Chapter 701 — Black Water

CHAPTER 701

Black Water

The canal didn’t take him.

Riverless Step at Major Success needed only a skin of water under his heel, and the Willow Canal had plenty. Shi Feng walked across it as if it were a courtyard floor. The black water barely rippled under his boots.

On the last barge, the three porters watched him come.

“He walks on it,” one of the knife men said.

“So I see,” Fu Can said. “Go.”

The two knife men came off the barge together, from a height of two men, straight down at him.

Their knives flashed in the red lantern light. Gull Dives at Fish, a Soul Formation-grade knife art. Two men dropped from above and struck at the same point from two sides, so that a man standing on water had nowhere to step.

Shi Feng didn’t step. He lifted the grey Sword.

Iron River Sword Art at Perfection turned their attacks aside. The blade’s flat guided the left knife into the right, making the men strike each other’s weapons. One knife buried itself in the barge hull. The other spun into the canal. Shi Feng kept his feet beneath him.

Both men landed on a moored skiff beside the barge, staggering, and turned for another try.

Fu Can came across the water.

He didn’t walk on it. He skimmed it low, in three long strides, and every stride left a patch of grey scum floating where his foot had been. The Withered Reed Sickle came round at the height of Shi Feng’s ribs.

Shi Feng put the grey Sword in its way.

Steel met steel. The sickle didn’t try to cut through. It clung to the blade instead, and the withering qi poured off its edge and up the sword. The grey Sword’s edge went dull, then chalky. In another breath that qi would reach his hand, and his hand would dry out like the bricks in the courtyard wall.

The All-Devouring Physique opened under his palm and drank.

The withering qi tasted of dust and old straw as his Physique absorbed it through the Sword. Shi Feng kept his grip firm. Letting go now would give Fu Can the opening he wanted.

Fu Can felt his own qi going the wrong way. His plain face changed for the first time.

At that moment, the nearer knife man came off the skiff with his last knife.

Shi Feng’s sword was locked with the sickle. He turned his body half a pace, which was all he had, and the knife grazed along his ribs instead of between them. It split his robe and left a long, shallow line in the skin. He didn’t lose his balance.

He felt the blood run down under his belt.

Fu Can tore the sickle free and leaped back onto the barge. The knife man landed beside his partner on the skiff, and the two of them stood side by side at the skiff’s edge, ready to come again.

Their shoulders were level, close enough to catch with one cut. Shi Feng turned toward the skiff before either could leap again.

Shi Feng lifted the grey Sword, and the dull chalk along its edge burned away. The blade turned the colour of a setting sun.

The Sunset-Splitting Sword at Major Success poured red light over the canal. It lit the coal barges, the swinging lanterns and the black water from bank to bank. Inside that light, the edge went out flat and wide and very thin.

It took both knife men across the chest in one stroke.

They went backward off the skiff into the canal, one after the other, and the black water closed over them.

Shi Feng went after the nearer one. He reached into the water with his right hand, caught a fistful of brown jacket and hauled the man up onto the skiff. The man was still alive. He looked up at Shi Feng, and then his jaw moved once.

He had bitten something in his cheek. By the time Shi Feng had turned him over, he was dead. The other one never came up at all.

Shi Feng looked up.

Fu Can waited beside the next barge’s stern lantern. The sickle hung pale at his side. Shi Feng watched his grip, knowing the man had felt the qi leave his weapon. That discovery had changed what he intended to do.

“Middle Deity Transformation,” Fu Can said thoughtfully, as if he were reading a weight off a scale. “And you eat what touches you.”

“Come down and I’ll tell you more,” Shi Feng said.

“No,” Fu Can said. “We’ll write it down, Alchemist Shi.”

He stepped off the stern. He slid into the water along the barge’s hull and went under it. The ripples ran under the line of barges and stopped.

Shi Feng searched from the skiff for a slow count of fifty. Fu Can didn’t surface where he could find him. Pursuing farther would leave Ji Yuanhe alone. The man had escaped; Shi Feng wouldn’t forget the blade at his throat.

He pressed his left hand to the graze. Only the skin had split; the bones beneath were untouched. It bled visibly, but neither his breath nor his movement was impaired. Closing the thin split would stop it staining the rest of his robe.

Fu Can hadn’t tried to seize Ji Yuanhe tonight. He’d tested the man guarding him, then withdrawn with what he’d learned. Shi Feng was angry with himself for giving him that knowledge. Whoever received the report would prepare for a mid Deity Transformation who absorbed qi.

Shi Feng walked back across the canal. In the alley, he stopped to listen.

“Two hundred and six,” Ji Yuanhe was calling, hoarse now. “Two hundred and seven.”

He hadn’t stopped once.

Shi Feng went over the wall and knocked on the shutter twice.

“Two hundred and eight,” Ji Yuanhe said, and then the bar slid back and the shutter opened. The old man looked at him, then at the dark stain spreading down his robe. He didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“You came back,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“I said I would,” Shi Feng said. “Fetch the needle and white thread, please, Master Ji. It only needs the skin closed. Then go to sleep. I’ll take the sill.”

He sat down on it again with his back to the shutter. The sky over the canal was starting to turn grey.

By sunrise the Willow Canal had given up both bodies, and the whole lane knew it.