Journey to the East 36

“So you both gonna be on horseback for this, how about the little flame fairy?” Zheng Nan asked, rolling his shoulders as they strode toward the sparring ring.

“I think not,” Gu Xiulan replied, earning a disgruntled pout in the back of her head from the fairy lurking in her dantian. “Perhaps later, spirits would only overcomplicate things. Do you have a spirit aside from your steed Shan Qiao?”

“I do not, I have not had the opportunity nor the honor,” Shan Qiao replied, briefly frowning. The Shan clan did have contracts with a number of burrowing beasts and metal fairies, if Gu Xiulan recalled correctly. She supposed none were particularly suited for a cavalrywoman.

“And you, Zheng Nan. You said before that your clan might be sending something.”

He chuckled, scratching the back of his head.”Well, I said I had a friend. Gramps’ kind don’t take kindly to be ordered around, but I did make a friend when I was a brat. Remains to be seen if he wants to haul his hairy butt out here to sweat in the desert.”

“Just the three of us, two versus one then. The purpose of the spar is not victory but to test coordination. I hope you will keep that in mind Zheng Nan,” Gu Xiulan.

“So I shouldn’t just jump up and deck you in your pretty nose at go?” Zheng Nan asked innocently, bounding up onto the stone foundations of the sparring ring, inscribed with simple formations to contain a minor exchange of blows.

“As if I would let you,” She sniffed. “I’d burn every hair off your idiot head if you tried.”

Something about the way Shan Qiao was glancing back and forth between them with such a concerned look, stirred a deep irritation in her chest. She was not an idiot, and frankly for all his incessant and shameless flirting, she didn’t believe Zheng Nan was on the hunt for her. He was not a subtle soul, or a manipulator, he was merely a… a… randy hound, sniffing after whatever he could get on a given day without having to work for it.

Which she had less than zero interest in indulging.

“Hah, and here I was hoping for the lightning. Gets me all tingly!” Zheng Nan replied with a bark of laughter. “But yeah, yeah I get it. You want me to play defensive. I don’t practice the seventy two transformations, so I can't give ya a bunch of copies to fight, but I can think of some tricks. Guessing we’re going for ring out, since ya want to be all tactical like?”

“Just so, I don’t doubt you will surprise us. Shan Qiao.”

“Captain Gu!”

She eyes the other girl’s attentive stance appreciatively. “This will test your responsiveness and ability to work with me. I will not give you many direct orders, as I will not be able to manage you in the heat of real combat. Follow my lead, support me, or at least do not get in my way. That is your test.”

Shan Qiao’s nodded tersely, her jaw working with nerves, but Gu Xiulan was confident that she would not make a fool of them here in front of Zheng Nan, she expected some issues, having never fought beside the girl, but she was a quick wit in the what of battle, and did not get hung up overthinking in crisis, which in Gu Xiulan’s opinion was the most important foundation for a warrior. She waved Shan Qiao forward and mounted short steps onto the sparring platform herself, taking up a position opposite and to the right of Zheng Nan. Shan Qiao followed her, taking up a stance across and two the left. Together the three of them formed an even triangle within the circular confines of the ring. Gu Xiulan tapped her heel on the stone, sending a spark of qi into the formations, which activated with a hum, a faint shimmer filling the air in a dome around them.

“Three count?” Zheng Nan asked idly, feet sliding apart, hands spread wide. It was a brawlers or a wrestlers stance, his staff no where to be seen.

“Three count,” Gu Xiulan agreed, her right foot sliding forward, her burned arm extended, palm up.

Shan Qiao was looking entirely too anxious for a spar. Had she misjudged the girl?

“One.” “Two.” “Three.”

Zheng Nan’s heel crashed into the earth thunderously before the sound of the final number had faded. The packed earth of the dueling circle heaved like water, cracking and groaning from the sheer force of the impact, dirt and rock visibly rippling like water as it rushed outward from where his foot had come down.

Gu Xiulan scoffed, leaping from the heaving earth almost lazily. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shan Qiao crouch instead, driving fingers into the dirt, steadying a circle of ground a half meter across.

She fanned out her fingers, a bead of blazing blue light blooming at the tip of each fingernail, and slashed her hand through the air, sending the four beads screaming down, ballooning outward, gaining cores of blinding white.

Shan Qiao’s face went amusing pale as it dawned on her that Gu Xiulan was not going to hold HER fire either. There would be exercises where Gu Xiulan had more restraint too, but for now she wanted to see how her prospective second would handle proximity to a battle like this.

Zheng Nan would obviously be fine, the laughing brute.

Flames detonated across the the ring, making the formations in the stone groan as light flared in a swirling dome of qi, straining under the heat and force of the blast.

Zheng nan, as expected, stood in the middle of the hottest part of the flames, arms crossed over his chest, embers catching in his hair and on the hems of his clothes, grinning up at her in that infuriating way he had as if to say ‘is that all?’

His expression twitched, eyes darting to the side as a spinning shape erupted from the flames. A dense boulder of flame scorched rock as large as a man, it shot out of the smoke and fading fires as if launched from a siege engine

Zheng Nan’s hand snapped out fingers widespread and caught it. His feet ground backward in the dust, digging furrows in the ground just as his clenching fingers ripped jagged scars in the spinning rock.

He spun, flinging the rock away., toward the barrier.

And caught a bolt of roaring lightning across the back, shoving him even further toward the edge of the ring.

The flung boulder thudded to the earth, cracking open like an egg as its momentum drained in a second, and Shan Qiao, stumbled out wincing, just in time to dive to the side as Zheng Nan seized the crackling bolt Gu Xiulan had thrown in his hand, smoke rising, and hurled it into the ground with a boom.

“Well! If you ladies don’t need a warm up. Guess I don’t either!”

Gu Xiulan landed light upon the earth, sparks crackling in a web between her fingers as he shouted, and she could not help the fierce grin that broke out on her lips, even as the shadow of his scorched fist fell over her face, the wind of the incoming blow ripping at her hair.

Gods and ancestors she had missed this.