Serpent's Eyes 7

The hallowed halls dedicated to martial cultivation dated all the way back to the first White Serpent Queen, who constructed them in the wake of her victory, it was said, so that no member of the white serpent would ever be without venerable Yao’s teachings. So that no member of the White Serpent would ever be unable to personally crush the seeds of rebellion, should they ever spark again.

They were among the sturdiest structures in the Empire, along from the actual walls of Zhenjian, the Heavenly Pillar, or the Imperial Palace. Which was to say, she did not have to worry at all about damaging the halls. This was not the meager training hall of a lesser family or the mediocre fields available to temporary disciples in the Sect..

Their mothers could clash here, and the halls would likely still stand. Bai Meizhen was looking forward to this.

The obvious audience was small. They were not Zheng to stand around hooting like apes while a pair of their scions brawled a rickety disposable stage, but Bai Meizhen knew that there were many eyes upon them, in shadowed balconies and among the garden pavilions, through open windows and doors.

She would never claim they were not important, but right now, they were a secondary concern.

She met Bai Nuying’s eyes across the circle of finely ground white sand which filled the low formation etched walls of the sparring arena. If she strained her senses, she could feel them thrumming, the energies rippling in a high invisible dome.

“I did not expect you to choose one of the outer rings,” Bai Meizhen said.

“I know you have an affinity for the arts of earth, the sand and the muck. I would not wish to be accused of selecting an unfair battlefield against a sister,” Bai Nuying replied casually. The air shimmered as her spear materialized. Carved from dark wood, painted and patterned after a serpent’s scales, and tipped with a broad sharp blade of gleaming bronze, it spun in her grasp, blade hissing and trailing a shimmering edge of blue in its wake.

Bai Meizhen’s ribbon blades rang and hissed as the handle appeared in her hand, the long strips of flexible venom infused steel, cutting lazily lines through the sand as they writhed like serpents tails in the sand. “Sister is honorable. Though I would never make such a petty accusation. I only hope that you yourself might not find the battlefield unfair.”

“Never. This I swear. We are white serpent’s. It is for lesser people to complain about fairness in combat. As said by Venerable Yao…”

“No tactic is unfair when blood is shed,” Bai Meizhen finished the statement easily. They were words every child knew, even if she felt her kin could be terribly uneven in holding to them.

“You are not so far gone as to forget, good,” Bai Nuying said coolly. “Proctor.”

The simulacrum seated in the air above the arena cracked open one eye. The woman, the Keeper of the hall, was a fourth realm, tasked with overseeing the duels and spars of the younger generation. Thickly built for a white serpent, wearing only a loose martial robe which left one arm thickly muscled and inked with dark tattoos, she looked down at them with affected disinterest.

“The count will begin. This spar ends upon yield, unconsciousness, or the total loss of usable qi, or my judgment, as agreed by both participants.”

They both gave a sharp nod. With careful steps, they circled the edge of the arena and each other, two predators judging their rival. The proctor's low, calm voice washed over them, counting down from ten, until…

“Begin.”

Steel screamed and sparks showered the arena. Her domain blade, summoned and shot out in an eyeblink, met with Bai Nuying’s. Where her blade was broad and nearly crescent shaped, a metal fang worthy of its regent, Bai Nuying’s was a rattling chain of liquid metal, hung with barbed weights. Bai Meizhen ripped her weapon free before it could be trapped in clinking links, even as she rose and rose from the sands.

And her cousin matched her. Abyssal waters, deep blue and black flooded out of the air, embracing their bodies, erasing their human postures with the predatory sway of towering serpents. They circled the arena far faster now, eyes burning gold in the shadow of their abyssal mantles.

The air between them detonated in a dozen thunderous cracks, air rippling where their weapons invisibly met, darting spear and hissing ribbons skirling thunderously, sending sand erupting from the bursts of erupting air and ear splitting noise. Five strikes, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty.

All these feints and counters and strikes flashed in mere seconds, filling the air with drifting kicked up sand.

And darkening the sky with ominously gathering moisture.

Metal screamed on metal, and this time her domain blade caught, razor edge sinking into quicksilver chain, but gummed, caught and coiled. She scented lightning on her tongue, gathering power in her cousin’s tensed arm as the next thrust of the spear roared out in chained thunderclaps, overpowering her parry.

Bai Meizhen qi churned as the spear struck her dead in the center of the chest, ripping a fissure in her mantle with the final booming crack. Felt it rattle her bones and threaten to disrupt her organs and meridians alike.

But she was not a feeble thing wrapped in adamant armor. Beneath mud and soil lay only unbreakable bedrock. She saw a flicker of surprise cross her opponents shadowed eyes as only a single trickle of blood overflowed her lips.

Then her liquid tail crashed into Bai Nuying with enough force to crater the wet send and rattle the walls before her arm had finished rebounding from the failed strike. Bai Nuying, responded instantly, her own coils rippling angrily, lashing out, coiling around hers in a text book grapple, denying her control of the coil as their combined weight slammed them into the wall and barrier.

Face to face, she was too close for her opponent to bring her spear to bear. As the acidic, ugly purple clouds began to sizzle, dripping with corrosive rain, she struck out, not with her ribbon blade, but with with her off hand, a knife hand strike with her skin glistening with acidic venom.

It was knocked aside, countered by a harsh jab that sank into her stomach, a second and a third battering her chest, sending up sprays of blue black water as her cousin's monstrous strength punched directly through her defenses and struck flesh, bruising even her earth charged flesh, making ribs groan as the contact venoms hissed and burned, soaking through her gown.

She saw triumph in Bai Nuying’s eyes.

It was a sweet sight to see it break, pressed against the barrier, there was not even room for her head to snap back, as Bai Meizhen’s elbow slammed into her cheek just below her eye, shredding her own sleeve with the alkaline water blade that erupted from her pores and slashing through the other girls own mantle, missing her eye by barely a millimeter.

There was no shame in accepting pain, accepting loss, to bring yourself to victory.