A dragon stylist's life was to be a rich combination of all things: positive and negative, internal and external, hard and soft. At the very surface was the self-defense component, which took the best attributes of the most effective animal kung fu styles known. Dragon-style kung fu involved the use of pressure-point attacks and joint locks from the eagle-style arsenal, pinpoint strikes from the crane style, heavy-handed blows from the tiger style, and circular evasion movements from the snake style, all combined with the unpredictability of the monkey style.
Beyond the fighting techniques, Ying saw another side of martial training he never knew existed: leadership skills. He had had no idea that some people considered leadership an art. The first scroll outlined numerous psychological techniques that could be used to convince men to do what you wanted them to do. There was even a section on psychological warfare.
Ying could feel his power increasing with every line he read. He was more certain than ever that he was born to be a dragon. Strangely enough, some of the psychological techniques Ying read in the scroll were techniques he recognized Tonglong used when directing soldiers. Ying decided to pay closer attention to Tonglong.
Ying closed his eyes. Once his brothers were out of the picture, he would accept the title of General and become the youngest leader ever to report directly to an emperor. While that was an admirable goal, he wanted more. Both his father and Grandmaster had been dragons to the core, but Ying wanted more power than either of them had had. The dragon scrolls would help him first become like them—then surpass them.
A distant KAA-BOOM! suddenly cut through Ying's head like a battle-ax through a winter melon.
“ARRRGH!” Ying shouted as he rolled up the first dragon scroll and dropped it onto his sleeping mat. It seemed his visions of greatness would have to wait. His men had just failed. Again. That was a warning shot from a qiang.
Ying bolted out of his tent and raced over to Tong-long's horse. He passed a wide-eyed soldier and hissed, “I'll return shortly. Tell the men not to do anything stupid while I'm gone.”
Ying unhitched the horse, leaped onto its bare back, and grabbed hold of the reins. He thrust his long toenails into the horse's sides and hung on tight with his powerful thighs, steering the animal as best he could toward the trail Tonglong's men had hacked into the forest.
Horseback riding was not a skill practiced at Cangzhen, and Ying had had little time to learn it while employed by the Emperor. He had a difficult time, to say the least. Branches tugged at his silk robe and pants, and the horse seemed to go out of its way to lean toward any tree limb that might knock Ying and his toenails from its back. By the time Ying reached the clearing where three men lay sprawled on the ground, his clothes were in tatters and his arms and legs were badly scratched and bruised. But he didn't notice. He was too busy trying to make sense of what he saw before him.
All three men lay facedown, spread quite some distance apart. Two of the men were soldiers. The third, with his thick braid and straight sword, was Tonglong. Tonglong and one of the soldiers didn't have any visible injuries, but the third man was a mess. His back appeared to have been shredded by a metal rake. Next to that soldier was a qiang, and in front of the qiang was a tree with a fresh hole at the base. The soldier must have fired the warning shot. As Ying dismounted, the mangled man turned his head to one side and moaned. Ying walked over to him and bent down.
“What happened here?” Ying asked in a firm tone. “Who did this to you?”
“A tiger, sir,” the soldier replied in a hoarse whisper.
“A tiger?” Ying said. “Are you sure?”
The man nodded ever so slightly. “A young tiger came out of nowhere to aid the boy called Fu, just like the monkeys helped the one called Malao earlier.”
Ying's carved face darkened. “Where are the boys?”
“Gone, sir.”
Ying paused. “Weren't there more men with you?”
“Yes There were five of us.”
“What happened to the other two men?”
“Gone, sir. Chased off by the tiger.”
Ying pointed to Tonglong and the other soldier in the clearing. “Are those two still alive?”
“I think so …,” the soldier muttered, “… just knocked unconscious by the boys. Those boys are not… normal, sir.”
“You don't have to tell me that,” Ying snarled. “How long have the boys been loose?”
“I'm not sure, sir. I keep passing out. But I think they ran off as soon as I fired the qiang”
Ying looked up at the sun. “By the time we wake those two up and get back to camp, it will be late. There seems to be no point in trying to search for the boys after nightfall. You men can't even seem to get things done in the daylight.”