Chapter 382 — Past the Hundredth

CHAPTER 382

Past the Hundredth

“Sixty-two,” Sima Lan said.

Gu Zhan pulled the spear back and thrust again. This time Shi Feng's Sword was already waiting at the exact place the point arrived. The two weapons met with a crack like splitting wood, and the black stone under Gu Zhan's front foot gave a small groan.

“Sixty-three. Sixty-four,” Sima Lan counted, following each clang.

The Martial Palace line had stopped cheering. They didn't understand why yet. Shi Feng was still standing on the very edge of the shelf, with nowhere to go, and yet the spear wasn't going through him.

Thrust, thrust, thrust, turn.

Shi Feng stepped into the turn.

It was the first step he had taken forward in the whole fight, and it was a small one. The sweeping shaft passed in front of his chest and the butt end missed his chin by an inch. His Sword came up from below. Gu Zhan jerked backward, and the grey blade cut a thin line across the front of his robe.

“Sixty-nine!” Sima Lan called, and her voice cracked on the last word.

“Ha!” Gu Zhan shouted. His good eye was huge and delighted. “You were reading me!”

“Since the twentieth,” Shi Feng said.

The Martial Palace disciples argued in low voices over the retreat they had just cheered. A Valley girl cut across them, pointing at the air around Gu Zhan.

The ash was thick around the plateau, a pale grey drift in the morning light. But inside the drift, in a wide ring around Gu Zhan's feet, there were tiny red points.

Not a few. Dozens. They hung motionless at head height, knee height and shoulder height, like sparks that refused to fall.

“Embers,” Bai Chenxi said slowly. She had stepped to the front of the Valley line, and her frost sword was half drawn. “From Ember Rain. Every parry.”

Several disciples turned toward Bai Chenxi. Every parry? They looked back at the sparks they had barely noticed.

“Look where they are,” Bai Chenxi said. “He didn't scatter them. He placed them. They're lying exactly on the lines of the spear.”

The crowd went silent, one row at a time. As the saying goes, beyond the sky there is another sky, and beyond people there are other people.

The nearest disciples shifted along the edge for a better view of the red points. Others craned over their shoulders. The embers were not a cloud. They were a map. Each one marked the place where Gu Zhan's spear had passed, or would pass, along the three-and-turn pattern he had used for sixty exchanges. Shi Feng hadn't been retreating at all. For sixty exchanges he had been drawing the spear's road in the air, one flick of the Sword at a time.

“A hundred,” Gongsun Ce said, to nobody. “It was never a bet on the fight. It was a bet on the map.”

“Seventy-two,” Sima Lan said. “Don't narrate. I'm counting.”

Gu Zhan looked at the embers, at the Sword and then at Shi Feng. He didn't look angry. He bared his teeth in delight, testing a new grip on the shaft.

“That's the Ember Rain Sword,” Gu Zhan said. “Perfection?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Then it's real,” Gu Zhan said happily, and lunged.

The spear changed.

For the first time, the rhythm broke. Gu Zhan abandoned the three-and-turn and threw a thrust, a thrust, a sudden drop and a rising slash. He was moving fast enough to make the ash swirl, and every strike came from an angle that hadn't been in the pattern. A man who fights for the joy of it learns quickly. He had seen the trap and he was already building a new road.

“Seventy-eight! Seventy-nine!” Sima Lan called, raising her voice over the blows.

Shi Feng's Sword was no longer waiting. It was moving. He parried the first thrust, bent under the second and took the rising slash on his shoulder guard. It cut a groove in the Sword's flat. Another few embers went up into the air.

[Devoured: Gu Zhan's slash | Gain: moderate | Note: angry spear]

The Ledger took the blow's force and kept it. His core turned. It was a quarter full, and every exchange made it feel a little fuller.

“Ninety!” Sima Lan called. The chalk had worn blunt between her fingers.

The Valley disciples pressed forward, calling out each time Shi Feng held his ground. Gu Zhan's spear gouged the stone and sent chips into their path. They drew back again, still cheering.

Gu Zhan was laughing aloud now, and it was a clean, loud laugh. The spear flashed, and Shi Feng answered. The grey Sword took a thrust and slid along the shaft, and the embers around the ring trembled.

“Ninety-eight,” Sima Lan counted, bending closer to her marks.

“Ninety-nine,” Sima Lan said. She did not look toward Gongsun Ce.

Gongsun Ce was holding his brush so tightly it had begun to shake.

“One hundred,” Sima Lan said.

The Sword and the spear met in the middle of the plateau and locked. For one breath, neither moved. Gu Zhan's good eye was inches from Shi Feng's face.

“One hundred and one,” Sima Lan said. She wrote it on the black stone. Then she drew a second line underneath, very neatly. “Twenty stones, three to one. Pay the man, Third Prince.”

“Not yet,” Gongsun Ce said faintly. “It isn't over.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

He pushed. Gu Zhan was thrown back two steps, still grinning, and the spear came up for a thrust.

Every ember in the ring began to fall.