Chapter 1109 — Outside the Stack

CHAPTER 1109

Outside the Stack

The forty-first blow came in low, and Shi Feng took it on the flat of his sword.

It landed with forty blows behind it. The grey Sword rang in his right hand, the shock ran up his arm into his cracked ribs, and his heels slid back a full pace across the threshing floor. Chaff blew up around his boots. Behind him there were three paces of packed earth left, and then the stone roller at the floor’s edge.

“Forty-one!” someone in the crowd shouted. “He’s blocked forty-one!”

“And every one’s heavier than the last! That one shook the roller!”

“He’s done. Sixth on the list or not, nobody carries that on broken ribs.”

Mu Hanzhi didn’t press. He stood four paces off in the plain brown robe of the Myriad Marrow Sect, fists loose at his sides, breathing evenly.

“Master Shi,” Mu Hanzhi said, giving a small bow without lowering his fists. “This Mu can stop here. Nobody in this county would call it a loss.”

“I would,” Shi Feng said, wiping the blood from his lip with his thumb. “I agreed to an exchange. I didn’t ask to be let off. Go on.”

Mu Hanzhi nodded once and came in.

The forty-second blow came straight at his chest. Shi Feng saw Mu Hanzhi’s shoulder drop and his back foot dig into the earth. This was the blow the whole fight had been building toward.

Shi Feng lowered the grey Sword.

The crowd screamed. On top of the millet stack, Lin Langtian jumped to his feet with his betting book in one hand.

“Junior Brother! Lift the sword!” Lin Langtian shouted. “Yours Truly has money on you!”

Shi Feng folded the space in front of his chest, one hand’s width deep, and stepped through the fold. It set him two body-lengths to his left without crossing the ground between. The step took nearly all the qi he had left.

Mu Hanzhi’s fist went through the place where his chest had been.

Forty-two blows of stored force met nothing at all.

Boom!

The air in front of Mu Hanzhi burst. A ring of wind went out across the threshing floor, flattened every chaff pile, and rolled the great stone roller onto its side. With nothing to land on, the rest of the force had nowhere to go but back. Mu Hanzhi’s sleeve split from wrist to shoulder, and he stumbled a step forward, off balance for the first time in the fight.

Shi Feng was already beside him.

Sunset-Splitting Sword went out once, a short red arc, and stopped. The edge lay against Mu Hanzhi’s throat, a hair from the skin. A thin line of red sword light hung in the air behind it and faded.

The threshing floor went silent.

“He… he stepped out of it?”

“Out of where? He was standing right there!”

“Forty-two blows, and the man wasn’t in front of any of them!”

“The roller. Look at the roller…”

“…”

Mu Hanzhi slowly opened his fist. He looked at the split sleeve, then at the sword, and then at Shi Feng’s left arm, which had hung at his side the whole fight.

“This Mu concedes,” Mu Hanzhi said quietly. “You let me build it.”

“Your fist needs something to land on,” Shi Feng said, taking the sword away from his throat. “I gave it forty-one things to land on, and then nothing. The more you stored, the more came back on you. I could only step once today, so I waited until the step was worth it.”

Mu Hanzhi was humbled. He cupped his fists properly and bowed deeply.

“It was worth it,” Mu Hanzhi said.

He took the wager pouch from his belt and set it on the overturned roller with both hands, the way a junior pays a senior. He meant it as a mark of respect.

Shi Feng picked it up and lowered his voice so only Mu Hanzhi could hear.

“Who asked you to come today?” Shi Feng asked. “When I can barely stand?”

“A Situ house elder asked this Mu a favour,” Mu Hanzhi said, just as quietly, and didn’t look away. “He wrote the letter. He said you would welcome an exchange. That is all this Mu knows, and all he will say.”

“That’s enough,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you for telling me.”

Mu Hanzhi straightened. “When your ribs are whole, this Mu would like to ask again. Without a letter.”

“Then come without one,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll be glad to see you.”

Mu Hanzhi bowed again and walked off the threshing floor, holding his torn sleeve closed. The crowd respected him and made way. He had lost, but he had lost honourably.

Then the crowd found its voice.

“Tenth on the Tianxing! And he lost to a man with one arm!”

“So sixth was never a misprint. I told you!”

“You said it was a misprint yesterday!”

“Yesterday I hadn’t seen it!”

“Truly, beyond every mountain there’s a higher mountain,” an old farmer said, shaking his head at the roller. “And somebody still has to put that back.”

Lin Langtian had already climbed down from the millet stack. He went through the crowd with his betting book open, collecting.

“Those who bet on the Myriad Marrow, pay up! Pay up!” Lin Langtian shouted cheerfully. “Those who bet on my Junior Brother, step forward and collect! Yours Truly told you so!”

“You told us nothing!” a butcher shouted. “You were taking bets on the tenth this morning!”

“That was to keep the odds honest,” Lin Langtian said, holding out his hand. “I nearly died of fright up there. Wealth is found in danger, and I was in a lot of danger.”

On the granary roof, Qin Wuyan had hardly watched the fight. He’d watched the sky above Pinefall nearly the whole time.

“It did not move,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng understood him. The Profound Heaven presence that had sat above the town since the bandits came was still there. It had watched him nearly lose and done nothing. Someone up there had only wanted to know how badly he was hurt.

Shi Feng was uneasy. Whoever watched from up there now knew exactly how badly he was hurt.

Lin Langtian came back with his book bulging and his hand trembling on it a little. He saw Shi Feng’s grey face and stopped grinning, worried.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said. “I told you that losing to a man sent to measure you would be very stupid.”

“I didn’t lose,” Shi Feng said. “Help me sit down.”

He sat down on the overturned roller, and he didn’t get up again.

He slept for a day and a night in the back room of the herb house, and when he woke, his left arm wouldn’t move at all.

By then the story had reached Tianjing.