Chapter 1003 — The Nineteenth

CHAPTER 1003

The Nineteenth

The man on the ferry post was eating a pear.

Inkwater Ferry’s forty houses were now forty black squares in the snow. The wide, dark river flowed between icy banks. On the landing’s black pine ferry post, taller than two men, a grey-robed man sat cross-legged in daylight, eating his pear in neat bites.

On the far bank, two dozen ferrymen had come back in their boats to look for their families. They saw the man on the post and stopped rowing.

Shi Feng walked down to the landing. Qin Wuyan walked one pace behind him.

“You’re younger than I was told,” Yao Chenggu said from the post. He threw the pear core into the river. “Guest Elder Shi. Late Shattering Void. Eighth on the Tianxing, a 6 Mark at twenty-three. They say you don’t bow to anyone.”

“I bow to people who don’t burn villages,” Shi Feng said. “Where are the fifty who aren’t in the county granary?”

“With the Sect,” Yao Chenggu said pleasantly. “They’re useful. Everyone is useful to the Heavenly Sect.” He stood up on the post without using his hands, and his grey sleeves hung down past his knees. “The Heavenly Sect’s Nineteenth Elder. Yao Chenggu.”

His aura came off the post and settled over the landing. Mid Shattering Void, solid and old.

Then Yao Chenggu looked past Shi Feng at the old man in Pavilion grey, and his smile got wider.

“Shattering Void, Senior Qin,” Yao Chenggu said. “Below your line.”

The landing went quiet. Even the river seemed to go quiet.

Qin Wuyan looked at the man on the post for one long breath. Then he took one step back.

“Guest Elder,” Qin Wuyan said, without taking his eyes off the post. “The Pavilion keeps its alchemist alive. It does not fight the Heavenly Sect. Below Profound Heaven, the fight is yours.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said. He drew the grey Sword. “I just wanted to hear him say it first.”

Yao Chenggu laughed and opened his right sleeve.

A chain came out of it. It was black and dull, as thick as a child’s wrist, and it had nine links, each as long as a forearm. It didn’t hang. It floated in the air beside him, turning slowly, and the space around each link looked bent.

“Nine-Link Void Chain,” Yao Chenggu said. “Do you know what it does?”

Shi Feng was furious at the answer. He attacked before Yao Chenggu could finish boasting about his chain.

He cut from twenty paces. Sunset-Splitting Sword at Perfection didn’t need to reach. The red line went across the landing and split the ferry post in half from top to bottom, and the two halves fell into the snow.

Yao Chenggu wasn’t on it. He’d stepped through a rift and stood on the river ice ten paces to the left. As he stepped, the first link of the chain broke away from the others and flew.

It didn’t fly at Shi Feng. It flew at the air beside him, a pace to his left, and slammed into it.

Clang!

The link stopped dead in empty air. A small black rift opened round it, and the link sank into the rift and stayed there, stuck halfway in, humming.

Shi Feng felt the space on his left go stiff.

Shi Feng understood the first link. The refined artifact anchored space so it couldn’t fold, cross or tear. Yao Chenggu’s realm wasn’t the danger; this chain was. Shi Feng watched the remaining links while moving in to kill him.

“One,” Yao Chenggu said.

Shi Feng took Void-Crossing Step. At Major Success it didn’t travel. He stood on the landing, and then he stood on the river ice behind Yao Chenggu, with the grey Sword already coming down.

Yao Chenggu didn’t turn. The second link was already flying. It hit the air between them, and the sword struck the anchor instead of the man. Sparks burst across the ice. Shi Feng’s arm went numb to the elbow.

“Two,” Yao Chenggu said, and stepped away. “Three. Four.”

Two more links flew. One nailed the air above Shi Feng’s head. One nailed the air behind his back. Then a fifth and a sixth hit to his right and his front, close enough that he could hear them humming.

On the far bank, the ferrymen were shouting.

“What’s he throwing? What is that?”

“He’s hammering nails into the sky!”

“Get out of there, young master! Run!”

Shi Feng tried. He took Void-Crossing Step again, for a place thirty paces up the bank.

Nothing happened.

There was nowhere to step to. Every point around him had been nailed. The six anchors held the space in a ring, and the space inside the ring couldn’t fold. He’d stepped, and the step had gone nowhere. He was standing in the same place on the ice, with his sword raised and his qi spilling uselessly out of his feet.

“Six,” Yao Chenggu said happily. “Now you know what it does.”

The seventh link came straight at him.

He cut it. The grey Sword struck the link and the link wrapped round the blade and kept going, round the sword and round his left forearm, twice. Then the chain went tight.

Yao Chenggu pulled.

Shi Feng’s left shoulder came out of its socket with a wet crack. Pain went through him, white and loud, and his knees hit the ice.

Pain shot through the arm that still ached from Black Mirror Lake. Shi Feng forced himself to look at the links instead of the injury. The artifact had to have a way through.

“Don’t struggle so much,” Yao Chenggu said, winding the chain round his own wrist. “A wise man submits to circumstances. Eight. Nine. And then we’re done.”