Prophecy FourDeath and power but a dance,

  In a romance of murder and ruin.

  Revetions quelled in silence,

  As eggs bombarded the stone.

  Stump gred at Dong with the eyes of a predator about to pounce on its prey.

  The Red Dragons stood on the left side of the cliff, restless, tensely waiting for Wei Bin to order the attack. On the right side, the Green Dragons had already drawn their weapons. The world was silent, frozen. Muscles were taut, fists and jaws clenched, feet pnted and ready to charge. The motionless sea of warriors stood like a fully drawn bow, straining to release a single arrow—a cough could have shattered the silence and brought about such bloodshed as never before seen on Redwood Cliff.

  The Butcher inch closer to Wei Bin in anticipation of danger. Mayhem was inevitable.

  There was something in Wei Xi’s eyes, a strange confidence impossible for a man standing on enemy territory, faced with a battle no one could predict. Did he know something that Wei Bin didn’t? Perhaps the Green Dragons somehow infiltrated Redwood Cliff and pnted the cauldron to start a war that would make them seem like victims, something they have fully prepared for.

  Wei Bin reached for his metal fan again, steadying his gaze on the mass of Green Dragons, all poised with hands on weapons.

  Li Kung’s eyes followed Wei Bin’s to the old man beside the furnace. The poison-user was ready. He turned to the thousands below him. Hundreds of guests were completely enclosed by two hostile Houses, and no one was concerned for their safety. There would be little time to reach the only path to the Grand Stairway. The guests belonged to inferior Houses, and Wei Bin couldn’t possibly bother with their survival. More than half would perish.

  Stump shrieked in agony. His sword fell to the ground. His hands had become charred bck, dark blisters on the back of his palms. He stared at his trembling fingers in horror, tears flowing, screaming again and again.

  “Poison! They poisoned me!” His voice choked in a sudden gust of frozen wind. Every st warrior on Redwood Cliff drew their weapons. Wei Bin spun around to Old Snake, still standing next to the furnace. The old poison-user shook his head in disbelief. He was not responsible for this.

  Wei Bin urgently raised both hands and faced the masses in front of him. “Be calm, my brothers!” His voice projected far across the cliff.

  Stump’s charred hands finally closed around his dagger. He screamed and hurled himself at Dong. With a quick whip of his body, Wei Xi’s adopted son sshed Dong across the waist.

  Dong staggered back, helpless.

  “Stop, Stump!” Wei Xi shouted.

  The crowd drowned out his command.

  Stump lurched forward, wielding his dagger, screaming. Dong fell back. There was an onrush of men. Immediately, a swarm of Red Dragons lined up between Stump and Dong.

  “Gentle Swordsmen!” Stump gasped. He fell back.

  The Red Dragon swordsmen, their red robes flowing behind them, their dancing bdes ripping the air like arrows in full flight, quickly pressed Stump into a steady retreat.

  Without warning, a group of Stump’s men stormed into the Red Dragon Swordsmen. The Green Dragons were poised to attack, and now, the opportunity to draw enemy blood drove them to madness. With bdes pointing forward and straining for release, the men of the Green Dragon House charged.

  Wei Bin inserted himself in the midst of the fray with hands held high, pnted both feet into the frozen ground like a wall in front of his assaints, and roared, “Stop!”

  The power of his voice thundered across the cliff. There was not so much as a pause.

  “Kill him!” The Green Dragons responded with a cry of war, bringing their swords down like a storm. Wei Bin’s face ignited in fury.

  There came a second cry of war, more earth shattering than the first. A swarm of Red Dragons tore across the ground to pummel the rear of Wei Bin’s attackers.

  Dong climbed to his feet and barked, “Kill them! How dare they attack Wei Bin! Kill them!”

  The original onrush of Green Dragons couldn’t be stopped. Wei Bin waited for his assaints to close in before leaping clear to the side, drew the metal fan from his belt and struck his enemies in the throat with casual precision.

  With a massive surge, Wei Bin’s men smmed into the backs of the Green Dragons, raining their weapons upon every man who attacked their master and quickly sughtering those who couldn’t turn around in time. In response, hundreds of Green Dragons charged in from behind. More Red Dragons also swept in, driven by the hate and rage that gripped both Houses for decades. Redwood Cliff flooded with blood.

  High up behind the tombs, still a safe distance away, Pun pulled Li Kung into retreat. “Let’s go. Go before the battle gets to us.”

  Li Kung prepared to run, but something caught his eye. The old man beside the stone furnace now lifted two canvas bags over his head and threw them into the fmes.

  Then, a roar shook the earth. The contents of each bag ignited and spewed golden balls of fire into the heavens. Sheets of fming wind propelled through the air and scattered into the masses. The fire didn’t burn the warriors it nded on, but thick smoke emerged where the fmes fell. The warriors in green robes instantly weakened and began to fall back.

  “Poison!” some of them shouted. “Be careful of Old Snake’s poison!”

  The Red Dragons, protected by an antidote, didn’t seem affected.

  The Green Dragons could do nothing but retreat. Each struggled desperately to move away from the smoke.

  Meanwhile, every warrior on Redwood Cliff was fighting for his life. Men from both Dragon Houses attacked anyone they didn’t recognize, striking with such fury and hate that many died without knowing who murdered them. Some were sshed from behind, amputated for being in the way, stabbed again and again by people they didn’t know – and the resulting carnage left puddles of blood against the uneven earth. Most of the guests managed to fight their way to the Grand Staircase, only to be bottlenecked in a chaotic attempt to descend. The mouth of the stairs swirled into battle.

  Li Kung circled in front of Pun, wrapping his arms around her and shielding her body with his. She pushed him away.

  “Stay behind me!” she shouted. “I’ll break open a path for us.”

  She leaped forward to kick someone out of the way but was thrown back when a barrage of steel bdes crossed in front of her.

  Li Kung panicked. “No, Pun!” He charged forward, stumbled over a decapitated head, and with a short yelp, fell sprawling to the ground.

  “Where are you going?” Pun shouted. She leaped into the air and pounded a flying kick into someone who came too close, and then rushed to his side.

  “We’ll circle around the battle,” Li Kung said, grabbing her by the waist and hauling himself to his feet. His legs were shaking.

  He spun her around and pushed her behind him, his frail arms reaching out to form a protective barrier between Pun and the warriors killing each other.

  Pun yanked him back. “Let’s go!”

  They climbed back to the safety of the hill behind the rge boulders, and Li Kung turned around to stare. She could pull him no farther. He gazed at the raging battle with tears in his eyes. Warriors with bashing weapons were smashing the skulls of others while spear users pummel the entire length of their spears through a man, then continued to pierce the writhing body until completely mangled.

  Everything moved so slowly. Li Kung couldn’t hear the screams of agony, the hideous cackle of a man who just killed, the dense cngs of colliding steel.

  “We have to wait,” Pun said. “There’s no way out right now.”

  The Green Dragon master was completely surrounded by the Gentle Swordsmen. They were taking advantage of their numbers, surrounding him with their fluttering red robes and dancing bdes, slowly wearing him down with hit-and-run tactics. Wei Xi fought with patience, the gold dagger in his hair gleaming against the sunlight, his light sword cutting and piercing in quick, accurate movements. So far, neither side could overwhelm the other.

  Meanwhile, the Butcher remained close to Wei Bin. Together, they fought off wave after wave of Green Dragon warriors. The Butcher’s tactics were brutal, merciless, his movements a remarkable blur. He seemed to be everywhere at once, his double swords covering so much distance that he resembled a fshing wall of bare steel in front of his enemies. Behind the Butcher’s relentless onsught, Wei Bin tucked his metal fan into his belt and comfortably walked away.

  The battlefield separated. Wei Xi’s Green Dragon elite, the Chaos Spearmen, had pushed their enemies to the back of the cliff where the silver pine forest stood in its magnificence.

  Another group of Green Dragons forced their assaints into the edge of the cliff. The Red Dragons, whose backs lingered over the vertical drop, fought in a deranged frenzy. Those shoved over the edge screamed all the way to the bottom, and they seemed to scream forever.

  In the middle of the hill, in front of the ancestral tombs, the worst of the massacre unfolded. Weakened by the poison smoke and unable to break free, over a hundred Green Dragon warriors perished.

  Then Li Kung saw him, the massive warrior with the blue-tinted skin and heavy saber hanging from his belt. The Mongolian slowly moved through the heart of the bloodshed, tossing and hammering with his bare hands, clearing the warriors in his path like they were hollow figures of cy. His saber remained sheathed, his piercing eyes locked onto the distant figure of the old poison-user, his elegant acts of brutality bringing a new dimension to the battlefield. Li Kung realized that to Sochai, there were no enemies, no friends, no one he shouldn’t kill on Redwood Cliff. The poison-user stood within seconds from him.

  Li Kung looked below him and noticed a familiar face. It was Cricket, Wei Bin’s youngest son, who had escorted him safely from Redwood Cliff a few nights ago. Next to Cricket, moving like lightning, was a figure with a demon’s face and a woman’s body. She held a strange metal flute in her hand; a long bde extended from one end of the flute, smeared with dark blood and torn flesh.

  “That ...” Li Kung managed to lift a finger and point. “That’s the woman with the flute weapon. She stabbed Sochai through the arm!”

  Pun looked down. “That’s a woman?”

  Li Kung shouted, “Sochai! Sochai, we’re over here!” The Mongolian didn’t respond. Li Kung tried to run closer, but was thrown back when a wounded body was hurled into him. He crumbled to the ground, instinctively wrapped his arms together, protecting the little monkey hidden in his coat.

  “What are you doing?” Pun was immediately by his side. She pulled him to his feet. “Sochai can take care of himself. Let’s go!”

  If you’re enjoying the story, please consider following the fiction. It helps the story reach more readers.