Chapter 740 — Four Lamps

CHAPTER 740

Four Lamps

“I don’t owe anybody,” Shi Feng said.

“Everybody owes somebody,” the big man said. “My name’s Gou Tianbao. These are my brothers. We don’t argue about whether a debt’s real. Take a man’s money, and you take away his troubles. That’s the trade.”

Behind him, the other three spread across the lane. One was thin, with a knife in each hand. One was square and bald and carried nothing at all. The last stood under the unlit lamp at the far end, in the dark, with his hands in his sleeves. He hadn’t said a word.

Shi Feng didn’t take his eyes off them.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said quietly. “Auntie Niu’s back door. Go in, and stay in. Don’t come out, whatever you hear.”

Ji Yuanhe didn’t argue. He walked to the bun stall’s back door, three paces behind them, and knocked once. It opened at once, as if Auntie Niu had been standing right behind it. A thick arm pulled him inside, and the bar dropped.

“Smart,” Gou Tianbao said. “We weren’t paid for the old man anyway. You come with us, or we put you in a cart. Your choice.”

“Who paid you?” Shi Feng asked.

“Somebody with money.” Gou Tianbao rolled his shoulders. “Brothers.”

The thin one vanished.

He didn’t run. One moment he was standing by the second lamp. The next, the air beside Shi Feng’s right arm bent, and the knives came out of it. One hooked toward his sleeve; the other cut across his path to stop him turning.

A Shattering Void cultivator could fold space and step out wherever he could see.

Shi Feng had seen this before, in another lane, on another night. He didn’t turn to meet the knives. He reached out with his left hand, slapped the bronze cap of the nearest gate lamp, and poured the Thousand Forge Flame Art into it.

Inside the flame, he struck the Second Anvil Fire.

At Minor Success, each beat came out clean and strong. Shi Feng kept their rhythm steady while watching the approaching knives. The lamp didn’t flare. It roared. The flame stood up a foot high inside its paper and beat, beat, beat, and the air around it shook with every stroke.

A fold had to close on still air. Beside that lamp, the air was never still.

The bend beside his arm cracked apart. The thin man fell out of it half a pace short, with his knives cutting nothing, and stumbled against the lamp-post. Shi Feng’s elbow came back into his jaw.

Crack!

The thin man went down and stayed down.

“Brother Shan!” the bald one shouted.

Gou Tianbao’s bored face had become very interested.

“A forge-fire trick,” Gou Tianbao said. “I’ve heard of that. Light a lamp, and the fold breaks.” He spat on the ice. “Then we’ll do it the old way. Two fists can’t beat four hands, alchemist.”

He drew a short iron club from his belt and walked straight in. No fold, no trick. The bald one came beside him with his bare fists. Two Shattering Void fighters against one mid Deity Transformation man. Nobody in Tianjing would have taken a bet on that fight.

The club came down across Shi Feng’s sword arm with Shattering Void strength. Gou Tianbao meant to disable him and drag him away. Being taken alive wouldn’t spare him a beating.

He drew the grey Sword and set the flat against the club. Iron River Sword Art turned the blow aside, along the steel and down into the frozen paving, and the stones split in a line two paces long. The jolt ran up his arm and into his left side, and the cracked ribs flared with pain.

He bit down on it and kept moving.

The bald man’s fist came in under the sword, aimed at his left side. Somebody had told them about the ribs.

Shi Feng went with it. Riverless Step took him sideways along the frozen ruts without lifting his feet, and the fist tore through his robe instead of his ribs. On the way past the second lamp, he slapped it too. Forge fire. The third lamp, at the next gate, he lit with a flick of fire from his fingertips as he went by.

Three lamps roared in the lane now, beat after beat. The light jumped on the walls.

Gou Tianbao looked at the lamps, then at Shi Feng.

“You’re making us fight in your workshop,” Gou Tianbao said.

“Then you should’ve kept out,” Shi Feng said. He shifted his sword to keep both men in front of him.

He was breathing hard. Every breath dragged on his left side. Two ordinary Shattering Void men stood in front of him, and both were still on their feet. Shi Feng knew he could beat them. He also knew the fourth man was waiting to move. He’d finish these two quickly and make that man act.

Behind the bun stall’s door, very faintly, he heard Ji Yuanhe’s voice.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Two.”

At the far end of the lane, the fourth man took his hands out of his sleeves.

He was standing under the only lamp that wasn’t lit. The dark there was thick and deep, and the forge fire’s beat didn’t reach it.

The fourth man stepped back into the dark and was gone.

Then the whole far end of the lane folded.