Chapter 356 — Perfection

CHAPTER 356

Perfection

The second floor of the Sword Pagoda smelled of hot stone and lamp oil.

Shi Feng stood in the practice ring with the Sword in his hand. Forty lamps burned in the wall niches. At the far end of the floor, nine training posts stood in a row, black from old fires. This was his last free morning before Duanyang. In the afternoon the cart would leave for the tower, and for days he would be a candidate instead of a swordsman.

Elder Qian Mo had charged him forty contribution points for the day. Shi Feng meant to use every one.

Ember Rain Sword had been at Major Success for eight days. The embers fell where he aimed them, hard and in order. But a few still wandered on every cut, and he had to push them back into line with his qi. Pushing cost him a breath each time. In a real fight, a breath was too much.

He raised the Sword and cut.

The first slash threw sparks. The second turned them into embers. On the third cut, Shi Feng stopped pushing. He let the embers go, and thought only of the posts.

Nine embers fell.

Each one landed in the exact centre of a post and burned a black circle the size of a copper coin. Not one cinder touched the wood beside it. Nothing wandered, and nothing needed pushing. The embers had been falling toward their marks before the blade finished moving.

Shi Feng lowered the Sword. This time, controlling the embers hadn’t required a separate correction. He’d finally completed the art.

Perfection.

Behind him, something clinked on the stone and shattered.

Keeper Yan sat on her stool by the stairwell, as she did every morning now. She had been holding a cup of tea. She was looking at the nine black circles, and the cup lay in pieces around her feet.

“That's the second cup this year,” Keeper Yan said faintly.

“I'll pay for it,” Shi Feng said.

“It belongs to the Pagoda. Everything here belongs to the Pagoda,” Keeper Yan said, opening her record book. Her pen was shaking. “Nine posts. Nine circles. At early Golden Core.”

“They're only posts,” Shi Feng said.

“Perfection!” a disciple cried from the other side of the ring. He had been practising a spear thrust and had stopped halfway through it. “He reached Perfection!”

“Of a Golden Core-grade art?”

“He only got Major Success last week!”

“Nobody does that. Nobody! Beyond the sky there is another sky!”

“…”

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Keeper Ou from the first floor came through the door with his broom, out of breath, and saw the posts.

“Again?” Keeper Ou said.

“Perfection,” Keeper Yan said.

“He's cutting through my records,” Keeper Ou said. He sat down heavily on the top step. “All my years in this tower, the last man to reach Perfection on this floor needed eleven years.”

“I was lucky,” Shi Feng said.

“Luck doesn't burn circles,” Keeper Ou said.

Keeper Yan found the right page and wrote the date. She looked up cautiously, already dreading how little importance he might give the feat.

“Disciple Shi, I have to ask for the record,” Keeper Yan said. “How would you rate it?”

“So-so,” Shi Feng said.

The pen stopped.

“So-so,” Keeper Yan repeated.

“Senior Brother Lin's embers go around corners,” Shi Feng said. “Mine only go down.”

“Around corners,” Keeper Ou said slowly.

“He showed me once, behind a wall,” Shi Feng explained. “He said it was a party trick.”

Nobody spoke. The disciple with the spear sat down on the floor. Keeper Yan wrote four careful words in her book, and she underlined one of them twice. Shi Feng could read it upside down: so-so, compared to Lin Langtian.

“I'll keep it exactly as you said it,” Keeper Yan said. “It's the only comparison anyone here will believe.”

“Is that all?” Shi Feng asked.

“That's all,” Keeper Yan said. “Go. Please go, before you do something else. I only have one more cup.”

Shi Feng sheathed the Sword on his back. He nodded to both keepers and went down the stairs.

Outside, the morning mist was lifting off Thousand Forge Peak. Below the Pagoda steps, Zhu Liu stood in the lane holding his receipt book against his chest. His round face was pink from running.

“Senior Brother Shi!” Zhu Liu panted. “The cart is at the gate. Senior Attendant Sima says it leaves when the tea she poured has gone cold, and she poured it a long time ago.”

“Understood,” Shi Feng said.

“Elder Qian Mo gave me the travel money,” Zhu Liu said, opening his hand. Four small copper-bright spirit stones lay on his palm. “He said it's for the whole trial. He said the tower feeds candidates, because the registration fee covers it.”

Shi Feng looked at the four stones for a while.

“What does the registration fee cover?” Shi Feng asked.

“He didn't say,” Zhu Liu said unhappily. “He said it was a very good fee. After he haggled it.”

Shi Feng thought, Four stones for the whole trial. Sima Lan will have an opinion about that before we reach the gate. He took the stones and put them in his sleeve.

“Eight days!” Keeper Ou shouted from the first-floor window, announcing the record to the whole peak. Behind him, Keeper Yan could be heard telling him to close the window.