Chapter 280 — The Thunderhide

CHAPTER 280

The Thunderhide

Shi Feng's hair stood up before he reached the rim.

The hollow lay half a li east of the ridge, a round bowl of black mud ringed by dead reeds. No rain fell here. The ash hung in the air without moving, and every few breaths a bolt of white light dropped out of the clear sky, struck the middle of the bowl and vanished with a crack that shook his teeth.

Nobody hunted here. He could see why. Three iron-grey hunters' spears stuck out of the mud near the rim, bent into hooks.

At the centre, on a low mound of scorched earth, lay something the size of a cart.

Grey plates overlapped across a bull-like body. Blue sparks crawled along its spine and gathered around two forward-curving horns. When lightning struck, the plates absorbed it. Shi Feng watched the sparks brighten and waited before entering its reach.

The Thunderhide. A Golden Core-grade beast, one rank above anything on the cohort's list. As the saying goes, without entering the tiger's den, one cannot catch the tiger's cub.

Shi Feng thought, Lin was right. A big heart.

He stepped over the rim and sank to the ankle. The mud was warm and it hummed. Each step sent a tingle up his legs. He had gone twenty paces when the sleeping beast opened one yellow eye.

It rose without hurry. The sparks along its back flared white. Then it lowered its horns and charged.

The mud barely slowed it. Shi Feng threw himself right, and the beast thundered past in a spray of black water. A bolt hit the ground where he had been standing. The shock threw him ten paces through the air, and he landed on his shoulder with his whole left arm buzzing and numb.

He got up. The beast had already turned.

His knife was in his right hand. He met the second charge with the Iron River Sword Art, a clean cut across the nearest shoulder plate, and the blade rang like a bell. The steel skidded off. A fine white line showed on the hide, and then it was gone.

The Thunderhide's tail whipped round. He ducked. The air where his head had been cracked, and a bolt came down on the knife he was holding.

Pain went up his arm to the elbow. The steel glowed blue. He dropped to one knee and let it drop from his hand.

The Ledger spoke up in his mind, flat and unhurried.

[Lightning: absorbed in part | Cost: left arm | Note: not enough room yet]

Shi Feng thought, My body can absorb only part of a bolt. I can’t keep taking them like that. He had to stop the beast drawing more lightning before it charged again.

The Thunderhide lowered its head for the third charge. The plates on its back were pulling lightning out of the air, and the yellow eyes had narrowed. It was learning him.

Shi Feng wiped the ash from his face and picked the knife up with his right hand. It was hot enough to blister. He held it anyway.

Ember Rain Sword. Golden Core-grade. He had learned its first form at the Pagoda in a single idle week, and practised it every night since. His core hadn't formed. By every rule of the Sword Pagoda, he shouldn't be able to use it.

“Then I’ll use what I can,” Shi Feng muttered, tightening his right hand around the scorched knife.

He reached for the flame in his belly, the stolen fire he had eaten in the Flame Cavern, and pushed it out through the knife.

It hurt. The first spark flickered on the blade and died. The second held. Then five more came, small and stubborn, hanging off the steel like drops from a roof. They fell slowly in the air around him.

The Thunderhide charged.

Shi Feng stepped into it. He did not cut the plates. He cut the seams between them, the thin dark lines where each grey scale met the next. A drop of fire went into each wound as the knife passed, and the ember rain drifted down and lodged there.

Steam burst from the beast's flank. The mud under its feet began to boil. It screamed, and the sound was thunder, and it twisted its head round toward him with its horns blazing blue.

A bolt came down. He had been waiting for it.

He dropped the knife and drew the Slag Weight from his sleeve. The bolt struck the steel in the mud instead. Lightning flashed along the blade, but the grey ingot in his fist remained cold. Shi Feng felt no current from it.

Slag was dead metal. There was nothing left in it for lightning to hold.

Shi Feng swung the Slag Weight with both hands, high and overhead, against the soft place between the horns where the embers had burned the plates open.

The skull cracked.

The Thunderhide stood quite still. The sparks on its back went out one by one. Then its legs folded, and the huge body tipped sideways into the boiling mud, and the hollow was silent.

Shi Feng stood over the fallen beast, breathing hard. His left arm still trembled. A patch of skin was missing from his right palm where the hot knife had burned it. The ringing in his head made the sudden silence difficult to trust.

He climbed up on the corpse and cut the chest plates open with the knife, which was blue-black now and scorched along the spine. The heart inside was as big as a cooking pot and warm, and it crackled in his hands with a fine blue light. He wrapped it in cloth and put it in the ring.

Blood still ran from the wound. He cupped a handful and drank.

It was thick and tasted of copper and storm. A line of heat ran down his throat and into his belly, and the Ledger answered, quieter than before.

[Devoured: Thunderhide blood | Gain: a third of what you expected | Note: bigger vessel]

Only a third. He sat still and let it settle, and felt for the edges of his foundation. They were still too far away to find.

A bigger vessel needed more, then. That was also something Lin had said.

The mud around him bubbled and ticked as it cooled. Somewhere behind the rim, a branch cracked.

Shi Feng turned his head. A pair of small, round, gold-rimmed eyes was looking at him from the corpse's flank. Below them, a wide mouth hung open. The creature was the size of a rice bowl, soot-grey and warty, and it had climbed out of the mud without making a sound.

It was a toad.

It looked at him. It looked at the knife in his hand. Then, with great deliberation, it burped, and a small ring of ash drifted up into the dead air.