Chapter 595 — The Tracker

CHAPTER 595

The Tracker

“Three hundred and twelve,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The flood had been going through Shi Feng’s meridians since the count was at one.

The stored qi rushed into his dantian: waste pills and scorched residue, sweepings, the ward plate and everything else he’d absorbed. Failed medicine had given only its ingredients’ worth, without multiplication. Three months of those gains still made an immense flood. His Nascent Soul drank it as fast as it came.

He matched his breathing to the old man’s numbers. One breath in on the even count, one out on the odd.

“Five hundred and sixty,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The spiritual infant in his dantian, soft and pale since his breakthrough, began to firm. Its limbs thickened, and its face began to look like his.

It was ready for this, Shi Feng thought. Every night he’d forced it to remain small. In this quiet cave, at last he could let the stored strength reach it.

“Eight hundred and ninety-nine,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Nine hundred.”

Something in the dantian settled, deep and solid. Shi Feng opened his eyes.

Mid Nascent Soul.

A Great Sect elder in Great Liang might spend ten years crossing that stage. Shi Feng looked at his hands, amazed at how steady they felt. Three months of hidden gains had become a breakthrough before Ji Yuanhe finished counting to nine hundred.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said, and started again.

“Thank you, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “That one’s on the house.”

Then he turned his head toward the cave mouth, because his Spirit Sense, a good deal wider now, had just touched a man on the overhang.

The man swung in over the lip without a sound and landed on the sand in a crouch. He was lean and brown, in a leather coat, with a bronze compass on a cord around his neck. The needle was black bone, and it pointed straight at Shi Feng.

Early Soul Formation.

“You cooked,” the tracker said, sniffing the air. “Pill smoke carries three li on a wet morning. An alchemist always cooks. That’s how we always find them.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Shi Feng said politely. “Who’s asking?”

“The Heavenly Sect is asking,” the tracker said. “Come quietly, and the old one keeps his tongue. Fight me, and you go back with a broken leg. The house only pays for your hands.”

“So there’s a price on me already,” Shi Feng said, interested. “How much?”

“Enough,” the tracker said. “A bird dies for food, and a man dies for wealth. Today, you’re coming back in chains.”

He moved. A hooked chain came off his wrist and whipped toward Shi Feng’s ankle.

Shi Feng stepped once on Cloud Ladder Step, and the chain cracked into empty sand. The grey Sword came out of his ring already moving. Sunset-Splitting Sword. The flat of the blade struck the tracker’s wrist, then his knee.

Bang!

The tracker went down on one knee. Before he could rise, two fingers tapped the points under his collarbone, and his qi stopped dead.

The whole fight had taken less time than it took Ji Yuanhe to reach nine.

The tracker stared at him, frightened. He’d expected an escaped prisoner to threaten with a broken leg. A Nascent Soul boy had disabled him before he reached nine in the old man’s count. He hadn’t prepared for anything like that.

“You…” the tracker said hoarsely. “You’re Nascent Soul.”

“Mid Nascent Soul,” Shi Feng said, pleased. “As of a few minutes ago. You’re my first guest at the new level. Now, let’s settle your account.”

He knelt and lifted the compass off the man’s neck.

“First, this,” Shi Feng said. “It points at me. Anything that points at me is clearly my property.”

He opened the leather coat and took out a folded map and a heavy purse.

“Second, the map,” Shi Feng went on. “You drew it to find me. You found me. So the job’s finished, and the paperwork goes to the client. Third, the purse. You came to collect a price on my head. Since I’m the goods, the money belongs to the goods.”

“You’re robbing a Heavenly Sect hunter,” the tracker said through his teeth.

“I’m robbing a bandit,” Shi Feng said kindly. “I hear there are a lot of them in these marches. Fourth, your boots.”

“My boots?” the tracker said, stunned.

“Master Ji lost his to the river,” Shi Feng said, pulling them off. “He’s an old man, and his feet are cold. You’ll be sitting down for three days until those points open again. You won’t need boots for sitting.”

He pointed at a flat grey rock by the cave wall.

“Please, have a seat. That’s the best seat in the cave,” Shi Feng said. “I’d offer you tea, but my other guest drank the last of the dew.”

The tracker looked at the rock. He looked at Shi Feng.

“…” The tracker had no answer.

He sat.

Shi Feng tipped out the purse. Three hundred and forty stones, and every single one was stamped with a tiny seal in the corner, a closed eye inside a ring. It had been on every crate in the Pit.

Every stone was marked. Spending them at a landing would tell the hunters exactly where he’d stopped. Shi Feng put the purse away as evidence instead. He wouldn’t throw away a trace of the people pursuing him just because he couldn’t safely buy food with it.

He put them in the ring and unfolded the map.

It showed the river winding down through the south-western marches in brown ink. Along it were small red circles: a landing, a ferry, a toll fort, a tea house. Every place a man on the run might stop for a bowl of rice had one.

Ten days downriver, where the brown line split into a hundred fingers, a big city sat with its name written neatly in black.

Wanhe.

There was no red ink anywhere near it.

“You won’t get far,” the tracker said from his rock. “The Pit’s board is up at every landing on this river. Three thousand stones on your head, and your face drawn beside it. Every hunter from here to the sea can read.”

Shi Feng looked up from the map. For the first time all morning, he was truly offended.

“Only three thousand?” Shi Feng said.

He put Ji Yuanhe’s new boots on the old man’s feet, tied him onto his back, and stepped out over the overhang into the morning.