Chapter 651 — I Brought Lunch

CHAPTER 651

I Brought Lunch

“Out of the way! Azure Sun business!” Ran Bowen shouted, shouldering past a porter.

The young man pushed straight through the morning queue on Lamp-Oil Lane. Porters stumbled, and he didn’t look at any of them. He wore a crimson robe with a gold sun on the chest and a short spear on his back, and his aura was mid Soul Formation, pushed outward so the whole lane could feel it.

He slapped a letter down on the shop counter.

“Ran Bowen, inner disciple of the Azure Sun Sect,” Ran Bowen said. “I’m here on behalf of Young Master Zhuo Heng of the Zhuo House. A duel. The loser leaves Lamp-Oil Lane for good.”

Shi Feng picked up the letter and read it. It was in Zhuo Heng’s hand, signed and sealed, with three hundred thousand stones as the stake.

So that’s what the gold-sun letter said, Shi Feng thought. Azure Sun lends him a spear, and Zhuo Heng lends Azure Sun his name. Very neat. Brother Zhuo, they want my shop closed. You’ve given them a way to challenge me without risking their own name.

“I accept,” Shi Feng said, grinning. “But there are two small charges first. One sheet of duel paper, delivered to my counter, that’s a service. Twenty stones. And you cut a queue of thirty-one people. They’ve been standing since dawn. Ten stones each, paid to them, not to me.”

“You—” Ran Bowen began, his face reddening. “Trash! You want to bill me?”

“I want to bill you twice,” Shi Feng said pleasantly. “Three hundred and thirty stones. Or the duel waits until you’re back at the end of the line.”

The whole queue turned and looked at Ran Bowen.

Ran Bowen threw a pouch on the counter so hard it bounced.

Tao Xiaoyu counted it aloud and handed the coins down the line.

A duel inside Wanhe needed a Pavilion witness. Branch Master Cen Rong came herself before noon, with Clerk Rao carrying the law book behind her. The lane cleared a circle in front of the noodle stall, and the lane packed the roofs.

“Wanhe duel law,” Cen Rong said coolly. “No hidden aids. Each fighter may use only what he made himself or bought openly, and he must declare it on the form before the first exchange. Anything undeclared is forfeit and the duel is lost.”

Ran Bowen took the brush first.

“One Sun-Flare Pill,” Ran Bowen said loudly, writing it down. “Bought from the Azure Sun’s own hall. It cost me three years of my base allowance.”

The crowd gasped. Everyone in the port had heard of Sun-Flare Pills. One of them doubled a Soul Formation cultivator’s speed for the length of a meal.

Cen Rong turned the form toward Shi Feng.

He wrote one line and handed back the brush.

“One burst pill, own refining,” Cen Rong read aloud. She looked up. “That’s all?”

“I brought lunch,” Shi Feng said.

“…”

Even Clerk Rao had to stare hard at the law book.

“Begin,” Cen Rong said.

Ran Bowen came in like a red streak. The Dawn Spear Art was a straight, brutal art, all thrust and no circle, and the first thrust came faster than the lane could follow. Shi Feng turned his body, and the spear shaft still caught him on the ribs.

Crack.

“He hit him!”

“That’s a rib! I heard it from up here!”

Shi Feng stepped back two paces with one hand on his side. The Physique had eaten most of the force, but not all of it.

Fine, he thought. One rib is a cheap price for letting a whole lane think he can win.

Ran Bowen laughed.

“You see? You’re nothing!” Ran Bowen shouted. “I didn’t even need the pi—”

Then he looked at Shi Feng’s face and stopped laughing. The young alchemist didn’t look hurt. He looked amused. Ran Bowen bit his lip, pulled the Sun-Flare Pill from his sleeve and swallowed it.

Red light burst out of his skin. The next thrust came twice as fast as the first.

Shi Feng put last night’s burst pill in his mouth.

He’d refined it last night, a Perfect one. A finished pill gave its effect, not its herbs, so the Physique had nothing to eat in it. It just did what it was made to do. Heat rushed through his meridians, and for a moment the whole lane seemed to slow.

The spear came in. Shi Feng stepped inside it, past the point, past the shaft, and laid one palm on Ran Bowen’s chest.

Boom!

Ran Bowen flew back across the circle and crashed into the noodle stall’s water barrel. The barrel split. He slid down in a puddle and didn’t get up.

The lane was silent. Then the roofs exploded.

“One palm! Just one!”

“That was a Sun-Flare! He beat a Sun-Flare with lunch!”

One of Ran Bowen’s companions rushed to the edge of the circle, shrieking that Shi Feng’s pill was a foul.

“He declared it,” Cen Rong said, and wrote on the form.

Ran Bowen forfeited three hundred thousand stones before the sun moved. His companions carried him out of Lamp-Oil Lane, and he never came back to it. Tao Xiaoyu wrote the total in the book: seven million, three hundred thousand.

Zhuo Tingsong arrived as they left, red in the face, with Zhuo Heng trailing behind him, too ashamed to look toward the shop. The old man didn’t say a word. He bowed to Shi Feng in front of the whole lane, deeply, and his grandson bowed beside him.

The burst pill’s price came that afternoon. For an hour Shi Feng’s legs shook whenever he tried to stand. He sat on Tao Erniang’s back step with his ribs bound, annoyed by the weakness but pleased the duel was settled.

Zhuo Heng came and stood at the bottom of the step for a long while.

“Why didn’t you use the pill on the first exchange?” Zhuo Heng asked quietly. “You’d have kept the rib.”

“Then the lane would have learned what I can do,” Shi Feng said. “Not what I will do.” He grinned. “Lesson thirty-six from my Senior Brother. Let them see what you’ll do, Brother Zhuo. Never what you can.”

Zhuo Heng said nothing. But this time he bowed on his own.

At the far end of the lane, the first carriage turned in, and it had a gold sun painted on the door.