Chapter 604 — Iron Lock Ke

CHAPTER 604

Iron Lock Ke

Ke Tiesuo’s Spirit Sense swept over Shi Feng like cold water.

It found a quiet body and nothing else. Ke Tiesuo was early Soul Formation, an ordinary cultivator, and his Spirit Sense didn’t look twice.

“A body cultivator,” Ke Tiesuo said, unimpressed. “Bone Refinement, and you think that makes you a wall.”

“I think it makes me a tenant,” Shi Feng said. “And the rent doesn’t include you.”

The rope moved first.

Ke Tiesuo’s qi went into it, and the red rope came down the lane by itself. Coiling Python Rope. The iron weight missed Shi Feng’s head and smashed the corner off Tao Erniang’s bench.

Shi Feng was already two paces left on Drifting Ash Step. The rope turned in the air and came back for his ankle.

So he went up.

Cloud Ladder Step put a rung under each foot, and he was on the shop’s eave before the rope closed. It wrapped the eave beam instead, and tiles burst in the gutter.

Ke Tiesuo pulled on the rope and rose with it, and his free palm came down.

Mountain-Pressing Palm.

Boom!

It caught Shi Feng between the shoulders and drove him off the eave. He hit the lane so hard a paving stone cracked. The queue screamed.

Shi Feng got up slowly and spat blood into the gutter. His robe was split from collar to waist. Underneath, the golden bones of the First Extreme had taken the blow and held.

Shi Feng had seen enough. Ke Tiesuo never came close without the rope. The rope set the distance, and the palm came in behind it. And a rope needed room to swing.

Shi Feng backed into the gap where the bench and the shop step pinched the lane to one man’s width.

“Lend me your pole,” Shi Feng told the oil seller’s son.

The boy threw it, an oil-black bamboo pole as long as a man. Shi Feng set his feet and held it like a sword. Iron Gate Thrust was an art for holding a doorway, and this gap was one.

The rope came in from the right and hit the shop wall. It came from the left and tangled on the bench. Whenever it found a straight line to him, the pole was there, thrust and back. Three times the point struck the iron weight, and each time the rope fell dead.

“That’s my pole!” the oil seller shouted proudly.

Ke Tiesuo’s face darkened. He whipped the rope round the pole, tore it away, and came straight in. His left hand clamped on Shi Feng’s wrist, full of Soul Formation qi, to hold him for the palm.

It was the mistake Shi Feng had been waiting for.

The All-Devouring Physique opened under Ke Tiesuo’s fingers. A palm’s worth of his qi poured into Shi Feng’s wrist and vanished.

Ke Tiesuo’s raised palm went white and empty, and his expression changed.

“My qi—what did you—”

Shi Feng hit him in the chest with his fist.

There was no art in it, only golden bone behind a fist. Ke Tiesuo flew the length of the noodle bench and landed in the fish market’s water trough. Water and carp went everywhere.

“That was Iron Lock Ke…”

“A Soul Formation expert! In the trough!”

“The boy didn’t even let out his qi!”

“…”

The patrol sergeant from the bone-pill commission looked into the trough and turned pale.

“That’s Ke Tiesuo. Early Soul Formation,” the patrol sergeant said. “There’s been a warrant on him three years, and nobody wanted to serve it. What realm are you?”

“A tired one,” Shi Feng said, picking up his bowl. “Serve it now, Sergeant. He won’t argue.”

Two patrolmen dragged Ke Tiesuo out and tied him up with his own rope. Kuang Dahai looked at the trough, and the last of his courage left him.

“…I still don’t have two hundred on me,” Kuang Dahai said.

“Then sit down,” Tao Erniang said, and slammed a bowl of pork-bone noodles on what was left of her bench. “Sit still and eat that, and nobody else gets hurt in my lane. It’s on the house.”

Kuang Dahai sat. He ate. After the fourth mouthful, his face changed.

“This is good,” Kuang Dahai said, surprised.

“Of course it’s good!” Tao Erniang shouted. “Twenty years, it’s been good! Your men never paid for a bowl, that’s why you didn’t know!”

The Red Rope men limped out of the lane one by one. Their boss stayed for a second bowl, and paid for it, and sent the two hundred and ten round that evening wrapped in a red cloth.

The rope never came back to Lamp-Oil Lane. Kuang Dahai did, every morning, for the noodles.

By nightfall the lane had a name for him: the noodle-bowl alchemist. The cobbler swore he was a Bone Refinement monster. Nobody guessed right.

Far south, new-moon torches burned around Artificer Hall’s sand ring.

“Again!” the Martial Palace champion roared, spitting sand.

“Again? You’ve lost your belt, your hairpiece and one boot,” Lin Langtian said cheerfully, from the other side of the ring. “And you’re still at early Nascent Soul. So am I. Look at us, two equals! But one of us is shameless and one isn’t, and that’s the whole difference.”

The champion charged. Lin Langtian kicked sand in his eyes, stepped on his remaining boot, and tore his sleeve off at the shoulder. The champion’s fist went past Lin Langtian’s ear by the width of a thread. Lin’s palm didn’t miss.

The champion landed outside the ring.

“The Artificer Hall keeps its Great Sect seat!” the judge cried.

“Victory and defeat are common in war,” the Martial Palace elder said stiffly, helping his champion up.

Lin Langtian was already walking over with his hand out.

“That’s eight stones for the sand,” Lin Langtian said. “You ate quite a lot of it.”

Later, on the roof of hut nine, the Sect Master sat with his broom across his knees and looked north.

“You want to go,” Li Changyuan said.

“I want to go,” Lin Langtian said, for once without a grin.

“The brat will send a bill,” Li Changyuan said. “He always sends a bill. When the bill comes, you’ll know where he is. You can go north then, and not before.”

Lin Langtian said nothing. Then the ladder creaked, and Zhu Liu’s earnest head came over the edge of the roof. He was holding a blank receipt book and a brush.

“Senior Brother Lin,” Zhu Liu said anxiously. “For the trip north. Where do I write Return condition?”