The Last Victory

22. Confrontation Between Two Warlords

No sooner had the blue peacock reached the "roof" of the unfinished palace, he looked around hastily. When he found his destination, he wasted no time. He pushed himself off and glided over the wall and over the roofs with a peacock cry. Shortly afterwards, Shen shot through the planks too, and saw his rival flying towards the East City. Snorting angrily, the lord tied his long sword on and chased after him.
Xiang heard loud flaps of his wings and turned around briefly. The white lord was close to his trajectory. Xiang growled loudly. None of that was part of his plan, but he still had a plan B - like always.
Before Shen could reach the fugitive, he quickly sat down in an alley between the houses and scurried away. With a loud thud, Shen came to a halt on a roof and held his sword in an attacking position. His red eyes searched the street. But the blue peacock was nowhere to be seen.
Snorting, Shen slid down from the roof of a lantern shop and stayed there in a crouched position on the floor. He listened. There was no sound. The streets were empty. The city people had already left the city in their panic of new explosions.
After a few seconds, the white lord rose and walked slowly along the houses.
"Are you a coward, too?!" Shen yelled down the alleys. "Fine! Breathe a few seconds longer if you want. But you will not have a short death!"
A period of silence followed.
"Do you think that's really fair?" A voice answered.
Shen narrowed his eyes and stared at a corner a few meters away, where he suspected his rival.
"So easy to kill someone without a decent fight?" Xiang continued in a meek voice, but with a mocking undertone.
The white lord dashed forward and jumped around the corner, but the alley was empty. His peacock tail began to tremble with anger.
"What do you know about fairness?!" He hissed and looked around again. "Actually, I should chop off your wings and hang you alive!"
"Oh yes," Xiang continued in another corner. "Okay, it wasn't exactly nice of me to bury your brats in such a rowdy manner. But though... if you haven't got it yet, this is my victory."
Shen let out a disparaging snort. "How do you not know that it won't be mine?"
It was quiet for a moment. "Do you really want to be like me? You're not even half of me."
Shen sensed a movement at the other end of the street.
Their eyes met. Xiang stood with his wings folded, calmly looking at the white lord. "Why don't we leave it at that and you give yourself up voluntarily?"
The blue peacock grinned, causing Shen to rage. He raised his sword and wanted to bring it down on Xiang. But in the next moment, he felt a hard hit on the head and he fell unconscious to the floor.
Xiang smiled. "Good job," he praised and kicked away the sword that Shen had dropped.
Two black-clad ox soldiers emerged and grabbed the passed out lord.
"Tie him up there," Xiang ordered, pointing to a pillar of a shop.
Immediately, the soldiers set about tying a rope around the peacock and then they pressed him against the pillar. There they tied his wings backwards and also fixed his feet firmly. When the work was done, the blue peacock waved his followers away. "You can leave now. I will ignite the explosive charge now."
The soldiers bowed, then they quickly disappeared. Meanwhile, the blue lord had found a long fuse between a few boxes. He put the end on one of the boxes and walked back to the trapped white lord, who was slowly coming to. When he finally blinked again, Xiang shook his head in disapproval.
"Stupid chick. You don't seem to understand anything anymore. Well, you should never get carried away like that. You should know that exactly from the war." He turned away, laughing for a moment, then he looked again at the white peacock. "Speaking of war, the whole city is under gunpowder. That means I can blow up any part of this house garden at any time. And you will take off with them."
He laughed hoarsely while Shen glared at him bitterly. "See it as grace. You die where you were born. That's a nice death, isn't it?"
He made a big jump backwards and grabbed the fuse that was attached to the gunpowder under the houses.
"I wish you a nice flight to heaven!" With that, he lit the fuse, got up and left the white peacock alone in his predicament.
Xiang flew over the houses until he was sure he was in the next safe zone. There he sat down on one of the rooftops and waited for the big bang. The fuse wasn't very long. It wouldn't be long before it exploded.
He waited. One minute, two minutes...
"What...?" Xiang frowned. Why did nothing happen?
"Are you waiting for fireworks?"
Xiang turned around with shock, when he heard the voice of the white warlord behind him. Shen stood one step up on a roof and stared down at the blue peacock.
First, Xiang couldn't understand anything. "How are you...?"
"... got out that quickly?" Shen raised the corners of his beak. "Cutting the ropes was easy." He raised one of his feather knives. "Just the preliminary work was a little more difficult."
Xiang backed away a little.
"While you were waiting for me," Shen continued in a firm, dark voice. "I spent the day to relay the fuses. I know every corner and every hiding place in that city. Including the underground where you store the powder kegs. I cut the fuses of every gunpowder charge and placed them somewhere else."
A bitter, cold smile crossed his beak. "That means that I am the only one who is able to activate the explosive charges. You're just a decoration in town. You have chosen the wrong city for your plans."
He watched with great satisfaction as Xiang turned a little pale around the beak. He stood there in disbelief while Shen cracked his fiinger feathers and dug his claws into the roof tiles.
"Well, where did we leave off a few minutes ago?" He pulled out his long sword. "Oh yes." The white lord looked at his reflection in the metal. "Wasn't there a talk of a cleaning campaign?"
Xiang jumped aside and wanted to fly away. But Shen reacted quickly and slammed the hilt of the sword brutally into Xiang's back. The blue peacock rushed to the ground, but was just able to roll over before Shen could stab him with his sword. But Xiang did not have time to flee. Shen kept attacking him, and he kept dodging. Whenever he tried to fly away, the white lord stood in his way.
In the end, Xiang had no choice but to defend himself and grabbed a pole, that was actually used to hold cooking kettles. That didn't give him much superiority in this fight, but it prevented a fatal blow from the sharp blade. But not forever.
Shen was so enraged that he resorted to whatever means possible to weaken the blue lord in his defense. When he threw a load of sand in his face, that inattentive fraction was enough. Xiang cried out when the sharp metal hit his wing. Shen paused for a moment when his rival dropped to his knees and held his injured wing. He could have rammed the rest into his heart right now, but he didn't want a quick death for him. He wanted to see him suffer. As long as he could.
Xiang pulled his feathered hand back, which had covered in blood. As he stared at the red paint, he began to tremble and his eyes widened with horror. But the cut on his wing sparked anger in him now, too.
"It surprises me that you have so much left for this bitch!" He snapped and grabbed the pole again and hit the white peacock several times, who held his sword like a protective shield over himself. With the next blow, he pushed Xiang away and made him scream again when his other wing also received a cut.
The blue lord dropped the pole again and held both wings. The wounds weren't deep, but it looked terrible on his pure blue feathers. And his robe was soaked in the red paint. Without remorse, the lord swung his sword forward, where the tip stopped a few millimeters from Xiang's neck. Sobering, Xiang took a few steps backwards.
Both stared at each other. Everyone with the same devastating thought as fire and water. Each wanted to obliterate the other. If looks could have killed, each of them would have crumbled to ashes long ago.
Xiang ducked his head a little and began to breathe loudly and fitfully.
"If I were you, I'd better be careful that she doesn't stab you secretly in bed while you're sleeping," he gasped and let out a throaty, hoarse chuckle, showing his blood-smeared feathered hands. "Because something like that can happen at any time."
The blue peacock's eyes widened and he looked as if he was short of breath. He held his throat briefly and gasped for air. But all this lasted only a brief moment. Then he dashed off.
Shen let out a scream and kicked all of his energy against Xiang. The blue lord was hurled with tremendous force against a house wall, which collapsed with a crash. After the dust cleared, Shen brought down another wall. The wall hit the floor next to Xiang, but caught his legs. The blue peacock screamed in pain. He tried to pull himself out of the heavy stone rubble, but his foot was trapped.
Without paying any more attention to the fallen peacock, Shen walked past him and picked something up from the ground behind a barrel. In horror, Xiang watched as Shen held up the fuse.
"Now it's my victory." He took out a match. "When you go to the realm of the spirits, I swear to you, I will continue to chase you there."
He set the cord on fire. Then Shen dropped the fuse to run away. But Xiang's convulsive spirit was far from broken. He found a couple of ropes next to him. Quickly, he grabbed it and threw it like a lasso at the white peacock. The first noose went around Shen's neck, pulling him back down. Xiang pulled hard and looped the next few loops around the wings, then around his legs. Shen fell to the ground, but immediately he picked himself up and tried to pull away.
"If I go down!" Xiang yelled at him. "Then you go down with me, too!"
Shen's gaze fell on the fuse. But the fire had long since disappeared into the earth. He couldn't erase it anymore. The new fuse was longer, but he couldn't win any time forever. He tried to reach his feather knives in the wing, but Xiang wrapped more and more ropes around him so that he could no longer move. No matter what he did, he couldn't touch the knives. After all, there was only one option left to him. He threw himself forward at Xiang. But he fended him off with his wings and gave the white lord a good deal of blows.
"We can go on in the afterlife!" Xiang roared. "But then your slut won't have anything from you anymore!"
"Shen? Shen?"
The white lord looked up in surprise when the familiar figure of a familiar panda appeared. When Po saw Shen well, he breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew, I thought it would be worse..."
"PANDA! EVERYTHING EXPLODES ANY MOMENT!" Shen yelled at him.
Po froze. "Oh, that's not good, of course."
Anxiously, he watched as Shen pulled the ropes that Xiang was still holding tightly.
"Don't worry!" Po called. "I was top of the class in the tug war."
But before he could lay hands on the tied peacock, Xiang pelted the panda with stones.
"Ouch, hey, hey!"
Panic rose in Shen. According to his calculation, the fuse was already over halfway through. It would be seconds now before the explosion.
At that moment, Po saw something flash on the floor. Shen's sword. Po didn't think twice and grabbed it. Then he made a run-up and let the sharp instrument of war crash down on the ropes.
When Xiang saw, what the panda was up to do, it was too late.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The ropes broke. Shen fell backwards and felt himself being carried away by a tall person. The rest perished in a deafening bang.