Chapter 736 — Gold Beads

CHAPTER 736

Gold Beads

Before the call, Tang Wenbo came up the steps with a clay jug in one hand and the shop’s first ledger open in the other. He walked the east edge of the ring, pouring, and the water ran in a line along the stone.

“The year our first shop opened,” Tang Wenbo said, and read it off the ledger page. “And the three generations since. The master who opened it on the river road. The master who moved it. This one.” He bowed toward the east gallery, where the Tang elders stood.

Tang Mingyu walked to the east edge, put his hands together, and bowed to the water, low, before he turned and bowed to the galleries.

“Begin,” Ke Lianshu said, and got off the ring very fast.

Tang Mingyu didn’t leave the centre. He stood with his left arm held across his body and the gold abacus along his forearm. The fingers of his right hand rested lightly on the first row of beads, like a shopkeeper about to add up a bill.

Shi Feng stood at the edge, fifteen paces away, with his hands in his sleeves.

“Ninety-first on the Tianxing,” a gallery voice said. “Late Deity Transformation. The Tang heir.”

“And the alchemist’s only mid! A whole stage below, against a Tianxing!”

“He beat Huangfu Lie.”

“Huangfu Lie stood in front of him and punched. The Tang don’t stand in front of anybody.”

“I’ll keep this short, alchemist,” Tang Mingyu said. “My family’s elders have a banquet to get to.”

“Then don’t make them late,” Shi Feng said calmly, and took his hands out of his sleeves.

Tang Mingyu flicked.

A bead left the abacus with a click and came across the ring as a streak of gold light. Each bead was gold qi packed around real gold. With the Gold-Abacus Finger, Tang Mingyu aimed for gaps in an opponent’s guard.

The first bead went for Shi Feng’s left knee.

He stepped right. Riverless Step at Major Success worked best on water, but Shi Feng could use it here too. He slid half a pace without lifting his feet, and the bead hissed past his knee.

The second bead was already in the air. It went for his right shoulder, which the step had just opened.

He turned the shoulder. The bead tore his sleeve.

Click. Click. Click.

Three more came, at his hip, his throat and the inside of his elbow. Every one went for the place his last move had left open. He dodged two and knocked the third aside with the back of his hand, and his knuckles went numb.

“A thousand-li dike crumbles from one ant hole, alchemist,” Tang Mingyu said pleasantly, flicking. “I just find the holes. Every time you move, you open a new one, and I add it to your bill. You can’t dodge your own bill.”

Click.

Shi Feng drew the grey Sword.

The sixth bead met the flat of the blade. Iron River Sword Art at Perfection didn’t stop force; it moved it somewhere else. The bead skidded along the steel and flew off into the galleries, and a spectator yelped and ducked. A hole the size of a thumb appeared in the post behind him.

The seventh came low, at his ankle, under the sword.

He jumped it.

Tang Mingyu’s eyes sharpened. He’d forced Shi Feng to jump.

The eighth bead hit him in the left side, over the ribs.

Bang!

It hit like an iron hammer. He came down on one knee with the breath knocked out of him, and felt something under the skin give with a dull crack.

The ninth bead hit the same place. Tang Mingyu had aimed it at the eighth bead’s bruise.

The second crack was louder.

The galleries roared.

“Two hits! Two!”

“Those were ribs. You could hear them!”

“An open spear is easy to dodge, but a hidden arrow is hard to guard against.”

“Get up, alchemist! I’ve got money on you!”

“…At what odds?”

Shi Feng stayed on one knee for a breath. He tasted blood and swallowed it. On his left side, every breath now came with a hot line of pain, as if someone had laid a red iron along his ribs.

At the rail, Ji Yuanhe was gripping the wood with both hands. His lips were moving.

“Seven,” Ji Yuanhe was saying. “Eight. Nine.”

Ji Yuanhe was frightened for him, but he hadn’t lost count. His fingers pressed into the rail at every click. Shi Feng heard the numbers clearly over the crowd.

Shi Feng lifted his head.

At the centre of the ring, Tang Mingyu’s fingers had left the first row of the abacus. They slid down to the second row, found its first bead and settled on it.

It took him half a breath. For that half a breath, no bead came.

“Nine,” Ji Yuanhe said again, very quietly, and stopped.

Nine to a row, Shi Feng thought. Moving his hand interrupted the sequence. That half breath was enough; he only needed to reach the end of a row without giving Tang Mingyu another clean hit.

He stood up slowly and wiped his mouth on his torn sleeve. Then he smiled. Tang Mingyu, who had been about to flick, paused with his finger on the bead.

“What are you smiling at?” Tang Mingyu demanded.

“Your abacus has nine rows,” Shi Feng said. “I’ve only seen one of them.”

“Then let me show you the rest,” Tang Mingyu said, and flicked.