Wu Hao was already two-thirds awake, eyes wide open, four heartbeats after he'd heard the first scream. He tried to leap out of his bedroll but, still shorter than he'd expected to be, his feet nearly tangled in a sheet and it was a bit of frantic work before he managed to get loose.

  Around him, the other porters had also been clustered around the dying embers of the campfire, and they were slowly waking up, though they weren't as alert as he was. After all, they hadn't been expecting to be be woken up in the middle of the night, while he had.

  Stupid, he scolded himself. Why hadn't he told them? He'd been so busy thinking about what he was going to later that he'd nearly forgotten to think about what he was going to do now.

  He inhaled deeply as Old Qin's eyes were still in the process of unmisting from slumber.

  "What -" Old Qin asked, his voice somewhat hoarse.

  "Attack!" Wu Hao screamed. "Bandits!"

  There were a few beats that lasted far too long as everyone who was awake stared at Wu Hao and he stared back, panting for breath, and then Old Qin ripped his bedroll away and stood up.

  "Ambush!" he roared. "Attack! Golden Lotus Guards, protect the merchandise! Protect the young lord!"

  Finally that served to kick everyone into quick, confused motion. Several men nearly slammed into each other as they tried to fulfill a dozen tasks at once, gathering up bedrolls, scrabbling for where they'd laid their spears, pulling on their clothes and the little armor they'd received.

  Wu Hao hadn't even received that much. He hadn't been given a spear, hadn't been given answer that he was thought to be growing out of soon, wasn't even given a knife.

  A knife, he thought. He'd need a knife.

  He dashed away as fast as he could, trying to think through the chaos erupting as the men around him were being organized by Old Qin into something resembling a formation. Where could he get a knife? They'd been given cold food for dinner, so there had been no one that had used a knife that he could steal.

  Making his way to the carriage, he finally realized where he'd find a knife. Old Wang, the young master's servant, was the one who handled cooking for his master. It'd been an extravagant meal for the road, so if anyone had used a knife there it'd have been him. Wu Hao sprang forward, scrabbling up the sides of the driver's seats and lifting himself bodily next to where Old Wang would usually sit.

  Just as he'd found Old Wang's bag in the legroom beneath him and dived down to rip it open, he heard the sound of a wooden panel behind him shifting open. It wasn't much of a sound, but with only the men in the distance preparing themselves for an attack that had to be incoming any moment, it sounded loud.

  "Old Wang," a voice hissed. "What's going on?"

  Wu Hao righted himself, staring into the stunned face of Liu Zhiyi. The other man still had traces of sleep in his eyes, with the puffy red eyes of someone who'd woken up abruptly. The scent of wine and food wafted forward, out of the opening.

  "Who the hell are you?" Liu Zhiyi whispered, and then his head whipped around as something loudly burst into fire not far away. "Are we under attack?"

  Speechless, Wu Hao could only nod.

  "Yes," he said. "We're under attack."

  Liu Zhiyi let out a low sob of desperation.

  "This isn't fair," he moaned. "One of my first five deliveries. My second sister never gets attacked. Why me?"

  "Shut up," Wu Hao hissed, seeing something move in the darkness beyond and hearing the cries of thundering feet, but Liu Zhiyi didn't seem to hear it. Instead, his eyes had lit up with an idea.

  "Drive," he ordered Wu Hao. "Just drive. Take the horses, take this carriage, and take me out of here. All of the most important goods are here. Get us out of here and I'll reward you."

  Wu Hao fell silent.

  He should, he thought. Rationally, he knew that there was nothing he could do to make a difference here. If the bandits had a martial artist of the second-grade, they were all doomed unless there was something miraculous that could give him all of his qi back and more, and as far as he knew something like that didn't exist.

  And he could do it, too. The horses were only a short distance away, and it wasn't like he actually knew any of these people.

  Somewhere in the darkness, he heard Old Qin muster up a battlecry, and that forced all thoughts of just fleeing out his mind.

  "Go," Liu Zhiyi urged him. "Why are you hesitating? My father will reward you richly."

  Wu Hao let the reins drop and rooted around in Old Wang's bag, where his fingers butted blindly against something made of comforting cold steel.

  He pulled it out, finding it to be little more than a well-cared for kitchen kife. There were faint hints of blood, but they were from preparing meat, not cutting into people.

  With a knife in his hand, the world felt a little more stable. It helped, he found, to think about what he was about to do as a mission. There was every chance that he would die and that others would die also, but what else was new? His objective was to kill the bandits.

  Leaving Liu Zhiyi behind, he jumped down from the driver's seat and ran away from the carriage. Liu Zhiyi's terrified voice reached him, before a loud string of curses replaced it as desperation gave way to a panicked anger.

  He ran into the darkness, heading towards the site of battle, and thankfully his eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly enough.

  It wasn't much of a battle. When he'd fought with the porters of the Diancang Sect, he'd been like a wolf among well-armed lambs even as a limited third-stage martial artist, and these porters weren't in that better of a shape. When they thrust out their spears they shut their eyes before striking, when they were forced back they gave ground way too easily, and they cringed away from every blow even when those blows gave them a opportunity to strike back.

  Their opponents, on the other hand, were smaller in number. As Wu Hao ran, the occasional torch that a few of the men on either side carried allowed him to see their faces in flashes of rugged, unkempt beards and moustaches, sabers with more nicks than edges.

  He ran at the first man he saw that wasn't wearing the golden lotus on his back, knife held forward. Every step he felt himself grow more tired, unused to the exertion and sleep deprived, but the knife in his hand was real and so was the bandit in front of him.

  Wu Hao rammed the knife into the man's side. He didn't try to force it deep - experience had taught him that was an easy way to lose it - but instead pulled it out with two hands, then thrust it again and again until the bandit's saber fell to the ground with an almost plaintive clang.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Breathing heavy, Wu Hao's eyes scanned the little clearing. A saber flashed, he smelled something metallic, and he turned, trying to catch it with his little knife, but it was a strike with two hands, wielding the flat side of the blade to smash into him.

  He flew back, his body momentarily weightless as he was throw clear off his feet, and when he slammed into the ground it took him a dazed few moments before he realized what had just happened.

  A giant of a man, muscular and bald, stood where he'd just stood. One foot idly kicked at the corpse of the bandit Wu Hao had just killed. Ink patterns scrawled up and down the man's arms, but Wu Hao couldn't make out anything else before the flickering torchlight was forced away by someone. The giant was wearing the remnants of a martial artist's robe, the sleeves torn off to make space for the giant's muscle-laden arms.

  And in one hand he was wielding a military saber, with a curved handhold and rings laid into the sword around the back of the sword that were still jangling. It looked small in the giant's hands but it would be deadly.

  Despite looking like a brute, though, Wu Hao could feel something as he looked at the other man. He inhaled and smelled something metallic - not the tang of blood, though there was plenty of that, but something that extended beyond the scents already spred throughout the clearing. He saw it, too, the barest beginnings of a qi core in the bandit's chest.

  This man was at least two thirds of the way to becoming a third-stage martial artist.

  "Killed by a kid," the giant spat. "Pathetic, fourth brother."

  He kicked the corpse again, then received a signal from one of his men and grinned, exposing a mouth with a few missing teeth.

  Wu Hao stared as a shape was brought forward out of the darkness. It was Liu Zhiyi. His hair had been mussed, his elegant robes were flecked with blood, and he had been left with giant bruises all across his face and hands. He stood on his feet, but only barely, his right eye was swollen shut, and tears were leaking from his left. The men pushed him along, poking him in the back repeatedly with their sabers.

  "Please," he was mumbling. "My father can pay you. Please don't kill me."

  Liu Zhiyi might have once been known for his arrogance, but there was nothing of it left.

  "Boss Li," one of them said. He looked like a rugged type, with a chunk of his ear torn out, a scraggly beard and wearing a filthy tunic that left his upper arms bare. "We found a few Spirit Peaches in the carriage."

  So, Wu Hao thought. The leader in front of them was Boss Li, was he? He committed the name to memory.

  Boss Li sighed. "Why'd you have to call me that, huh, third brother?"

  "Oh," the man who was apparently the third brother said. "Sorry, boss. Forgot we weren't supposed to use names. Heheh."

  "You're such an idiot," Boss Li said, and sighed. "Now we're gonna have to kill all of 'em. They know my name now, don't they?"

  Third brother shrugged with an apologetic little smile, but Wu Hao could read Boss Li's qi easily. It hadn't fluctuated even once. The plan had never been to spare them at all. This entire scene might have just been nothing more than an idle amusement.

  "Kill the adults," Boss Li ordered. "Chain up the children."

  He considered this for a moment, then looked over.

  "The horses any good?" he yelled at one of the men, who was busy inspecting them.

  It was then, in that moment of distraction, that Wu Hao tried to strike. Boss Li must have seen him, though, because his head moved as Wu Hao approached.

  "Look at him," Boss Li jeered. "Little brat thinks he's a hero, huh?"

  The saber came down at his head, aiming for his neck.

  So Wu Hao threw himself past where the saber was scything down, throwing himself to the ground, low enough to where Boss Li would've had to crouch to get at him, and then scrabbled forward again on hands and knees, clenching the knife.

  He sprang up again, then reared back with his fist and tried his best to stab Boss Li. His blow thudded feebly against the man's leather armour, though, and the dagger's edge did no more than prick him.

  A blow nearly smashed Wu Hao aside, but he ducked down just in time that the punch soared above his head.

  Wu Hao veered up, changing targets. The belly was protected, the head was beyond his ability to reach, which left the legs. His dagger thrust out again and again, letting out loud ringing sounds as it slammed against Boss Li's hasty attempts to block Wu Hao with his saber.

  He was the better fighter, at least as far as technique went, but Wu Hao was already breathing heavily. The other man had better reach, lean muscle cording his arms, and he wasn't 12.

  That left Wu Hao with no option but to try and close the gap, but a few steps back to avoid another hack from Boss Li's saber made it clear that he wouldn't get the opportunity again. But, on the other hand, Boss Li had given him just enough space to breathe out and in, taking whatever calm he could.

  "Rending Dagger Art," Wu Hao mumbled. He pulled at his qi, mobilizing his vital qi and pulling it away from his lungs, his blood, his heart, and pushed it all into a qi loop that had no right to work but somehow did. "Long Hook."

  The knife's edge sputtered, before a thin bunch of strands extended from its tip, and then Wu Hao felt a teeth-rattling shock as he thrust it as hard as his arms could manage into Boss Li.

  A scream.

  Blood splattered.

  Wu Hao blinked - once, twice. A chill was spreading through his chest that was achingly familiar. He hadn't felt pain like that since the last time that Xing Zhao had torn into his ribs. The knife clattered from his numb fingers.

  Boss Li panted with pain, but Wu Hao's hopes plummeted and died as he saw that the hilt protruded from Boss Li's leg. It clattered to the ground as the giant's shaking fingers brushed against it.

  Not deep enough.

  "You shit," Boss Li breathed. "You fucking shit."

  Face red, he advanced towards Wu Hao with the saber held high and his leg limping, and Wu Hao tried to mobilize more of his vital qi, but he'd exhausted it all in that initial burst and even though he tried to pull more, there was nothing his aching, dying body could provide him.

  The saber came down - there was a long piercing scream from someone - darkness.