Chapter 750 — Burnt Buns

CHAPTER 750

Burnt Buns

The awning over Auntie Niu’s bun stall was on fire.

Red-gold flames ran along the canvas and dripped onto the steamers. Auntie Niu stood in the middle of the lane with a wet broom, beating at the fire and swearing at it. Niu Tiezhu was pulling trays of buns out from under the burning edge. Ji Yuanhe had both arms round the stall’s money box.

Three men in plain brown cloth stood at the far end of the lane, waiting.

One was big and bald. One was thin, with a fan of red-gold fire hanging over each palm. The third stood behind them with his hands in his sleeves, and his qi was heavier than either of theirs. Early Shattering Void. The other two were peak Deity Transformation.

Shi Feng knew that fire. Scorching Sun fire, the Azure Sun’s own art, only a little weaker and a little less polished than Qu Ming’s. Outer disciples, then, dressed in somebody else’s cloth.

They hadn’t come for the stall. They’d set it alight so he’d come running into a lane they’d already chosen. The three spread out to block his way home. They wanted him trapped and beaten where the whole lane could watch.

“Ji Yuanhe,” Shi Feng said. “Take Auntie and the boy inside. Bar the door.”

Ji Yuanhe went at once. Auntie Niu didn’t.

“That’s my awning!” Auntie Niu shouted.

“I’ll buy you a better one,” Shi Feng said. “Go inside, Auntie.”

She went, still holding the broom.

The thin man threw first.

Two fans of fire spread across the lane, cutting off Shi Feng’s path to the stall. They were wide enough that he’d have to raise his guard or retreat. The thin man stepped forward behind them, ready to force him back.

Shi Feng didn’t try. He lifted both arms and took the fire on his sleeves.

The Quiet Sleeve Art had taken a hook in the Terrace lane, and a chain at Willow Ford’s gate. Fire was harder. Fire spread. It caught the cloth and ran up toward his shoulders, and he had to close the sleeve around it fold by fold before it could get there. The heat bit into his forearms through the cloth.

Then the sleeves closed. The fire went into them and didn’t come out.

He turned his wrists and opened them again, and the two fans of fire came out of his sleeves going the other way.

The thin man screamed and threw himself flat. The fire went over him and hit the bald man full in the chest. The bald man staggered back into a water barrel, and steam burst up around him.

“He took Scorching Sun fire in his sleeves!” someone shouted from a window.

“And threw it back!”

“Those were Azure Sun moves! In plain cloth!”

The third man came down the lane.

He didn’t throw fire. He walked, and the space in front of him folded. Three paces vanished from the lane in one step, and he was in front of Shi Feng with his right palm already burning, a sun the size of a fist in his hand. Early Shattering Void, against late Deity Transformation. A whole great realm.

He drove the palm at Shi Feng’s sword arm. He meant to break his guard and disable him. The fire would still burn deep if it struck; capturing him didn’t mean keeping him whole.

Shi Feng caught the palm in his right sleeve.

The fire went in. The force went in with it. He felt the sleeve want to tear, and he didn’t let it. He closed the cloth around the man’s wrist, around the fire, around the strike itself, and the art gave way under the strain and opened wider.

At Minor Success, the Quiet Sleeve Art had hidden what was in his own sleeve. Now it could close any sleeve he touched.

Shi Feng turned the man’s palm over, folded the burning fist back into the man’s own cuff, and closed the cloth on it.

The man looked down.

His right hand was inside his own sleeve, up to the elbow. The fire was in there with it. He pulled, and the hand didn’t come out. He pulled harder, and smoke started to come out of the seams of his own robe.

“Get it out!” the man shouted. “Get it out of me!”

Shi Feng kicked him in the knee. He went down, still pulling at his own sleeve with his left hand.

“He folded space at him,” a water-seller said hoarsely. “That was Shattering Void.”

“And he’s lying in the lane with his hand stuck in his own sleeve!”

“And they say he’s only Deity Transformation!”

“…”

Shi Feng looked at the three men on the stones. He wasn’t smiling.

“You burned my neighbour’s stall,” Shi Feng said quietly. “With my attendant standing beside it. You’ll name whoever sent you. Don’t think being taken to the watch settles this.”

[Art: Quiet Sleeve Art, Major Success | Note: it closes any sleeve he touches.]

Sergeant Chai arrived with four men from the watch, just after the bald man had stopped steaming. He looked at the three men, the burnt awning and the hand stuck in a sleeve.

“Bandits?” Sergeant Chai asked.

“They’re wearing plain cloth,” Shi Feng said. “Write down that they threw Scorching Sun fire. Write it exactly like that, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Chai wrote it down.

When the watch had dragged them off, Auntie Niu came out of her door with the broom in one hand and a slate in the other.

“Forty-one buns,” Auntie Niu said. “Burnt. One awning. Burnt. When the city gate catches fire, the fish in the moat suffer! The fire came for you, Young Master Shi, so you pay.”

Shi Feng paid it in full, and added ten silver for a better awning.

He was still standing in the lane when a household runner came round the corner in Long-family red, carrying a small sealed box.

“From Master Cui Zhaoyu,” the household runner said politely, “with his compliments.”