Chapter 1046 — Marrow-Burning Fist

CHAPTER 1046

Marrow-Burning Fist

On the morning of Appeal Day, the gate of the Listing Court had one new word painted on it in fresh red ink: Pointers.

“The Mansion Master wrote it himself,” a disciple at the gate told everyone who passed. “Last night. Nobody knows why.”

Shi Feng knew why. He walked under it with his left arm in a clean sleeve and his collarbone bound under his robe. Nine days and a bandit’s burnt pills had closed the skin. The bone had knit, but it still complained when he lifted the arm above his shoulder.

The Listing Court was a round stone ring at the bottom of a bowl of terraces. On the lowest terrace sat a row of scribes at desks, brushes ready. Above them sat forty young geniuses of the Hundred Famed Tianxing, in forty different sect colours, and above them every disciple of the Mansion who could find a place to stand.

Taishi Xu sat on the highest terrace with a teapot. Qin Wuyan stood at the edge of the ring, as he stood everywhere, with his hands in his sleeves.

The first two bouts were short. A girl ranked thirty-first threw a boy ranked twenty-ninth out of the ring in eleven exchanges, and the scribes swapped their numbers before he’d finished getting up. A man ranked fifteenth fought a man ranked fourteenth for a long time, and the scribes changed nothing.

“Shi Feng, seventh!” the herald called.

The stands stirred. Half of them had come to see this.

A young man stood up on the second terrace before the herald could call the next name. He was broad and short-necked, with heavy fists wrapped in red cloth, and he came down the steps three at a time.

“Murong Tuo, ninth, Myriad Marrow Sect!” Murong Tuo announced, loud enough for the top terrace. “I appeal the seventh place! A pill-maker in the top ten is a clerical error, and I’m here to correct it!”

Some of the stands laughed. Some of them didn’t.

“Isn’t the Myriad Marrow’s Elder Shang the one who bowed to him in Beiling?” someone muttered.

“Elder Shang bowed to his pill,” Murong Tuo said, hearing it. “I’m not Elder Shang. I don’t need a pill.”

He stepped into the ring and bowed properly, fist to palm. For all his noise, the bow was correct.

“Master Shi, I’ve got nothing against you,” Murong Tuo said, straightening up. “But the list is a fighters' list.”

“Then let’s fight,” Shi Feng said, and bowed back.

Murong Tuo came straight in.

The Myriad Marrow Sect’s arts all did the same thing. They drew strength out of the bone itself. The Marrow-Burning Fist did it fastest: for one breath, the man burned his own marrow and his fist hit with double force.

The first blow came at Shi Feng’s chest. He raised his right forearm and took it on the bone. The force went straight through his guard, and his whole skeleton rang with it. His teeth hurt.

“One!” somebody shouted in the stands.

Shi Feng chose to meet the second blow. He wanted to feel how Murong Tuo’s force changed between breaths. Riverless Step didn’t dodge. It went along with whatever hit him and carried the force through his body and out through his feet, so it went into the stone instead of into his bones. The second fist landed on his shoulder and the ring’s floor cracked under his heel.

“Two!”

“He’s not even blocking!”

Murong Tuo laughed and kept coming. Third, fourth. Each blow was a breath of burning marrow, each one doubled, and each one rang through Shi Feng’s bones before Riverless Step carried it away. The fourth caught the old collarbone, and something in it moved that shouldn’t have.

Shi Feng kept his sword sheathed and watched Murong Tuo’s breathing. His collarbone hurt, but he was deliberately waiting for the fist art to weaken.

A man could burn his marrow, but marrow didn’t grow back in a morning. Every breath of doubled force cost the next breath something. The fifth fist came as hard as the first. The sixth came a fraction late, and the red cloth on Murong Tuo’s knuckles was wet with his own sweat.

“Six!” the stands roared. “He let him hit six times!”

The seventh came slow.

It wasn’t much slower. A hair. To Murong Tuo, it must have felt the same as the others. To Shi Feng it was all the time he needed.

He drew his sword sheathed and turned it flat. Sunset-Splitting Sword was a killing art, a single horizontal stroke that cut anything in its line. Turned flat, it didn’t cut. It just carried the whole stroke’s force into whatever it touched.

The flat of the sheath took Murong Tuo across the ribs while his seventh fist was still in the air.

He left the ring sideways. He went over the white line, over the scribes' desks and into the bottom row of the stands, and two Cangming disciples caught him before he hit the wall.

Bang.

The stands went quiet. Then they all started talking at once.

“Seven! He waited for the seventh!”

“Seven was the last one he had.”

“He read his marrow. He read his marrow while he was being hit.”

“That’s a pill-maker?”

“…”

Murong Tuo sat up in the Cangming disciples' arms, holding his ribs, and stared at the ring. His face was red and white by turns. Then he laughed, painfully, and climbed to his feet.

“Clerical error,” Murong Tuo said hoarsely, and bowed again from the stands, lower than before. “Mine. Master Shi, I’d like to buy a marrow pill from you. I think I’ll need one.”

“Come to the ninth terrace tonight,” Shi Feng said, carefully moving his sore shoulder. “Bring the herbs. I’ll refine one for you.”

The stands laughed, and this time all of them laughed.

At the scribes' row, a brush moved. The scribe didn’t change Shi Feng’s number. He just crossed out a note beside it, and the man next to him nodded.

Shi Feng turned to leave the ring.

“Master Shi,” Yun Zhiwei said quietly from the top of the stands. “Since you’re already standing there.”

A young man in Mansion white came down the steps without hurrying. He was slim and plain-faced, with a sword in a grey sheath at his hip, and every Mansion disciple in the bowl straightened up as he passed.

“Yun Zhiwei, sixth,” the herald called, a little late.