“Well, come on if you’re coming,” she cried out, and the words had barely left her mouth before two figures dropped out of the trees directly on top of her. With another warning shriek, Almost Brilliant flew up into the leaves and now Chih could see forms moving between the tree trunks, still enough to pass as trees at first, but now too obviously people and too many people at that.

Chih and Sang beside them froze in shock, and suddenly the air was filled with shouts. Lao Bingyi threw the two figures off of her, but didn’t stay still for them to recover. She followed them down to the ground, dropping her knee hard on one’s throat with a sickening crunch and dealing the other a savage blow to the temple with a rock in her fist.

There was a swirl of silk behind them and a flash of steel as well, and Chih spun around to see Wei Jintai leap high into the air, far higher than someone should be able to. It allowed her to rain a furious flurry of kicks down on her attackers, striking one so hard that he dropped immediately. One of his companions tripped over his body, but then Wei Jintai’s scarf was in her hands, looping around his neck and pulling him forward with a devastatingly final crack.

She didn’t pause to watch the dead man fall, but instead was already turning towards another, the butt of her sword coming forward to slam him in the face.

Apparently Southern Monkey style likes face strikes, thought Chih in appalled fascination.

It was like standing in the eye of the storm, and by the time it was over, probably no more than a count to seventy later, there were a dozen bodies on the path. Sang and Chih clung to each other, because, well, the center of the path was solid and firm, and they weren’t going to trip over anything if they stayed there.

At some point, the tide turned, and the bandits who had come out of the trees retreated back into them, or at least they tried. Wei Jintai dropped one who had turned his back to run, and she leaped over him to get another, her sword flashing in the light. She would have chased him straight into the forest if Khanh hadn’t cut across her path, herding her back to the road. For a moment, it didn’t look like she would go, her eyes locked over his shoulder on the shadows in the trees, but then she returned, coming back to stand by Sang’s side.

The silence after the last body dropped was different from the silence that had come before, and Lao Bingyi contemptuously cast aside the staff that one of the attackers had thought to use against her.