Chapter 469 — Where the River Breaks

CHAPTER 469

Where the River Breaks

Wei Chengyuan's next blow came straight down the middle, and Shi Feng did not block it.

He stepped into it instead.

Wei Chengyuan struck Shi Feng's left shoulder with his full strength. The bone cracked. Sharp pain shot down his arm, but Shi Feng kept moving. He was inside the guard now, close enough to smell the old man's tea-and-liniment breath, and for the first time in the fight Wei Chengyuan's eyes met his.

“Fool,” Wei Chengyuan said, and drew his other fist back.

Shi Feng wasn't looking at the fist. He was looking at the line of qi that fed it.

That was the thing about the Ten Thousand Strikes Art. A hundred blows a breath meant a hundred pulls on the same source. Every punch drew its power from the old man's core, down one long, thick channel through the chest and shoulder to the knuckle. It was a river. It had run the same course for forty years. Hitting Wei Chengyuan's toughened body wasn't working. Cutting that flow of qi would stop him drawing strength from his core.

Severing River Sword.

He had learned it on the Pagoda's third floor, and it had reached Minor Success on a roof tile in the dark. It was Nascent Soul-grade. Normally, a Golden Core cultivator couldn't control this art, especially before reaching peak Golden Core. Shi Feng's foundation let him attempt what others couldn't.

He held it anyway.

The grey Sword moved. It did not seem to go anywhere. It drew one flat line through the air from the base of Wei Chengyuan's ribs to the top of his shoulder, along the exact course of the river. It passed through the grey robe and left no mark on the cloth. It passed through the old man's skin and left no mark there either.

Nothing happened for a breath.

“What was that?” Wei Chengyuan said. “Did you think a wave of your hand—”

He stopped.

His second fist had come forward, and it stopped one finger from Shi Feng's face, and the force simply wasn't there. The qi that should have powered it stopped at his elbow. His fist no longer carried any force. Wei Chengyuan looked at his own hand. He turned the wrist. It was an ordinary hand. For the first time in forty years, nothing was behind it.

“What—” Wei Chengyuan began, staring at his powerless hand.

Deep inside his chest, something went crack.

The crack was faint, but Wei Chengyuan felt it clearly. Wei Chengyuan's face went white. He opened his mouth, and blood poured out of it, a thick dark gout that splashed across the front of his grey robe.

He staggered backward two steps.

His core, a late Golden Core that had stood unmarked through forty years of blows, had split down the middle.

The gate court fell silent. Shi Feng could hear Li Changyuan's broom scraping the far steps.

“…”

“His core,” someone whispered at last. “Did you see? His core.”

“What did Shi Feng do? He didn't touch him!”

“The sword went through his robe and nothing happened!”

“Nothing happened until it did!”

“That was a Nascent Soul-grade art,” Tian Luo said.

The elder's voice carried to every corner. He had stepped forward from the pillars with his register clenched against his chest. His face, usually calm, was grey.

“Severing River,” Tian Luo said. “I know the pattern. Nobody below Nascent Soul has ever drawn it clean. He is using an art one realm above his own.” He swallowed. “At Minor Success.”

“Impossible,” Qu Jiang said hoarsely. “He's a late Golden Core. He's barely twenty!”

The elders repeated his age in disbelief. “The waves behind push the waves ahead,” Elder He Zhen murmured. Twenty, and he'd already reached Minor Success in a third-floor art! Others admitted they'd thought the keepers were exaggerating.

“So-so,” Shi Feng said.

Every head in the court turned to him.

“That's what the keeper wrote,” Shi Feng said. “Compared to Lin Langtian.”

Nobody dared to laugh. Up on the roof, a sweet potato fell off the ridge, bounced twice down the tiles and landed in a gutter. Lin Langtian did not look at it. He was staring at Shi Feng's hands, and for a moment, his face held no expression at all.

Shi Feng didn't notice. He was looking down at the Sword.

The grey blade was warm. Something had come up the metal into his palm, thin and bitter and very old. It was a river of qi, cut loose from the old man's core, and it had nowhere to go but into him. His body took it. He felt it sink into his core, which was hungrier than ever.

[Devoured: Ten Thousand Strikes qi, severed | Gain: moderate | Note: forty years, bitter]

He had used a fraction of the cut. The rest was still there, quiet, behind his teeth. It was a feeling he'd had since the tournament and never explained to anyone. He didn't explain it now.

Wei Chengyuan was on one knee. Both hands pressed to his chest. He was shaking.

“Brat,” Wei Chengyuan rasped through the blood in his mouth. “What—what have you done to me?”

“I cut off the qi feeding your fist,” Shi Feng replied, lowering the Sword. “That's the first part of the bill.”

“Elder Wei!” Qu Jiang cried in alarm. “Take him! Take Elder Wei back, now! Keep the green hills, and there will be no lack of firewood!”

The eight crimson escorts drew their swords as one.