Chapter 470 — A Faster Cabinet

CHAPTER 470

A Faster Cabinet

Two of the escorts reached Wei Chengyuan before the rest had finished drawing.

They scooped the old man under the arms, turned and ran for the gate. The other six spread across the court with their swords drawn. The nearest shouted that Shi Feng was courting death and would die for harming Elder Wei.

“Is that the duel over?” Shi Feng asked.

The escort shouted back that they would decide when it was over.

“Then it isn't over,” Shi Feng said. “He hasn't paid.”

Elder Qu Jiang took a step to follow his friend. Tian Luo, He Zhen and an elder from the Hall of Counsel stepped across his path, their hands tucked in their sleeves. Tian Luo smiled gently.

“Elder Qu,” Tian Luo said. “Haste will not let you eat hot tofu. A formal duel was fought. Please wait for the Pavilion's ruling.”

“You can't—” Qu Jiang began angrily, trying to push past.

“We're not doing anything,” He Zhen said. “We're simply standing.”

Shi Feng didn't wait to see the end of it. He went through the escorts' wall at a run.

The first swung at his legs. He hopped it, and the Slag Weight, which he'd snatched up from the paving on his way past, cracked the man's wrist. The second thrust at his chest. He turned his shoulder, let the point slide past, and put an elbow into the man's jaw. The third and fourth he left to the outer court. About a hundred disciples had finally remembered they were supposed to be furious, and they rushed the escorts from both sides, carrying brooms and cooking pots.

By the time he reached the gate, the old man and his two bearers were already on the stairs.

“Stop them!” Zheng Yu squealed from the wall. “They haven't signed the exit register!”

Shi Feng went down the stone stair three steps at a time.

It was the longest stair on Thousand Forge Peak. Four hundred steps, with a bend at every hundred. The two escorts took them in great flying leaps, with Wei Chengyuan's grey body flopping between them, and Shi Feng ran behind them in a hail of loose gravel.

He fell on step two hundred and eleven.

His left foot caught a crack and his whole body pitched forward. He rolled down eight steps in a bundle of Sword, elbows and curses, ended up on his back and stared at the sky.

Drifting Ash Step. Minor Success since the buried days, and today it still felt like walking in someone else's boots. He'd practised it on a two-brick patch for eleven days. A staircase was a good deal longer than two bricks.

“Thump, thump, thump!” Lin Langtian called beside him. “Eight steps! Are you practising movement or rolling down the mountain?”

Lin Langtian was running alongside on the wall, one hand in his sleeve, as if he'd come out for a stroll.

“How are you here?” Shi Feng said, getting up.

“I'm the chief disciple. I go where the crowd is,” Lin Langtian replied, skipping a step. “Junior Brother, you're still holding the stair with your feet. Don't hold it. Let it come to you. A step is only ash settling. It goes where it goes.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

“You don't,” Lin Langtian said cheerfully.

Shi Feng ran.

At step two hundred and fifty, he fell again. This time he let his hands go slack and his knees give, and his body rolled forward with the stair, and his feet touched down once, twice, lighter than he'd ever managed. The ash, he thought. Not the step. The ash that settles after.

Something clicked in his legs.

He didn't stumble at the bend. He went into it in one smooth drifting line, caught the wall with a palm and spun round it, and he was ten steps behind the escorts instead of thirty. The air came off the rock face in a long clean current.

Major Success.

“Oh! You finally got it,” Lin Langtian called from farther up the stair.

The two escorts reached the bottom of the stair with their burden. Beside the landing, a long sleek vessel with a Martial Palace pennant waited at the landing, its hull faintly aglow. There were six more crimson guards on its deck, pointing crossbows.

The lead escort shouted for cover and ordered his companion to throw Wei Chengyuan aboard.

They hurled Wei Chengyuan over the rail without waiting to lift him carefully. He landed on the deck and did not move. The vessel rose off its moorings, and the escorts leapt after it.

Shi Feng cut the rope.

It was a cord, really, a thin mooring line trailing off the stern, and the Sword took it above the knot. The ship lurched. One escort lost his footing and fell back toward the landing, hit the dock on his hip and howled.

The other had already got onto the deck. He leaned over the rail. Something had worked loose from the old man's belt in the throw, and the escort grabbed for it a breath too late. A black jade seal the size of a rice bowl, trailing a cord of crimson silk with a plain ring knotted into it, dropped from the rail and rang off the stones.

Shi Feng picked it up.

The ship was climbing now, trailing sparks. The lead escort looked down at him with something close to terror.

The lead escort pointed down at Shi Feng, too frightened and angry to finish his threat.

“Thank you for visiting,” Shi Feng said. He tucked the seal under his arm.

The sleek vessel turned east and was gone.

On the stair above him, the rest of Wei's escorts had been persuaded to give up their rings by several hundred outer-court disciples carrying cooking pots. The man on the dock was still lying where he fell, holding his hip.

“Ring,” Shi Feng said.

The injured escort stammered, trying to hide his ring.

“Gate rules,” Shi Feng said.

Lin Langtian came sauntering down the last flight with a sweet potato, and sat on the dock beside him, swinging his legs.

“You know,” Lin Langtian said, “you moved like a cabinet falling downstairs.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

“A faster cabinet,” Lin Langtian insisted. “Still a cabinet.” He took a pleased bite of his potato. His eyes slid sideways to the Sword. “Wei's core. Where did you learn that?”

“Third floor,” Shi Feng said. “It isn't hard.”

Lin Langtian looked at him for a long moment. Then he laughed, loud and bright, and thumped him on the back so hard the Slag Weight fell out of his sleeve.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said. “I'm going to bill you for that.”