Chapter 716 — One, Two, Three

CHAPTER 716

One, Two, Three

By noon there wasn’t room for a needle in the Talent Hall’s yard.

Candidates packed the benches and stood on one another’s shoulders to see the centre stone. Servants watched from the red walls. In the gallery, sect deacons and family elders filled the seats behind the lacquered rail. Even defeated candidates had stayed for this called bout.

Deacon Lei Zhenhai sat in the middle of the gallery with his hands in his sleeves. Two seats along from him sat Qu Ming, with Yao Chen standing behind his chair.

The centre platform was thirty paces across, made of old dark stone. Yesterday’s bout had left a burned spiral near its eastern edge.

Ji Yuanhe stood at the attendants’ rail on the south side, holding the book in both hands. Two household guards stood beside him, as the officer had promised.

“Tally ninety-nine, Huangfu Lie, Thunder Abyss Valley,” Ke Lianshu announced from the hall steps. “Tally one thousand one hundred and seven, Shi Feng, no sponsor. A called bout. Both tallies at stake. Begin when ready.”

Huangfu Lie stood on the north side with his sleeves rolled to the elbow. Violet sparks were already running over his right hand.

“You came,” Huangfu Lie said.

“You said you’d fetch me,” Shi Feng said. “I didn’t want you to trouble my neighbours again.”

“Late Deity Transformation against mid,” someone shouted from the wall. “The ninety-fourth Tianxing against a pill-boy!”

“Huangfu Lie made one coil yesterday, and the other man’s still in bed!”

“Let’s see how many coils the furnace can take!”

“A mantis trying to stop a chariot!”

Huangfu Lie didn’t wait for them to finish.

Huangfu Lie crossed ten paces and struck at Shi Feng’s chest. He’d brought Nine-Coil Thunder Palm to Major Success. His Valley took pride in that art, and the watching disciples knew it well. Thunder from each blow remained wound into the next, making the sequence stronger as it continued. Shi Feng heard the hum before the hand reached him.

Shi Feng let it come within a hand’s breadth. Then the Riverless Step took him.

He slid off to the left as if the stone were a river and the palm a rock in the current. The strike went past his shoulder and hit the platform.

Crack!

A spiral of black char opened in the stone, the same size as the print on Willow Ford’s gate.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said from the rail.

Huangfu Lie turned on his heel and struck again at once. This palm was faster. Two turns of violet light spun inside it now, and when it passed through the air there was a smell like a burned-out storm.

Shi Feng slid right. The palm missed his ear by an inch. His hair stood up on that side of his head.

Crack!

A second spiral opened in the stone, wider than the first, and the edges of it glowed.

“Two,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The crowd was roaring now.

“He dodged it! He dodged two!”

“What step is that? He’s sliding like he’s on water!”

“Dodging is nothing. Huangfu Lie hasn’t even started!”

Huangfu Lie changed his approach instead of wasting a third straight strike. He circled east, forcing Shi Feng west and north. Four steps left nine paces behind Shi Feng; six left five. He was being driven toward a corner where a sliding retreat would fail.

Then the third palm came.

It came low and from the side, aimed at his hip, to push him into the corner. Three turns of thunder spun in it, bright enough that the front row shut their eyes. The air shrieked.

Shi Feng moved along the palm’s edge, not back toward the corner. Riverless Step carried him around the attack and returned him toward the platform’s centre. He watched the direction of Huangfu Lie’s next turn as the thunder struck behind him.

Crack!

The third spiral went into the stone a pace from the corner. Chips of black rock flew out and rattled against the gallery rail. An elder in the front row jerked his head aside.

“Three,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Huangfu Lie straightened. He was breathing evenly, and the violet light in his palm hadn’t dimmed at all. Three coils lay wound in it now, and every one of them was waiting to be thrown.

He looked at Shi Feng with something close to contempt.

“Is that all you can do?” Huangfu Lie said loudly. “Slide about like a fish? A man who only steps is a man who’s already lost. Sooner or later the stone runs out.”

“Three coils have hit the stone,” Shi Feng said. “Now I know their speed. You’ll have to land the next one differently.”

In the gallery, Lei Zhenhai’s hands came out of his sleeves.

“He’s stalling,” a sect deacon near him said quietly. “He knows he can’t take a coil.”

“Then he’ll lose,” Lei Zhenhai said. “Slowly.”

Qu Ming said nothing. He was watching Shi Feng’s feet.

On the platform, Huangfu Lie raised his right hand and let the thunder in it climb up his arm to the elbow. Purple light hissed over his skin. The stone under his feet began to smoke.

“The first three are free,” Huangfu Lie said. “Everyone gets those. From four, they cost something.”

He set his feet.

“Four,” Huangfu Lie said.