Long Yijue

Long Yijue is the eldest daughter among the nine children of the Long family and second in the direct line. Her talent for the sword was extraordinary, and people of the time called her the finest woman fighter in the Wulin; her martial skill was also the deepest of the nine.

She believed in strength above everything. She was calculating, hard-handed and devious, and she held people to her with sheer power and with examples made of anyone who crossed her — convinced that only her way could carry the Long family further, which is why she and Long Wu, who held to reward and mercy, could not stand each other.

In The Order’s twelfth year, she and her brother Long Wu killed each other at Xinglong Manor.

Long Yijue was the most gifted of the nine, and she reworked her own golden blade-aura into something that could draw in other people’s Sha-Chi. On that base she built a sword art of her own: Cold Star Sword Shadow.

Cold Star Sword Shadow

She charges and condenses a crystal of blade-aura with enormous pulling force. Because that crystal is so receptive to Sha-Chi, she can use it to drag in everything nearby that can produce Sha-Chi; at the same time she condenses countless golden blade-auras around herself into a vortex, so that whatever she has pulled in is shredded inside it.

When the central crystal can no longer hold, she breaks it down in the same instant and releases it as countless ordinary golden blade-auras — pushing enemies away and running them through at once.

Early years

As Long Er of the direct line, Long Yijue had held one principle since childhood: only the strong get to live the way the strong live.

She was quick, and her gift for the martial arts was exceptional. Among her generation only the branch-born Long Mingyu was better, and across the Wulin of that time nobody could match her, which earned her the title of the Wulin’s finest woman fighter. Many assumed the Long family token would be hers before long.

Then came the fifth son of the old clan head Long Tairan: Long Wu.

From the day Long Wu began his training he showed a gift of his own. He was still behind her in skill, but she could see that Long Tairan’s attention and the resources he put into the boy went far past any other child of that generation — enough to show who he meant to inherit. Long Yijue did not care. Strength decided everything, and the seat of the clan head would go to whoever was stronger.

The turn

The road up is always cruel and lonely, and the further you walk it the more you become it. Long Yijue knew that perfectly well.

And still, when death came quietly up to her and stopped a hand’s width away, it frightened her. The pastries a retainer who had followed her for years brought her were poisoned; had she not broken off half of one and fed it to her mastiff, she would have died there.

The dog convulsed at her feet, whining. She broke its neck to end it faster.

A creature that had been beside her a moment before — all its warmth and life — ran out of her hands just like that. That was her road: the world has no mercy in it, and only the ruthless and the quick can hold it. Cruel, and lonely.

It was while burying the mastiff that she met Long Xing, the ninth and youngest of her brothers: a direct-line child with real talent who never bothered to show it. Perhaps his face was too easy to read, or perhaps she had seen that look before, in the eyes of a mastiff begging her for food. Without quite meaning to, she talked to him about a great deal — her views on the family’s affairs, what she had learned about training, and how far she meant to go.

Standard-bearer of the orthodox side

As the strongest of the new generation in the direct line she was not Long Mingyu’s equal in raw skill, but her standing meant she often carried more weight than he did when the Long family sat down with the great orthodox houses.

And where Long Wu won followers across the Wulin by being fair and generous, she held people by force and by harsh example. To her, his habit of showing mercy while hiding his authority, of handing out favours and letting offences go, did the Long family nothing but harm.

The Wulin of that time was already rotting into conservatism: more and more heads of the great orthodox houses were drawing their pay and doing nothing, and crushing anyone who disagreed with them. Long Wu’s leniency, in her view, spent the family’s authority for free, let that rot into the Long name, and dragged the house into every petty quarrel of the Wulin.

She was certain the only correct position was to put the Long family’s own interest first, always. That ruthlessness and readiness to plan is what drew her following: the great orthodox houses impressed by her nerve, the Wulin fighters who admired sheer strength, and family members who thought the Longs should rule.

Fighting inside the family

In The Order’s tenth year the old clan head Long Tairan died suddenly, with no explanation, and the family fell into fear and rumour. Long Wu stepped forward, announced that he would find out how his father died and then take the seat of clan head, and said that meanwhile he would move out to his own estate, Xinglong Manor. After that Long Yijue could feel him pressing one impression on everyone — that she had planned their father’s death — until people in his camp were openly asking whether she was behind it. She had not done it, and she knew she had to strike first and beat Long Wu before he could name her as the killer.

In The Order’s twelfth year the Bastion of Mó was destroyed by The Order. Long Yijue knew the Long family was next, and that the nine children were already split into factions. If The Order came, and Long Wu’s people took the moment to finish her — what then? Settle the inside before facing the outside: she had to remove Long Wu’s faction first. So she gathered the fourth son, Long Lie, who had old grievances with Long Wu, and Long Jiu, who had always followed her, along with the retainers she had kept for years — and outside the family she went as far as allying with The Order to root out Long Wu’s line together.

Her eye was sharp. Knowing she could not beat Long Mingyu, she split the problem in two: she spread word that the truth about the old clan head’s death was hidden in the ruins of the Bastion, to draw either Long Mingyu or Long Wu there. Xinglong Manor was the base of Long Wu’s faction, so the two of them could not both leave; she and The Order had troops waiting in the ruins, and whoever came would walk into the ambush while the rest moved on the manor.

It worked. Word went out and Long Mingyu took the bait, going to the ruins alone. Long Yijue moved at once, and on a rainy night she came to Xinglong Manor with Long Lie, Long Jiu and her closest retainers to kill Long Wu, his wife and their people in one stroke.

She had planned for everything except the thing that mattered. Even with Long Mingyu — then the best fighter in the house — out of the manor, Long Wu used Long Xing as the opening, found the gap in her, and the finest daughter of the Long family came to nothing after all. She died in the battle at Xinglong Manor.

Phantom Blade III

In The Order’s thirty-eighth year the Five Fingers rose again, and its people began trying to call the minds of dead masters back into the world. Under their hands Long Yijue woke again inside the Discordance — and this time she means to move one careful step at a time, and to actually win.