Chapter 592 — The Stair and the Cold Flue

CHAPTER 592

The Stair and the Cold Flue

“Put the old man down,” Yu Tieshan said, and drew his sword.

It came out without a sound. The blade was long and narrow, with pale qi along its edge. Mid Soul Formation, Shi Feng judged, and a man who’d never needed to raise his voice on this stair.

“He stays where he is, Captain Yu,” Shi Feng said. “He’s lighter than he looks, and he keeps good time.”

“Four hundred and eighty-six,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Yu Tieshan’s eyes narrowed.

“A mule boy at early Nascent Soul, with Kong Ba on the floor behind him,” Yu Tieshan said coldly. “You don’t know the height of heaven or the depth of the earth.”

The grey Sword slid out of the ring and into Shi Feng’s hand.

The arts he’d polished to Perfection would finish this in one move. Shi Feng left them alone. Sunset-Splitting Sword was still at Entry, and a mid Soul Formation captain was the best whetstone he’d get for free.

The art needed work. Shi Feng kept the Sword ready, determined to use the captain’s strength to improve it.

Yu Tieshan came down the stair.

Clang!

The first exchange threw Shi Feng back three steps. The captain’s blade was heavy and exact, and Shi Feng’s Sunset-Splitting arc came out crooked. His arm went numb to the elbow.

Yu Tieshan didn’t press. Instead, his left hand went to the bone whistle at his throat.

Shi Feng didn’t stop him.

The captain blew. A thin, piercing note rose from the whistle, a qi signal meant to run through the stone to every guard post in the Pit. It went three steps up the stair, and the walls drank it. The note thinned, wavered and died.

Yu Tieshan stared at the whistle in his hand.

“First, the whistle,” Shi Feng said. “It uses qi. This stair is spirit-eating stone. I’ve eaten that stone for weeks, Captain Yu. I know what it swallows.”

Yu Tieshan’s face went cold. He came again.

Shi Feng gave ground on the second exchange, watching Yu Tieshan’s shoulders. His Sunset-Splitting arc needed more qi behind it. He’d been controlling it too tightly, trying to hold a stronger technique within the limits of a cautious cut.

On the third exchange, he gave it everything.

The grey Sword swept up in a long red arc, and for a moment the dim stair glowed red. Sunset-Splitting Sword reached Minor Success. The arc met Yu Tieshan’s blade at the guard, and the heat of it ran down the steel into the captain’s hand. Yu Tieshan hissed. His fingers smoked.

He didn’t let go. He was a good captain.

“Second, the arm,” Shi Feng said.

He opened the ring, and the Slag Weight fell out of the air onto Yu Tieshan’s sword arm.

It was a dull black lump no bigger than a brick. It drove the captain’s arm into the step, and Yu Tieshan went down after it. The stair edge caught his side with a crack that Shi Feng felt through his boots.

Yu Tieshan groaned. He set his free hand under the Slag Weight and pushed with all the qi a mid Soul Formation could raise.

The Slag Weight stayed still. It didn’t respond to qi, however much Yu Tieshan forced against it. His trapped arm couldn’t lift what Shi Feng would shortly pick up by hand.

“And the ribs,” Shi Feng added, looking at the way the captain lay. “I’m sorry about those. Not very sorry, but a little.”

“You...” Yu Tieshan gasped. “Who taught you to fight like a merchant?”

“My senior brother,” Shi Feng said. “He’d charge you for the lesson. I won’t.”

He picked the Slag Weight up with one hand, put it back in the ring and walked on down past the captain.

Shi Feng hurried on. Winning here was useless if another guard arrived before he reached the flue.

The third hall was cold.

Twelve cold furnaces stood in dust marked only by a guard’s footprints. The great flue ran into the mountain. Shi Feng held a hand at its mouth and felt cool, damp air smelling of water.

Third kiln, cold. Mo Tianheng had left a direction, not a riddle. Shi Feng had spent three months learning enough of the Pit to follow it.

Thank you, Senior Mo, Shi Feng thought, checking the draught.

Bao Liang was asleep on a stool beside the hall door, his spear across his knees and both boots off. The fire rule had sent him to guard an empty hall, and he’d clearly decided it could guard itself.

Shi Feng took one receipt from the ring and wrote on the back of it with his chalk stub. He tucked it into Bao Liang’s left boot with Kong Ba’s spirit stone on top.

For the rice.

Bao Liang snored and scratched his ankle.

He set Ji Yuanhe down at the flue and sat beside him. Outside the spirit-eating rooms, his Spirit Sense could rise through the mountain.

In Hall Two, the smoke was clearing. Mei Han stood at the far table with the black book open and wrote in her small, exact hand.

Hall Two. Station nine. Furnace fault, overload. One furnace lost.

It was true, every word. She didn’t look at the bucket line. She’d never once looked at the bucket line.

Farther up, at the outer gate, the two wardens sat where they always sat.

“Two had a furnace go,” one warden said.

“Count’s steady,” the other said.

Down in the arch, a little wax hammer kept Ji Yuanhe’s rhythm, and Clerk Shu counted along with it.

“Then it’s nothing,” the first warden said, and closed his eyes again.

Shi Feng drew his Spirit Sense back and smiled.

He lifted Ji Yuanhe onto his back and climbed into the flue. Two body-lengths down, the stone ended. Below him, in the dark, black water was running fast toward somewhere he’d never been.