Chapter 10: Ridge of Teeth
On the way to report, they came: six men in gray with banded arms—mercenaries bought with pills and grudges—racing along the ridge path above a gorge whose water licked stones with a knife's tongue. The lead bore the crescent stitch.
"Qin Mo," he shouted. "Leave your life."
Qin Mo did not answer. He dropped three stones. They hit earth, not randomly but with old intentionality. Lines bled out like dye in water.
The mercenaries charged, blades flowering silver. Qin stepped left, then up—no ground there, yet his foot found it: Reed-Boat Slipstream. He brushed a shoulder with two fingers; a man's balance evaporated. He fell, rolling into brush, blade tumbling into the gorge.
Two came together, practiced mates. Qin cut between them, flicked a talisman at the one on his right—smoke bloomed—and dragged the other into it by his collar. He emerged behind them, heel rapping knee, elbow tapping jaw. The man's lights went out.
Steel whistled at his back. He bent, spine like a willow in a high wind, and felt the blade's sigh pass over his hair. He turned the bend into a kick—short, brutal—against ribs. Something gave.
The lead drew a talisman etched with a true cultivator's hand—this one careful, deadly. He slapped it to his blade. Gold wind screamed, a blade inside a blade.
Qin Mo's face went still. He had nothing equal in raw realm, so he changed the field.
He snapped his fingers. The three stones cried out, and the ground remembered being soft. The lead man's foot sank an inch—only an inch—but a blade's angle is born in inches. The gold strike skittered, glanced off the world's edge, and found only air.
Qin stepped in. Soft Flow Palm rode the failing angle, slid under the man's arm, and kissed ribs over heart. He didn't break—he persuaded. Breath fled. The leader sagged.
Then the seventh shadow stepped out of the world. He moved like someone who had forgotten being a man and remembered being a knife. His blade, black and smudged, drank light.
"Withdraw," he told the mercenaries without looking. They scattered, more terrified of him than of death. The knife-man's eyes rested on Qin Mo. "Who hired you?" Qin asked.
The knife-man only smiled, a thin cut, and moved. The world constricted to a line of black and a heartbeat.
Qin met it with empty hands.
The first cut fell—and missed. Not by chance. The man cut air where Qin had been; Qin had stepped into the cut and out again, shoulder brushing the blade's dead edge. The second was a rising throat-taker. Qin dipped his chin and felt hair fall. He let the third paint his sleeve.
Then he placed a thumb on the blade's spine. The knife-man's eyes flicked—shock. Who touches a blade? Qin's thumb slid one knuckle with the blade's motion. The cut drew itself away. The knife sang, confused.
"Empty Sleeve Evasion," the knife-man murmured, respect like rain. "Who taught you?"
"The mountains," Qin said.
They traded ten exchanges in a space where a hawk couldn't fling its wings. Then the knife-man leaped back, drew a glyph into air, and vanished, leaving a smell like cold slate after rain.
Qin Mo stood alone on the ridge, breath steady, sleeve torn. He looked at the place the knife had been. He had not won. He had not lost. But the world had taken note