Chapter 711 — Platform Sixty-Three

CHAPTER 711

Platform Sixty-Three

Platform sixty-three was a square of grey stone twenty paces across, raised waist-high off the yard. The rule was cut into its edge in red characters. Leave the stone, kneel, or yield, and the bout was lost.

By the second bout of the afternoon, a crowd had gathered around it three deep.

Most of them hadn’t come for Shi Feng. They had come because Young Master Zhong had spent his lunch telling everyone within earshot that he was going to fight the pill-boy, and that it would be very short.

Zhong Tianci climbed onto the stone with his robe tied back and his jade crown still in his hair. His circle took the front row along the platform’s east side. The big man with the hook stood at the corner, arms folded, grinning.

“Ten thousand silver says it’s over in one exchange!” one of the friends shouted.

“Nobody will take that bet!” another shouted back.

They all laughed.

Shi Feng climbed up from the west side. Ji Yuanhe stood at the rail of the attendants’ walk behind him, holding the book.

The household judge was a grey-haired woman with a red sash and a bamboo rod. She bowed to both of them politely.

“Tally four hundred and twelve, Zhong Tianci, of the Zhong house,” the judge said. “Tally one thousand one hundred and seven, Shi Feng, no sponsor. Begin when ready.”

“No sponsor,” Zhong Tianci said, and laughed. “Do you hear that? Not even a sponsor. Tell me, pill-boy, are you going to kneel, or should I help you?”

“I came to win, Young Master,” Shi Feng said. “Kneeling would waste the walk up.”

“You’re courting death!” Zhong Tianci said.

He set his feet, and the whole crowd went quiet.

The Zhong house prized Seven-Step Mountain Fist, a Deity Transformation-grade art. Each step added its force to the next strike. At Minor Success, Zhong Tianci had already broken a Gu boy’s arm with it. Shi Feng watched his feet rather than his grin.

Zhong Tianci took the first step and punched.

The fist came with a rush of air, heavy and straight. Shi Feng didn’t block it. He stepped back, and the fist stopped a hand short of his chest.

The second step came at once, heavier. Shi Feng stepped back again.

The third step shook the platform. Dust jumped up off the stone. Shi Feng stepped back a third time, and now his heels were three paces from the western edge.

“He’s running!” the friend with the bet shouted. “Look at him run!”

“One more step and he’s off the stone!”

“Young Master Zhong, finish it!”

Zhong Tianci’s face was red with qi. The fist was glowing a dull earthen yellow now, and the air around it groaned. He grinned and took the fourth step.

“A furnace-sweeper should know when to kne—” Zhong Tianci began.

Shi Feng’s sleeve was already there.

Quiet Sleeve hid the fist the instant it entered the cloth. For half a breath, Zhong Tianci lost all sense of the target and the weight at his arm’s end. Shi Feng took that instant to turn the four accumulated steps of force.

Shi Feng turned his wrist. The sleeve wrapped Zhong’s forearm and folded it back on itself, and the fist came out of the cloth facing the other way.

It hit Zhong Tianci in his own chest.

Boom!

He staggered back two paces with all the air knocked out of him. His mouth was still open in the middle of his word.

Shi Feng closed the distance and pressed a palm to Zhong Tianci’s shoulder. The young master was already stumbling backward from his own blow. Shi Feng needed only to deny him the step that would recover his balance.

Zhong Tianci flew backward across the platform, over the eastern edge, and landed in the middle of his own friends.

His friends stopped laughing as Zhong Tianci landed among them. One still had his mouth open and shut it.

“Off the stone,” the judge said, and raised her rod. “Tally one thousand one hundred and seven.”

For a moment the crowd didn’t make a sound. Then everyone started talking at once.

“What happened? I didn’t see!”

“He hit himself! Young Master Zhong hit himself!”

“That was the Mountain Fist at four steps! It broke the Gu boy’s arm!”

“They’re both mid Deity Transformation. Same realm, and he didn’t even draw a sword!”

“The pill-boy…”

“…”

Zhong Tianci sat up among his friends with both hands pressed to his chest. He was coughing, and his face had gone from red to white.

“What did you do?” Zhong Tianci rasped. “That was a trick!”

“Your fourth step carried the first three with it,” Shi Feng said. “I turned the strike back. I didn’t need to add force. Stop before you lose control of it next time.”

The crowd murmured. Several of the older spectators nodded, as if that was the first sensible thing they had heard all day.

“Knowing yourself and knowing your enemy,” an old man in the back row said to his grandson. “A hundred battles, no danger.”

Shi Feng climbed down from the west side. Ji Yuanhe was waiting at the rail, and he held out the book without being asked.

“One bout,” Ji Yuanhe said. “One.”

“Write it small,” Shi Feng said. “It was a short one.”

Before Ji Yuanhe could write anything, a shadow fell across the page.

The big man with the hook had walked round the platform. Up close he was a head taller than Shi Feng, and his aura sat heavily on the air around him, a full stage above mid.

“That wasn’t a fair bout,” the big man said loudly, so that the whole crowd could hear. “That was a trick. Young Master Zhong is my friend.”

He pulled the tally from his belt and held it up.

“Kuai Shan, tally five hundred and eight,” Kuai Shan announced. “I call tally one thousand one hundred and seven. A rematch, for honour.”