Chapter 18 — The Young Master Didn't Return

CHAPTER 18

The Young Master Didn't Return

The Green-Eyed Rock Fox shot from its den with a chicken feather stuck between its teeth. Shi Feng stepped across the narrow path and cut before it could turn back.

The fox twisted in midair. His first stroke missed its neck and opened the shoulder instead. It landed upon a rock, hissed, and sprang toward his face.

He raised the scabbard with his left hand. The fox's claws struck wood. His sword entered beneath its ribs.

He turned the blade and lowered the body before it could tear its own valuable hide.

A quick hunt. The beast wasn't large, but its green eyes and pale fur made it worth finding. Buyers paid far more for something pretty than for something that bit them.

Shi Feng checked the slope behind him. The den stood beneath a low cliff, well away from the cart road. Nobody was watching.

He removed the hide, wrapped it, and touched the remaining body. Warmth passed through his palm. He drew it slowly, then sat upon a stone while the new strength settled into his own refined qi.

The fox's resources didn't amount to another spirit boar. They still helped. He packed the hide only after his breathing was calm.

A voice called from the path below.

“That's the one!” Wei Kuo said. “Bring it here.”

Shi Feng looked down.

The young master stood between two boulders, wearing yellow silk far too clean for the hills. Luo San waited beside him with a hand upon his sword. Both men were in Qi Condensation.

Nobody else followed them.

Shi Feng walked to the edge of the clearing and stopped several steps above their heads.

“What do you want?” Shi Feng asked.

Wei Kuo pointed at the wrapped hide.

“That,” Wei Kuo said, pointing at the fox. “A girl at the wine house wants a scarf.”

Luo San leaned closer to his master.

“She asked for white fur, Young Master,” Luo San whispered.

Wei Kuo glared at the green-grey hide.

“Then she can change her mind!” Wei Kuo snapped. “Two spirit stones, Shi Feng. Bring it here.”

“It's not for sale to you,” Shi Feng replied.

Wei Kuo stared, surprised that a cripple had refused him so quickly.

“Did you hear me?” Wei Kuo asked.

“I heard the price,” Shi Feng said.

The young master's face darkened.

At the gate, somebody had interrupted him. Out here there was no clerk, no crowd, and no reason to pretend that two stones were a fair offer.

“Luo San, take his pack,” Wei Kuo said. “If he complains, break his legs.”

Luo San drew his sword and climbed toward Shi Feng.

The servant looked older than his master, with gray beginning near his temples. He had no interest in the fox. He wanted to finish the errand and return to town before the cooking fires went cold.

“Put it down, brat,” Luo San said.

Shi Feng didn't move.

“Don't make me repeat myself,” Luo San warned.

“Then stop talking,” Shi Feng replied.

Wei Kuo's expression twisted with anger.

“Kill him!” Wei Kuo shouted. “Who'll ask about a cripple lost in the hills?”

Luo San thrust at Shi Feng's throat.

At the same moment, Wei Kuo pulled a dagger from his sleeve and threw it toward the clearing. He aimed at Shi Feng's chest. There was nothing uncertain about either man's intent.

Shi Feng drew his sword.

The dagger struck his edge and flew into the dirt. He stepped inside Luo San's thrust, caught the servant's sword arm, and cut across his throat.

Luo San's eyes bulged. The movement was so fast that his feet kept climbing after his blade had already missed.

Shi Feng pushed him aside.

Wei Kuo stood frozen below.

His servant fell beside the boulder and didn't get up.

“You're not—” Wei Kuo began.

Shi Feng reached him before he finished.

The young master raised his empty hand as if rank could block steel. Shi Feng knocked it aside and drove the sword into his chest.

Wei Kuo's mouth opened.

No order came out.

Shi Feng withdrew the blade. The yellow robe slid down the rock, and the body settled beside Luo San's fallen sword. The whole fight lasted only a few breaths.

Two ordinary Qi Condensation cultivators had attacked a man with perfect meridians and vastly greater strength. They hadn't understood the difference until it was too late. Shi Feng looked down at them without pleasure.

They wanted his hide, then his life. He'd given neither. There was no reason to leave an attempted murderer alive just because the man discovered fear at the last moment.

He wiped his blade upon a clean patch of grass and listened.

Wind moved through the bushes. Far below, somebody called to a mule upon the road. The boulders and cliff hid the clearing from passing travelers.

Nobody had seen his qi or the fight.

Shi Feng searched both bodies. The two purses held seventy-six spirit stones between them. A little wound medicine was still sealed. The weapons were ordinary forged steel, not refined artifacts.

He kept the money and medicine, then picked Wei Kuo's thrown dagger from the dirt. It was a sound knife, better than the chipped blade he'd taken from Ma Liang. He replaced the old blade at his belt and left the swords behind.

His own sword was enough. He didn't want to carry every weapon a dead fool dropped.

He rolled the bodies away from the narrow footpath and left them beneath the cliff. Whether beasts or searching retainers found them first wasn't his concern. He wasn't going to spend the afternoon building graves for men who'd come to murder him.

The wrapped fox hide went back into his pack. He took a different path down the hill.

The furrier Zou An inspected the hide beneath an awning near the east market.

Zou An turned the pelt over, checked the clean seam at the shoulder, and paid twenty spirit stones without argument before the waiting customers could put their greasy hands on it.

He accepted, bought a meal, and returned to the lodging house before sunset. Bian Cui looked at the blood dried upon his cuff.

“Don't wash that in my drinking basin!” Bian Cui said.

“I wasn't planning to,” Shi Feng replied.

She pointed toward the yard tub and went back to arguing with a tenant over a missing quilt. Shi Feng washed there without explaining what had happened in the hills. As far as Yunze Town knew, he'd hunted a fox.

That was true.

In his room, he counted the useful gains once and put them away. Money would buy food and medicine, but ordinary purchases wouldn't fill the enormous capacity inside his body for long. He needed stronger beast resources and something to prepare for Bone Refinement.

The blue manual described that next step clearly. Refined qi had to enter a bone and remain steady while strengthening it. His control was improving, but he wanted it steadier before attempting the change.

Shi Feng opened his hill map.

One place bore a small mark beside an old spring. The hunter who'd mentioned the fox also spoke of mineral deposits there. Jade Marrow Dew sometimes gathered around the rocks, but a Blackback Stone Ape had claimed the hollow.

Other hunters avoided it for good reason. Its strength matched Bone Refinement. Shi Feng studied the approach and folded the map.

A young master thought he was easy prey.

Tomorrow, he would see what the ape thought.