Chapter 230 — Please Don't Break the Puppets

CHAPTER 230

Please Don't Break the Puppets

“Young Master Shi!” Song Tai whispered. “A moment, a single moment!”

Song Tai caught Shi Feng’s sleeve at the gate. His scorched apron was twisted, and the cloth in his other hand was already damp. He looked ready to beg.

“I'm listening,” Shi Feng said.

“The new puppets,” Song Tai said. “The Grade 7 and Grade 8 ones. Prince Gongsun Ce rebuilt them from the broken ones after your, your last visit.” His voice cracked on the word. “Do you know what Grade 8 costs? Four hundred spirit stones each!”

“I didn't know that,” Shi Feng said.

“There are six of them!” Song Tai said.

“Two thousand four hundred,” Sima Lan said from behind him, without opening her ledger. “If the keeper rounds down for sorrow.”

Song Tai let out a thin wail. Zhu Liu patted his shoulder and then looked unsure whether a receipt-keeper was allowed to do that.

“I’m not asking you to lose,” Song Tai said anxiously. “Only spare the puppets. Elder He will deduct another breakage from my wages, and there’s hardly anything left to deduct! Even a clever housewife can’t cook without rice!”

Shi Feng thought about that for a moment. The array was only a measuring tool. Nobody would learn anything useful from watching him smash it a second time.

“I’ll last until the incense ends,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t break them. You have my word.”

“Truly?” Song Tai clutched the cloth. “You swear?”

“I'll put it in the receipt,” Shi Feng said. “Zhu Liu.”

“Yes, Senior Brother Shi!” Zhu Liu opened the book so fast he nearly dropped his brush. “'The array-keeper requests that the champion break nothing. The champion agrees.' Shall I charge a fee for the promise?”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Then who pays for the ink?” Zhu Liu asked.

“I do,” Sima Lan said. “It goes on his account.”

The second bell rang.

The outer-court crowd had gathered around the array fence, and they were loud. Shi Feng stepped through the gate onto the stone floor. Nine bronze plates formed a ring around him, and from each plate a wooden puppet rose on creaking joints.

“There he is!”

“Last time he turned a war puppet into firewood!”

“Break something, Champion!”

“Hush, Song Tai is crying again!”

The incense stick was lit. A thin white thread of smoke climbed toward the roof. Shi Feng stood still and waited for the first grade.

Grade 1 and Grade 2 puppets were wooden men with dull wooden swords. He turned each strike aside with two fingers and let them tumble over their own feet. A few spectators groaned at the lack of damage.

Grade 3 and Grade 4 carried iron-tipped staves. Shi Feng stepped sideways and brushed their elbows, and the staves went past his ear and into the floor. The puppets stopped to pull their weapons out. He walked around them.

Grade 5 and Grade 6 had hardened wooden bodies and moved in pairs. He took a blow on the shoulder, then another on the ribs. Each blow landed with a dull thud, and each time his body drank the force and gave back nothing but warmth.

[Devoured: puppet blows | Gain: small | Note: gentle]

By the time Grade 7 stepped forward, the crowd had gone quiet.

“He isn't dodging at all,” someone said.

“He isn't attacking either.”

“Is he losing?”

“He's standing there like a wall. Is that how the champion fights?”

“He's counting the incense,” Zhu Liu told them, in a tone of grave authority, and then turned pink.

Grade 7 hammered at him with a pair of iron cudgels. Shi Feng slid half a step inside the swing and let the cudgels pass over his head. His left hand rested lightly against the puppet's chest. There was a seam there. One push would have cracked the whole torso.

He lifted his hand away.

Grade 8 came last, a heavy puppet with a bronze face and four jointed arms. It was Gongsun Ce's best work in the array. Shi Feng could see three weak points in the elbows before it took a single step.

From beyond the fence, Song Tai made a small pleading noise.

Shi Feng parried the first arm, ducked the second and let the third strike the stone beside his foot. The fourth caught his shoulder. He stepped into the blow, absorbed it, and gently turned the arm away from its own joint.

The incense burned to a stub. A small bell rang.

“Time!” He Zhen's voice called from the platform. “Grade 8 survived. Nothing broken.”

Silence.

“Nothing broken?” a boy asked. “At all?”

“The keeper's smiling,” a girl said. “Is that allowed?”

Song Tai wasn't merely smiling. He was holding the cloth over his face and shaking.

Shi Feng walked out of the ring. Zhu Liu rushed to meet him with the receipt book. Sima Lan was already writing something down.

“Grade 8,” Sima Lan said. “One point short of the full nine.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

“They’ll say you couldn’t pass Grade 9,” Sima Lan said, glancing toward the spectators.

“I promised the keeper,” Shi Feng said. “They can think what they like.”

“I heard you,” Sima Lan said. “Song Tai knows what it saved him.”

“Which is?” Shi Feng said.

“Two thousand four hundred stones,” Sima Lan said. “That ought to earn a finder’s fee. I’ll ask him when he stops crying.”

A moment later Gongsun Ce entered the ring. The crowd was suddenly loud again. He cleared Grade 1 to Grade 9 in a single, flawless run, jumping from plate to plate with his sleeves rolled up and the little puppet on his shoulder bobbing in time. When the ninth puppet fell back, perfectly intact, he turned and bowed to the fence. “Beyond the sky there is another sky,” someone in the crowd sighed, “and beyond people, other people.”

“Nine,” Gongsun Ce said, and looked straight at Shi Feng. “One more than you.”

“Congratulations,” Shi Feng said.

“Does that not bother you?” Gongsun Ce said.

“The cavern is tomorrow,” Shi Feng said.

Gongsun Ce's smile wavered. He had expected a different answer.