Chapter 386 — The Ravine of Howls

CHAPTER 386

The Ravine of Howls

“Go,” Sima Lan said. “I'll stay with the rings.”

“You'll be alone with seven bodies,” Shi Feng said.

“Six are asleep and the seventh can't move,” Sima Lan said. “If any of them wakes up, I'll bill him for the trouble. Go.”

He went.

Old Soot climbed out of his collar at the first ridge and perched on his shoulder, gold-rimmed eyes fixed south. The howling had grown. It wasn't one beast, or ten. It was a sound like a whole pack arriving at once, and under it came the thin, high ring of a sword cutting ice.

Shi Feng ran.

His Drifting Ash Step was still at Entry, so he ran like a man with a heavy Sword on his back. He crossed two ridges before the ground dropped away into a long, narrow ravine, grey with ash and loud with claws.

Ash-maws.

There were forty of them at least. Each was the size of a hound, with a flat, wide head that opened like a trap, and a tongue that licked up ash and qi alike. Shi Feng had read about them in the Hall's records. Qi didn't hurt them. They ate it. A cultivator who fought them with a flood of power only fed them.

At the bottom of the ravine, the Valley team stood in a ring.

There were about thirty of them, all six groups driven together into one ring. Their green sashes were torn. Bai Chenxi stood on the east side with her frost sword, and every sweep of it froze a maw solid, but the next one climbed over the ice. The younger disciples were white-faced, because their qi flowed out of them faster than they could pour it in. Elder Mu Shuyun was not among them. This was a young people's team.

In the middle, within the ring, stood Ling Qingzhu.

Her sword was in her left hand. Her right sleeve was torn from shoulder to wrist, and the arm under it was streaked with something grey that crawled up toward her elbow. Ash-rot. She had taken a claw, and the poison was already eating her qi from the inside.

She held the sword steady anyway.

“Hold the line!” Bai Chenxi shouted. “Don't pour qi! Use the blade! Use the blade only!”

A young disciple sobbed that she could no longer feel her hands. Her blade tipped toward the ash.

“Then use your feet!” Bai Chenxi ordered, moving across to cover her. “Stay inside the line!”

A big maw leapt for the weakest side. Shi Feng jumped from the ridge.

He landed on its back with both boots. It collapsed under him with a wet crunch, and the grey Sword came down behind it in one clean stroke. He didn't pour a single thread of qi into it. The heavy blade was ungraded metal, and it cut beasts the way an axe cuts logs.

Startled cries broke out behind him. Disciples recognised the Artificer Hall champion and called to one another to give him room. “Sending charcoal in the snow,” someone breathed. They saw that no qi shone on the blade; he was simply swinging the weight of it through the beasts.

Shi Feng cut left, then right. Old Soot spat a single gob of slag fire onto the nearest maw's head, and the beast screamed and rolled back into three others. The ring of maws broke. Bai Chenxi swept her sword across the gap and a wall of white frost slammed shut behind them.

Fifteen breaths later, it was done.

The maws that remained backed away, shaking, and loped off into the ash. Disciples sat down where they stood. Someone began to laugh, a little hysterically.

Shi Feng sheathed the Sword over his shoulder and walked straight through the ring.

Ling Qingzhu was still standing. The sword hung from her left hand, and her face above the veil had gone paler than he had ever seen it. Her right arm shook. The grey mark had reached her elbow.

She saw him. Her lips parted.

“Shi—” Ling Qingzhu began.

He took a small white bottle from his ring, tipped out a single plain pill, took her right wrist in one hand and pressed the pill into her palm. He folded her fingers over it. Then he let go.

He didn't say anything.

It was an Ash-Rot Clearing Pill. He had refined it six days ago from the Hall's own records, a Golden Core-grade recipe, for exactly this poison, and it had been sitting in his ring for no better reason than that Sima Lan insisted every traveller should carry one.

That was all it was.

Ling Qingzhu looked down at her closed hand. Then she looked up at him.

“Senior Brother Shi!” Bai Chenxi called, already hurrying across the ice. “Wait! We owe you—we can't—”

Shi Feng turned and walked out of the ring. He climbed the slope in long, plain steps, and by the time Bai Chenxi reached the foot of it, he had gone over the ridge and out of sight.

A Valley disciple started to call after him, then stopped. Another peered at Ling Qingzhu's closed hand. The whispers died before anyone asked her what he had given her.

Bai Chenxi stopped at the foot of the slope and let her frost sword drop to her side. She looked at Ling Qingzhu, then at the hand that was still closed around the pill.

“Senior Sister,” Bai Chenxi said carefully. “You're not going to eat it?”

“I will,” Ling Qingzhu said. She did not look up. Her thumb pressed hard against her palm, keeping the pill sheltered from the ash. Bai Chenxi waited beside her instead of reaching for it. “In a moment.”

“It's the right pill,” Bai Chenxi said. “I can smell it from here.”

“I know,” Ling Qingzhu said.

On the ridge, Old Soot had stopped looking back. Its gold-rimmed eyes had turned north, toward the central mountain, whose chimney had been dark since the realm opened.

It was glowing now.

A deep red light was climbing out of the furnace mountain's mouth, slow and heavy, like a coal blown awake. Somewhere under it, a horn sounded. It was a Martial Palace horn.

Shi Feng stopped on the ridge and watched the glow.

“Someone's lit the furnace,” Shi Feng said.