Chapter 505 — A Hundred Li

CHAPTER 505

A Hundred Li

The white light spat him out onto dry grass, and he lay there for a while with his mouth shut.

Above him the sky was an ordinary sky, orange at the edges and darkening to blue. Crows crossed it. A wind that smelled of dust and pine came across the hill, and no part of it pressed on his chest. He had not known he would miss that. After the Ruin, the plain evening felt strange.

He sat up. Sharp pain shot through his ribs, and he pressed one hand to them and breathed carefully through his nose.

The core sat full in his chest, to the lip. The core itself didn't hurt, but its fullness made him wary of every movement. Each slow breath felt as if it would tip him over and spill light out of his skin.

So he breathed slowly, and thought.

I'm out. That's the first thing. Alive, with a cracked rib and a torn sleeve. The Ruin has thrown everyone out, and everyone with sense will be running home to tell it their own way. And what they tell will have my face in it.

He got to his feet.

He stood on a long hill road of packed earth, rutted by cart wheels, running along the spine of a ridge. There were no villages in sight and no walls. Far to the south the hills dropped away into a haze that might have been a river valley. To the north there were only more hills.

He did not know where he was.

He started down the road at an easy pace, keeping his lips pressed together. The Sword hung at his back. His left hand strayed twice to the place where the sleeve had been cut off at the wrist, and each time he forced it down.

Half an hour later he met a man.

The man was old and bent, with a pole across his shoulders and a charcoal basket at each end. His face was black to the eyebrows. He was coming up the road in the opposite direction, and when he saw Shi Feng he stopped and put down his load with a grunt.

“Young master!” the old man called. “You've been in the hills? Where from?”

Shi Feng stopped. He opened his mouth just a crack, and let the breath leave in a thin, careful thread.

“Qingyun City,” Shi Feng said. “Which way?”

“Qingyun City?” The charcoal-burner squinted at him, then waved an arm down the road. “That's a hundred li, young master. Three days if you walk well. You'll want to keep to the ridge road until the third crossing, and then there's a ferry.”

“A hundred li,” Shi Feng repeated, trying to judge how far the exit had thrown him.

“About that. Come down from the Ruin, have you? We saw lights over the north ridge a little while ago. Strange lights. And a lot of folk coming down the valley, shouting, in fine clothes. They didn't buy any charcoal.” He spat. “Never do.”

“Which way did they go?” Shi Feng asked, alert at the mention of fine clothes.

“Everywhere,” the old man said. “Flew off like startled birds.”

Shi Feng thought about that, and decided it was true. Eleven peak Golden Core juniors, flung out of the same dying Ruin at random, would have come down in a ring of scattered places across the hills. Some near. Some far. All of them looking at the sky.

“Did you see anyone in yellow and white?” Shi Feng asked.

“Eh?” the charcoal-burner asked.

“Sleeves with yellow trim,” Shi Feng clarified, watching the old man's face.

“Never,” the old man said. Then he looked at the torn cuff. His expression grew concerned when he noticed the torn cuff and Shi Feng's guarded breathing. “You're hurt. Here.”

He rummaged in his basket and pulled out a flatbread wrapped in a black cloth. It was hard as a roof tile, and it had charcoal dust on it.

“I can't pay,” Shi Feng began.

“Who asked?” the old man said gruffly. “Sending charcoal in the snow beats adding flowers to brocade. Eat it later. It's worse warm.”

Shi Feng took it. The last time a stranger had put food in his hand on a road, he had been a cripple. He pressed his lips together over the thought, and bowed.

“Thank you, Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“Hmph. Go on, young master,” the charcoal-burner urged. “Dark in an hour, and the road's bad.”

The old man hoisted his baskets and plodded off up the ridge, humming something tuneless. Shi Feng watched his back dwindle. Then he turned and went on.

The sun slid behind the hills. The sky purpled, and a thin rain began to fall. The wind dropped, and with it the rustle of grass, until the road was so quiet he could hear his own boots.

He ate nothing yet. He was thinking about Qu Ming, and about the way he'd been looked at across the broken floor. Qu Ming hadn't looked angry. That troubled Shi Feng more than a shouted threat. The young lord looked determined to claim what was inside him, without caring whether he survived.

He still owed Ling Qingzhu forty parts in a hundred of whatever he had borrowed. He had no idea what the share of a legend came to, or whether she would believe him.

It's a hundred li, Shi Feng thought. Three days. Ling and Sima Lan and Gu Zhan are somewhere on the same hills. If I walk steadily, I'll meet someone I know before the third crossing.

He took a few more steps.

Then a soft crack sounded in the air ahead.

Three figures dropped out of the dusk onto the road. They came down one after another, light on their feet, with the faint hum of treasures cooling after a long flight. All three wore white, trimmed in yellow at the sleeve.

The road ahead of him was no longer empty.