Year 658 of the Stable Era,
Twentieth day of the tenth month
Slightly Later Afternoon
Glancing over at her opponent, Gao Oma watched as Li Gho slid her hand into a large stone gauntlet. There was a faint click as it attached itself to the rest of her armor, her entire left arm now encased in rough gray stone. Rather than the smoothed surface common to most cultivator artifacts, it was deeply whorled and cratered, the largest of its cracks filled with veins of silver. Burnished copper gleamed between the bends of her fingers, revealing a second, inner layer.
It was an asymmetrical piece, as the stony shell covering her left arm only extended as far as her upper shoulder. A striking art perhaps? Or maybe a channeling piece designed to work with an elemental affinity? Or perhaps it was a relic of an older era, something Li Gho had either purchased or inherited, the sole remnant of a suit of armor to have survived the ages. Whichever it was, Oma couldn’t tell.
Shifu Yeung Lin would know what it was, if he were here. He always seemed to know everything, probably from all the books that he read. He’d often told his classes about how he had made sure to read as many books as he could in his youth to understand the best way to approach his cultivation.
“True comprehension begins with assimilation,” he had said. “One cannot truly practice the art best suited for them if one only knows of a fraction of the arts that exist.”
Oma had tried to follow his advice, reading most of three scrolls cataloging various cultivation methods before she had given up in frustration. Many had been described with prose that only seemed to obscure their actual nature, while many others served as steppingstones for specific paths of cultivation. Paths that Oma didn’t even know she would want to pursue.
Still, she doubted that reading more scrolls would have allowed her to glean Li Gho’s technique from her equipment, as she seemed to be the practitioner of some very esoteric arts. In addition to her strange stone armor, the short cultivator had also festooned herself in strings of cash.
Three thick bands wrapped around her waist, while three shorter strings about eight inches long hanging from each of her hips. A gleaming silver coin, as wide as her index finger was long, glittered from the last braids of her hair, and a set of dark iron rings adorned the first three fingers of her right hand.
It made Oma feel unprepared in comparison. The only things she had prepared for herself were a pair of vambraces with a few talismans she had drawn stuffed under the straps. They felt heavy under her robes as she made sure that Willow Branch’s sheath was properly fastened to her waist, her nervousness adding pounds to their weight. Li Zhan watched as she retied her last knot, nodding in approval at her technique.
“Senior, do you have any advice?” Oma asked, watching as Chang Hui and Guan Tie whispered theirs to Li Gho.
“Remember your technique,” Li Zhan said, tracing his hand along the pommel of his sword contemplatively. “Avoid wasting effort on poor strikes and be aware of your opponent’s actions at all times.”
Oma sighed at the general nature of his advice, which was the same as what he gave her each time they sparred.
“Do you have any advice that would be suited for this duel?” she asked pleadingly, looking deep into his eyes for some semblance of emotion. He blinked, taking a long moment to think about his answer, before putting his hand lightly on her shoulder, like someone trying to stop a gentle breeze from stealing a piece of paper.
“Your opponent’s cultivation is slightly greater, but your sword technique is sufficient to bridge the gap. You can win this fight so long as you remain focused.” He raised and lowered his hand twice, before taking a step back.
It was perhaps the single most awkward pat on the shoulder Oma had experienced in her life. She looked to Baikun Feng in hope of more advice, but he was too busy using the preparation period to practice his sword technique.
Taking a deep breath, Oma let the mountain’s rough qi flow through her body as she stepped onto the raised stone of the dueling area. Her opponent was the challenger, so as the representative of the defending club she made the first move.
“Disciple Gao Oma, Body Refining Cultivator of the Sword Intent Club,” she declared, clasping her right fist firmly as she delivered her martial salute with a low, straight bow, doing her best to keep her nerves out of her voice.
“Disciple Li Gho,” her opponent responded, her glasses glinting like twin moons as she returned the gesture. She spoke with cold, calm detachment as she finished her declaration, as if this was just a normal occurrence for her. “Qi Refining Cultivator of the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall.”
As the last words left her lips, their heads rose, followed by their hands.
Willow’s Branch left its sheath with barely a whisper, the tip of its blade twisting to face Li Gho before plunging towards her as Oma opened the duel with a quick thrust.
The stone arm rose in response, forearm sweeping left as Li Gho deflected the thrust away from her body with casual ease. As she did her unarmored arm reached for her belt, pulling a string of cash free in a single motion. The length of coins twisted like a copper snake, red cord glowing faintly from between the square holes of the coins as it formed into the shape of a sword. Oma took a defensive stance as Li Gho made her counterattack, the long blade of her sword whipping through the air towards her leg.
The cord extended as it approached, aglow with wisps of light blue qi as the blade lengthened and a sharp edge of hardened energy formed along its side. Oma hopped to the left to avoid the blow, letting it score a thin line into the stone of the arena. Her escape, however, was short lived, as a small object whizzed towards before she could land and plan her next move.
On reflex she parried the first with her sword with a sharp ping, eyes focusing on Li Gho’s left hand as she cut through the next four, her sword moving in short, precise swings as she landed on her feet. The thumb of the stone hand flicked again, its silver cracks aglow as it sent another coin zooming towards her face with a level of dexterity that defied the girth of its thick digits.
She could sense that this one was stronger than the rest, infused with a greater measure of metal qi, and Oma exhaled a breath as she channeled her will and qi through her blade, making it one with her body as she cleaved through the oncoming projectile. The two halves of the coin fell to the stone behind her with a soft tink as Li Gho’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
“So, you’re not as dull as you look,” she said with a faint chuckle, absently tossing and catching a handful of coins as she did. They clinked against the stone with each toss, the metallic sound forming a strange rhythm as she and Oma began to circle.
“You’re not too bad yourself,” Oma replied, carefully watching her opponent as she planned her next move.
Whatever technique Li Gho was using was metal in nature, she thought, and one that a was particularly flexible at both close range and at a distance. Her weapon was odd, though. It was a sword for most of her moves, but it would extend like a whip if it got too close to her, closing the gap far faster than her sword could match.
Whip swords were only slightly uncommon among cultivators, but with a medium as blunt as coins, surely a flail would have been a better choice to pick. A whip blade’s strength lay in the way its narrow blade speedily cut through the air, and the thickness of the coins combined with that of the cord cost it most of that advantage.
“Say,” Oma asked, curious about her opponent’s weapon choice, “why are you using coins instead of a real whip sword? Surely a lighter weapon would allow you to—"
Her words were interrupted as Li Gho made her next move, slapping the fistful of coins at her with a sharp crack. The coins whistled as they shot through the air, infused with far more force and qi than the previous barrage. Oma desperately threw up her left hand as they approached, fingers fumbling a talisman from her vambrace as her tongue did the same with its chant.
“Oh water, crashing falls of-fuck!” she managed, her hours of careful study fleeing her mind as she forced as much energy as she could into the expletive. It was a crude tactic—one that Shifu Yeung Lin would no doubt deducted points for—but an effective one nonetheless.
The excess of qi poured through her third-best attempt at matching the example talisman, activating the mystic meanings of the spell stored within. In an instant, a wall of water burst into the air between her and the coins, its surface a rough, uneven disc far closer to the sole of a cheap sandal than the circle it was supposed to be. She had also intended to use her earth talisman, as she was the most proud of how it turned out, but water would have to do.
One coin reached her before the wall formed, drawing blood as it tore a ragged line through the robes on her left shoulder, but the rest collided with her improvised barricade. They slowed as they hit the wall, the water stealing their momentum before they could reach her. With each strike the surface began to bubble more and more unsteadily as it absorbed the force of the blows, until it finally reached its limit and popped, briefly wetting her clothes before it dissolved back into pure qi. Oma deflected the last two coins with a single sweep as she grit her teeth, focusing her energy into her left shoulder as she forced the bleeding to stop.
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Using her qi like this was also a crude solution compared to a pill, but such medicine was prohibited in a duel, and she would lose more energy in the long run if she allowed herself to bleed out during subsequent exertions.
She didn’t have long to heal herself, however, as Li Gho had already taken advantage of her split focus to close the distance between them, her coin-sword whistling as it swept towards her injured arm. The glowing edge of the coins simmered with energy, clearly the result of Li Gho’s diligent refinement of whatever art it was, but the technique of the swing was far from the same. It was slow, obvious. A heavy blow meant to overwhelm without any complexity behind it.
Oma breathed out as she moved, focusing on the flow of her qi through Willow Branch’s long blade. She let her technique guide her, every practiced movement adding its focus to the strength of her blows. Her sword cut between the gaps in Li Gho’s coin weapon, severing the corded qi holding it together like it was common thread.
Once, twice, thrice, she struck, each blow flowing seamlessly into the next as she sheared the long whip-sword into a short dagger with a string of strikes. On the fourth sweep her blade rose towards Li Gho’s face like an ascending koi, only for the stone arm to once again intercept her blow.
This time, however, her opponent lacked the time for a perfect deflection, and Oma’s blade carved a smooth gash deep into the rough gray rock as her focused sword qi bit through it like it was made of rice paper.
Li Gho’s qi flared as she forced Oma’s blade to a halt, metal and earth rumbling with a sound like an avalanche. Oma quickly pulled her sword free as Li Gho twisted her arm, refusing to allow her opponent to disarm her by catching her blade with the remaining half of the armguard.
Coins fell to the ground in a light rain as Li Gho drew back six paces, tossing the remains of her weapon to her ruined stone hand before reaching for her waist. As she formed the second string of cash into another weapon, the coins in her left hand began to sizzle, bright orange metal oozing from between her clenched fingers.
The metal spread down her arm, but instead of simply falling to the floor in molten droplets, it clung to the dark stone, forcing itself into the gash that Oma had just carved and pulling the stone together. The metal began to swirl as it rapidly cooled, forming a whorled pattern that shone faintly against the dull gray. Li Gho considered her work before looking back to Oma, whatever trace of humor she had displayed earlier disappearing as her expression turned steely.
“It takes no small level of strength to pierce my Mountain Peak Armor,” Li Gho said, giving Oma a harsh appraising look as she reevaluated her opponent. “Your sword is more dangerous than your appearance would lead one to believe. I suppose that I will have to get serious after all. Truly, a lion must always use its full strength, even when hunting a fox in rabbit’s hide.”
With those words she drew the last string of cash from her waist with her left hand, twirling the two together until they formed a long staff. With a shout, she lunged at Oma, her calm demeanor replaced by one of calculating ferocity.
The shining string of cash lashed out again and again, as Li Gho made use of her weapon’s superior reach to press the attack, forcing Oma onto the defensive with a series of sweeps at her legs and face. Its adherence to form also grew more erratic, alternating between the flexibility of a whip and the rigidity of a pole at a moment’s notice, making it harder for Oma to sever the strands with same ease as she had before.
They traded several more blows, each drawing blood from glancing hits before Oma saw an opening for a clear strike. She lunged forwards, intent on clipping the last foot from Li Gho’s staff.
As she did, her instincts suddenly screamed a warning, and she quickly transitioned into a duck, just as the fingers of the stone hand flicked out again, sending three coins from the middle of the staff through the space her face had occupied half a second ago.
As she watched the severed cord reknit itself, as Li Gho used her qi to rebind the threads together. Oma attempted a horizontal slash towards her side, but the coin weapon intercepted it, clicking together into a solid cylinder of metal that protected its corded core. When pushed into a direct conflict, Li Gho’s qi was far more potent than Oma’s, her dedication to that pillar of cultivation allowing her far more energy to focus into a far denser form.
Oma let Willow’s Brach bounce off rather than contest blow, focusing her qi instead on strengthening the blade’s flexibility to prevent it chipping as she quickly returned to a ready stance, eyes paying extra attention to Li Gho’s hands as they began to trade blows in earnest.
She was in a truly frustrating position. Her opponent’s technique allowed her immense control over the flow of the fight, and the strength of the Mountain Peak Armor was no joke. Her palms were ringing from the strength it was adding to Li Gho’s two-handed blows.
Li Gho was also a cunning tactician. More than once her opponent used her coin-staff as a distraction to attack Oma with barehanded strike. The first had rattled her ribs, causing her stance to falter, while the second had barely grazed her thigh. Her fighting style was a wild mix of soft and hard techniques, the artistry of their combination pushing the limits of the second stage.
But each time Li Gho’s deployed a new tactic, Oma grew better at reacting to them. Her sword grew faster, catching the end of the coin-weapon with greater frequency, cutting down on Li Gho’s reach an inch at a time. Her opponent’s sudden ambush attacks were also beginning to take their toll, as each coin she shot at Oma was one fewer in her weapon.
Instead of dodging the coins, she also grew more confident in blocking them, deflecting each close-quarters attacks with short, precise turns of her blade. As the fight dragged on, her foe’s weapon began to dwindle, growing shorter and shorter until it was barely two feet long.
However, just as Li Gho was about to run out of cash, her hand darted into her pocket. She drew out a large sycee of gold from a hidden pocket, the gilded boat almost as large as a closed fist. Wisps of qi flowed from between her fingers like smoke from a blazing fire as she tossed it towards Oma.
“Moneychanger’s Art:” she intoned, her voice ringing with qi as she invoked her technique. The surge of energy bypassed the chant that the mortal technique normally required, raising it to a height that its creator could have never dreamed of. “Quick Exchange!”
Coins rose from her palm in a copper wave as the taels of gold transformed, cresting as it fell towards Oma.
Part of Oma winced at the wastefulness of the technique. Such money could have bought her family’s farm ten times over back when she had been a mortal, a sum far greater than any she had been likely to have ever seen in her life before her acceptance into the Teal Mountain Sect. An extravagance for a mortal, a pittance for a cultivator.
She surged her qi as she breathed in the mountain’s strength, Willow’s Branch steaming with power as her blood pounded with anticipation at meeting the technique with her own. But as the cap of the wave began to fall, and the first sound of her technique was on her lips, Shifu Yeung Lin’s words echoed in her mind.
“How much do you think these dummies weigh?”
The weight of the stone slab struck her like a boulder, and her mind ticked as it did the math. A thousand copper coins to a tael of silver. Ten taels of silver to a tael of gold, and that sycee looked like it had weight at least twenty…
And metal weighed more than stone, didn’t it?
Gao Oma grabbed both of the talismans from her right vambrace as the shadow of the falling coins blotted out the sun, throwing them out before her as she recited their chant, forcing the panic from her voice as she retreated as fast as she could.
“Mountain, touch the clouds so proud. Endure, both the storm and rain.”
Two walls of stone rose from the ground as they engulfed the paper talismans. One cracked under the force of Li Gho’s coin-whip as it lashed out after her heels. The other formed at an odd angle, crumbling as the poorly scribed stone gave in to the weight of the metal. The edge of the tide reached the tips of Oma’s toes as the coins slid to a stop, and she swept the front of it away with a foot as she readied herself to approach over the now uneven terrain.
On the other side of the pile of coins Li Gho took deep, ragged breaths. Using Quick Exchange like that always took a lot out of her, as the technique produced true metal rather than qi constructs. The latter would have been useless its creator, but it meant that pushing the technique past its limits with an invocation put an enormous load on her Qi Refining cultivation.
Her opponent had dodged the initial strike, but her assault was far from over. Her hand twisted in a series of signs as she strode across the coins, copper rising around them as she spat out the name of her next technique.
“Clinking Coin Arts: Fistfuls of Cash.”
Li Gho punched her fists together as she charged, her feet gliding over the loose change as her qi surged. Oma raised her blade just in time to slice the outer layer from her palm, retracting her sword quickly as Li Gho attempted to grab the blade. Li Gho kicked up a spray of coins and she wove beneath them, slicing a long cut along her leg before deflecting a hammer blow from her stone arm with Willow Branch’s pommel.
A second kick halted an inch before it could send a second spray at her, the blade’s anticipation forcing Li Gho to back off the attack moments before she severed her own leg against Oma’s sword. She responded with a knife strike, but Oma deflected her again, redirecting her fingers to the side as the coins forming her fingers shot harmlessly towards the audience. Guan Tie deflected them into the air with a casual spin of his spear, laughing as his free hand caught them in a tower before they hit the ground.
The two combatants exchanged another three blows, Li Gho giving up more ground with each. The strength of her metal fists was more than Oma’s sword could hope to break, but Willow Branch’s reach was far longer, and she used it to great effect as she forced Li Gho onto the defensive. With a frustrated cry Li Gho crossed her arms to block another blow, metal screeching in protest as layers sheared away.
Li Gho’s qi might be greater, but Senior Li Zhan was right: her technique could bridge the gap.
She sharpened herself again and again, will and might entwining as one as her focus intensified. Her path, her heart demon, her future, all of it faded. Her sword took over all thoughts. The arc of its swing, the way each move would react to her opponent, like a partner in a dance. Li Gho’s qi blazed more and more brightly, her fists intensifying in strength, but they only offered less and less resistance to her blows.
It all felt so right, so natural.
Her sword sang as copper bled, the coins beneath her feet aiding her blows as she used them to slide between stances with greater ease. Half the coins on Li Gho’s right hand fell away as her sword rose through them, before twisting forwards in one final stab. But just as her blade was about to make contact, she felt her opponent’s qi flare one last time.
“Clinking Coin Arts: Rugpull,” Li Gho exhaled, sliding her right foot back with a snap of her fingers. Threads of qi surged through the coins beneath their feet as she did, linking them all together in a spiderweb of glowing light. Oma felt a sharp keening fill her ears, like nails against a thousand copper pans. Willow’s Branch fell as she clutched at her ears, her focus shattering like a pane of glass. The ground shifted as the coins beneath her feet jerked to the side, and she fell as even her balance failed her.
Coins gathered in Li Gho’s fist as she raised it in the air, threads of pure qi twisting through them as they formed into a narrow spear. Without hesitation she drove it downwards, and Oma screamed as blood poured from her shoulder.
