Chapter 412 — The Pruning Knife

CHAPTER 412

The Pruning Knife

The envoy ran.

He was a Golden Core cultivator and he moved like one, a black blur down the north path in three long strides. He made it four paces. Bai Chenxi tore the grey cloth off her sword, flicked it once, and a white line of frost raced across the ground and bit the envoy's boots to the knee. He fell on his face with a yell.

“Mmph! My legs! I'm only the courier!”

“Then stay a courier,” Bai Chenxi said.

Shi Feng stood up from the rocks. He pulled the grey Sword off his back and walked into the pavilion's ruined doorway. Elder Hua Rong watched him come, smiling the same gentle smile he had worn in the elders' hall.

“Young Master Shi,” Hua Rong said. “So the Valley's guest dines at midnight. I did wonder who the raids were for.”

“They were for you,” Shi Feng said. “Captain Xue Mang drew the map.”

“Ah,” Hua Rong said. “The Captain. A boy who couldn't keep a secret in a bucket.” He sighed and patted the pouch inside his robe. “Chenxi, child, come closer. Did you think Shuyun sent you to catch me? She sent you to be caught.”

“You poisoned the Master,” Bai Chenxi said. Her voice had no heat in it at all. That was worse.

“I poisoned nobody,” Hua Rong said. “I sold a list of watches and a timetable. What was done with them was done by others.” He rose from the bench. “Three disciples died. A hundred would have died next winter, when the Palace took the herb trade by force. I chose the cheaper road. A man who does great deeds does not fuss over small things.”

“Three,” Bai Chenxi said. “Their names were Zhou Mei, Qiu Lan and Hu Xiao.”

“I know their names, child,” Hua Rong said.

“Then you know whose tea you carried every morning,” Bai Chenxi said.

Hua Rong's smile finally thinned.

“Pity,” Hua Rong said. “I always liked you.”

Late Golden Core qi spread from Hua Rong and flattened the grass for twenty paces. His core was full after thirty years of patient cultivation. Frost cracked on the boulder. Shi Feng felt the pressure against his own core, still less than half full. The old man had concealed far more strength than his gentle manner suggested.

Raw qi, he thought. He has more of it than I do, and he knows it.

Hua Rong drew the pruning knife. It was not a knife anymore. It grew in his fist into a green jade blade as long as a forearm, bright as a new leaf, and the old flower roots under the pavilion floor burst up through the stone to meet it.

“Hundred Vine Palm,” Hua Rong said gently.

Shi Feng raised the Sword.

Roots burst around Shi Feng’s ankles, knees and sword arm. He caught the palm on the flat of the Sword, but the force broke the pavilion floor beneath him. He crashed through the bench, rolled past a shattered pillar, and rose on one knee with blood in his mouth.

[Devoured: Hua Rong's vine palm | Gain: small | Note: a gardener's blow]

“Alchemist Shi!” Bai Chenxi cried.

“Stay with the courier,” Shi Feng said.

“He's late Golden Core!” Bai Chenxi said.

“I noticed,” Shi Feng said.

He used his feet. The Drifting Ash Step, at Minor Success now, put him a body's width to the left of the second palm and a body's width wrong for the third. He let Ember Rain loose along the ground, a hundred small red sparks, and they crawled into the vines and ate them. For ten breaths they traded in the ruins. Every time Shi Feng's blade met the green jade, his arm rang to the shoulder. Every time he stepped away, a root caught his heel.

He was losing ground, and he knew it.

“Good,” Hua Rong said, almost fondly. “Know yourself and know your enemy, and a hundred battles bring no peril. I had a page of notes on you. Palace notes. Ember Rain. The weight in your sleeve.” His left hand drifted low and he turned his hips, just a little. “And the knee.”

He had guarded the knee.

Shi Feng stopped fighting.

He stood in the broken floor with the Sword hanging down, and he looked at the old man's low, careful stance for one slow breath.

“Please be careful,” Shi Feng said.

Hua Rong frowned.

Shi Feng threw the Slag Weight straight at Hua Rong’s face. The old man raised his jade blade by reflex, shifting it away from the low guard. The grey ingot struck its edge without a sound.

The blade fell in two pieces.

Shi Feng stepped through the gap the blade had occupied. Hua Rong was still guarding against the knee described in Martial Palace’s notes. The short, low dirty move came from another angle and landed before he could change his stance.

Hua Rong made a small noise like a kettle losing its steam.

He sat down on the floor. His face went through three colours, and the last one was the shade of old tea.

“You...” Hua Rong wheezed.

Hua Rong’s roots tightened around Shi Feng’s wrist and reached for his throat. Bai Chenxi cut them with a white flash. Frost ran back along the vines into Hua Rong’s sleeves, freezing both arms from the elbows down. She stopped her sword a finger from his neck.

“Done,” Bai Chenxi said.

“The courier?” Shi Feng asked.

“Crying,” Bai Chenxi said. “He's asked me to be gentle.”

Shi Feng picked up the Slag Weight, wiped it on his sleeve and crouched in front of the old man.

“Who paid you?” Shi Feng asked.

Hua Rong stared at the frozen hands.

“Martial Palace,” Hua Rong whispered. “The Hall of Ten Thousand Strikes. Eleven payments, through Deputy Qu Jiang's people.”

“Why the Valley?” Shi Feng said.

“Herbs,” Hua Rong said. “The Valley sells to three kingdoms. Poison the garden, then let the Palace's own alchemists offer to cure it. A sect that owes its life to someone doesn't refuse him anything.”

So that was it. Mu Shuyun's “generous offers of help.” The Palace had meant to sell the Valley its own medicine.

“You carried my tea tray,” Bai Chenxi said, very low, “for twelve years.”

“Never spilled it,” Hua Rong said.

“No,” Bai Chenxi said. “You didn't.”

She tied his wrists with a frost cord, and she did it neatly.

Shi Feng walked down the path to the courier, cut the jade slip out of his cloak and read the pin at his collar by starlight.

“Blood Lotus,” Bai Chenxi said behind him. “Hua Rong gave them the watch change. And the rotations.”

“The slip never reached them,” Shi Feng said. “The courier did.” He turned the jade over once. “They'll expect him back by dawn.”

Bai Chenxi looked at the grey line growing behind the hills.

“Then we have until they notice,” Bai Chenxi said.