting room, Hong Fei decided that the odds of complicated traps were slim. His reasoning was twofold: firstly, the layout of the base itself was straightforward. And secondly, while the attack on the House of Yu was well organized, it had also been relatively direct, including the duel with the former duchess Yu Hui. The person who’d fought her had arranged the assault such that they could do so one on one. The killing stroke had been clean and singular—no tricks involved.
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Hong Fei made “half-half” gesture with his good hand. That’s true about Metal Tiger, but I actually don’t know anything about Earth Tiger. The rod used on Chen Wenbin was made of stone… Could that bedroom belong to the one who’d created it? If so, they’re the kind of person who would place a dangerous weapon in an unassuming place. He considered this thought for a handful of breaths, then decided: I should expect a hidden attack.
The doors were directly across from each other. Wait, depending on the nature and reach of the trap’s effect… I can’t be that lucky, can I?
Hong Fei hopped down from the table and quickly made his way back toward the workshops. In the one with the patch of dried blood, there’d been a block of marble about two chi wide, deep, and tall. The stone would make a good projectile—heavy enough to batter a wooden door down but not too heavy to carry.
He found the block, got his arms around it, then waddled it back toward the meeting room. His ankles complained about the stress he was putting on them, so he sent more essence to support the joints.
He lifted the stone onto the table so that he could plan his next steps. Take a position on top of the table at its center, then… No, I should stand farther back, but then the angle will make it harder to hit the door directly. What if the trap’s effect follows the trajectory of the original attack? Then where I stand won’t matter. It’ll always find me. Unless I throw the stone from the far corner of the room—the angle would then work and I could immediately withdraw into Blue Fist’s room for cover.
The plan was reasonable, assuming he was able to throw a chunk of stone weighing about two hundred jin across the room, with enough force remaining in the toss to break the door. That was too much to ask of the first tier of Qi Gathering, even with essence also empowering his muscles.
I’ll need Lion on the Battlefield, Hong Fei decided, so he went into Blue Fist’s room to sit on the bed, meditate, and recover the qi necessary for the spell.
The beauty of a simple cultivation practice was that it could be kept running constantly. The Hong family’s approach might be slow in comparison to more sophisticated methods, but it was steady, and as a result Hong Fei’s lower cauldron was rarely empty for long.
Now, he brought his attention to his cultivation practice, adding the force of his will to the fire transforming essence into qi. He watched as the energy beaded along the top of the assemblage before it ran down along the sides to fill his lower cauldron.
A stray thought crossed Hong Fei’s mind: How luxurious to be able to spend so much time in an enemy’s base. Then he focused on his practice in earnest and the rest of the world faded from his thoughts.
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A handspan of the sun’s travel across the sky later, Hong Fei rose from the bed with his lower cauldron nearly a quarter full of qi. The added benefit of the extra time taken was that his ankles felt stronger and his hand didn’t sting as badly.
He emerged from the bedroom and went to the block of marble he’d left sitting on the meeting table. There was no elegant way to throw the thing, so he simply got his arms around it, cast Lion on the Battlefield in preparation, and lifted the stone. Hong Fei then backed away from the table to make sure he had room to run for a few steps, then took those steps before heaving the block at the door, relying on the strength of his legs, waist, and arms working together.
While the stone sailed over the table in a flat arc, Hong Fei retreated to the safety of Blue Fist’s bedroom, finding a spot in the corner to hunker down. There came the sound of a mighty thud almost immediately afterward. Half a breath later, it was followed by metal ringing against metal. Wood snapped, something else cracked, and then the whole room shook as a mass of rock was suddenly sent hurtling into the meeting room.
The table shattered and splinters of wood were sent flying like daggers. Rock dust billowed past Blue Fist’s door. Hong Fei covered his mouth with cloth to keep the cloud coming into the room from getting into his lungs.
He waited, his eyes wide and his heart beating fast. He listened to the sound of debris settling. Feeling uneasy, he went to the bed and lifted it up with the intention of blocking the doorway, just temporarily. He had the frame in hand when there came a ping. The meeting room instantly filled with a wall of flame; it extended past the bedroom doorway to travel out into the tunnel leading to the exit.
The blast sent Hong Fei slamming into the wall behind him. His ears ringing and feeling disoriented, he gripped the bed at first, then threw it aside when he saw that it’d caught fire. The flames dimmed almost immediately, but he didn’t have the awareness to focus on the reason. His lungs weren’t working properly. The air was hot, like the time he’d faced Scarlet, but this was different.
Then he heard a great whoosh come from the room outside, and the fires that had been going out suddenly sprang back to life. Now, he could breathe again, but the room was quickly filling with smoke. The air was growing even hotter.
Have got to get out, Hong Fei thought, and he ran out of the bedroom. He jumped over the burning remnants of the meeting table and sped down the tunnel toward the exit.
Just before Hong Fei reached the Tiger Mask barracks, he saw Auntie Ling dashing toward him. “It’s okay,” he croaked out, holding his hands up to reassure her. “I’m all right.”
The badger glared at him in reply. She barked in anger.
For a moment Hong Fei thought she’d grab him and throw him onto her back to carry him out. Instead, Auntie Ling pointed at his hands. He hadn’t noticed in the rush to escape the fire, but he’d managed to burn both this time. Now that he was conscious of them, the throbbing intruded upon his awareness. He closed his eyes and forced the pain down. When he opened them again, he realized his clothes were smoking, as was his hair. Determined to focus on what mattered most, he thought, I forgot about the iron door. It seems to have also been trapped, and by more than one of the Tiger Masks.
ten chapters ahead. :)
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Auntie Ling, Uncommon Badger, 3 | 3
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Blue Fist, one of the Tiger Masks who assaulted the House of Yu, deceased
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Chen Wenbin, commander of the soldiers defending the House of Yu
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The One in Charge, the Tiger Mask who seemed to be processing the intake of prisoners, deceased
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Yu Hui, the former duchess, deceased