Chapter 152 — Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER 152

Twenty-Seven

The last second-round match ended with a staff lying broken across the boundary.

Twenty-seven winners remained beneath the awning. The others had left by choice, injury or the officials' order. Sima Yu's name carried a red disqualification mark on the public sheet rather than an ordinary line through it.

Lu Yong waited until the attendants finished checking every result.

“The next stage is three trials,” Lu Yong said. “They test your physical and cultivation foundation under pressure, your heart-temperament in the Illusion Garden, and your combat discernment in the Puppet Array. Only the top sixteen combined results enter the main bracket.”

A murmur crossed the court. Several candidates had prepared for continuous duels and looked less pleased by the change.

Lu Yong indicated a second sheet.

“If a qualifying candidate withdraws before the draw of sixteen, the next eligible trial rank takes the place,” Lu Yong said. “The rule applies before the bracket is sealed. Afterward, withdrawals count as losses.”

Zhou Ke fastened the sheet where everyone could read it.

Sima Lan stood near the back, drying a shallow cut beside her collarbone. She had won by holding her line after losing the advantage of reach, choosing a close exchange that left both contestants bleeding.

Shi Feng looked at the cloth.

“Does it need a healer?” Shi Feng asked.

“No,” Sima Lan replied. “It needs me to stop touching it.”

She moved her fingers away from the edge.

Duan Yichen laughed once. He had made the same mistake with his arm twice that morning.

Across the court, Yuan Kuang spoke to two kingdom princes about the coming trials. Xiahou Lie stood beside him, thick arms folded over a sleeveless robe. The body cultivator looked as though pressure stairs had been invented to save him the trouble of finding a heavier training stone.

Bai Chenxi listened alone beneath the far pillar. Her peak Foundation Establishment qi was cold and controlled. She checked the edge of her pale sword while the other candidates talked.

Gongsun Ce held a small jointed wooden bird. The late Foundation Establishment prince adjusted one wing with a pin, apparently more interested in its movement than in the crowd.

Gu Zhan approached him and pointed at it.

“Does it fight?” Gu Zhan asked.

“No,” Gongsun Ce replied.

Gu Zhan lost interest immediately.

Outside the candidates' gate, Han Zheng was explaining the trials to a circle of White Crane supporters.

A first-round defeat had cost him an easy argument. The new stage offered another.

“Throwing a man over a boundary is one thing,” Han Zheng said. “Three sect trials require more than brute force. The cripple won't make the sixteen.”

The tea seller beside him raised his brows. His name was Qiao Ping, and he'd sold enough cups to hear the steward's earlier certainty about Xie Wenyuan.

“Would you put stones behind that?” Qiao Ping asked.

Han Zheng looked at the watching faces.

“How many?” Han Zheng said.

“Twenty,” Qiao Ping replied. “Paid here when the scores are posted.”

Han Zheng placed the money on the tea table. Qiao Ping matched it and asked the neighbouring stallkeeper to witness the terms.

People nearby began smiling.

Shi Feng heard the last part while passing with Duan Yichen. He didn't stop to place a counter-bet. Han Zheng had found a way to make his own embarrassment more expensive without any help.

At the candidates' gate, He Zhen had set three broken mechanisms on a trestle beneath a chalked notice: three faults, name them, answers entered on the sheet and nowhere else.

A seized lock. A snapped hinge. A cracked puppet core with its side plate propped open.

Candidates named the first two and drifted away from the third. Shi Feng stopped beside the core and followed the bronze supply down into the seat, then back along the return channel to the elbow where the flow stalled.

“It isn't the core,” Shi Feng said. “The return channel is choked at the elbow seat. The crack is where the pressure came out.”

He Zhen wrote the answer and Shi Feng's name on the notice sheet, chalked the time beside them and closed his case. The notice stayed at the gate. He asked Shi Feng nothing.

Sky Pavilion's examination desk occupied a quiet side hall above the ordinary medicine counters.

A clerk named Wen An checked the rest-day schedule. She was a Bone Refinement cultivator with neat cuffs and ink stains on the side of one finger.

“One Mark requires Foundation Establishment at minimum,” Wen An said. “You'll produce a Golden Core-serving medicine under an examiner's observation. Ingredients are sealed until the examination begins.”

“I understand,” Shi Feng replied.

“Which of the listed formulas have you practised?” Wen An asked.

He selected Clear Spring Pill, the simple recipe whose cooling turn had occupied his recent nights.

Wen An marked the choice.

“The examiner checks your preparation, control and finished medicine,” Wen An said. “Knowing the formula won't substitute for a pill.”

“It shouldn't,” Shi Feng replied.

She looked up briefly, then handed him the morning appointment.

The fee and ingredient allowance occupied one line on the receipt. Shi Feng paid, folded it and left.

At the inn, Duan Yichen stopped outside Shi Feng's door with a bundle of fruit.

“You're examining tomorrow?” Duan Yichen asked.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Then these are congratulations if you pass,” Duan Yichen said. “Otherwise they're breakfast.”

Shi Feng accepted the bundle with a small smile.

“Efficient,” Shi Feng replied.

“I dislike carrying things back,” Duan Yichen said.

He left without asking to watch the practice. Shi Feng ate one piece of fruit, set the others aside and unpacked his furnace.

He practised the same joining stage, then the cooling turn, stopping after each failure to note what his own hands had done.

Mo Tianheng's remembered experience gave him a clear method. It didn't move his fingers for him.

When the last flame died, the room smelled of warm herbs and clean sand.

Shi Feng washed the furnace and went to bed early.

He placed the examination receipt inside the everyday bag, beside his tournament plate.

Twenty-seven candidates remained in the tournament. Before he faced the trials, he had a different piece of work to finish.