A potent fragrance wafted toward them the moment they peeked inside. It was late spring and Luoyang was in full bloom, yet there were no visitors in the garden. Several soldiers near the gate rattled their spears and barked, “The garden is closed! Go to another garden if you want to look at flowers!”
Hongjun shot Li Jinglong a sideways glance as they both had the same thought: These soldiers were most likely yao.
“This place is heavily guarded, and the guards seem uneasy,” Li Bai muttered. “Something fishy’s going on here.”
“Brilliant!” Hongjun gushed.
Li Jinglong realized he should’ve left Li Bai to drink himself stupid at the Luoyang department headquarters.
The three men retreated down the path. When they took a furtive look back, they could see the soldiers whispering among themselves. One mounted a horse and took off southward, no doubt to report their intrusion.
“Shall we force our way in?” Li Bai drawled, drawing his saber. Li Jinglong hurriedly shoved the blade back into its sheath. “Hongjun, you’re always asking how I manage to predict our enemies’ moves, so I’ll teach you. Listen up.”
Hongjun glanced at Li Bai, then back at Li Jinglong, before nodding.
Li Jinglong began with a question. “First, how did Wan Jue know we were coming to Luoyang?”
After a moment of pondering, Hongjun realized: “The divine kun!”
Li Jinglong nodded. “That’s right.”
Leaning casually on his saber, Li Bai gazed into the distance. “I’d guess he knew the conversation you had last night was destined to happen, but he didn’t know how and when you’d arrive in the city.”
Li Jinglong smiled. “So at some point, Wan Jue had the divine kun under his control, and gained a fraction of his ability to predict the future. Next question: If you were Wan Jue, what would you do after last night?”
“Send yao to keep an eye on us,” Hongjun answered with a frown.
“Exactly. Third question: If he learns we’ve discovered his hiding place, what’s the best way to deal with us? Attack us until we retreat? Definitely not—that would just make the situation worse.”
Hongjun was stumped. If Wan Jue learned they’d come here, how would he react? If this garden was really the flower yao’s hideout, he couldn’t just move the entire garden on the spur of the moment, could he?
“Simple,” Li Bai answered casually. “He’d trick you into thinking there’s nothing unusual about this place. Or he’d deliberately lay down hints for you to find and set a trap for you here, when their real hiding place is somewhere else.”
“We can eliminate the second possibility.” Li Jinglong looked toward the garden again and said slowly, “We found this based on the divine kun’s message. No one else knows the source of our information, so we can be sure this isn’t a trick.”
“But why do these guards—be they yao or human—look unprepared, like they weren’t expecting us?” Hongjun asked.
“The only possibility is that something went wrong with whatever means Wan Jue is using to keep watch on us,” Li Jinglong said.
Suddenly Hongjun understood. “So Wan Jue sent yaoguai to keep an eye on what we’d do…”
“But something went wrong,” Li Jinglong finished. “From that, we can infer that at least one of our enemy’s subordinates is secretly on our side.”
“Then what should we do now?”
“We’ll break into this peony garden and see what we find,” Li Jinglong said.
Hongjun clapped a hand to his forehead. “What was the point of that long explanation if we’re just going to fight our way in anyway?”
Li Jinglong quirked a brow. “If we charged straight in, you’d complain I didn’t tell you anything. So I laid everything out—do you have a problem with that too?”
Shaking his head, Hongjun let the matter go. Li Jinglong turned to Li Bai. “I’ll leave the guards outside to you, Taibai-xiong. If we can take care of them, I’d guess we have at least two hours.”
“There’s still a gu ape that hasn’t shown up yet,” Hongjun pointed out.
“He could be anywhere, but he won’t be here. Let’s go!”
Without wasting another moment, Li Jinglong dashed toward the garden. From the moment they’d arrived, the guards had appeared on edge, ready to fire their bows at the slightest provocation. When they spotted Li Jinglong sprinting toward them, they dropped all pretenses, promptly proving Li Jinglong’s theory correct. “Enemy attack! The exorcists are here!”
Hongjun whistled and released his four throwing knives, slicing the arrows streaking toward him into pieces. Before either of them had noticed, Li Bai had snuck all the way to the garden’s entrance. He called, “Can I kill them?”
“Sure…” Li Jinglong hesitated. “I think?”
Before he finished, Li Bai had already slashed one of the guards across the torso. Watching blood spurt from the man’s abdomen, Li Jinglong roared, “Why’d you ask if you were going to do it anyway?!”
There were only two guards against three of them, and after this display, Hongjun found himself pitying them. He shouted, “Go easy on them!”
“On it!” Li Bai called. He twirled his saber and stabbed it right into the second guard’s thigh as the man shrieked in pain.
Li Bai’s moves were unusual—nothing like the more straightforward hack-and-slash techniques of the Central Plains—and he wielded his long, narrow saber like a sword, yet not quite, twisting and parrying with the grace of a dancer.
Hongjun was about to cheer when Li Jinglong snapped, “Come on!”
He yanked on the back of Hongjun’s collar, and the two bounded up the outer garden walls in a few steps, then somersaulted into the courtyard on the other side.
The fragrance permeating the air was so thick they were instantly dizzy. They landed near an ornamental rockery that occupied one section of the garden, which was filled with peonies in a riot of colors, each emitting a faint, dark mist.
Two more jabs of Li Bai’s saber brought both guards to the ground. They transformed into large monkeys, blood streaming from their wounds. “Monkeys, eh?”
Standing amid the peonies on the other side of the wall, Li Jinglong said, “The books I read claimed flower yao can only take human form through a special transformation technique; their real bodies must be planted in soil. If my guess is correct, this garden is where they—”
Without warning, a wooden hut in the garden exploded open as several dozen guards stormed out. Startled, Hongjun and Li Jinglong backed away. A shout came from the gate: “Leave them to me!”
Li Bai removed the wineskin fastened to his waist and downed several gulps before charging unsteadily forward. The guards—more monkey yao in disguise—leapt onto the buildings and swiftly climbed the beams, but Li Bai was faster. He moved like a raging gust of wind, felling a guard with each swing of his saber. He flitted easily left and right with his reeling steps, so that the monkey yao couldn’t come near him.
It was Hongjun’s first time witnessing another mortal besides Li Jinglong hold their own against yao, relying on nothing but skill alone. Li Bai wove his way through the troupe of monkey yao, his motions effortless despite the way he swayed on his feet. His saber pierced and stabbed, leaving a trail of bloodied monkey yao in his wake.
“Should we burn the garden?” Li Jinglong suggested.
Just as Hongjun was about to call fire to his fingertips, all the peonies in the garden began spewing dark fumes, their sweet scent choking in the air. Before their astonished eyes, countless fair-skinned women rose naked from the clusters of flowers, turning their bewitching bodies toward them as wanton moans slipped from their lips.
Li Jinglong and Hongjun lapsed into a dumbfounded silence.