Chapter 1078 — The Signal

CHAPTER 1078

The Signal

Shi Feng drew the grey Sword and laid his left palm along the flat of it.

The Thousand Forge Flame ran out of his hand and over the steel. Inside it he struck the Second Anvil Fire, nine beats and a rest, and on the first beat the blade went red from guard to tip.

Clang!

The masked man’s lantern swung toward the light. Its pale glow fell on the blade and began to strip the flame away, exactly as it had stripped his sleeve.

Clang!

The second beat poured new flame in faster than the lantern could strip it away. Behind the flame, the qi in Shi Feng’s arm stayed whole. The lantern took whatever qi was closest to its light, and the closest qi was now the forge fire. Feeding it that fast cost him, and sweat ran down his back.

The masked man saw it at once. He gave up on the lantern and came in with the blade alone.

They met in the middle of the lane. The narrow sword was fast and exact, and every cut came at the arm that held the grey Sword. Shi Feng deliberately gave ground for six exchanges, studying the cuts and returning none. On the seventh the masked man’s heel came down on a burning roof beam, and he went up onto the granary eaves to get the height back.

Shi Feng chose to follow him up rather than let him keep the height.

Heat poured up from the burning roofs of Lower Pine in a steady column. Riverless Step at Perfection walked on anything that flowed, so Shi Feng stepped onto the rising heat and climbed it. Then he was running along the burning ridges, the fire scorching his boots, the Second Anvil Fire still beating along his blade.

“He’s on the roofs! He’s running on fire!” Tan Ershu shrieked from under the cart.

“The roof’s burning and he’s not falling through!”

“What kind of alchemist is this?”

The masked man turned on the granary ridge and threw three cuts in a row, high, low and high. The lantern swung behind each cut so that its light came after the blade and stripped whatever qi had stopped it. Shi Feng understood the art. A man who kept blocking with qi would have nothing left by the third cut.

Shi Feng chose not to block the third cut. He let it pass his shoulder, close enough to tear his collar.

Then he brought the Sunset-Splitting Sword across.

At Perfection it didn’t need to be large. Red light ran down the grey blade in a thin line, and he aimed it at nothing but the cord where the lantern hung from the guard. The cord was bone and qi. The red light went through it, and the lantern fell.

It hit the burning roof and broke. The pale light went out.

Shi Feng was relieved. His qi settled in his arm, whole and quiet, and for the first time the masked man stood on the ridge with only a sword.

The masked man knew he’d lost his advantage. He brought the narrow sword down with both hands and his full peak Shattering Void force behind it, and the granary roof split under them both.

Shi Feng stepped back off the edge into the air above the lane, giving up his footing to get above the blow.

The Falling Star Sword came down from above, as it always did. At Major Success it fell through whatever stood in its way, and what stood in its way was the masked man’s sword arm. The grey blade fell through his guard, struck his forearm and broke it.

Crack!

The narrow sword went spinning into the snow. The masked man came down after it, hit the lane on his knees and stayed there, holding his broken arm against his chest.

For a moment only the burning roofs made any sound.

Then the drying shed doors banged open. Qin Wuyan had kept his seal on the masked men with one hand, and with the other he had lifted the bars from every shed, one after another. Villagers came stumbling out in their nightclothes into the snow. Children were crying. A woman ran straight to the burned herb-gatherer and hit him on the chest with both fists, sobbing.

“He broke the bandit chief’s arm!” a boy shouted, pointing.

“The chief! The one on the roof!”

“The guardian was holding the others. The young master beat the chief by himself!”

“Peak Shattering Void,” Qin Wuyan said quietly, with rare approval. “One step from Profound Heaven. Broken by a peak Shattering Void, in open fight.”

The villagers didn’t understand the words, but they cheered.

Shi Feng walked over to the kneeling man. His right forearm was bleeding through the remains of his sleeve, and the heat of the roofs was still in his boots.

“Who sent you?” Shi Feng asked.

The masked man looked up at him and laughed loudly, pleased, though it hurt his broken arm.

“You came for the village,” the masked man said. “Good.”

Shi Feng realised the man had wanted him to come. He reached for his jaw.

Shi Feng was too slow. The masked man bit down hard on something in his back tooth, and swallowed.

Shi Feng expected him to fall forward dead. That was what a Heretic’s last pill did. He’d seen three men do it in the north already.

The masked man didn’t die. He knelt there in the snow, smiling under his mask, and a thin line of grey smoke rose from his mouth. It went straight up into the night, faster than smoke should go.

Above the basin, it touched the sky.

A grey line ran out from that point in both directions, from one rim of the basin toward the other, and kept running, straight and thin across the stars.

Qin Wuyan looked up sharply. For the first time since Shi Feng had known him, the guardian went pale with alarm.

“That was not a poison pill,” Qin Wuyan said. “It was a signal.”