Chapter 718 — The Ninth Coil

CHAPTER 718

The Ninth Coil

The eighth palm came down from above like a falling roof.

Shi Feng slid out from under it at the last moment, to the right, toward the centre. The thunder hit the place where he had been standing and went into the platform with a sound like a mountain splitting.

Boom!

A crack ran across the dark stone from one side to the other. The whole platform tilted a finger’s breadth, and the front row of the crowd stumbled back from its edge.

“Eight,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Huangfu Lie didn’t pull his hand out of the crater. He left it there, palm down in the broken stone, and for a moment he didn’t move at all.

Then he straightened up slowly, and everything he had went into his right hand.

Huangfu Lie drew the light from his shoulders, feet and hair into his right palm. His left arm dimmed and his face paled. Eight coils were already there. The remaining qi wound into the ninth, leaving him nothing held back if it failed.

“He’s staking all of it!” someone in the gallery shouted. “He’s putting everything into the ninth!”

“If that misses, he’s empty!”

“It won’t miss. Look at the size of it!”

The palm turned white. Nine coils spun together with a thin, piercing whine, and a ring of cracks spread beneath Huangfu Lie’s feet. Shi Feng watched the heel of that hand rather than the widening light.

Huangfu Lie looked across at Shi Feng.

“This is the Valley’s ninth,” Huangfu Lie said. His voice was hoarse. “Nobody under Shattering Void has stood in front of it. If you step off now, I won’t think less of you.”

Shi Feng drew the grey Sword with his right hand. His left arm hung useless at his side.

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said. “I didn’t stay through eight coils to leave before the ninth.”

He walked forward and stopped six paces from Huangfu Lie, in the middle of the platform, where there was nowhere left to slide.

The crowd went silent.

“Is he mad?”

“He’s going to meet it head on!”

“With one arm…”

At the rail, Ji Yuanhe had stopped looking at the book. He was looking at Huangfu Lie’s palm. His lips were moving.

Ji Yuanhe listened for the interval before the strike. The coil was still winding, gathering around its centre in a rhythm he could hear. He fixed that beat in his mind just as he had beside the practice bell.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe counted, in the Pit’s rhythm. “Two. Three.”

Huangfu Lie heard it too. His eyes flickered toward the rail, and his face darkened.

“Four. Five. Six,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng let the Thousand Forge Flame Art run out of his right hand into the grey Sword. The grey went red, then gold, then the deep orange of a setting sun. Red light spread over the cracked stone and up the faces in the front row.

“Seven. Eight,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Huangfu Lie roared and threw the palm.

“Nine,” Ji Yuanhe said.

Shi Feng cut.

The Sunset-Splitting Sword at Major Success had split Dong Kai’s chain at its link in a frosty lane. This time it didn’t aim at the thunder. It went in just behind it, at the heel of Huangfu Lie’s hand, at the one point that had to stay still while everything around it turned.

The sword edge touched the still centre.

For half a breath, nothing happened.

Then the ninth coil came apart.

It split in two like a log under an axe. One half went past Shi Feng’s left side, and the other half went past his right. Both halves went down into the platform behind him, two white bolts into black stone.

Boom! Boom!

The stone behind Shi Feng blew open in two smoking holes. Dust and chips poured into the air. When it cleared, Shi Feng was still standing exactly where he had been, with the grey Sword out in front of him.

Huangfu Lie stood in front of him with his right arm still extended.

A red line crossed the heel of Huangfu Lie’s palm. Blood dripped from his fingers, and the light was gone. His knees bent under the sudden loss of qi. He forced them straight once.

He didn’t fall. But he couldn’t raise his hand.

The yard stayed silent for three breaths. Then it exploded.

“Ninety-fourth! Late Deity Transformation!”

“Against a pill-boy at mid?”

“He split it! He split the ninth coil in half!”

“Nobody under Shattering Void stands in front of the ninth! He said so himself!”

“Beyond the mountain there’s always a higher mountain…”

“…”

Shi Feng lowered the grey Sword. Up close, he could see that Huangfu Lie’s eyes weren’t angry. They were stunned.

“How?” Huangfu Lie asked hoarsely.

“Your palm turns around the heel of your hand,” Shi Feng said. “The more coils you stack, the more they all lean on that one spot. You stacked nine. I only had to cut one.”

Huangfu Lie looked down at the cut across his palm, and didn’t say anything.

Ke Lianshu’s voice came from the hall steps, perfectly calm.

“Young Master Huangfu cannot continue,” Ke Lianshu announced. “Tally one thousand one hundred and seven. Tally ninety-nine is forfeit.”

In the gallery, Deacon Lei Zhenhai stood up. He didn’t look at the platform. He didn’t look at anybody. He turned and walked out through the gallery door, and his escort hurried after him.

He hadn’t said a single word.

Shi Feng put the grey Sword back in his ring and looked at the two smoking holes behind him.

“You still owe Auntie Niu two gates,” Shi Feng said.