I looked at the toppled giant for a few seconds before glancing back at my daughter. The grin on my face remained wide and more than a little condescending. Can you blame me? What father wouldn't relish the opportunity to pummel and potentially cripple his daughter’s lover? Alright, maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I certainly enjoyed the experience.
I never loved Lu Linqi’s mother. The lady Yan had been a clever and formidable white-haired beauty whom I found distracting in my youth. I enjoyed her company for a while, and respected her mind for longer than that. The affection I felt for her was like a flickering candle compared to the roaring inferno inside my heart for Dioachan.
However, Diaochan sadly never gave me any children. It isn’t as though Linqi never had any siblings; I got many a concubine with child throughout my life. I do not believe any of them ever bore me a son, at least not one who lived, anyway. I did, however, have at least half a dozen daughters, but only one was Lu Linqi. My eldest, my mightiest, the only one who had truly been worthy of carrying my name forward. I loved that girl, and even here in this afterlife of impossible buildings and insane technology, I was proud of her.
My bike had returned to me by now and was idling at my side when Paul’s Tall Tale ability, which was granting him his impossible size deactivated. I wasn’t sure if the ability deactivated due to running out of time, the big man being too wounded to maintain it, or if he had simply chosen to turn the ability off for whatever reason.
Much like when he had first transformed into his multi-ton giant form there was an explosion of thick mist around the man as he returned to his regular size. Paul was still an enormous man, but he was at least vaguely human-sized with his ability turned off.
“I gave him a chance to surrender and everything,” I called over to Linqi and her collection of mounted guards. “Really, I’d just be honoring him as a warrior. “ I gestured with my spear ‘Featherfall’ as I spoke, pointing at Paul, who was using his axe to help him get back to his feet. The man was beaten and would likely need his foot replaced by cybernetics. Honestly, if I wanted to, I could finish him at any time.
“I told you to get away from him.” My daughter growled, and the warriors she had brought with her fanned out on their bikes.
“Or what? You will deploy your cadre of weaklings on me?” Each of the four men and two women who accompanied my daughter was one to three levels higher than me, but it wouldn’t matter. I had already expected that my twin statuses as a Paradox Incursion and as Lu Bu meant that I would be able to easily defeat people within five or six levels of me. After what I did to Paul Bunyan, my theory was all but confirmed. I still think I made the right choice in fleeing the club that hosted the meeting of the clans, but should it come to it I would cut through Linqi's warriors with ease. I think that she realized this as well, since my daughter narrowed her already glaring eyes.
“I'm surprised Red managed to come with you.” She said, instead of answering my mocking question. “I'm sure history recorded him as Guan Yu's horse, given how much longer he spent with him compared to you.”
I admit it, that stopped me in my tracks. With a slow turn of the head, I looked to my former horse.
“Guan Yu?” I asked the machine, both my tone and my expression conveying just how unimpressed I was.
The bike let out a low engine whine, and I had to stop myself from gritting my teeth. “Alright.”I said slowly, “I admit after my death, he was probably the most worthy of you, but how exactly did you come to be in Guan Yu's possession?”
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I swear to you, the bike rolled backwards ever so slightly. While I resented the idea of my Red Hare being ridden by one of Liu Bei's two lapdogs, I could accept that with my passing, Guan Yu was the greatest warrior left alive and thus most worthy to make use of my steed.
I wasn't exactly pleased at the idea, mind you. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei,
The so-called three brothers. Were some of my fiercest enemies, and for a little while, they were some of my strongest allies. I don’t mean strong as in close or loyal, I mean that outside myself, they were probably the best individual warriors of my era.
The three of them weren’t really brothers; in fact, they weren’t related at all. They had just made some weird oath together in a peach garden of all things that they would die on the same day, and that they would devote their lives to reestablishing the Son of Heaven as a true emperor who actually ruled his empire. I’m going to be honest with you, I never called them out for it at the time, but Liu Bei, the eldest brother, had often claimed to be distantly related to the emperor. I am all but certain he was just a shyster who happened to be talented with twin swords and managed to talk a pair of dangerous killers into serving him.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it was thanks in part to the efforts and advice of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei that Cao Cao was able to turn my army against me, and eventually led to my execution at his hands. They may not have done so had I not turned on them first, but that is beside the point.
At my questioning, my horse turned bike made another little engine noise that sounded rather ashamed.
“Yeah, hang your head, Red.” Called my daughter. I was a little surprised that she had recognized Red Hare so easily, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. She had played with him as a child and rode beside him in more battles than I can be bothered to count. Red had never been Linqi’s horse, but it would be unfair to say that they weren’t as close as family.
“ First, he gladly languished in Cao Cao’s stables, availing himself of the King of Ambition’s fancy supplies and even fancier mares.” Linqi went on. “But eventually he let Cao Cao bribe Guan Yu with him, probably wanted to see what it was like to be the steed ridden by The God Of War.”
I looked between my daughter and my steed for a few tense moments. I was annoyed at my horse, but even more than that, I was appalled that was the title people had bestowed upon Guan Yu. He was good, sure, but I had fought him and his two brothers to a standstill.
“There is no way that's what the people called Guan Yu.” I practically snarled.
“Oh, it is,” Replied my daughter smugly. “ Greater even than Lu Bu, they said, and his mighty Green Dragon Crescent Blade went down as the mightiest halberd of its day.”
“Ridiculous!” I snapped. “I would have crushed him alone, and his stupid blade was never a match for my Skypiercer. Never!”
I know she was goading me, and doing a marvelous job of it, too. It wasn’t a surprise, afterall who better to stoke the fires of one's irritation than a daughter? While she did, several of her warriors quietly conversed with her, I couldn’t catch what they were saying over the roar of the multiple engines, but that was what Diaochan was for.
“What are they saying?” I asked her quietly. The A.i was more than capable of reading lips and quickly informed me that Linqi’s warriors were offering to simply take me, since they could tell I was only level three. My daughter called them idiots who wanted to throw their lives away, and ordered them to grab Paul and get him to medical help once she and I were occupied fighting.
Call me polite, call me an enraged fool, call me a father being manipulated by his daughter. I care not at all if I must wear such titles. What I cared about was the things my daughter had said with utter confidence.
“Red,” I growled. “ You and I are going to have a long conversation later today, but for now, get your mind on the present. We have an opposing warlord to defeat.”
With that, I leaped back onto my bike’s saddle and engaged the engine so that I was suddenly hurtling towards my daughter. I could tell from the smile on her face and the way her bodyguards fully scattered that this was what she had planned with her goading. Smart of her honesty, everyone knows you do not pursue me if you wish to live, so it seemed she was planning to find out what happened when I pursued her.
