My dao to eternity

The scarred woman moved first, her free hand flashing through a short series of seals before Li Fan's eyes had finished tracking the motion. The four men moved with her in the same instant, not simultaneously but in a sequence drilled deep enough to feel like instinct — two coming high, blades already carrying a faint edge of metal-attribute qi that cut the air with a thin, whistling note, while the other two dropped low and slammed open palms flat against the packed earth.

The ground beneath Li Fan's feet answered them, the packed dirt turning slick and grasping in the span of a single breath, a crude earth-attribute binding technique meant to root him in place before the blades ever reached him. A trained formation. Coordinated pressure meant to collapse a single defender from multiple angles at once, the exact tactic Li Fan had read about in Wei Baishan's old military texts and never once expected to face on an ordinary street three doors from a noodle stall.

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