Chapter 737 — The Tenth Bead

CHAPTER 737

The Tenth Bead

The first bead of the second row came for his left side.

It went for the cracked ribs. Of course it did. They were the biggest opening he had.

Shi Feng turned his body and let it pass a finger’s width from his robe, and the turn opened his right hip. The second bead was already coming for it. He’d known it would, so he was already moving when it left the abacus.

Click. Click. Click.

He stopped trying to beat the beads. He let them come and let each one tell him where the next would go. Hip, then knee. Knee, then the wrist that covered it. Tang Mingyu used each forced movement to choose his next target. Shi Feng now understood the order. He could choose what opening to show and move before Tang Mingyu flicked.

“He’s dodging them!”

“He’s slower than before! Look, he’s hurt!”

“He’s slower, but they’re missing more…”

Tang Mingyu’s pleasant face had gone tight. He flicked faster. The fifth bead grazed Shi Feng’s thigh. The sixth went past his ear so close that it singed his hair. The seventh he turned with the grey Sword, and the eighth with the back of his left hand, and the jolt went straight into the cracked ribs. He went white for a breath, but he stayed on his feet.

“Nine,” Ji Yuanhe said at the rail.

The ninth bead came for his left side again. Shi Feng let it come within a hand’s width before he moved.

Then Tang Mingyu’s fingers left the second row.

Half a breath. The fingers slid down to the third row and found its first bead.

Shi Feng moved on the tenth.

Riverless Step took him three paces left and one forward without a sound. When Tang Mingyu’s finger came down on the bead, the opening he’d started counting from wasn’t there anymore. Tang Mingyu was still aiming from the guard he’d just broken. Shi Feng’s sudden change of position made that aim useless.

The tenth bead went to where Shi Feng had been. It hit nothing and buried itself in the stone.

Tang Mingyu’s expression changed.

He flicked the eleventh in a hurry, at the new place, without counting first.

Shi Feng caught it in his sleeve.

The Quiet Sleeve Art closed on the bead. At Minor Success it hid whatever his sleeve held from other people’s senses, and Tang Mingyu’s art lived on what he sensed. He’d thrown a bead and felt it vanish. Tang Mingyu could no longer sense whether it was still flying or had struck. He’d relied on that feedback to follow each attack. Losing it broke his rhythm completely.

For one breath, the Tang heir’s hand hovered over the abacus. He didn’t know where to aim.

Shi Feng let the bead roll out of his sleeve onto the flat of the grey Sword.

Iron River Sword Art moved force somewhere else, and now it moved it back. The bead ran down the steel like water down a channel, picked up the sword’s turn and went back across the ring the way it had come. It went for the one opening Tang Mingyu had never bothered to guard, because nobody had ever thrown anything back at him.

His own left wrist.

Bang!

The bead hit the abacus strap where it buckled over the wrist bone. The leather burst. Tang Mingyu cried out and clutched his wrist, and the gold abacus fell off his arm and hit the stone. Its frame cracked open. Sixty-one gold beads bounced across the ring, striking the stone with sharp clicks. Tang Mingyu reached for the frame, then snatched his injured hand back.

Shi Feng was already there.

He didn’t use the sword. He stepped through the rolling beads, put his palm flat against Tang Mingyu’s chest and pushed.

Tang Mingyu went over backward and landed on his back in the middle of the ring, among his beads. One of them rolled off the edge of the stone and dropped into the sand with a small tap.

The practice ground was silent.

Nobody moved in the galleries. Nobody spoke at the rail. Up in the highest gallery, behind the gauze, nobody could see whether anyone had moved at all.

Then the noise came all at once.

“He beat him! The alchemist beat the Tang heir!”

“Mid Deity Transformation over late! Over a Tianxing!”

“He used the man’s own spear against his own shield!”

“With two broken ribs! I heard them go!”

“Where’s my money? Somebody find the bookmaker!”

Shi Feng bent, picked one gold bead off the stone and set it on Tang Mingyu’s chest.

“Your hand pauses after nine,” Shi Feng said. “Ji Yuanhe noticed it too.”

Ke Lianshu climbed back onto the ring and bowed to the man on his back, then to the galleries, then to Shi Feng.

“Tally one thousand one hundred and seven wins,” Ke Lianshu said. “The household will, ah, gather up Young Master Tang’s beads.”

On the stone, Tang Mingyu pushed himself up on his elbows. Humiliation turned his face red to the ears. His elders had watched him lose his refined artifact and fall in the middle of his own scattered beads. He looked up at Shi Feng and began to shake.

“Cheat,” Tang Mingyu said. Then he shouted it. “Cheat! This bout was bought!”