Eternally Ambitious Wangfei

Chapter 18: Training

As she continues to look at the mask, rushed footsteps could be heard. Mingxia Jie turned around to see her maids running up to her. She looks at Bai who had followed her line of sight. They quickly look at each other then stop and wait for the approaching 'male' servants. As both maids catch up to Mingxia Jie they take deep breathes to calm down before speaking:

-"Young Mi-Master. We must return, you still have other things planned for tonight."

-"Come on, remember?"

-"Ah, yes of course."

Mingxia Jie looks back at Bai with a face of 'I'm sorry'. Bai shrugs and looks back at her maids, before turning back to Mingxia Jie.

-"It was a pleasure to meet you, and I wish to talk with you again Ming. If you'd like, please come to read with me in a weeks' time under the giant tree in the square. Well then, I'm on my way now."

-"Of course."

Bai continued on his path and disappears behind a street corner. As the women look at each other, they start on their way back to Kangxi wangfu before. As they pass the children running through the streets and the bright lanterns give off a warm glow, the city comes to life. Beautiful music plays through the streets as Mingxia Jie sees couples smiling and dancing in the street. The guards laughing with the stall vendors and children laughing and playing bring the carefree attitude of the city to life.

A woman grabs Mingxia Jie's arms and starts to dance with her, the emotions she feels in the environment make her cold demeanour drift away like the fallen petals, she dances and laughs and soon enough slips back into her quiet home. As she walks through the hallway with a light smile Zhang Heng appears in front of her with the white garb. Zhang Heng gives her the garb before completely disappearing away.

She goes back to her inner rooms before changing into the garb. Having worn assassins' garb before, she puts it on as though second nature. As she does her hair in a red ribbon, she looks at the mask that lays on her bed. A soft meow graced her ears as she looks to her spirit animal.

-" Mingxia, where are you off to?"

-"To go meet my squad."

-"Oh, I see. Though I fail to see why you need them."

-"To crush the Devil Sect when the time comes to face Master Yu. As you are aware, the Devil Sect is made up of highly skilled assassins. I need highly skilled warriors to face them and destroy them. Beginning with the small branch they have here in East Zhousan."

 The mask bathed in a light glow of the lights, she picks it up and puts it on before quietly escaping her home leaving behind her spirit animal. She runs on the rooftops before seeing a white head in a sea of black, she stops and looks down to see Bai smiling as he looks at the couples dancing. He notices her gaze on him and looks up to see her dressed in assassin's garb.

He is quite shocked because he knows who the mask belongs to, as he looks at 'Ming' who is on the roof looking down at him. As he is about to call her, Mingxia Jie runs off to go train the elite squad she picked out. Upon arriving, she sees the men waiting there in proper attire before jumping down loudly. The men look at her and ask:

-"Who are you?"

-"Master sent me."

-"Ah, you're the woman that Madam sent. You should know that we don't listen to women."

-"You should. It saves you the fighting with your wives. But Master told me he can't come because he is training in the mountains right now. You would be an inconvenience to him. Fight me, and we'll see where you can improve."

-"What did you say?"

-"Fight me."

-"I won't fight a woman."

-"Fine, I'll fight you."

Mingxia Jie then charged the man closest to her, the man withdrew his sword late and received a hit to the lower ribs. He recoiled from the kick and spit out blood. Mingxia Jie then made her way over the next man, he was slightly faster and had already prepared his sword. He swung at Mingxia Jie but missed as she bent to her left to avoid the blade. She kicked at the flat of his sword and the sword slid across the floor. Mingxia Jie then ducked and narrowly avoided the man's punch, she sidestepped then swung at his legs. Tripping the man as he fell to the ground, she moved onto the next man.

The other six men had prepared weapons and someone called out:

-"If we do an organized attack we can beat her!"

Mingxia Jie's lips hooked up as she thought that they could outnumber her, her martial arts was much higher than theirs combined, although their qi levels were higher than hers levelling out the playing field. The two spearman stood on either side of the single spearman while the archers stood farther away to get better accuracy. As the three men attacked together Mingxia Jie sneered at their nativity, she jumped up a bit and flying kicked the swordsman before hiding behind one of the spearman from the archers.

She picked up the sword with her foot and kicked it at the archer's bows that snapped in half on contact when the sword hit them since she was in close quarters with the spearman. He couldn't hit her without leaving himself open, his hesitation was used by Mingxia Jie as she punched him with two open palms while dislocating his left shoulder. He yelped from the pain and dropped to his knees, his spear slipped and Mingxia Jie grabbed it and with the hilt attacked the last spearman. In the span of 5 minutes, she had handicapped eight men.

She sat on a rock as all the men regained consciousness again, as they woke up and saw their limbs bending at an impossible angle their faces paled. Mingxia Jie laughed and asked all the men to come to her so she could fix it. The men were worried and walked up to her.

-"Don't worry, they aren't broken. Just dislocated."

She grabbed the spearman's left arm before punching the bone back into its socket. The spearman rotated his shoulder to feel that there was no more pain left. Soon enough she had cycled through all the men while explaining what they had to improve on. Each man then followed Mingxia Jie's instructions and soon enough the night had passed. Mingxia Jie then asked them to gather around :

-"As you all know my 'Master' can't come. 'He' as well instructed me to give you codenames, and if you ever get caught during missions then you should use those names. The spearmen will be named Bolin and Chun, the leader of the swordsmen will be Xia while the other two will be Qiu and Yezi. And the archers will be Dong and Xue Bao."

The squad left accepting their new roles in life. The sun begins to rise and she said her goodbyes before leaving for her home quickly, as she leaves the men and she goes back. Upon seeing the wangfu, she goes and climbs back inside. As she sneaks back into her rooms, she takes everything off and hides it before slipping into bed. Only to have those few quiet moments disappear.

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Xuě bào- Snowstorm

-冬 (Dong)-Winter

  博林  (Bolin)- elder brother rain

春 (chun)- spring

夏 (xia)- summer

秋 (qiu)- autumn 

叶子 (Yezi)- leaf