Chapter 671 — Knives on the Water

CHAPTER 671

Knives on the Water

Ma Jiu came out with a belt of throwing knives across his chest, twelve of them, each no longer than a finger.

“They call me Swallow Ma,” Ma Jiu said, smiling under a red cloth mask. “Don’t worry, little brother. I only aim at the parts you won’t miss.”

The benches laughed. They’d decided Dun Kuo was luck.

Shi Feng looked at the knives, then walked to the weapon rack by the stairs. The house kept a row of plain iron swords there for fighters who came empty-handed. He took the one with the most chips in the edge and a cord-wrapped hilt.

The grey Sword stayed in his ring. Half of Wanhe had watched it on the wall. A cheap sword had no history.

“A house sword?” someone jeered. “He can’t even afford a blade!”

The gong rang.

Ma Jiu’s hand moved, and three knives were in the air at once. They didn’t fly straight. They curved out wide, left, right and high, and came in at Shi Feng from three sides. Flying Swallow Knives was a Deity Transformation-grade art, and Ma Jiu had clearly practised it for years.

Shi Feng’s house sword moved once.

It flowed between the knives like a current around rocks, and the flat touched each one in turn. Clink. Clink. Clink. All three dropped at his feet.

That was Iron River Sword Art at Perfection. At that level, the sword didn’t meet force. It just changed where the force went.

Ma Jiu’s smile disappeared. He threw four more, faster, and backed away across the dry stone. A knife-thrower lived on range.

Shi Feng didn’t chase him across the stone. He stepped sideways onto the black water at the far end of the floor.

He didn’t sink. Riverless Step at Major Success needed only a skin of water under his heel, and the old cistern gave him a hand’s depth. He ran across it in a wide arc.

Ma Jiu’s next two knives went where a man wading through water would be, low and slow. They hissed into the water a full pace behind Shi Feng’s heels.

Then Shi Feng came off the water on Ma Jiu’s left side.

The flat of the house sword cracked across his throwing wrist. The next knife fell out of his fingers. Ma Jiu reached for his belt and found the chipped edge against his throat.

“…I yield,” Ma Jiu said.

The Cistern was silent for one breath. Then it exploded.

“He walked on it! He walked on the water!”

“That isn’t Soul Formation footwork!”

“Four to one, and I bet against him again! I’m an idiot!”

Shi Feng handed Ma Jiu his knives back and bowed nervously to the benches.

Old Que had kept the book on Bench Twenty for twelve years. He’d watched hundreds of Soul Formation boys come down those stairs, and the house had carried most of them back up.

He looked at the boy in the wooden mask again. Soul Formation. The aura said so clearly.

Old Que had paid out on the wrong side twice tonight. He quietly rubbed out his line on Xie Tieshan and wrote nothing in its place.

Xie Tieshan didn’t laugh, and he didn’t talk.

He was a broad man of forty, late Deity Transformation, with nine iron rings threaded on the head of a bronze staff. He’d watched the last bout closely. He took up his place on the dry stone beside the dye vats, as far from the black water as the floor allowed.

This one is smarter, Shi Feng thought.

“Rolling Thunder Staff,” Xie Tieshan said. It was all he said.

The staff came down, and the nine rings rattled. Each ring carried its own blow, nine blows one after another.

Bang! The first one, Shi Feng turned with the house sword. The second and third, he turned too, but the iron blade bent a little more with every ring. By the sixth, the chipped sword was badly curved. The seventh skidded off it and tore the sleeve from his shoulder.

The benches roared.

Shi Feng stepped back to the vats. The staff followed him. Xie Tieshan swung low to sweep his legs, and Shi Feng caught the staff head with the bent sword, right among the iron rings, and held it there.

Xie Tieshan leaned in with all his strength to break the bind. Shi Feng let him.

Then he sent the Thousand Forge Flame down his arm and into the blade.

No flame showed. The rule said no flame that showed, and the Thousand Forge Flame Art at Perfection didn’t need to show anything. The heat ran down the iron sword, crossed into the iron rings and poured into the bronze shaft. The rings went dull red in two breaths.

Xie Tieshan’s palms began to smoke.

He held on for two more breaths, and the smell of burnt skin rose over the indigo. Then his hands opened on their own, and the staff hit the floor with a clang.

Xie Tieshan didn’t step back. He lunged and grabbed Shi Feng’s wrist with both burnt hands, and his deity’s pressure came down through the grip to crush the bones.

It was a mistake. The All-Devouring Physique opened under his fingers.

A palm’s worth of Xie Tieshan’s qi poured out of his hands and into Shi Feng’s wrist, and it was gone before he understood what was happening. His arms went slack. Shi Feng turned his hip, and the big man flew over it and landed flat in the dye drain, sending blue water up the wall.

He didn’t get up.

“Late Deity Transformation!” a man on the front bench shouted, standing on his seat. “A Soul Formation just beat late Deity Transformation! That’s a whole major realm!”

“Bench Nine,” someone said.

“Bench Nine!”

“Bench Nine! Bench Nine! Bench Nine!”

The masks stamped their feet to it until dust fell from the ceiling. Shi Feng dropped the bent sword on the rack and bowed to them, very shyly.

He was enjoying this far too much.

Then the chant stopped, one bench at a time.

The man in the iron mask had stood up. He came down the stairs slowly, the long spear on his shoulder, and the masks moved aside for him. Madam Rao met him at the bottom and listened to something he said too quietly for anyone else to hear.

Then she turned to Shi Feng and bowed.

“Honoured guest,” Rao Mingshen said politely. “Bench One asks for an off-card bout. Tonight.”