Chapter 741 — A Young Lord in Red

CHAPTER 741

A Young Lord in Red

The darkness at the end of the lane bent inward. The three roaring lamps still burned, but the fold was forming beyond their reach.

The fourth man came out of it right behind Shi Feng, with a thin, straight blade already moving toward his sword wrist. The others were meant to hold him still while it struck.

He was the best of the four. He’d waited until the others had shown him every trick.

Shi Feng felt the blade approaching his wrist. The man had chosen his moment well. A step would carry Shi Feng into the two in front, and lighting another lamp would be too slow.

Shi Feng turned the grey Sword to meet him.

The fire he’d poured into three lamps was still running in his arm. He let it flow down into the blade, and the grey steel went the colour of a setting sun. The Sunset-Splitting Sword was at Major Success. Its red light came off the edge and went across the lane in one stroke, and it didn’t cut the man. It cut the fold he’d come out of.

The bent air behind Shi Feng split open from top to bottom. The man was still half inside it. When the fold broke, it threw him out the rest of the way, sideways, into the wall of the Wang family’s courtyard.

Boom!

Plaster rained down.

Gou Tianbao and the bald man had come in at the same moment, from the front, to catch him between them. They saw the red light open the air and stopped dead in the middle of a step.

“He cut the fold,” the bald man said hoarsely. “Boss, we can’t hold him!”

“I saw!” Gou Tianbao snapped.

Shi Feng didn’t wait for them to start again. He went forward through the lamplight with the grey Sword still red. The club came up to meet it, and the sunset light took the club in half at the grip. The second stroke went low, and the bald man’s knees went out from under him. Gou Tianbao threw the stump of his club. Shi Feng turned it aside with his sleeve and laid the pommel of the grey Sword against the big man’s temple.

Gou Tianbao sat down in the lane. He looked surprised to be sitting.

“Enough,” Gou Tianbao said thickly, raising both hands. “A wise man doesn’t take a beating he can see coming. We’re done.”

The whole exchange had taken five breaths.

Windows had opened all along the lane, and faces were looking down from every one of them.

“Four of them! He beat four!”

“Mid Deity Transformation against Shattering Void… that’s a whole great realm!”

“It’s Young Master Shi. Of course it’s Young Master Shi.”

“…Someone go and get the watch.”

Shi Feng stood in the lane with his sword lowered, breathing in short, careful pulls. His left side burned with pain. One of the rib cracks had worsened during the fight; even standing straight hurt now.

He watched the four men until he was certain none could stand. They’d tried to seize him in his own lane. He wanted the man who’d paid them named before they disappeared into custody.

He walked to the bun stall’s back door and knocked once.

“It’s me,” Shi Feng said. “Master Ji, are you all right?”

The bar lifted. Auntie Niu stood in the doorway with a rolling pin in one hand. Behind her, Ji Yuanhe sat on a flour sack with his hands on his knees.

“Five,” Ji Yuanhe said. “That was five breaths.”

“It was,” Shi Feng said. “Stay with Auntie Niu a little longer.”

Sergeant Chai came at a run with six watchmen and his belt flapping. He looked at the four men on the ground and the three roaring lamps, and sighed from the bottom of his chest.

“Bandits?” Sergeant Chai asked hopefully.

“Debt-collectors,” Shi Feng said. “Hired. They say somebody bought a debt in my name. I don’t owe one.”

“A debt dispute, then,” Sergeant Chai said. “One more matter is always worse than one less.”

The watchmen put iron on the four and hauled them to the cart. The thin one woke up halfway there.

“Who paid you?” Sergeant Chai asked him, without much interest.

“A young lord,” the thin one mumbled through his swollen jaw. “In red. He paid in gold, and he said—”

Gou Tianbao kicked him in the shin.

“Shut your mouth!” Gou Tianbao barked.

The thin one shut it.

Sergeant Chai wrote in his book. Shi Feng watched him write it. Debt dispute. Four held.

“Red’s a common colour, Young Master Shi,” Sergeant Chai said, without looking up. “Half the young lords in the capital wear it at New Year.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said. “Write it down anyway. All of it. ‘A young lord in red, paid in gold.’”

Sergeant Chai looked up at that. Whatever he saw in Shi Feng’s face made him lick his brush and write it.

Shi Feng didn’t go home to bed. He asked Auntie Niu to keep Ji Yuanhe in her back room behind the bar until morning, and paid her a full string of cash for it without haggling once. Then he gave his account at the watch house, and within the same hour he gave it again at the Phoenix Tail Pavilion.

Ke Lianshu came down to the night gate in a robe thrown over his sleeping clothes.

“Master Shi! At this hour…” Ke Lianshu said.

“Four men came to my lane tonight,” Shi Feng said. “First, they were hired. Second, they knew which side my ribs were cracked on. Third, one of them said a young lord in red paid them.”

Ke Lianshu went pale.

“This humble steward will report it to Her Highness at once,” Ke Lianshu said. “The household deeply regrets—”

“I’m not asking the household to regret anything,” Shi Feng said. “I’m telling you so it’s written down before anything else happens. I came into this contest for a prize. If someone comes near the old man who lives with me, it stops being a contest.”

Ke Lianshu wrote it down himself, word for word, under the gate lamp. He didn’t apologise again.

On his way out, Shi Feng passed the open doors of the pavilion’s front hall. Folded red-gold Azure Sun banners leaned beside the doorway, and a row of lacquered gift chests waited under them, each tied with a red cord.

“Young Lord Qu calls tomorrow, Master Shi,” the night porter said politely. “With gifts for Fairy Shen.”