Chapter 387 — The Jade That Was Heavy

CHAPTER 387

The Jade That Was Heavy

The furnace mountain's mouth was a hall of black stone, and in the middle of it sat the biggest furnace Shi Feng had ever seen.

It was round, ten paces across, with a lip as thick as a man's waist. Red light poured from its mouth. On the lip, set into a groove that had been made for it, lay a jade tablet the length of his hand. Its lid was open. Fire was sinking into it, slowly, a thread at a time.

The legacy jade.

Old Soot stirred in his collar and gave a hungry little burp.

“Not yet,” Shi Feng said quietly.

He heard the footsteps in the tunnel behind him. There were eight sets, and they were not trying to be quiet. Martial Palace had followed the horn they'd sounded themselves, and they were close.

He thought fast.

The jade was a vessel. It was meant to carry the furnace's last fire out of the realm, to be the prize of whoever lifted it. The fire was the legacy, and the legacy was fire. He would have preferred to take both. But a man cornered in a tunnel has to choose, and he had already chosen on the ridge.

He lifted the tablet out of its groove. The fire stopped flowing. He drew the Slag Weight from his sleeve, scraped a pinch of grey shavings off one corner with the edge of his Sword, tipped them into the tablet's hollow and closed the lid. Then he laid his palm on top and ran a thread of Thousand Forge Flame Art around the seam. The lid sealed with a soft hiss. The jade grew warm, heavy and dense, like something full.

It took eleven breaths.

The footsteps stopped at the tunnel mouth.

“There he is!” Hou Ping shouted across the hall. “That's the jade! Trash is holding it!”

Eight Martial Palace disciples came out of the tunnel in a spread line. Hou Ping was at their head, his eyebrows crooked. Beside him walked a calm young man in a robe with gold pillars on the sleeves, whom Shi Feng recognised: Shen Ji, the elder's nephew from Ashfall Marsh, now at early Golden Core and carrying himself like it.

“Junior Brother Shi,” Shen Ji said evenly. “You've found the legacy. The Palace thanks you for opening the road.”

“It's mine,” Shi Feng said. “I lifted it.”

“By the Realm Accord, the legacy belongs to the team that carries it out,” Shen Ji said. “We have thirty. You have twelve. It's a question of who can carry it.”

“I can carry it,” Shi Feng said.

“Not for long. You are a fish on the chopping block,” Hou Ping said, and grinned.

He charged.

Shi Feng stepped back, swung the Sword in a short, ugly arc that missed by a hand, and drove his shoulder into the nearest disciple. It was a wild, clumsy movement, and several of them were fooled by it. Two more rushed him. He parried badly. A blade cut his sleeve. Old Soot belched a fireball, hit nobody, and burned a hole in a Palace disciple's sleeve.

The Palace disciples shouted that he was panicking. They surged closer, reaching past one another for the jade and urging the men nearest him to seize his arm.

Shi Feng held the jade against his chest with both hands, and made them pull. It took four men to peel his fingers off it, and Shi Feng shouted loudly, without much dignity, “That's an Artificer Hall legacy! You can't—Stop!”

Hou Ping tore the tablet from his grasp and held it up in triumph. “Got it! I got it, I got it!” Hou Ping shouted, turning so his companions could see.

Shen Ji took it from him at once, with two fingers, and weighed it in his palm.

“Heavy,” Shen Ji said.

“Full,” Hou Ping said eagerly.

“Warm,” Shen Ji said. He turned it over, tapped the seam and passed a thread of qi along the lid. The qi met the sealed fire inside and the dense grey weight under it, and came back satisfied. “Very full.”

He looked up. His eyes were calm, and a little amused.

“Thank you, Junior Brother Shi,” Shen Ji said. “As the saying goes, the victor is king and the loser a bandit. You may write that the Palace took it by force. I imagine you will.”

“I will,” Shi Feng said. He kept one knee in the dust, his sleeve smoking and his Sword on the ground. He made no move to brush himself off until they had gone. “Hou Ping. Shen Ji. Six others. I'll put the names in.”

“Do,” Shen Ji said pleasantly. “Disciples. We're done.”

They filed out of the hall with the jade held high. Hou Ping was laughing. He was still laughing when the tunnel swallowed him.

Shi Feng stayed on one knee until the last footstep faded.

Then he got up, brushed the dust off, and sheathed the Sword.

“That went well,” Shi Feng said.

Old Soot burped, happily.

He walked to the furnace's lip and laid both palms on the stone. The red light washed over his face. It was a deep, patient fire, the kind that has burned in a mountain for ten thousand years and has never been asked to go anywhere. It had been about to flow into a jade. Now it flowed into him.

[Devoured: core furnace residual fire | Gain: moderate | Core: 30% | Note: patient]

His core turned, slow and round. It drank, and drank, and was still not full, but it was a little less empty than before. Old Soot sat on the furnace rim with its eyes half shut, absorbing what Shi Feng left behind.

He took his hands off the stone.

“Thirty,” Shi Feng said quietly.

Under his boots, the floor of the hall shivered.

A fine rain of dust fell from the roof. The furnace's red light flickered once, then twice. Far above, deep in the mountain, a long, low crack ran through the rock like the first note of a bell.

“Old Soot,” Shi Feng said.

The ground started to shake.