Chapter 522 — The Army of Sixty

CHAPTER 522

The Army of Sixty

“Begin,” He Zhen said, and the gong rang across the Puppet Array grounds.

Gongsun Ce stood on the stone dais in his best grey robe. Ten wires looped over his ten fingers, controlling sixty clay-faced puppets in six neat ranks. He’d had every puppet repaired, oiled and re-sealed overnight. Four hundred spectators waited behind the rope. Song Tai, the Array keeper, looked worried before the first puppet moved.

Shi Feng walked into the square with the Sword on his back. His right hand hung loose at his side, steady.

“Candidate,” Gongsun Ce said. “You read the board. I read your records. I'll be using everything.”

“You said so,” Shi Feng said.

“I wanted it witnessed.” Gongsun Ce lifted both hands. “Nine-Gate Wall.”

The front two ranks stepped forward as one, and twenty-four clay soldiers locked their shields edge to edge. Twelve spears slid out between them. It was a wall as wide as the square, and it advanced in a single heavy step.

Shi Feng drew the Sword.

Shi Feng moved to his left instead of charging. The shield wall turned with him, keeping its front closed. But its rear rank lagged by a fraction after each turn. He watched the delay carefully. The puppets were sound; their controller still had only ten fingers.

He thought, Every wire feeds from ten fingers. A man can only pull so fast.

On the fourth turn, he stepped into the beat.

Drifting Ash Step carried him into the opening as it formed. Shi Feng swung low, passing his blade through the air between the shields and Gongsun Ce’s fingers. Severing River caught the almost invisible wires. Three snapped at once, and control of that section of the wall broke.

The wall folded. The front shields dropped. The spears sagged.

“Twelve,” Sima Lan said clearly, ledger open at the rope. “Thirteen. Fourteen.”

“He cut the wires!”

“Not the puppets, the wires!”

“Nobody told us you could do that!”

“That's because nobody can!”

Gongsun Ce did not blink. A thin line of sweat ran from his temple, but he held his posture. His fingers moved, and the middle ranks stepped smoothly into the gaps.

“Crane-Wing Formation,” Gongsun Ce said.

Eighteen puppets leapt from the second rank on spring-loaded legs and came down in a spiral, each with a small silver crane's wing spread at the back. The wings hummed. Needles flew in sheets, and the air in front of Shi Feng turned silver.

He took three on the Sword. One went through his sleeve. One grazed his ribs and left a hot line there. He didn't slow down.

He flicked his left hand instead. Ember Rain scattered across the square, tiny orange sparks that drifted lazily upward instead of down. The cranes' wings caught them.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the joints began to smoke.

“The wax!” Song Tai shouted from the rope. “He's melting the cooling wax!”

“What wax?”

“Every joint's sealed with wax! It keeps them from overheating!” Song Tai said.

“Then why is he heating them?”

“Because melted wax doesn't cool anything, it glues!” Song Tai said.

The eighteen puppets locked at their elbows, knees and wings. For a heartbeat they stayed in the air, then crashed onto the flagstones one after another. The softened wax had jammed their joints. Shi Feng stepped between their frozen bodies while Sima Lan continued counting from the rope.

“Thirty-two. Thirty-three,” Sima Lan said.

Gongsun Ce let out a long, shaking breath. His fingers were trembling now. The remaining eighteen puppets had been waiting at the back of the dais, still and heavy, bigger than the others.

“Mountain-Pressing Form,” Gongsun Ce said quietly.

The eighteen came together. Arms locked to arms, shields to shoulders, until they stood as one thick clay column as tall as a hut. It came forward with a grinding rumble that shook the flagstones. The ground cracked under its feet. A ram of eighteen bodies, with Gongsun Ce's whole will behind it.

Shi Feng stopped.

Shi Feng planted his feet. The needle graze burned along his ribs, and sweat tightened the scarred skin on his face. His breathing was loud. With the clay column bearing down on him, the spectators could see no room for him to escape. He raised his Sword instead of retreating.

“He's cornered! A turtle in a jar!”

“It's over!”

“Look at his face!”

He lifted the Sword in both hands.

Sunset-Splitting Sword. He had learned it a day ago, and it was only Entry, but Entry was enough for one cut. The qi of a full Golden Core went into it, all at once, and the grey blade drew a single line across the air.

The air divided ahead of the column, just as the evening beam had split on the Pagoda’s top floor. A thin strip of shadow ran down the ram’s centre. Its halves separated by a hand’s width and thundered past Shi Feng on either side. Both crashed into the rope behind him.

Four hundred people forgot to shout.

Dust settled. Sixty clay puppets lay on the flagstones in pieces. Song Tai sat down on the dais steps with his hands over his face.

“Sixty,” Sima Lan said, very quietly.

Gongsun Ce stood among the wreck. His ten wires hung from his fingers, cut and limp, trailing on the ground. There was nothing left on the square for him to command.

Then he put one hand into his sleeve and took out a small wooden man.

It was the one he had carried on to the boat in Qingyun City, the one with the damaged shoulder cover. Its joints had been repaired so often that no two of them matched. He set it on his palm and looked at it for a long moment.

“Sixty-one,” Gongsun Ce said. “This one has never lost a fight it was allowed to finish.”