Chapter 388 — The Last One Through

CHAPTER 388

The Last One Through

The ash rain stopped, and then the mountain behind him began to fall.

Shi Feng was halfway down the slope from the core furnace when the first ridge went. A long grey crack ran across the valley floor. The furnace-shaped peaks leaned toward each other, and the whole realm groaned.

He didn't look back. The decoy jade was in Martial Palace's hands, the furnace fire was in his belly, and the seniors were on the far side of the valley.

He ran east.

The cohort's exit was an old slag tunnel cut by the realm's long-dead forge masters. It was the shortest road to the lake, and Sima Lan had marked it on the first day, with chalk, because she distrusted anyone else's map. Shi Feng reached its mouth with ash falling in sheets around him.

The tunnel was a li long, arched, and cracking.

“Seven!” Sima Lan called.

She stood on the threshold with a slate in one hand. Old Soot clung to her shoulder, and she had given up trying to remove him. Gongsun Ce was behind her, both hands out, his puppets holding up the first three arches on their backs with their joints smoking.

“You're late,” Sima Lan said. “I woke the Palace escort with a bucket of ash, told them the roof was coming and left the Wei boy to them. Their problem. The rings are in my sleeve.”

“Where are the other two?” Shi Feng asked.

“I counted nine seniors out of the plateau camp,” Sima Lan said. “Seven are here. Pei Gang and Lu Heng went back for something.”

“For what?” Shi Feng asked, looking up the slope.

“Pei Gang said ‘stones,’” Sima Lan said. “I stopped listening.”

Gongsun Ce's face was white and wet. “The beams won't hold much longer, Shi Feng,” Gongsun Ce called. “Misfortunes never come singly! Everyone inside, go! Go!”

The seven seniors ran into the dark, Yao Min clutching her bandaged palm and a broad-shouldered senior shoving the others along. Shi Feng stepped past Sima Lan, drew the grey Sword from his back, and walked up the slope the wrong way.

“Where are you going?” Gongsun Ce shouted.

“To get them,” Shi Feng said, without slowing.

“The tunnel's coming down!” Gongsun Ce shouted. One puppet's elbow buckled, and he hauled his own arm upward to straighten it.

“Then I'll be quick,” Shi Feng said.

He found them two hundred paces up, in a ditch of slag. Pei Gang had a wheelbarrow of black ore stuck in a rut. Lu Heng strained at the back of it. He was frightened enough to keep looking at the ridge, but still wouldn't let go.

“It's two hundred stones!” Pei Gang screamed. “Elder Qian Mo's form says two thirds go to the finder!”

“Drop it,” Shi Feng said.

“Two hundred!” Pei Gang protested, clinging to the handles.

“Then live, and earn it twice,” Shi Feng said.

He seized each senior by the collar and threw them down the slope toward the tunnel. Pei Gang bounced twice. Lu Heng screamed all the way down, and the wheelbarrow stayed in its rut.

The ridge above him broke apart.

Shi Feng ran after the seniors. The roof of the tunnel was already spitting stone dust when he entered, and the first puppet was down on one knee, its shoulder cracked. Gongsun Ce was tugging at its arm.

“Leave it!” Shi Feng said. “Go!”

“It's my best one!” Gongsun Ce cried. His fingers tightened around the puppet's cracked wrist.

“Then I'll bill you for the next one. Go!” Shi Feng ordered, pointing toward the opening.

Gongsun Ce let go. He and Sima Lan went into the dark behind the last senior, and Shi Feng stopped at the fourth arch, where the middle of the stone arch had sunk below its supports.

He thought, The seniors need three hundred more breaths. The roof gives me fifty.

He raised the grey Sword.

Ember Rain Sword had never been meant to hold up a mountain. It was a Golden Core-grade art, all quick cuts and scattering sparks. But at Perfection every spark obeyed him, so he sent them upward. Each ember flew into a crack in the ceiling, and the crack glowed orange, and the stone around it began to melt.

He fed the arch his fire. The Physique drank the heat that leaked back.

Boom!

Dust poured down. The glassy ribs spread across the ceiling, thin and bright and ugly, binding the broken stone together. He reached into his sleeve for the Slag Weight and jammed it under the keystone like a doorstop. The grey ingot bit into the stone and held.

“It's holding,” Gongsun Ce said from the dark, awed.

“Don't stand there admiring it,” Shi Feng said. “Run.”

“I'm counting!” Sima Lan called, her voice thin and hard from far ahead. “Four... five... six... Yao Min, move your feet! Seven! Eight!”

Shi Feng kept the arch alive. His arm burned from the wrist to the shoulder, and sweat ran into his eyes. Behind him, stone cracked, then cracked again.

“Nine!” Sima Lan shouted. “That's all of them! Shi Feng!”

“Coming,” Shi Feng said.

He wasn't. He had stopped at the arch to hold it, and the roof ahead of him had begun to come down in slabs. The glass ribs flared and failed, one after another. He pulled the Slag Weight loose and sprinted.

The opening at the far end had shrunk to a narrow patch of light. Shi Feng could still see Sima Lan standing there with her slate and Old Soot.

“Come out,” Sima Lan said. She was not shouting. That was worse.

“Go on,” Shi Feng said.

“I have a contract!” Sima Lan said. She took a step toward the tunnel instead of away from it.

“Then keep the books. Go!” Shi Feng shouted. A slab struck the ground between them.

She didn't move. Gongsun Ce grabbed her by the sleeve and hauled her sideways out of the opening.

The tunnel mouth was fifty paces ahead. Then forty. Then thirty.

Above the lake, the whole cliff face let go.

The roar swallowed the light. Stone fell in front of him, behind him and over him, and the last thing Shi Feng saw was the light at the opening disappearing.

Then the mountain came down.