Chapter 734 — The Third Bend

CHAPTER 734

The Third Bend

Situ Yanbo came up the ring’s steps in green brocade, with a sword whose scabbard was worth more than most candidates’ houses.

“Bout nine,” Ke Lianshu read, and bowed. “Young Master Situ Yanbo against Master Cheng Mobai. This humble steward begs everyone’s pardon for the wind.”

Cheng Mobai climbed the other side with his sword in a plain scabbard. The patch on his elbow flapped where it had come loose.

“That’s a Situ cousin,” someone in the gallery said. “The Prime Minister’s grandnephew.”

“And that’s a nobody with a hole in his sleeve.”

“He’ll be off the ring in three moves.”

Situ Yanbo drew his sword and held it straight out, the point level with Cheng Mobai’s throat.

“This young master will be quick,” Situ Yanbo said. “You can tell your village you crossed swords with a Situ.”

“I don’t have a village,” Cheng Mobai said. “I had a boat.”

“Begin,” Ke Lianshu said.

Situ Yanbo came straight in. Upright Pine Sword was a Deity Transformation-grade art taught in every great house, and he’d been taught it well. Every stroke was clean and level.

Cheng Mobai drew and met him.

His sword didn’t come straight. It went out toward Situ Yanbo’s left shoulder, bent halfway toward his hip, bent again toward his knee, and then it was somehow at his right wrist. Situ Yanbo parried in three places at once and found nothing in any of them. That was the Nine Bends Sword, and nobody at the rail knew who had taught it.

Clang! Situ Yanbo caught the fourth bend on his guard and was pushed back two steps.

“It’s crooked!” a gallery voice shouted. “How do you block that?”

“You don’t. You get lucky.”

At the rail, Shi Feng watched the sword and not the men.

Most of the nine bends drew the eye away from the intended strike: the first wide and quick, the next quicker still. At the third, Cheng Mobai’s wrist dipped a finger’s width and his weight shifted forward. There. That was the turn carrying his force.

Situ Yanbo came again, angry now, with a straight thrust down the centre line. Cheng Mobai’s sword went out to meet it, bent once, bent twice.

“Third,” Shi Feng said out loud.

The third bend went under Situ Yanbo’s guard and laid the flat of the blade across the back of his hand. The Situ sword jumped out of his fingers, turned over twice in the air and stuck point-first in the sand below the ring.

Situ Yanbo stared at his empty hand.

Cheng Mobai looked up at the rail before he lowered his sword. Shi Feng had called the bend aloud, and they both knew what that meant. Then Cheng Mobai grinned at him, pleased rather than offended.

“Bout nine to Master Cheng,” Ke Lianshu said. “Young Master Situ, the household apologises for the wind.”

“It wasn’t the wind!” Situ Yanbo snapped, and went down to dig his sword out of the sand himself.

The galleries buzzed.

“A rogue beat a Situ?”

“Who shouted ‘third’?”

“…The alchemist, I think.”

Cheng Mobai came down the steps, wiped his blade on his own sleeve and leaned on the rail beside Shi Feng as if he’d never left it.

“You saw it,” Cheng Mobai said. “Most people see nine and guess.”

“Your wrist drops on the third,” Shi Feng said. “Only a finger. Anyone who watches you twice will see it too.”

“Then I’d better fix it before the bracket,” Cheng Mobai said. “Thanks, Alchemist.”

“Who taught you?” Shi Feng asked.

“My father poled boats on the Nine Bends of the Lan River,” Cheng Mobai said. “A straight push will put you into the bank there. We couldn’t afford a sword master, so he taught me to turn the blade the way he turned his pole.”

“He taught you well,” Shi Feng said.

“He’d have charged you for the lesson,” Cheng Mobai said.

“Bout ten,” Ke Lianshu read. “Young Master Gu Yanxing against Young Master Mu Chenghai.”

For this one, the galleries went quiet by themselves.

Gu Yanxing was tall and plain, in a dark soldier’s coat without any embroidery. He carried a black-hafted spear with a red banner tassel below the blade. He didn’t bow to the galleries. He bowed once to his opponent, exactly as deep as courtesy asked.

Mu Chenghai of the Jade Gate Old House was late Deity Transformation and knew it. He drew two short swords and crossed them in front of his chest.

“Begin,” Ke Lianshu said.

Gu Yanxing thrust.

The spear drove straight at the crossing of the swords. Air compressed ahead of its point and struck Mu Chenghai with it. Iron Banner Spear was the Gu generals’ art, meant to drive an opponent back even when he managed to catch the blade.

Boom!

Mu Chenghai’s swords held. His feet didn’t. He slid backward across the whole ring with sparks spraying from his boots and went over the edge into the sand.

Gu Yanxing drew his spear back, turned and walked down the steps. He didn’t look at anyone at all.

For three breaths, nobody said a word.

“…One thrust.”

“Eighty-sixth on the Tianxing. Peak Deity Transformation.”

“A soldier trains a thousand days to be used for one,” an old man in the gallery said. “That’s the Gu.”

Shi Feng watched the tall back go out through the gate.

“He used the thrust and stopped,” Shi Feng said. “No pause to gather it where we could watch. That’ll be harder to get around.”

“The Gu don’t put on shows,” Cheng Mobai said. “They fight wars.”

Gu Yanxing had given him no opening as obvious as Qu Ming’s raised hand. Shi Feng replayed the thrust, looking for somewhere to move without meeting its full force. He would rather have time to study it than face that spear in his next bout.

At dusk, as the candidates were leaving, a black carriage with no lanterns turned in at the pavilion gate.

Its door bore a seal Shi Feng had never seen: a coiled dragon over a closed book. The Shattering Void guards at the gate bowed lower to it than to anyone in a month.

Ke Lianshu hurried down the steps to meet it. His face had gone the colour of paper.

“The Imperial Clan Court,” Cheng Mobai said quietly. “Somebody’s in trouble.”

The carriage door opened, and a thin man in black stepped down with a register under his arm.

“Tally one thousand one hundred and seven,” the thin man said. “Is he still on the grounds?”