Chapter 1048 — The Hundred-and-First

CHAPTER 1048

The Hundred-and-First

Shi Feng stepped into the void and didn’t come out.

Shi Feng had always rushed through the crossing between two places. Now he deliberately remained in that gap, holding himself in the void instead of landing.

It was cold. There was no up and no down, and no ring and no stands. There was the pull of the place he’d left and the pull of the place he could go, and nothing else.

He wasn’t anywhere in space. So his fate couldn’t put him anywhere in it either.

Outside, in the Listing Court, the stands saw the 6 Mark take a step and vanish, and they saw nothing come back.

“Where is he?”

“He’s gone! He went into the void and he’s gone!”

“Is that allowed?”

Yun Zhiwei stood in the middle of the ring with his sword raised, reading. He turned his head slowly to the left. Then to the right. His blade went to the place where Shi Feng’s next step should have landed, and it hung there, and nothing came.

For the first time in six years, the Foreseen Path Sword had nowhere to strike.

Shi Feng held on in the crossing for as long as he could stand it. It was only three breaths. Every breath in the void drained his qi, and his ribs, already cut, began to tear further with the strain. But three breaths was enough. In three breaths, the place he’d been heading for had stopped existing. The fate Yun Zhiwei had read for him had passed and gone, and nothing had come in to replace it.

He chose a new place. It was one nobody could have read, because it hadn’t been his place until he chose it.

It was directly above Yun Zhiwei’s sword.

Falling Star Sword came down out of nowhere. There was no void behind it and no fold, only a man stepping out of the crossing and falling with his whole weight onto a blade from a place it had never foreseen.

Yun Zhiwei reacted a heartbeat late. Alarmed, he raised his sword anyway. Even without the reading, he was a skilled swordsman.

The two blades met.

Crack!

The plain steel split down its length. Shi Feng’s sheathed sword went through the crack, turned off Yun Zhiwei’s guard, and opened his left shoulder to the bone. Yun Zhiwei went to one knee in the middle of the ring with half a sword in his hand.

Shi Feng landed beside him and stayed standing, but only just. The cut across his ribs had opened all the way. He could feel the blood running down his side and into his boot.

Nobody in the stands said anything at all.

Yun Zhiwei looked at the broken sword. Then he looked at his shoulder. Then he set the half-blade down on the stone, very gently, and stood up and bowed. He bowed first, before Shi Feng could, and lower than he’d bowed at the start.

“I read a hundred moves,” Yun Zhiwei said, and his voice was quite steady. “You made the hundred-and-first.”

“You read them very well,” Shi Feng said, and bowed back. “The first hundred cost me a lot of blood.”

Then the stands found their voices.

“He beat the Foreseen Path!”

“He stepped out of his own fate! I saw it, he just wasn’t there!”

“The chief disciple bowed first!”

“Six years! Six years and nobody touched him on this mountain!”

“The Myriad Marrow’s ninth and the Mansion’s sixth, in one morning, with his ribs open.”

“…Is anyone going to call a healer?”

Mansion physicians ran into the ring. Two took Yun Zhiwei. One came toward Shi Feng and stopped at a look from Qin Wuyan, who had come to the white line without anyone seeing him move.

“Your salve,” Qin Wuyan said, and took a jar from his sleeve. “This one carried it.” It was Elder Ye Wanqiu’s wound salve from the north, the jar Shen Yaoqing had handed over at Whitereed. He put it in Shi Feng’s hand and went back to the line.

Shi Feng sat down on the edge of the ring and packed the salve into his ribs. It stung badly. He didn’t let it show.

At the scribes' row, the oldest scribe dipped his brush and wrote one line on a fresh proof without being told. The scribe beside him held it up to dry. Every genius in the bowl could read it from where they sat.

Shi Feng, 6th.

On the top terrace, Taishi Xu was laughing. He came down the steps with his teapot in one hand and his belly shaking.

“Pointers!” Taishi Xu said cheerfully. “Master Shi, didn’t I tell you? Pointers are what everyone agrees to before the first cut.”

“Nobody died,” Shi Feng said, pressing his ribs. “Nobody’s maimed. They’re pointers.”

“Ha! Fair. Fair,” Taishi Xu said, looking at the proof, then at his chief disciple being carried out with his shoulder strapped. His smile didn’t change, but he was quiet for a breath. “Zhiwei’s needed someone to make him wrong for a long time. The Mansion thanks you. The list has measured what it prints.”

“Then it’s paid,” Shi Feng said.

“The first coin is paid,” Taishi Xu agreed, and turned his teapot in his hand. “Rest three days. Elder Sang will cast the light reading for your Serene Jade lady after that. She doesn’t like to be hurried.”

He went back up the steps. The stands began to empty, slowly, still arguing.

Murong Tuo came down from the second terrace holding his ribs, and sat on the ring’s edge next to Shi Feng without asking. The two of them looked about the same.

“Sixth,” Murong Tuo said, shaking his head. “Master Shi, you’ve made my clerical error twice as wrong.”

“At least you can still laugh,” Shi Feng said, glancing at Murong Tuo’s ribs. “Bring more herbs tonight. You’ll need two pills now.”