Chapter 673 — The Noodle House

CHAPTER 673

The Noodle House

“Four more bites,” Ji Yuanhe said, watching the bowl.

“Five,” Shi Feng said, lifting his chopsticks. “I’m in the capital now. I take small, refined bites.”

The noodle house sat in a side street off Tower Street, across from a lamp shop. It had six tables and the best beef broth in Tianjing, which still wasn’t as good as Tao Erniang’s. His old noodle pot sat at his feet, already filled with broth for Ji’s supper.

The door curtain was torn aside.

Two men came in wearing black robes with a silver hawk stitched on each sleeve. Both were early Soul Formation, and both walked like the floor belonged to them.

“Everybody out!” the taller one shouted. “Young Master Bei is eating here. He wants the whole room. Now!”

Nobody argued. In ten breaths the room was empty except for the cook.

Shi Feng ate another bite.

The second lackey, a thin man with a folding fan, walked over.

“You. Are you deaf?” the thin lackey asked.

“Not deaf,” Shi Feng said pleasantly. “I’ll leave, I promise. My bowl’s almost done. Four more bites.”

“Three,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Those who understand the times are heroes, country boy,” the thin lackey said. “Look at this coat. Soul Formation, and dressed like a ferryman. He even carries his own pot!” He flicked the fan toward Ji Yuanhe. “And this one counts his noodles. Get the idiot out before I throw him out.”

The fan tapped Ji Yuanhe on the ear.

Ji Yuanhe stopped counting.

Shi Feng’s good mood vanished. They could shout at him over a table, but they weren’t going to strike Master Ji and walk away.

He set his chopsticks down and pinched his thumb and forefinger together, as if he were picking a hair out of his broth.

Bang!

Both lackeys flew backward through the door curtain and landed in the street. The fan landed after them.

Outside, a crowd gathered at once.

“Those are the Bei household’s men!”

“He didn’t even stand up!”

“…”

The crowd went quiet because someone had stepped into the doorway.

He was about twenty-six, and he wore a white fur collar on a warm autumn day. A heavy, cold pressure came off him and filled the room. It wasn’t Soul Formation. It was late Deity Transformation.

“Bei Hong,” someone whispered outside. “Ninety-eighth on the Hundred Famed Tianxing.”

That was the Tianji Mansion’s list of the hundred strongest geniuses in the Empire under thirty. Even the bottom of it was a name the capital stepped aside for.

“When you beat a dog, you look at its owner,” Bei Hong said coldly.

Shi Feng gave him a look. Then he picked his chopsticks back up.

“Your men hit my companion,” Shi Feng said, looking at Bei Hong. “I asked them to wait three bites. They chose to strike him instead. Keep them away while we finish eating.”

He ate the noodles. Ji Yuanhe counted them under his breath, one, two, three, and the room was so quiet that everyone heard. Shi Feng drank the last of the broth, put six coppers on the table and stood.

“Good broth, Cook,” Shi Feng said. “Needs more star anise.”

“A provincial Soul Formation who thinks he’s somebody,” Bei Hong said quietly. “Kneel, and I’ll only break your hands—”

He didn’t finish. He attacked.

His palm came down with the deity’s pressure behind it. Shi Feng raised his left forearm and took the blow on the bone. The floor tiles cracked under his feet in a ring. He didn’t move back an inch.

Bei Hong’s expression changed.

Shi Feng stepped in and pushed one plain palm into his chest.

Bei Hong flew out through the door, over his own lackeys and across the street, and landed on the lamp shop’s steps. A rack of paper lanterns came down on top of him.

Shi Feng hadn’t used a thread of his deity. The golden bones of the First Extreme had been enough. Bei Hong was a genius of his own realm, but a man like that had never had to hit something that didn’t move.

So that’s the ninety-eighth, Shi Feng thought, picking up his noodle pot. Good to know.

The street erupted.

“Two moves! It was two moves!”

“The bumpkin with the pot?”

Bei Hong climbed out of the lanterns. He looked at Shi Feng, and his lips moved, but nothing came out. Then he turned and left without a word, and his lackeys limped after him.

“The noodle-pot man,” the cook muttered.

At dusk two more of the Bei household’s men came in for noodles. The cook met them in his doorway with a cleaver and a ladle and told them, politely, that this house did not serve them. Forty customers came out of the shops along the street and stood behind him.

Xiong Qiyun bought the cook’s account of it that evening, sentence by sentence, and declined to sell it on. So there was no version for the lane to trade.

By evening, the street had forgotten. In Tianjing, a fight lasted about as long as a bowl of noodles. Bei Hong was too proud to name a bumpkin, so he told his family only that he had slipped.

From that day on, nobody from the Bei household ever ate on that side of Tower Street again.

Six days later, Shi Feng and Ji Yuanhe were buying sesame cakes at a bookstall when a man beside them opened a fresh copy of the Hundred Famed Tianxing and began reading aloud.

“Ninety-ninth, Meng Chuyang, no change,” the man read. “Ninety-eighth, Shi Feng. No sect. Took the place from Bei Hong of the Bei household.” He snorted. “Never heard of him.”

“The ninety-eighth changes hands every other month,” his friend said. “Who cares? Did you hear about Bench Nine in the dyers’ ward? Now that’s a story.”

The Mansion never printed an alias. It printed true names, always, and nobody knew how it knew them. But nobody in Tianjing knew a Shi Feng. They knew a provincial 3 Mark called Feng Shi.

Shi Feng leaned over the man’s shoulder and read the line with great interest.

“Who’s that?” Shi Feng asked.

Ji Yuanhe didn’t look up from his sesame cake.

“You,” Ji Yuanhe said.