Chapter 634 — The Man in the Rafters

CHAPTER 634

The Man in the Rafters

“A 3 Mark is making 4 Mark pills,” Master Ruo of Hundred-Herb Hall said bitterly, and threw the tea house gossip sheet on the table. “Our three best clients went to that lane this month. Three!”

The broker across the table smiled and named a price. Master Ruo paid it without haggling.

“The man I have in mind doesn’t miss,” the broker said, tucking the money away. “He doesn’t ask why, either. You won’t see him, and you won’t see me again.”

“Good,” Master Ruo said. “I’ve seen enough of that lane.”

Three nights later, Shi Feng was working late.

The shutters were closed, and the lane outside was asleep. One oil lamp hung from a cord over the main furnace, and at the back, Ji Yuanhe was counting softly over the small furnace’s embers. Above them, the shop’s old rafters ran black with forty years of smoke, and the smoke vent in the roof showed a square of stars.

Above the rafters, a roof tile settled.

A roof tile shifted slightly beneath a carefully placed foot. The visitor was trying to move without making a sound. Shi Feng swept his Spirit Sense across the roof and touched nothing at all. A good concealment art, then. Very good. But concealing his qi hadn't stopped the tile moving under his weight.

Shi Feng grinned into the furnace light.

“The shop is closed,” Shi Feng said pleasantly to the dark. “The fee for entry is three hundred.”

The roof went silent.

Then a shadow dropped through the smoke vent and landed between the furnaces without a sound.

“…One,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The man’s knife flashed once, and the lamp cord parted. The lamp hit the floor and went out, and the shop was pitch black. Only the main furnace’s vents still glowed, two thin red lines at knee height that lit nothing.

He was mid Soul Formation, Shi Feng judged, from the force of the air he’d pushed aside. One small stage above his own early Soul Formation. A real professional, too. He’d cut the light first, because a man who couldn’t see couldn’t fight.

That was true for most men.

“Two,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng stepped left. The knife passed through the space where his throat had been, and he heard the man’s back foot scrape on the brick.

“Three,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The second strike came low, at his ribs. Shi Feng turned his hip and let it miss. The man was fast, but every step he took on the shop floor made a sound, and every sound landed on one of Ji’s numbers. Ji was calling his steps for him.

“Four. Five. Six.”

Three cuts came in a flurry, high, low, high. Shi Feng slid back on Drifting Ash Step, his heels brushing the brick so lightly that even Ji Yuanhe had nothing of his to count. The first cut missed his eye by a finger. The second hissed past his belt. The third shaved a lock of hair from his temple, and he heard it fall.

Then the man stopped moving.

The shop went quiet. The furnace ticked as it cooled. Shi Feng stood still and listened, and so did the killer. Each was reading the other in the dark.

“Your counter,” the killer said at last. His voice was flat and dry, like an accountant’s. “He’s the problem.”

“Seven,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The killer had already turned toward the back furnace.

Shi Feng’s good mood vanished. He crossed the shop in two steps and threw himself between the knife and the small furnace. The edge meant for Ji Yuanhe’s throat opened his left shoulder instead, a long hot line from collarbone to arm. Blood soaked his sleeve at once.

He caught the knife hand on the way back and shoved, and the man skidded away across the brick.

“Uncle Ji,” Shi Feng said quietly, without turning round. “Under the stand. Behind the iron legs. Keep counting.”

Ji Yuanhe crawled under the small furnace’s stand. His voice didn’t change at all.

“Eight.”

Shi Feng touched his shoulder. The cut was clean and deep, and a cold, numb tingle was creeping out from it under the heat. Poison. A Soul Formation-grade one, by the bite, and the Common antidote in his blood was already fighting it. He could still move the arm. He could not trust it for long.

“You blocked for him,” the killer said, sounding faintly surprised. “For a madman who counts.”

“He’s on the payroll,” Shi Feng said. “You’re not. You’re still three hundred short, by the way.”

The killer didn’t answer.

The air moved once, upward. Something brushed a rafter overhead, and a little old soot sifted down onto the furnace lid.

Then there was nothing. No breath, no step, no creak. Shi Feng swept his Spirit Sense up into the dark under the roof and found the same smooth, empty silence he had found before.

Under the stand, Ji Yuanhe had stopped counting. There was nothing left on the floor to count.

The killer’s dry voice came down from somewhere above the main furnace. It seemed to come from three places at once.

“Your counter can’t hear me up here,” the killer said. “And you can’t see me. I’ve killed eleven men from a rafter, Master Feng. You’ll be twelve.”

Blood dripped from Shi Feng’s fingertips onto the brick. He listened to it fall.