Chapter 468 — The Mountain Doesn't Move

CHAPTER 468

The Mountain Doesn't Move

Noon on the third day, and the gate court was full.

Two hundred outer-court disciples packed the walls and roofs. Inner-court elders stood in a row beneath the great pillars, with Tian Luo at the end, his register closed. Gongsun Ce had set up a stool and a chalk board by the dining hall steps. The board listed Wei Chengyuan at three to one. The line for bets on Shi Feng was short, but fervent.

On the highest ridge of the roof, Lin Langtian lay on his back eating a sweet potato.

At the gate itself, Li Changyuan swept the same square of stone for the ninth time.

Wei Chengyuan came up the steps exactly at noon.

He was an old man in a grey robe, tall, with a narrow face and cold, unblinking eyes. He wore no weapon. His hands hung open at his sides, and the knuckles were as flat and thick as hammer heads. Behind him walked eight escorts in crimson, and beside him, stroking a long grey beard, walked Elder Qu Jiang.

The air around the old man was heavy. His late Golden Core qi pressed heavily on the nearby disciples, even though he hadn't attacked.

“That's Wei Chengyuan,” a disciple whispered.

“Forty years in the Hall of Ten Thousand Strikes.”

“They say he's never been hit twice in the same place.”

“Shi Feng's mad. Look at him. He isn't even wearing armour. A moth throwing itself into the flame!”

Shi Feng stood in the centre of the court with the grey Sword on his back. He wore his plain training robe. He had eaten breakfast.

Wei Chengyuan stopped ten paces from him and looked him over without hurry.

“You're smaller than the reports,” Wei Chengyuan said.

“The reports didn't ask my height,” Shi Feng replied calmly.

“Kneel,” Wei Chengyuan said.

The court went quiet.

“Say the name of the man you killed at Yunze,” Wei Chengyuan said. “Say it to the ground. Then go to the Wei clan's hall and kneel before his tablet for a year and a day. Do that, and Martial Palace will lift the blockade. Artificer Hall will keep its roof.” His lip curled. “Such as it is.”

“Is that all?” Shi Feng asked.

“You think it's small?” Wei Chengyuan asked.

“I think it's incomplete,” Shi Feng said. “First, Wei Renshan was a branch head with a hired blade and a plan to bury me. He tried to kill me. I killed him. Second, the Wei clan sent the blade, so the debt stays with the Wei clan. Third.” He paused. “Your blockade has cost my sect eleven thousand stones in ore. You're also going to pay that.”

Somebody on the roof giggled and tried to turn it into a cough.

“Presumptuous brat,” Qu Jiang growled. “Elder Wei is giving you mercy.”

“Then I decline the mercy,” Shi Feng said.

Wei Chengyuan said nothing for a moment. His jaw tightened with anger.

“Very well,” Wei Chengyuan said. “Then you'll kneel with your bones broken.”

He took one step.

Nobody saw the second.

Wei Chengyuan appeared inside Shi Feng's guard, his right fist driving toward his chest. Shi Feng caught it on the crossed forearms. The impact rang across the court. His boots tore two furrows in the paving, and he skidded back five paces before he stopped.

“Hit!”

“He took it!”

“His arms should be splinters!”

Shi Feng shook the numbness out of his hands. Then he drew the Sword.

He did it in one clean motion and went in low, with the Iron River Sword Art, because it was the art he had never once failed to finish. The Sword came across at Wei Chengyuan's ribs. The old man didn't even raise an arm. The grey blade struck his robe, and the robe rang like cast bronze.

Shi Feng didn't bother to look at the cut. He knew there wasn't one.

“Ten Thousand Strikes,” Wei Chengyuan said. “Golden Core-grade. Perfection. Forty years of being hit by better men than you. Beyond the sky there is another sky, boy, and beyond people there are other people. A sword is a rod of metal, boy. It doesn't hurt a mountain.”

He hit back.

Wei Chengyuan attacked again before Shi Feng could recover his blade. A palm to the shoulder, an elbow to the ribs, a knee to the thigh, all landing in the space between breaths. Shi Feng blocked three and took five. Ember Rain flickered out of the Sword in a stream of red sparks but the old man's grey sleeve remained uncut. His defensive art stopped Ember Rain too. The Slag Weight went up. Wei Chengyuan caught it out of the air in one hand, looked at it, and tossed it aside with contempt.

“Trash,” Wei Chengyuan said.

His next blow sent Shi Feng across the court.

He landed on one knee at the base of the third pillar. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. Dust drifted from the stone behind him, and a long crack ran up its side.

“Elder Wei is winning!”

“Of course he is. He's Wei Chengyuan!”

“Where's Lin Langtian? Why isn't the chief disciple stopping this?”

“He's eating a potato!”

“…”

On the roof, the potato had stopped halfway to Lin Langtian's mouth. He wasn't smiling. He was watching Shi Feng's feet.

At the gate, Li Changyuan paused with the broom lifted. He did not look round.

Wei Chengyuan walked across the court at an easy pace. The escorts spread to either side, blocking the open court. Qu Jiang was nodding.

“Get up,” Wei Chengyuan said. “Or kneel where you are. I'll count it the same.”

Shi Feng spat red onto the paving. He wiped his chin with the back of his wrist, and looked at the old man's chest, the shoulders, the grey robe, the knuckles like hammers.

Forty years of training made Wei Chengyuan's body too tough for those attacks. Shi Feng thought, I need to change the way I strike, not just hit him harder.

He got to his feet and changed his grip on the Sword.