Chapter 1060 — Frost Terrace

CHAPTER 1060

Frost Terrace

On the morning of the fourth day, Shen Yaoqing came to Snowpine Court with two practice swords under her arm.

“The eighth peak hasn’t answered,” Shen Yaoqing said, standing in the gate. “I’m asking you for a bout of pointers on the Frost Terrace, since my elders wish to see what they are carrying up the mountain.”

Shi Feng looked at the practice swords. They were real steel, blunted along the edges, the kind the sect used for exchanges between equals.

“Your elders want to measure me again,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I’d rather do it myself than have someone else’s disciple do it badly.”

Shi Feng appreciated the honest answer. Shen Yaoqing wanted to test him herself, and he was curious about her sword. He put down his tea and stood.

“Pointers,” Shi Feng said. “No first blood.”

“Pointers,” Shen Yaoqing agreed.

The Frost Terrace stood on a spur of rock east of the outer hall, thirty paces across, paved in grey stone with a low rail round the edge and nothing beyond it but a long drop into cloud. The wind came up off the drop all day. There was always a thin skin of frost on the stones, even at noon.

By the time they reached it, the rails were full. Word had gone round the outer hall in the time it took to walk there. Junior disciples packed the rails three deep, and a few inner disciples had come down from the peaks above. Bai Ruoshuang leaned on the rail at the north end with her arms folded. Elder Jing Lanting stood a little apart from the crowd and watched without expression.

Qin Wuyan sat on a rock at the edge of the path, outside the rail. He didn’t look as if he planned to move.

Shen Yaoqing tossed Shi Feng a practice sword. He caught it in his left hand.

She looked at his bound right hand, then at the sword in his left.

“Your right hand’s still healing,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“It’ll still be healing next week,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll use the left.”

“Then so will I,” Shen Yaoqing said, and moved her own sword to her left hand. “I won’t have my elders say I beat a man with one hand bound.”

The juniors at the rail murmured.

“She’s switching hands? Senior Sister’s right-handed!”

“She’s left-handed too when she wants to be. She does everything with both.”

“When two tigers fight, one is sure to be hurt.”

They took their places ten paces apart in the middle of the terrace and bowed.

Shen Yaoqing moved first.

Her Moonlit Jade Sword was nothing like Bai Ruoshuang’s frost lotus. It was exact and cold and almost slow. Her first stroke cut the air in a long flat line at chest height, and where the blade passed, a thin line of pale light stayed hanging in the air, glowing faintly, the colour of moonlight on jade.

Shi Feng stepped back from it on instinct. A dry leaf blew up from the drop, touched the line and fell in two pieces.

Shi Feng knew the danger from watching her fight before. Each stroke left a sharp edge hanging in the air. Shen Yaoqing didn’t need to hit him directly; she could block every place he might stand.

Her second stroke drew a line at knee height, two paces to his left. The third came low on the right. She didn’t hurry. She took one step forward with each stroke and drew the next.

Shi Feng gave ground. He slipped a fourth line, then a fifth, and felt the rail come up behind his heels. Glowing lines hung across the terrace in front of him, crossing each other at chest and knee and head height. There was a gap between them a man could have turned sideways through, and he knew without testing it that she’d left it on purpose. Anyone who went through it would meet her sword on the other side.

“She’s caged him,” a junior said.

“In six strokes,” another one said. “She didn’t even get close!”

He counted the lines. Each one had hung for about three breaths before it faded. She was drawing them faster than they faded. Moving through the space between them wouldn’t work, because she’d built that space herself.

Shi Feng thought, I have to leave the cage before she closes it. He chose to cross the void instead of taking her bait.

Void-Crossing Step took him out of space altogether, for less than a breath. He stood at the rail, and then the rail was empty, and he stood behind her on the far side of her own lines, where nothing she’d drawn could reach him.

His blunt sword stopped a finger’s width from the back of her neck.

Her sword was already there to meet it. She’d turned on her heel the moment he vanished, and the flat of her blade lay across his, an inch from his throat. Neither of them pushed.

The last of her lines faded behind them.

“A draw,” Shen Yaoqing said, surprised by how close his blade had come. Her own sword stayed steady.

“A draw,” Shi Feng agreed calmly. She’d anticipated his landing and stopped his blade. He wouldn’t force the exchange further in a bout of pointers.

They stepped back and bowed. The rails erupted.

“A draw? Neither of them touched the other!”

“He went straight through her cage! I didn’t even see him go!”

“And she turned before he came out. She knew where he’d be!”

“You’re both blind. He held back. Look at his right hand!”

“She held back too! She was left-handed!”

Bai Ruoshuang pushed off the rail and walked over. She looked at Shen Yaoqing, then at Shi Feng.

“You both held back,” Bai Ruoshuang said bluntly.

“It was pointers,” Shen Yaoqing said, and sheathed the practice sword.

“I know,” Bai Ruoshuang said. “That’s why I’m annoyed.” She turned on her heel and went back up the path to the inner peaks.

Shen Yaoqing held out her hand for the practice sword. Shi Feng gave it to her.

“My elders will say you held back,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “They’ll say it to me, and I’ll tell them they’re right. I’d rather they knew it.”

“Will you tell them you held back too?” Shi Feng asked.

“No,” Shen Yaoqing said. “That isn’t any of their business.”

She took both swords and went.

The juniors argued at the rails until the evening bell, and then in the dining hall until the lamps were put out. Some said the 6 Mark had won and been polite about it. Others said Senior Sister had won and been polite about it. Nobody could prove anything, so the argument went on until the next morning.

At dawn, before anyone could start it again, a figure in plain grey came down the path from the eighth peak.