Chapter 748 — The Second Poison

CHAPTER 748

The Second Poison

The guard was heavy. His weight pressed against Shi Feng’s left side, sending pain through the thin-knit ribs. Shi Feng tightened his grip rather than let him drop. He set the man down against the pillar anyway and leaned the halberd on the wall.

The guard’s lips had turned grey.

Not blue. Grey, the colour of old ash. The grey was spreading out from the corners of his mouth as Shi Feng watched.

“Can you hear me?” Shi Feng asked.

“My chest,” the guard said through his teeth. “Inside the bones. It’s like ants.”

Shi Feng took the empty cup off the pillar ledge and smelled it.

It wasn’t Frost-Dream Dew. There was no cold in it and no white ring. There was a faint smell like wet chalk, and under that, something sour, like meat left out in summer.

Shi Feng’s expression turned cold. This wasn’t part of a test. Someone had slipped a deadly poison into a cup meant for a man on duty.

He knew that smell. He’d smelled it once in the Pill Pit, on a man who’d been fed it for refusing to refine. It didn’t touch the heart or the blood. It went into the bones and ate them from the inside, slowly, until the breastbone gave way and the ribs went soft and the lungs had nothing to pull against.

“Bone-rot,” Shi Feng said. “Shattering Void grade.”

Behind him, the hall had gone silent. The crowd at the silk-house table had turned around, one face after another.

“Bone-rot?”

“In the princess’s hall?”

“That’s not an exam poison. No exam would ever use that!”

“A Shattering Void-grade poison could kill a Shattering Void cultivator…”

On the dais, Shen Yaoqing had stood up. Her face didn’t change, but her voice carried the length of the hall.

“He’s right,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I can smell it from here.”

Shi Feng didn’t look up. He pulled open the guard’s armour at the collar and pressed two fingers to the breastbone. Under the skin, the edges of the bone gave beneath the light pressure. Shi Feng stopped pressing and checked how far the damage had spread. The rot had already eaten into the top third of it. Once it reached the ribs, nothing in any furnace in Tianjing would stop it.

He needed it out of the bone, and he needed it out before it spread.

At the guests’ tables, the grey-bearded physician had half risen.

“Distant water can’t put out a nearby fire,” the physician muttered. “A pill has to go through the blood first. The rot will be in the ribs before it gets there.”

A pill would arrive too late. Shi Feng thought: remove the rot directly first, then treat what remains. His flame control was precise enough to do it.

Shi Feng drew the Thousand Forge Flame Art into his right forefinger. At Perfection, the art didn’t have to be a furnace fire. It could be as small as he liked. He narrowed it until it was a needle of white heat no thicker than a hair.

“This will hurt,” Shi Feng said.

“Do it,” the guard said.

Shi Feng pushed the needle into the man’s chest, straight through the breastbone.

The guard arched against the pillar and bit back a scream. A thin wisp of grey smoke came out of the skin around Shi Feng’s finger. It smelled like burning chalk.

Shi Feng moved the needle slowly through the soft part of the bone, from top to bottom, one hair’s width at a time. Wherever the white heat went, the rot burned away and left clean bone behind. He went round the edge twice to be sure. Sweat ran into his eyes. Leaning forward pulled at his own ribs. Shi Feng held his hand steady through the pain. The guard’s heart lay behind the bone; one careless movement would ruin the rescue.

“He’s pushing flame through a man’s chest,” someone whispered.

“If he goes one hair too deep, it’ll burn the heart!”

“He’s not even looking at it. He’s doing it by feel.”

“…”

When the last of the grey smoke stopped, Shi Feng drew the needle out.

The grey at the guard’s lips had stopped spreading. It hadn’t gone away. There was still rot in his blood, and the bone that was left was thin.

Shi Feng reached into his sleeve and took out a small pill, pale gold, wrapped in oiled paper. It was a Marrow-Guard Pill he’d made for himself after the Tang Mingyu bout and never needed, Deity Transformation grade, seven clouds. He put it on the guard’s tongue.

“Swallow,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t chew.”

The guard swallowed. A moment later his breathing went long and slow, and the colour came back into his lips, a little at a time.

Shi Feng sat back on his heels.

Ke Lianshu had come across the hall at a run, and he stood behind them, white as paper. He looked at the guard. Then he picked up the cup from the floor and smelled it for himself, and his hand shook.

“Candidate Shi,” Ke Lianshu said hoarsely. “This humble steward… this wasn’t…”

“It isn’t your exam,” Shi Feng said. “I know.”

Ke Lianshu turned, went up onto the dais, and pinched out the incense stick with his bare fingers.

The thread of smoke broke and vanished. Nobody in the hall said a word.

Then Princess Long Caili stood up. The gauze of her veil stirred once and settled.

“The doors,” Long Caili said.

The guards at the main doors swung them shut. The bar dropped across them with a heavy thud.

“Nobody leaves this hall,” Long Caili said coldly, “until I know who poured that cup.”