Chapter 496 — One Hand

CHAPTER 496

One Hand

The hall with the open door was a library that had lost its books.

Shi Feng stopped behind a leaning pillar at the edge of it. Rows of stone shelves hung in the air, tilted at odd angles, and a lamp of blue fire floated in each alcove. Under one of those lamps stood a man in crimson, digging at the wall with the point of a short blade.

“Kuang Hai,” Shi Feng murmured. He knew the face from the Palace delegation at the arbitration. Mid Golden Core, inner disciple, a man who liked to be called Senior Brother.

The point slipped. A flat piece of wall fell away, and in the hollow behind it lay a pearl the size of a walnut, green as new leaves. Wind stirred around it at once, and the blue lamps all leaned toward it.

Kuang Hai gasped. He reached in with both hands.

A third hand got there first.

It was one hand, pale and unhurried, and it plucked the pearl from the hollow without effort. The man it belonged to wore white robes with yellow trim on the sleeves. He was perhaps twenty-five, handsome, and bored. A gold chain looped his wrist.

“Thank you,” Ji Wen said lazily. “We'd have spent an hour on that wall.”

“That's mine!” Kuang Hai shouted. His blade came up. “I found it! You can't just—”

A second junior yawned in the doorway and told Ji Wen to stop playing. Qu Ming wanted them at the third arch.

“I'm not playing,” Ji Wen said.

He flicked two fingers. The gold chain uncoiled with a bright chime and struck Kuang Hai across the chest. It didn't cut him. It simply lifted him off the floor and put him through a shelf, and the shelf came apart in a hail of stone.

Kuang Hai lay in the rubble, groaning. He was alive. Ji Wen clearly expected him to be grateful for that.

“See?” Ji Wen said, weighing the pearl. “Alive. A mantis who tries to stop a cart, and still alive. Even grateful, if he thinks about it.”

The other junior remarked that Kuang Hai wouldn't thank them.

“They never do,” Ji Wen replied, amused by his own cruelty.

Both of them laughed. Then they turned their backs on the groaning man and walked out through the far door as if they'd left nothing behind.

Shi Feng didn't move.

The attack ended almost at once. Shi Feng was still studying what he'd seen. First, the chain, which wasn't only a weapon, since it moved without Ji Wen's hand. Second, the way Ji Wen's qi had stayed perfectly flat through the attack, never rising, never straining. That attack hadn't strained him at all. Third, the second junior, who'd stood in the door the whole time with a hand resting on the hilt of a sword, and had not needed to draw it.

Peak Golden Core, Shi Feng thought. Treasures stacked on treasures. And they have time to be bored.

He felt the old hunger of the Ledger stir. He could take that chain's first blow, probably. He could probably take the second. He could not take the second junior at the same time, and he did not know what the third and fourth treasures were.

If he stepped out now, Kuang Hai would still be on the floor, and Shi Feng would be on the floor beside him. His core was only eighty-five per cent full. Fighting both juniors here wouldn't save Kuang Hai; it would leave him injured beside the man.

Not yet.

He waited until the voices faded. Then he walked into the hall, crouched beside the rubble and pulled Kuang Hai's collar loose so he could breathe.

“You,” Kuang Hai croaked. His eyes found the grey robe and filled with a shame that had nothing to do with the pearl. “You saw that.”

“I did,” Shi Feng answered, keeping his hand at the loosened collar.

“And you didn't...” Kuang Hai began, then stopped.

“No,” Shi Feng said.

Kuang Hai turned his face away. Kuang Hai was humiliated. He hated being seen helpless by a rival almost as much as losing the pearl.

“Can you stand?” Shi Feng asked.

“Leave me,” Kuang Hai muttered.

Shi Feng set a second Clear Marrow Pill on the stone beside his hand. He did not say what it cost this time. Some people could only take a favour if nobody named it.

“Third arch,” Shi Feng said. “Is that where they go?”

“Everyone knows it,” Kuang Hai said bitterly. “The remains are past the third arch. Qu Ming's party has been going that way since the gates opened.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said, standing to leave.

“Don't thank me!” Kuang Hai shouted at his back. “I didn't tell you anything!”

Shi Feng walked on. He thought that this was what the Empire looked like when it came down from its mountain and stooped to look at the frontier. Those juniors didn't need a grudge to hurt someone. They wanted the treasure, so they took it. What happened to the owner didn't concern them.

There was a door at the end of the hall, sealed with a ring of black iron. On its face, a circle of cold flame turned slowly, and it did not look like a door that wanted to be opened.