Chapter 597 — The Bargepole

CHAPTER 597

The Bargepole

Gou San came over the stern rail first, a knife in his teeth, and Gou Er right behind him. Gou Da came last, with the skiff’s iron anchor swinging from four feet of chain in his fist.

The barge was four strides wide and forty long, with grain sacks stacked shoulder-high down the middle and the mast amidships.

Shi Feng had run from one crowd at the landing. The river had brought him another. On a barge, running meant swimming, and Ji Yuanhe couldn’t swim.

“Nobody throws Gou Da in the river,” Gou Da said, spitting water.

“You swim!” Mou Dagui roared from the tiller. “You and your trouble both!”

“In a moment, Master Mou,” Shi Feng said. “Let me see my trouble off first.”

Gou Er and Gou San split around the sacks, a net of gold-coloured wire stretched between them.

“Gold-Thread Eel Net!” Gou San shouted, and they threw.

Their late Golden Core qi poured into the wire. It twisted in the air like a living eel, wrapped around Shi Feng and Ji Yuanhe both, and pulled tight.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng closed his right hand on the wire and let his fire out. Thousand Forge Flame Art, at Major Success, went exactly where he sent it. Not one spark touched the old man.

In one breath the wire glowed dull red, from his palm all the way to their fists.

The brothers screamed and let go together. The net sagged and smoked on the wet planks, and Shi Feng stepped out of it.

“Two,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng took a pole out of a frozen bargeman’s hands.

“Borrowing this,” Shi Feng told him. “You’ll get it back.”

Gou San came round the sacks with his knife, low and fast. Gou Er came over the top of them with both fists.

Iron River Sword Art, at Perfection, didn’t care that bamboo was lighter than any sword. The pole swept out low and heavy, like a river in flood, and took Gou San’s legs from under him. The same stroke rolled on upward without stopping and caught Gou Er in the ribs in mid-air. He flew back into the stack, and a sack burst open over his head.

“Three. Four,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“That’s a sword art!” the silk merchant’s guard shouted. “He’s using a sword art with a bargepole!”

Gou San scrambled up, but he didn’t go for Shi Feng. He went for the young porter crouched by the mast, for a hostage.

Shi Feng stepped up onto the sacks. Drifting Ash Step carried him four steps along the top of the stack, light as ash on the wind. He landed in front of the porter before Gou San was halfway there. The pole’s end tapped Gou San’s wrist, and the knife went spinning into the river.

“Five,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Then the deck went quiet. For the first time, Gou Da had swept the beggar properly with his Spirit Sense.

“Mid Nascent Soul,” Gou Da said slowly. “You’re mid Nascent Soul. A beggar half my age!”

The passengers murmured. Half of them didn’t know what it meant. The other half did, and turned pale.

Gou Da didn’t run. A hunter who ran from a beggar would never work this river again. He looked at the old man on Shi Feng’s back instead.

“Sinking Anchor Palm!” Gou Da roared.

The anchor came down at Ji Yuanhe’s head, with the weight of a whole riverbed behind it.

Shi Feng’s good mood vanished.

He didn’t step aside, because that would put the anchor through the old man. He turned and took it on his left shoulder.

Boom!

The plank under his feet split. He went down on one knee. Something in the shoulder cracked, his left arm went numb to the fingertips, and blood came up warm into his mouth.

“Six,” Ji Yuanhe said, very quietly.

Gou Da let go of the chain and grabbed for the old man’s collar, to tear him loose.

Shi Feng caught the wrist with his right hand.

The All-Devouring Physique opened. A palm’s worth of Gou Da’s qi poured out of his arm into Shi Feng in one swallow. It came hot, and it tasted of river mud.

Gou Da’s arm went limp. His face turned grey.

“What did you—” Gou Da stammered.

“You reached for my guest,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t.”

He stood, set the end of the pole against Gou Da’s chest and pushed. Iron Gate Thrust. The bamboo bent nearly double and straightened. Gou Da flew backwards the length of the deck and hit the bow rail hard enough to crack it.

Before he could rise, Shi Feng took the Slag Weight out of his ring and laid it on Gou Da’s chest.

“Hold this,” Shi Feng said.

Gou Da held it. He strained until the veins stood out on his neck, and the small grey lump didn’t move a hair.

“Seven,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Gou Da’s early Nascent Soul!”

“Two late Golden Core with him, and the boy never even put the old man down!”

“With a bargepole…”

“…”

Shi Feng took back the Weight. Then he took Gou Da by the collar and dropped him over the side. Splash. Gou Er went after him, and then Gou San.

“Eight. Nine. Ten,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng handed back the pole and wiped the blood off his lip.

“Ten’s right, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “You keep better books than the Pit.”

Mou Dagui looked at the cracked rail, the burst sack, and the three heads bobbing in his wake. Then he turned to the passengers.

“Those dogs were shouting about some board,” Mou Dagui said flatly. “I didn’t hear it. Nobody on my deck heard it.”

Nobody had.

The silk merchant from Wanhe watched the beggar sit on a grain sack and push his own shoulder back into place with a click. He didn’t make a sound.

A runaway bodyguard from some frontier house, the merchant decided. Good fighters were cheap in Wanhe. There, a Nascent Soul guarded a warehouse for eighty stones a month. Still, he moved his own bales a little further from the boy’s.

Two days later, the bargemen told the story over noodles at Willow Ford. By the time it reached Reed Bend, it had a fourth Gou brother in it, and the boy was the Bargepole Beggar. Nobody called him an alchemist. Nobody had seen him make a pill.

The barge turned south into the current.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said, as the first pole went in.