Chapter 499 — The Seam

CHAPTER 499

The Seam

Two men in white and yellow strolled across the tiles as if the hall had been built for their convenience.

The floor hummed under every step. They didn't seem to hear it. Ji Wen came first, the gold chain looped lazily round his wrist. Behind him walked the second junior, a lean man with a narrow face and a sword he still hadn't drawn.

“Xie Yun,” Ji Wen said, “look. Two locals guarding the thing we came for.”

“Guarding?” Xie Yun said. “They're standing on it.”

“Step aside,” Ji Wen said pleasantly. “We're taking the heart. It's for Young Lord Qu Ming. You'll be remembered kindly.”

“No,” Gu Zhan said.

Ji Wen blinked. Nobody had said that word to him in some time.

“What was that?” Ji Wen asked, his pleasant expression fading.

“No,” Gu Zhan repeated, and brought the spear up from the floor. “The hall is open. Wait your turn.”

“Hear that?” Ji Wen said to his companion, delighted. “A one-eyed gatekeeper wants me to queue. They truly do not know the height of heaven or the depth of the earth.”

“Fine,” Xie Yun said. “Then break him.”

The chain moved first.

It slid off Ji Wen's wrist like a gold snake and shot over Gu Zhan's head. It wasn't aimed at either of them. It struck the pedestal and curled round the bronze heart, and Ji Wen yanked.

The heart came free with a sound like a bell.

“That's—” Gu Zhan began.

The nine puppets opened their eyes.

They did it together. Nine pairs of white slits lit at once, and nine heads turned. A deep note rolled through the hall, and the tiles under every foot flashed green. The puppet nearest Shi Feng swung a bronze mace the size of a barrel.

He took it on the flat of the Sword.

Boom!

The blow rang up through his arms, across his chest and into the Ledger, which swallowed it greedily.

[Devoured: bronze guardian's blow | Gain: small | Note: tastes of old coins]

His boots slid a full yard. He was thrown back against the pedestal, and the grey blade shook in his hand.

“Hold the left!” Gu Zhan roared.

The scarred man had planted himself in the middle of the ring, spear low. Four puppets converged on him, with a halberd, a pair of cleavers, a chain-flail and a long-handled axe. He did not retreat. He did what he had been doing all day. Three straight thrusts, a sweeping turn, a step of the rear foot, three again from the other side.

“Good!” Gu Zhan shouted at the halberd. “Again!”

The halberd came again. He met it.

Shi Feng ducked under the mace, rolled past a flail and ran for the ninth puppet.

It had not moved yet. It stood alone, behind the others, taller than any of them, a six-armed warden in green-tarnished bronze that held its weapons crossed against its chest. The other eight moved around this larger puppet. Shi Feng judged that the Warden controlled them, and whatever drove the hall was inside its chest.

“Interesting,” Xie Yun said, behind him. His voice had lost its boredom. “Ji Wen, he's heading for the Warden.”

“Let him,” Ji Wen said. “It'll kill him.”

“It'll kill us too,” Xie Yun warned, watching the six-armed puppet.

“We have the heart,” Ji Wen replied, gripping the chain.

“We have it for now!” Xie Yun snapped, no longer amused.

The Warden unfolded.

All six arms came apart at once, a sword, a spear, a hook, a shield, a hammer and a fan of knives. The hall dimmed. The air thickened. Shi Feng felt the old immortal's pressure shift, pressing harder as the Warden woke.

He stopped dead and watched.

He wasn't looking at the arms. He was looking at the neck, where the head met the shoulders. The plate there was ringed with a thin line, as fine as a hair, filled with something grey and dull. The same grey, brittle, ancient stuff he had seen on a hundred puppets in Gongsun Ce's workshop.

Cooling wax, Shi Feng thought. A seam always has wax in it. Gongsun Ce's voice came back to him, complaining about his own joints. Everything that moves, breaks at the place where it bends.

He dropped under the hammer, which gouged a trench in the floor where his head had been. He leapt over the sweeping hook. The shield came down and he slid beneath it, using the Drifting Ash Step the way Lin Langtian had mocked it, like a cabinet falling downstairs. It was ugly. It worked.

He came up under the Warden's chin.

The dirty move was short and low and it needed no art. It was a pivot of the wrist, a single inch of the Sword's point, driven up at a slant into the line of wax at the base of the neck. The point struck the seam without a flash of qi or a shouted technique. A small, ugly crack came from inside the neck.

The Warden's head stopped turning.

Behind him, Ji Wen's chain screamed through the air. It wasn't aimed at Shi Feng. It was aimed at the man in the centre of the ring.

“Gu Zhan!” Shi Feng shouted.