The ninja were tools. The person in charge was somewhere else. Daisy scanned her surroundings and waited, giving whoever it was time to make an entrance—she wanted to see who had set this ambush for her.
"A real elite operative. Calm under pressure—impressive. A pity you'll die here today."
A tall, lean Black man stepped out from between the trees, moving unhurriedly, a sword in hand that caught the light with a cold luminescence. His face was full of mocking amusement—curly hair, a close-cropped beard, rough skin that spoke of a life lived hard—but his eyes held an age that didn't match the face around them, the eyes of something far older.
Everything about him carried the weight of accumulated years. Everything except the hand on his sword—that was alive and precise, coiled with controlled readiness, like a viper selecting its moment.
Blade like autumn water. Bearing like a predator. That was Daisy's first read of him.
They'd been on her trail for some time—from Afghanistan to Nepal, everywhere except Kamar-Taj, they'd tracked her the whole way. The Hand's ability to suppress their own heartbeats was genuine; through her frequency perception they'd registered as little more than a blur.
"Your honored name?" She was in the east. She used the eastern form.
"Bakuto." His gaze was sharp as a blade's edge, taking her in the way a man looks at someone already dead.
"You trained Colleen Wing, didn't you? I've heard you're good with a sword." She kept her tone conversational. "How did you end up in K'un-Lun with that appearance? My understanding is they don't take outsiders. How did you work your way up to Elder?"
"So you know about K'un-Lun." His eyes sharpened. "All the more reason you can't leave here alive." He raised a hand, signaling the ninja forward.
"Wait, wait—" She stopped him, and reached into her bag for the adamantium sword and shield.
Bakuto probably thought she was trying to provoke a one-on-one duel and buy time to escape. He pulled his foot back a half-step.
Unlike Madame Gao, who had devoted herself to refining her qi, Bakuto had always been a sword practitioner. To maintain his body at its peak, every fifty years he transferred his consciousness and memories into a new host, carrying everything forward. His control over qi fluctuated with each transfer—stronger in some bodies, weaker in others—but his swordsmanship never stopped advancing. He feared no challenge.
He'd overestimated her sense of martial honor. He also didn't know what a transmigrator's red lines looked like.
Martial honor? Daisy had no idea what that was. She'd drawn the blade and shield to cover what came next.
The most confident man in the clearing suddenly felt something he hadn't felt in a very long time: a needle-sharp premonition of danger. Something was about to happen that could kill him.
Instinct took over. He rolled.
From the corner of his vision, he watched a brilliant silver line trace a full circle with Daisy as its center point, fast enough to leave afterimages.
Trees. Rocks. Dead leaves. Ninja. None of it stopped the silver line.
The ninja had the accidental advantage of being spread across varying heights and positions—high in trees, low on the ground, scattered across every angle—and Daisy's focus was on Bakuto, not them. Even so, seven or eight elite fighters who would've been small-time bosses in their own right never got the chance to announce themselves before the Atomic Cutter opened them—some at the skull, some at the chest. Severed limbs and scarlet cloth rained down into the forest undergrowth. Heads flew under the force of blood pressure. The ones who'd been hit at the head might have been the lucky ones; two of the others had been bisected at the waist—blood and organs spilling across the ground. They still had awareness left. They could feel. They made soundless screams, clutching at the lower halves of themselves as if they could put themselves back together.
Of the survivors, five remained, only because their positions happened to fall outside the arc. Two had lost hands. One had lost an arm at the shoulder. The other two were intact.
Combat-trained soldiers were supposed to have burned fear out of themselves. Red scarves covering their faces, the two unhurt survivors trembled as they looked to Bakuto—one of the Five Fingers of the Hand, a man who had survived four centuries—hoping he could steady them.
Bakuto's right hand was gone. The cut was mirror-smooth. Blood was already sheeting from the stump.
His heart was shaking. The precision operatives he'd spent years building—nearly all of them, gone in a single sweep.
He looked at the two survivors. Their spirits were already shattered. Even if they made it out of this forest, the psychological wreckage would leave them as combat-ineffective as the dead. Alive in body, finished as fighters.
Run. The move had shattered every expectation Bakuto had built over four centuries. After four hundred years he was choosing to survive, and survival meant a new body—his consciousness transfer apparatus could carry everything to a fresh host, the sword technique would go with him, nothing essential lost.
Daisy raised her right hand, the Atomic Cutter held level, and struck a pose she privately thought looked fairly cool.
The pressure the Phoenix put on her had been building in her chest for weeks. The blood and violence had eased some of it—not enough.
Bakuto scooped up his sword in his remaining hand and ran.
She was on him in two strides, cutting off his path: "Old man. Relax. Madame Gao's waiting for you down below."
The words fell—and her sword came with them, horizontal, fast as a whip.
Bakuto had spent four hundred years practicing the sword. Even one-handed, even with the left hand he'd barely used in centuries, what he knew lived in his muscles. His blade was no common steel—it held its edge against adamantium without a mark. He deflected, then counterattacked in one motion, forcing Daisy back a step with her shield raised.
"Is that all you've got?" Bakuto spat, furious. Daisy's swordsmanship was third-rate compared to his—the kind he'd spent a lifetime forgetting how to be impressed by. And yet here he was, running. The injustice of it was a physical sensation.
Daisy was also frustrated. Her raw speed and strength both exceeded his, but whenever Bakuto's blade moved—just a light roll of the wrist, nothing flashy—she couldn't find a counter in time, only end up behind her shield, absorbing it rather than deflecting.
The two surviving ninja had found their footing again. Fury can accomplish things desperation can't—they flung a volley of shuriken.
Bakuto used the distraction. Two cuts drove Daisy back, and he ran.
This leader of the Hand was not only sharp with a sword—his judgment was equally precise. He called back over his shoulder, sharp enough to reach his people: "That cut was a one-time trick—she can't repeat it!"
The two survivors processed this. They watched Daisy. She did not use the silver-line attack again. Their nerve returned by degrees.
One of them drew a pair of short blades. The other produced a chain mace from somewhere and began working it in widening circles with a rhythmic rattle.