Chapter 508 — Soul-Fire

CHAPTER 508

Soul-Fire

They pinned him on his back in the mud.

Qu Ming’s boot pressed down on one wrist. The gold chain held the other arm and tightened across Shi Feng’s chest, leaving him barely enough room to breathe. He blinked rain out of his eyes. The lamp stayed in front of him. He couldn’t look away from its pale flame.

It hovered above his stomach now, a hand's width from his robe. The pale flame inside leaned toward him like a plant leaning toward the sun.

“Don't struggle,” Qu Ming said. “It pulls whatever the body has swallowed and draws it out through the flesh. The Azure Sun Sect made it for exactly this. It's an old method.”

“It's painless if you're lucky,” Ji Wen said.

“Don't lie to him,” Qu Ming said. “Painless is for people who agree.”

Behind them, Xie Yun groaned and rolled onto his side. Nobody looked at him.

Shi Feng pulled against the chain once, hard. It didn't give.

“Last chance,” Qu Ming said. “Open your mouth and give it up, and it ends here.”

“I don't know how,” Shi Feng said.

“Then the lamp will teach you.” Qu Ming nodded. “Ji Wen.”

The flame touched his skin.

For a moment there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Cold came first, deeper than any winter he'd known. It poured through his stomach and into his core, searching. He felt it open each door in him, one after another, looking for the essence. It found the essence. It tugged.

And it found something else behind the essence. It found the core itself.

The flame stopped.

The flame hesitated inside him. It was meant to pull out what a body had swallowed, not the core holding it. Shi Feng’s core was too deep and too unlike anything the lamp could recognise. The lamp couldn’t find a place to take hold. Its flame remained trapped with the essence.

“It's not coming,” Ji Wen said.

“Give it time,” Qu Ming said.

“It's not coming out, Young Lord. The lamp's stuck,” Ji Wen said.

The flame wavered.

Then it did what a flame does when it has nowhere to go. It burned.

Shi Feng heard himself scream.

His meridians tore from within, one after another. The five he’d painfully opened during Meridian Opening tore the loudest, all at once. Shi Feng couldn’t hold back the scream. His back arched against the chain, but it only tightened across his chest. He couldn’t escape the pain.

The pain climbed to his face.

He felt the soul-fire creep up his neck and spread under his jaw. It wasn't a flame that burned the skin. It burned the shape beneath it. The left side of his face went numb and then went wrong. His brow curled away. His eyelid pulled. The corner of his mouth dragged upward, and he couldn't stop it. He could smell something, sweet and hot, and understood only slowly that the smell was himself.

Xie Yun said, from somewhere far off, “Young Lord, it's wrong. Look at the lamp.”

[Soul-fire: not devourable. Meridians: torn. Face: burned from below.]

The line in his head was flat. The Ledger didn't beg or shout. It simply stated what was true.

Then it was over.

Ji Wen yanked the lamp away, cursing, and the flame shrank into its iron mouth. The cold vanished. In its place came a pain so large that he lay still in it, unable to move, unable to close his mouth.

“Is it dead?” Xie Yun asked. He had dragged himself up onto one knee.

“Not yet,” Qu Ming said, crouching beside him. His easy smile was gone. He stared at the lamp, angry and baffled by its failure. “It took nothing. Not one drop. How could it fail?”

“Maybe he didn't swallow it,” Ji Wen said. “Maybe the compass was wrong.”

“The compass is never wrong.” Qu Ming looked at Shi Feng's ruined face for a long moment. Then he turned his head and spat into the rain. “Frontier trash. It'll rot with him.”

He straightened. “Is he breathing?” Qu Ming said.

“Barely,” Ji Wen said.

“Should we finish him?” Xie Yun asked, one hand pressed to his ribs.

“And dirty our hands?” Qu Ming stepped back from Shi Feng. “Leave him. His meridians are shredded. Look at his face! A plucked phoenix is worse than a chicken. A cripple with a ruined core won’t survive this rain. Let the road finish it.”

He kicked Shi Feng's shoulder once. The body rolled off the packed earth and down the side of the road into a ditch of cold water. Mud closed over one ear.

“The sword?” Ji Wen asked.

“Leave it,” Qu Ming said. “Grey iron. Nobody in the Empire would hang it on a wall.”

Shi Feng saw the white boots turn. He saw three shapes climb into the grey, one limping, and the pale flame of the lamp glowing under its cloth. The air hummed. The shapes lifted and went north.

Then the sky was only rain.

He lay in the ditch with his eyes open. He could not feel his legs.