Chapter 380 — Four to One

CHAPTER 380

Four to One

“Now?” Gu Zhan asked.

He stood at the edge of the firelight with his spear planted in the ash. The scarred side of his face was in shadow, and the good eye was bright. He looked like a man who had been waiting for this since the tournament and wasn't going to be polite about it.

Shi Feng set the dusty volume one on his knee.

“It's night, and it's raining ash,” Shi Feng said. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's good too,” Gu Zhan said at once. “Where?”

“Somewhere with room,” Shi Feng said, shifting the book away from the sparks.

“The central plateau!” Gu Zhan said. “I walked it today. The ground is flat and the ash is thin. It's a good place for a spear.”

“Then the plateau,” Shi Feng said.

Gu Zhan nodded happily, pulled his spear out of the ground and went off into the dark. He was humming. Shi Feng watched him go and thought, He hasn't asked about my realm, my arts or my sword. He only asked where.

“Did I hear the word ‘fight’?” Gongsun Ce called from behind the tent.

Gongsun Ce stepped out from behind the nearest tent. He held a small black notebook, a brush and a puppet, all at once. He must have been listening for some time.

“You heard it,” Shi Feng said.

“Then there is a book,” Gongsun Ce said, and sat down.

Sima Lan came out of her tent after him and glanced from the notebook to its owner. He had not even waited for the two fighters to go to bed.

“Odds?” Sima Lan asked.

“Four to one against Shi Feng,” Gongsun Ce said.

“Four?” Sima Lan said. “At the tournament it was three.”

“At the tournament he was a champion with a spear in his ribs,” Gongsun Ce said. “Now Gu Zhan is mid Golden Core with a full core. Shi Feng is mid Golden Core with a quarter of one. I am a gambler, not a fool.”

“You're both,” Sima Lan said.

Gongsun Ce wrote it down without looking up. Shi Feng didn't argue. The numbers were fair, and the quarter was close to correct.

“Your stake?” Gongsun Ce asked.

“Twenty stones,” Shi Feng said. “The fight lasts more than a hundred exchanges.”

Gongsun Ce's brush stopped.

“That's not a real bet,” Gongsun Ce said. “You're supposed to bet on who wins.”

“It's in your ledger,” Shi Feng said.

“It is a very strange line,” Gongsun Ce said. He tapped the wager with the dry end of his brush.

“Three to one,” Sima Lan said, before he could object. “More than a hundred is unlikely, so he gets long odds. Write it, Third Prince.”

Gongsun Ce wrote it slowly, leaving room beside the line to check the exchanges. “You had better count aloud,” Gongsun Ce told Sima Lan.

By morning, the whole camp knew. As the saying goes, good news never leaves the gate, while bad news travels a thousand li.

Shi Feng woke to the sound of too many people whispering outside his tent. Sima Lan was already up, tying her hair, and she held a thin strip of paper out to him without a word. It was a list of bets, copied in her exact hand.

“Martial Palace put in six hundred stones overnight,” Sima Lan said. “All on Gu Zhan.”

“They don't know him,” Shi Feng said.

“They know you,” Sima Lan said. “That's enough.”

He read down the page. Hundred Flower Valley had bet small, in dozens of stones, from disciples who wanted to be loyal without being foolish. Pei Gang's seniors had put in copper coins, and one had put in a spare boot.

“Who bet the boot?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Attendant's ledger doesn't ask,” Sima Lan said.

The plateau lay an hour's walk from camp. It was a wide shelf of black stone, swept almost bare by wind, with the ash lying only in the cracks. The three teams stood along three edges, and nobody stood near anybody else. Old Soot sat on Sima Lan's shoulder and looked at the crowd with great suspicion.

Hou Ping stood at the front of the Martial Palace line. His eyebrows had grown back, thin and crooked.

“Trash! Not knowing the height of heaven or the depth of the earth! Today you finally meet a real spear!”

A Martial Palace disciple called across the gap about Shi Feng's debts and the four-to-one odds. He waved his betting slip, confident that he would collect soon.

Shi Feng didn't answer. On the far side of the plateau, Ling Qingzhu stood among the Valley disciples in her violet robe, her white veil still. She looked at Gu Zhan, then at him, and looked away. Beside her, Bai Chenxi's hand rested on her frost sword.

Gu Zhan walked out to the middle of the stone with his spear across both shoulders. He grinned at the crowd, turned his face toward Shi Feng and took the spear in both hands.

“Ready!” Gu Zhan called.

Shi Feng reached back and drew the grey Sword. It came out heavy and dull, with no shine on it at all.

“No rules?” Shi Feng asked.

“Spear down or sword down,” Gu Zhan said. “Or you say stop.”

“Fine,” Shi Feng said.

Sima Lan took out her chalk and drew a short line on the black stone. On the other side, Gongsun Ce lifted his brush.

“One,” Sima Lan said quietly.

The spear was already moving.