Chapter 1106 — The Bone Bell

CHAPTER 1106

The Bone Bell

The first palm came from twenty paces away, and it didn’t touch him.

Shan Ping struck the empty air in front of the well. There was no wind and no light. There was only a sound, one deep note, and it went through the square and through Shi Feng’s body without stopping at the skin.

His ribs rang.

The cracks in them shook open a hair wider, and a white-hot line of pain went up the left side of his chest. His knee hit the stones before he knew he was falling.

“Bone Bell Palm,” Shan Ping said calmly, watching him. “It rings through bone. Whole bones hum. Cracked ones break.”

Of every art Shi Feng had met in the north, this was the worst one to meet with three cracked ribs. Shan Ping didn’t need to come close. He could stand by the well and ring until the ribs came apart.

Shi Feng forced himself upright, angry at the weakness in his ribs. He couldn’t let Shan Ping keep striking while he lay there.

The second palm came. He threw himself sideways behind a toppled salt cart, and the note went through the cart and through him anyway. Wood didn’t stop it. Stone didn’t stop it. Blood came up into his mouth, and he spat it out on the stones.

“Get up there and help him!” a hunter shouted at the roof.

“Help him? That’s peak Shattering Void!”

“The guardian won’t come down! Why won’t he come down?”

On the roof, Qin Wuyan stood with his face turned to the clouds and didn’t look at the square once. His good hand was clenched at his side. If he came down, the presence in the sky came down with him, and then Pinefall would have a Profound Heaven fight in its market.

Lin was still shouting.

“You bald melon!” Lin Langtian roared from the roof. “Ring him once more and Senior Brother will come down there and ring your head like a gong! I’ll do it! I’ll—”

Shan Ping didn’t look up. Everyone in the square could feel how thin Lin’s aura was.

Shi Feng crouched behind the salt cart and thought about distance.

Twenty paces. Shan Ping wanted twenty paces, because the palm reached him from there and his sword didn’t. Void-Crossing Step could close twenty paces in one breath, but it would land a hand’s width off, and Shan Ping was peak Shattering Void. A hand’s width was enough for him to step aside and ring at point-blank range.

The palm had one weakness. Every strike came down a straight line, from Shan Ping’s palm to whatever he aimed at. For the instant the note travelled, that line was open, a path running straight back to the hand that made it.

Shi Feng thought, I have to take the next strike to reach that line. He hated the choice, but dodging would only let Shan Ping attack again.

Shi Feng stood up from behind the cart and walked out into the open.

“Is he giving up?” someone whispered.

Shan Ping frowned and struck.

Shi Feng didn’t dodge. He turned his strapped left side toward the palm, the side that was already broken, and stepped forward into it.

The note hit him full on.

Two ribs gave. He felt them go. Blood came out of his mouth in a spray, and his vision went white at the edges. But he was standing inside the palm’s line now, and he could feel the line itself, straight and humming, running from his chest back to Shan Ping’s open hand.

He raised the grey Sword and dropped Falling Star Sword down it.

At Major Success, Falling Star Sword fell through what was in front of it and kept its edge. It fell along the line of the palm, back the way the note had come. Twenty paces vanished in one stroke. The point came out of the air directly in front of Shan Ping’s palm, struck the palm in its centre, and kept falling.

Bang!

It split Shan Ping’s arm from the palm to the elbow.

Shan Ping screamed and staggered back against the well, clutching his arm. Blood poured between his fingers onto the stones. For the first time his calm broke, and he stared at Shi Feng.

“You took it on purpose,” Shan Ping said hoarsely. “You let it hit you on purpose.”

“It was the only way to stand where you were aiming,” Shi Feng said, and coughed blood.

Shan Ping looked at him a moment longer. Then he tore a rift open behind the well with his good hand and threw himself through it. It snapped shut on his heels.

The bandits didn’t wait for orders. They dropped their torches and ran, out of the square, down both streets, over the granary wall. In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, there wasn’t one of them left in Pinefall.

On the roof, Qin Wuyan turned his head.

“It’s gone,” Qin Wuyan said. “The presence. It left when the man fled.”

The square burst into noise.

“He drove them off! Both of them!”

“The captain’s dead and the bald one lost an arm!”

“That was peak Shattering Void! And the young man’s hurt worse than my grandfather!”

“Who is he? Somebody ask him who he is!”

Nobody asked. They put out the fires instead, and kept looking at him while they did it.

The county magistrate arrived after the last fire was out, in a sedan chair, with four constables and an ink box. He walked around Jie Lisheng’s body twice without getting too close, wrote for a while, and read it back aloud.

“Bandits,” the magistrate announced. “A gang of bandits from the hills, driven off by a passing traveller. One killed.” He looked up at Shi Feng nervously. “Is that correct, honoured traveller?”

“They left all the silver,” Shi Feng said. “Write that down as well.”

The magistrate looked at the silver on the stones, then at his paper, and wrote it down.

That evening in the room above the herb house, his ribs had opened again, all three and two more. Lin bound them. He did it badly. The knots were in the wrong places, and he pulled the cloth so tight that Shi Feng could barely breathe.

“Three feet of good cotton,” Lin Langtian said, tying the last knot with shaking fingers. “Yours Truly’s spare robe! That’s two hundred spirit stones. Stop moving, you brat.”

“It’s a bad bandage,” Shi Feng said.

“That’s extra,” Lin Langtian said.

Shi Feng didn’t argue. He was grateful that Lin Langtian had kept tying despite the tremor in his hands. The poor bandage still held his ribs together.

Three days later, a young man in a plain brown robe walked up Pinefall’s main street with a letter held in both hands, and asked very politely at the herb house for the Pavilion’s 6 Mark.