Zhang Hongqing was too strong.
Strong enough that Su Jie had stopped thinking about winning and started thinking about finding a gap — any gap — to get out alive. Two or three exchanges had been enough to make the asure of the distance absolutely clear. But he hadn’t despaired. He could still see threads of possibility.
It was the sa logic as the ring match against Feng Hengyi. Feng Hengyi had been far beyond him then too, but the risk of a mutual destruction outco had given Su Jie room to operate. He hadn’t won — the referee’s stoppage had been all that saved him — but he hadn’t been simply finished either.
Tonight was more dangerous than that fight. Both sides had drawn weapons. A blade doesn’t care whose side you’re on.
For Zhang Hongqing to kill Su Jie without cost — that, Su Jie thought, was going to require more effort than the Dragon Head had perhaps planned for.
He wasn’t what he had been.
And he had co prepared. He had known, before arriving in San Francisco, that a confrontation with Zhang Hongqing was a real probability. He had spent ti developing specific tools — thrown weapons especially. That first needle had registered on Zhang Hongqing. He had felt the slight recalibration.
“The thrown-weapon technique cos from Gu Yang,” Zhang Hongqing said. The short rod turned slowly in his hand — a viper finding its angle. “The Judgent. Many serious practitioners have ended under his toothpicks. That penetrating needle system of his is the kind of thing that gives even ghosts pause. You haven’t just absorbed the core of it — you’ve built past it.”
The moving rod reminded Su Jie of sothing he’d read once — a fictional weapons ranking in which the top position went to a short staff. Perceiving the chanism of heaven. The short rod in Zhang Hongqing’s grip, though wood, had exactly that quality: inexhaustible transformation, a reach that seed to extend or contract according to so logic other than its physical length. Dried blood was visible in the grain. It had seen considerable use.
Su Jie’s back was still speaking to him. The Thirteen Protectors Iron Body qigong — the full system of Diamond Indestructibility — was as developed in him as it had ever been, and even so, one blow from that rod through an instrunt of that quality had nearly dropped him.
His martial foundation was primarily unard — the Hoe Strike, refined through thousands of repetitions, fully integrated into his body as a system of bare-hand combat. Against weapons, against a practitioner of this depth, that foundation showed its limits. Against an ordinary master he could move freely. Against a figure of Zhang Hongqing’s historical rarity, the comparison was uncomfortable.
He focused on breathing — driving qi to the back, forcing circulation through the damaged area. The numbness that had settled in was the concerning part. Normally, a strike from a fist, a staff, or even a hamr produced a montary disruption that cleared quickly when he moved and breathed. Numbness that persisted ant sothing different.
“Your back is compromised,” Zhang Hongqing said. “Your mobility is affected. How do you propose to threaten now?”
Su Jie had settled into a posture — neither fully crouched nor standing, arms coiled around each other, the blade held inside the grip. The shape of it was the monkey on a branch: compressed, capable of exploding in any direction, attack or defense or full-output strike without transition.
Zhang Hongqing’s concern was not the posture. It was the needles.
The needles Su Jie carried were not off-the-shelf items. He had designed and fabricated them specifically for protecting Larich — engineered for ballistic consistency and maximum penetration at close range. A refinent of what Gu Yang had shown him, applied to a better delivery dium than toothpicks. Each one was capable of doing what he intended.
“It seems you’ve decided today is the day,” Su Jie said. He was smiling — genuinely, openly — despite everything. His body was still shaking slightly, but under the effort of breath-driven circulation, the back was beginning to respond. The numbness was retreating. It felt like sothing being kneaded back to life from the inside.
“Hmm.” Zhang Hongqing paused — sothing he hadn’t quite anticipated. Then a slight nod, sothing close to appreciation: “Youth is sothing. Recovery at that speed — the Honey Badger Training Camp has extensive data from practitioners at this level, but nothing from anyone who reached it before twenty. I don’t necessarily need to kill you. Taking you into the training camp as a research subject would also serve the purpose.”
“Then I have no choice but to go all in,” Su Jie said, still smiling.
He moved.
The blade swept upward.
Three needles left simultaneously, placed in a triangle around Zhang Hongqing’s available paths — a pyramid formation — and in the sa motion Su Jie reversed direction entirely, driving away from the confrontation toward the open street.
Zhang Hongqing had apparently anticipated this. As the needles launched, his rod described a brief arc and all three disappeared — deflected to sowhere unknowable. The short rod functioning as a shield.
He gave imdiate chase, launching into a straight sprint that matched Su Jie’s pace, closing the distance within a few strides, the rod descending again toward Su Jie’s skull.
In that instant, Su Jie spun back — a complete reversal of montum — and a second blade had appeared in his left hand. Both blades ca up around his head like two sharp horns braced to receive the blow.
Stubborn Ox Turns Back.
The Hoe Strike system’s answer to the huí mǎ qiāng — the horseback return-spear. Where the spear technique operated in a single line, this technique drove from two contact points simultaneously.
The ox in the fields was famously immovable — patient, obedient, capable of sustained labor without complaint. But when an ox finally turned, it turned without reservation and without regard for its own safety. The technique took that mont as its model.
Su Jie had modified it further and embedded it in his thrown-weapon arsenal: at the instant of the turn, both blades left his hands in the sa motion that brought them up — not a block but a throw, the motion of an ox violently tossing its horns, the horns becoming blades in flight.
The geotry was precise: Zhang Hongqing’s rod descending toward Su Jie’s skull; Su Jie spinning back; blades flying toward Zhang Hongqing’s sternum and throat simultaneously.
Mutual destruction logic.
If Zhang Hongqing completed the strike, he caved Su Jie’s skull. If he completed it, both blades entered him through vital points.
Zhang Hongqing had apparently read the technique forming before it fully arrived. His rod shifted left and right on the descent, knocking both blades off course. Then it transitioned — a thrusting extension, like a spear without a head, aid at Su Jie’s Dantian pressure point at the sternum.
A blunt rod in Zhang Hongqing’s hands didn’t need a tip to be fatal. The question of whether sothing without a point can kill a person has a clear answer.
The thrust was immaculate — water flowing from high ground, nothing wasted, nothing forced. With no external disruption, Su Jie was dead.
But the two deflected blades weren’t done.
Each one had a cord attached — transparent filant, nearly invisible in the dark. The blades arced out, reached the end of their range, and swung back on the cords: returning, now aid at Zhang Hongqing’s flanks from both sides.
If he completed the thrust into Su Jie, both blades entered his sides.
“Hmm.” Zhang Hongqing registered it — the transparent cords, the return arc. The Stubborn Ox had seized his attention at full intensity for that fraction of a second, and the cord setup had been laid in that cover.
The technique of attaching a cord to a thrown weapon and controlling its return flight was an ancient one — the shéng biāo, the rope dart. Extraordinarily difficult to develop. Beginners regularly strike themselves. A practitioner who had genuinely mastered it could direct the weapon through complex paths with precision.
Su Jie had clearly been working on this for a significant period. The execution had produced sothing Zhang Hongqing had not fully modeled.
He couldn’t complete the thrust. He drove backward — a genuine retreat — and the returning blades again found nothing.
Su Jie had landed no hit. But Zhang Hongqing had been pushed back. A real step backward, not a tactical repositioning. He had not anticipated the depth of the variation.
The blades swung on their cords and didn’t stop. Su Jie’s arm and body moved together — one blade redirected on the cord toward the retreating Zhang Hongqing, and the other swung and drove deep into the wall of a building beside them.
Su Jie pulled.
The cord went taut, the embedded blade held, and Su Jie was carried up the wall faster than climbing — faster than a monkey — and over the top, dropping into the property beyond.
Clang!
Zhang Hongqing’s rod moved, severing the blade from its cord. Then his arm — a flash of sothing cold passing through the dark, a thrown weapon reaching Su Jie’s body in the instant before he disappeared over the wall.
Then Su Jie was through a window. Gone.
Zhang Hongqing didn’t pursue. Climbing the wall ant his body in the air — movent constrained, no stable ground — and Su Jie would have the thrown-weapon angle he needed. Even at this level, that was not a position Zhang Hongqing wanted to be in.
He stood and looked at what remained: one blade on the ground, one embedded in the wall, transparent cord trailing from both.
“The boy actually got away.” He studied the arrangent. “Terrain, thrown weapons, flying blades, the rope dart — each piece necessary, none sufficient alone. Half a beat slower at any point and this ends differently.” He permitted himself a small asure of sothing like respect.
*****
Su Jie was already two buildings away when he stopped to take stock.
He removed his outer layer. On the back of the bulletproof vest beneath it was a small steel ball — embedded in the material where it had stopped. Zhang Hongqing’s thrown weapon, fired in the instant before the wall. Without the vest, it would have entered his body.
He was Larich’s last line of defense. When bullets were incoming, his job was to stand between them and his employer. He hadn’t been arrogant enough to go without protection.
The vest had also absorbed most of Zhang Hongqing’s rod strike. Without it, that blow would have ended the fight imdiately.
He breathed carefully for a long mont.
Zhang Hongqing was beyond what he had imagined. The man’s capability, the depth of his technique, the completeness of his combat thinking — all of it exceeded the picture Su Jie had constructed in advance.
Tonight had been luck. The specific geotry of the environnt had given him the one option that worked. On open ground, with no walls to use, no cords to anchor, he had no answer that would have served.
The gap between himself and Zhang Hongqing was substantial.
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