Chapter 337 — The Den in the Dark

CHAPTER 337

The Den in the Dark

Yuan Kuang's tent smelled of wine and boot polish.

Shi Feng stood inside it for exactly three breaths. The Martial Palace sentry had gone round the rope at the second watch and wouldn't come back for an hour. Yuan Kuang himself was sleeping off his victory in a tent two rows over, which was where the camp's one drunk always ended up.

On a tent pole hung a crimson belt. From the belt hung a lacquered token the size of a palm, with a gold fist on it and a name carved in the back: YUAN KUANG, INNER DISCIPLE.

Shi Feng unhooked it, wrapped it in a rag and put it in his sleeve.

Shi Feng knew exactly whom the stolen token would implicate. Yuan Kuang had claimed other people’s attacks all afternoon. Let him try explaining his own token when it turned up in the den.

He left the way he had come.

The den was blacker at night than he had expected.

Shi Feng came down the north slope by the Drifting Ash Step, with his Sword on his back and the Slag Weight in his left sleeve. His ankle sent up a hot complaint at every landing. Mist covered the hollow. The nine pale petals above the mound gave him just enough light to make out the serpent.

Coiled around the mound lay the serpent. Its sides rose and fell in heavy gasps. The hood hung cracked and dark at the base, and its blood had made a black pool on the stone. It was hurt, and it was awake.

But it was looking at the lotus, not at the dark.

Shi Feng crept along the wall to the left of the mound. There, behind a curtain of hanging moss, he found a shallow cleft in the rock. In the cleft, on a bed of dry moss, lay six eggs.

They were as big as melons, pale green, with a faint jade shimmer inside the shells. They were warm. He held his palm near a shell and felt the warmth inside. The eggs were alive.

Six, he thought. Six reasons for a mother to stay.

He took out the rag, unwrapped Yuan Kuang's token and laid it carefully on the moss where the eggs had been. Then he lifted the eggs one by one and slid them into a cloth sling inside his sleeve, as softly as he'd ever done anything.

Five.

On the sixth, the shell scraped against stone.

The serpent's head turned.

The head snapped toward him. Two plate-sized yellow eyes fixed on the egg, and the hiss made his teeth ache. He had one egg in his hand and five in his sleeve, and about two breaths to decide what to do with a very angry mother. Even a cornered rabbit will bite, and this was no rabbit.

He put the sixth egg in the sling and drew the Sword.

“Sorry,” Shi Feng said.

The serpent struck.

It came across the hollow in one long rush, jaws open. He dropped flat. The fangs smashed the wall above him and rock rained down on his back. He rolled under the swing of the tail, felt it brush his hair, and came up on his feet in the dark with his bad ankle screaming.

Mist and the serpent’s body blocked the faint light. Shi Feng stopped trusting his eyes and listened for the scales moving over stone.

Scales rasped to his left. He slid right and cut toward the sound. His blade struck a plate, throwing sparks into the dark. The serpent coiled and struck again, and he threw himself backward onto the stone. A fang tore down his left forearm in a burning line.

Only a graze, Shi Feng thought. Keep the sword steady.

It was a Golden Core-grade beast with a month of hunger and a cracked hood. He was an early Golden Core with a bad ankle and a core twelve parts in a hundred full. In a fair fight, that was a fight he could lose.

He’d opened the hood’s weak point that afternoon. Shi Feng intended to use it before the injured serpent could wear him down.

He stepped back into the shallows of the pool, up to his shins, where the black blood spread. The serpent's head came down on him. He raised the Sword and, at the last instant, threw the Slag Weight with his left hand, high.

It sailed over the serpent's head and struck the cracked base of the hood.

The grey ingot bit into the seam and held there, wedged in the break like a nail. The serpent shrieked. The cracked plates split further, and the hood folded in on itself, no longer a shield.

Shi Feng ran up the neck.

He planted one foot on the lowered jaw and the other on a neck plate. His ankle protested, but he drove the Sword beside the Slag Weight with both hands. The thick, dull blade slid in to the hilt. He felt something inside the serpent crack.

“Ember Rain,” Shi Feng said through his teeth.

The embers poured down the blade and into the wound. Light flared along the serpent's whole length, orange through the jade, and then went out.

The serpent gave one long shudder and slowly fell on its side. The mist swallowed the sound.

He stood on its neck, breathing hard, blood running down his arm. The nine petals above the mound swayed gently, as if nothing had happened.

“Hm,” Shi Feng murmured, checking that the head had stopped moving.

Relief came before satisfaction. The serpent was dead, and he still had to get the eggs and the lotus out before anyone arrived. He knelt and put his palm flat against the serpent's scales, where the blood pooled warm, and let the vitality flow into him in a steady, heavy, golden stream.

The Ledger lit behind his eyes.

[Devoured: Jade-Screen Serpent vitality | Gain: Core +4% | Note: the body is still needed]

Core 16%.

He stopped at once, before the serpent was drained, and sat back on his heels. Five eggs in the sling shifted against his chest, and the sixth knocked softly against the cloth.

Shi Feng took out the Slag Weight and wiped it on his sleeve. Then he looked at Yuan Kuang's token, lying alone on the moss with its gold fist shining.

The token was right where he wanted it. Somewhere, a long way off in the far marsh, there was a creature that would be home soon.