Chapter 689 — The Last Lamp

CHAPTER 689

The Last Lamp

All four came at once, and this time none of them came for Shi Feng.

They came for the three paces between the cart and the dark. Pull the old man into the dark, and the one-armed man could fold him away.

Shi Feng took the Slag Weight from his ring and swung it into the nearer water vat.

The bronze split. Ice and water burst out across the lane, and in one breath the stones from the gate to the dark were covered ankle-deep.

The hook man’s chain came out of the dark again. This time it went low and wrapped Ji Yuanhe’s ankle, and the old man was jerked off the cart onto the wet stones, sliding toward the black.

Shi Feng caught the chain in his left hand.

He didn’t pull. He lit it.

The Thousand Forge Flame Art ran out of his palm and along the links, and inside it he struck the Second Anvil Fire. The beats ran up the chain one after another. At Entry they stuttered, and one beat in three came out wrong. The other two were enough. Every link glowed red, then white, all the way into the dark.

A scream came out of the black, and the chain went slack.

Ji Yuanhe crawled back to the cart, still counting.

Where the hot chain lay in the flood, the water hissed. Shi Feng let more heat spill into the lane, and a white fog rose off the stones as high as a man’s chest.

The knife man came through it, fast and low.

Shi Feng stepped onto the water. Riverless Step at Major Success liked real water best, and now it had some. He crossed the flood without a ripple.

Then he gave the fog a little more heat, and Mo’s Left Fold bent the shimmer. Both knives went into a Shi Feng who stood a hand’s breadth to the left of the real one. The pommel of the grey Sword came down on the knife man’s temple, and he folded into the water.

The big man charged in after him, heavy as his millstone and twice as slow on wet stone. Shi Feng slid sideways on the flood, and the Slag Weight came round into the side of the man’s knee.

Crack.

The big man went down on his face in the water.

Old Tian had sold noodles on that lane for thirty-one years, and he had never once opened his door on a fight.

Tonight he held it open a finger’s width and forgot to breathe. The young candidate didn’t shout or curse. He walked on the water, and wherever he went, a grey man fell down. Tomorrow the whole lane would hear about the frontier candidate, and Old Tian meant to sell a great many bowls while he told it.

Then he saw who was walking into the light, and his ladle shook.

The one-armed man walked into the last lamp’s light himself.

He didn’t need to fold to kill. The pressure of Shattering Void came down on the lane, and every window above the wall went silent at once.

“Shattering Void!” someone choked out. “That one’s Shattering Void!”

The one-armed man struck with his single palm. The air in front of his hand simply went flat.

Shi Feng set the flat of the grey Sword against it.

The palm’s force went straight through the block and took him under the left arm. Two ribs gave way with a dull crack, and he flew backward into the gate so hard the night bar rattled.

Blood filled his mouth. He spat it into the water.

Ji Yuanhe had stopped counting. For a breath, the lane was silent.

Then the old man started again from one, loudly.

Shi Feng got up on three.

The one-armed man hadn’t waited. He reached for Ji Yuanhe, and the wind of his reach made the last lamp gutter. Its flame shrank to a bead. If it went out, the old man was as good as gone.

Shi Feng slapped his palm on the lamp’s bronze cap and poured the Thousand Forge Flame straight into it.

The lamp flared blue.

The air beside Ji Yuanhe, which had started to bend, cracked and fell apart. The one-armed man stumbled half a step out of nothing, exactly where he’d started. For the second time in his life, his mild face changed.

Shi Feng lifted the grey Sword.

The flame left the lamp and ran down the blade, and the grey turned the colour of a setting sun. The Sunset-Splitting Sword at Major Success wasn’t a stroke anymore. It was an evening. Red light poured down the lane, over the water and every face at every window.

The one-armed man met it with his flat palm.

The light split the palm’s force in two. It opened his sleeve and his arm from wrist to elbow, and he went back three steps through the water, bleeding.

“Mid Deity Transformation,” a candidate said from a window, very quietly. “And he pushed a Shattering Void back three steps.”

“That’s a whole great realm!”

“It can’t be done…”

“…”

The one-armed man looked at his arm, then at the four men struggling up out of the water.

“Together,” the one-armed man said.

All five came at the gate at once.

Light burst out of the flagstones. The white line in the threshold ran out of the gate and across the lane in gold, under the water and up the walls, and the gap closed. Gold lines raced over the five men, and all five stopped in mid-stride as if nailed to the ground. Not one of them could move a finger.

Three Terrace attendants came out of the gatehouse with lamps. They bowed to Shi Feng, deeply and correctly.

“We regret the disturbance, honoured guest,” the eldest attendant said. “The Sitting Officer has extended the line. Please return to your rest. The Terrace will tidy the lane.”

The one-armed man couldn’t turn his head. His eyes found Shi Feng anyway, and he was still smiling.

“Shi Feng,” the one-armed man said aloud, slowly, as if he were tasting it.

Then he bit down on something in his cheek.

The other four had already bitten theirs. They died standing, held up by the light, and the one-armed man died last, still smiling.

Shi Feng wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“Tidy it well,” Shi Feng said. “My attendant walks through here at dawn.”

Behind him, Ji Yuanhe’s voice came very quietly.

“Five,” Ji Yuanhe said.