Autumn's Final Dynasty

The heavy enforcer standing to the traitor's right drew a broadsword and charged. His mhoddim component was weaker than Baltukhasar's, but the Circuit Chief was not the type to rely on numbers. The remaining heavy fled with the earl's daughter. Trying to attack in a group was harder than it looked.

Without combat formation techniques, for one brawler to fight alongside allies carried more risk than reward. Someone always got in the way. The weakest link always required saving. It was better to tag team. This was like a tag team match, except the other team went looking for a better ring.

That was not a bad plan.

Combat formation techniques were rare. Baltukhasar preferred to fight alone. His opponent shared that mindset. The man used a heavy weapon metaphor to focus his mhoddim. He favored slashes with brutal momentum. If an ally had been around, he wouldn't be able to swing as effectively. In fact, Baltukhasar simulated that effect by sticking close. Whenever possible, he made sure his body touched his opponent's – the more intimately, the better.

Slashes with brutal momentum were less effective up close – and Baltukhasar could feel where the momentum intended to go. To develop his technique, he had started with the Royal Guard's Jade Wall Iron Fist style. Baltukhasar would not call his adaptation stronger. Bastard styles never were. The modifications satisfied extenuating circumstances.

Baltukhasar knew to leave Jade Wall Iron Fist's core tenets alone, however: get close enough to put your tongue down the opponent's throat, stay close, hit fast, hit often, force the enemy to submit through repeated application of fists, elbows, and knees. The Royal Guard wanted prisoners so it could learn more about threats. For Baltukhasar, forcing the enemy to submit meant killing.

Recognizing he would be unable to shake Baltukhasar off, the heavy adapted. Rather than slashes with momentum, he began to whirl his weapon around like a staff with one sharp edge, one dull edge, and two flat edges. Giving up the ability to kill with one hit allowed his wide weapon to become both sword and shield.

Versatile use of heavy swords was the hallmark of Dao Peak Abbey.

This man was no random street brawler. If the fight went on much longer, Baltukhasar knew the other two would get too far into Gol-Gunzgir to catch.

Given that his opponent had adapted, Baltukhasar would also have to adapt. His senses were supernatural for a reason. He could not literally turn into a wolf, but he did suffer from lycanthropy. That was his most extenuating circumstance. Jade Wall Iron Fist cultivated inner strength to reinforce the practitioner's body. Baltukhasar's body was already reinforced.

Because of that, he accepted a stab into his chest.

What couldn't kill him still felt like dying. That was the curse of lycanthropy. Only ancient magic could drop the Circuit Chief for good. That allowed him to experience what dying felt like over and over again. With his opponent's weapon immobilized by his own rib cage, however, the Circuit Chief had all the time in the world to land a lethal blow.

He concentrated inner strength in his fingers.

Jade Wall Iron Fist's most advanced practitioners could set up vibrations inside the bodies of their enemies. Those vibrations could do all sorts of terrible (or stimulating) things. Baltukhasar could not do any of that. However, he could use vibrations to tear. His lycanthropic spin on Jade Wall Iron Fist essentially bridged the gap between inward-looking force techniques and Gargogryeo's explosively outward-looking ones. 

Baltukhasar's strengthened fingers ripped out his opponent's throat.

If that man was also lycanthropic, this was going to be a painfully long night.

The man was not lycanthropic. The battle ended in a shower of blood. Baltukhasar smashed through a wall in pursuit of those about to get away. Dying really riled him up. His supernatural senses became more powerful. He could see what couldn't be seen, hear what couldn't be heard, and smell exactly where he needed to be.

Opting to gather supporters, the earl's daughter had not fled as far into Gol-Gunzgir's timber labyrinth as she could have. That strategy wasn't necessarily wrong. Stopping sooner gave her more time to organize a defense. In his riled-up state, Baltukhasar could have tracked her across the river and to the other side of the town anyway – and gotten there faster.

He raced through stockyards as a half-dead (albeit regenerating) apex predator. That might ordinarily terrify animals. Baltukhasar's prey was humanity, however, not the natural world. Consequently, the natural world became his ally. As the Circuit Chief navigated their maze, livestock moved on his behalf. The Emperor's buffalo avoided slamming into their enclosures – but were fully capable of doing so when circumstances required.

In a sense, Baltukhasar possessed rare combat formation techniques after all. He could marshal animals disposed toward pack or herd tactics. It had not been his plan to do so. Baltukhasar rarely planned things too far in advance. Plans always fell apart.

Adaptation was the key to any strategy's successful evolution.

Not counting isolated monasteries, people with any mhoddim at all congregated in Great Yao's eastern cities. To have four practitioners in remote Gol-Gunzgir was remarkable. The Circuit Chief couldn't have planned for that. He knew about the earl's daughter, of course, but his information stopped short of mentioning a disciple from Dao Peak Abbey.

Baltukhasar closed in on his prey.

Rather than face a lone rabid lawman, the forces gathering to resist justice faced a stampede. A stampede would not automatically represent a lethal threat to anyone with a mhoddim component. Baltukhasar demonstrated that himself. However, a stampede made mistakes – or pleas for mercy – untenable. The earl's daughter was a native of the Northwest Territory. She was familiar with its beasts. If she had techniques to influence them, Baltukhasar's were stronger. That was the beginning of her undoing – but not the end. Agile, light-footed, and disciplined, she leapt first into the air, and then from back to back, as livestock thundered beneath her.

An apex predator lurked in the forest of moving legs.

That was the end of her undoing.

Baltukhasar struck without warning. His strike missed the throat. The earl's daughter was a nimble minx – and she wasn't holding a broadsword stuck in someone's rib cage. Baltukhasar's toughened fingers still tore out a chunk of flesh. Falling to the ground during a stampede did the rest.

Baltukhasar remained with the herd. As it flattened Gol-Gunzgir's northwestern corner, more livestock were released and the stampede grew. Once free from the corrals, Baltukhasar aimed his legion at the hill where his men waited. By the time the herd reached them, the animals were content to nibble on grasses beside the river while heading in the general direction of home.

Baltukhasar circled back to the caravanserai.

Its structure was in no better shape than the bodies thrown over its furniture. Baltukhasar hurried into the lower chambers. He came upon more dead men, a tall woman with a powerful frame, and a dozen or more young women.

Life on the high plains was demanding. These women were not fragile beauties waiting for pampered lives in fashionable villas. They were laborers waiting to be worked to death in exchange for scraps of food. Perhaps Baltukhasar would slip into Tianming Town one night and deliver high plains justice to the filth optioning away his homeland's future.

"Any trouble?" he asked the tall woman.

"Only what was expected," she said. "You?"

"More than was expected," said Baltukhasar. "But the way is clear."

The tall woman saluted – and led the young women out.