Chapter 507 — Three Against One

CHAPTER 507

Three Against One

Shi Feng moved before the lamp finished waking.

Waiting would let Ji Wen ready the lamp. Shi Feng used Drifting Ash Step and crossed the wet road to his left, a silent grey blur. His Sword rose along the Severing River line before the others could finish watching the flame.

Ji Wen was the nearest. He had the lamp in both hands and no free arm to guard with.

The blade cut a straight pale seam through the rain.

“Ji Wen!” Xie Yun shouted.

The gold chain came off Ji Wen's wrist on its own, quick as a snake, and struck the Sword flat. The blow rang up Shi Feng's arm to the shoulder, still sore from the duel with Wei Chengyuan. The cut turned aside and opened the road instead. Ji Wen stumbled back with a long scratch across his robe and a face the colour of chalk.

“He's fast,” Ji Wen said. “He's really fast!”

“He's a Golden Core,” Qu Ming said. “Don't make it sound like a miracle.”

Qu Ming didn't hurry. He lifted the gold lantern, and a thread of sunlight leapt from it and bloomed into a blazing disc the size of a shield. The rain turned to steam in a ring around it. The heat hit Shi Feng's face, as fierce as an open furnace.

Shi Feng didn't try to meet it. He slid under the swing, felt the disc pass over his hair, and folded his own flame into the Sword the way Mo Tianheng's notes taught. A thread of fire ran along the blade. He cut through the edge of the disc, and the light split.

“Impossible,” Xie Yun breathed. “A frontier boy cut a Young Lord's light?”

“The edge only,” Qu Ming said. For the first time, the smile thinned. “Take him from both sides.”

They came together.

The chain struck from the left and the disc from the front. Behind him, Xie Yun circled with his blade drawn and the compass in his other hand. These three had trained together since childhood. Shi Feng had fought several opponents before, but never men who covered each other’s openings this quickly.

He gave ground. He took the chain on the flat of the Sword and the disc on the guard. His arms began to shake. The essence in his core rolled and pushed against his meridians, wanting out, and his body had no room to give it.

His thoughts turned cold and clear. He couldn't beat all three. He could beat one.

Xie Yun was the weakest link. He had spent an hour at the dais, holding a thread against the cloud. His sun-disc was dimmer than it had been in the bronze hall, and his sword hand was slow on the turn. Shi Feng knew the taste of that light. He had eaten some of it once.

He stopped retreating.

He stepped into the chain's swing instead of away. The links wrapped his forearm, bit through the sleeve and drew blood. Ji Wen grinned and pulled.

That was exactly what Shi Feng wanted. The pull took him straight across the road, into Xie Yun's guard.

Shi Feng drove the Sword’s pommel under Xie Yun’s ribs, then struck the same place with his knee. As Xie Yun folded, the heel of his hand hit the junior’s jaw. It was the dirty move from the border market, not a sword technique. No Palace page of notes had taught him that.

Xie Yun hit the road and didn't get up.

The compass skidded out of his hand, spun twice and stopped against a stone. Its needle swung toward Shi Feng's stomach and trembled.

“Xie Yun!” Ji Wen screamed.

“Lamp,” Qu Ming said. His voice had lost its smoothness. “Don't look at him. Keep the lamp ready.”

One down. Shi Feng spat rain and blood, tore the chain from his arm and turned.

It should have been the start of something. It wasn't.

He ducked the disc coming from his right, then turned the chain away from his knee. Neither blow landed. Both forced him back, and blocking them cost more strength than his opponents spent attacking. His sword arm slowed. Pain burned through his old shoulder injury.

He felt the gap open between what his body could give and what the fight demanded. Their treasures were heavier than anything he'd faced in Great Liang, and every strike hummed with a force from far beyond the region. He was taking in a little of each one. It wasn't enough.

Qu Ming saw it too.

“That’s enough,” Qu Ming said, sounding almost disappointed. “You saw which one was weakest. Clever. Did you think dropping him would be enough to beat us?”

“Not yet,” Shi Feng said.

“Ever,” Qu Ming said.

The disc came down.

Shi Feng caught it on the flat of the Sword. The grey blade shuddered. The heat pushed him to one knee, and mud rose around his boot. The gold chain looped his sword arm from behind and locked it.

The Sword left his hand. It fell into the mud, a hand's width from the compass, and lay there still.

Qu Ming put one white boot on Shi Feng's wrist and pressed it into the road.

“You fought well,” Qu Ming said, “for a frontier man. Even a cornered rabbit will bite, but it is still a rabbit.”

Shi Feng looked up through the rain.

He was losing by the width of a hair. Three more breaths might have let him turn the fight. A little more of the essence settled in his core might have done it too. Even one friend on this road could have changed where that final blow landed.

He had none of the three.