Chapter 761 — Thirty Breaths

CHAPTER 761

Thirty Breaths

“Bout one!” Ke Lianshu called from the end of the bridge. “Young Lord Qu Ming of the Azure Sun, against Young Master Rong Tianye!”

Three thousand people filled the galleries by the first bell. The candidates’ bench was at the foot of the bridge, and Shi Feng sat on its end with Cheng Mobai on one side and Gu Yanxing two places down, his spear upright between his knees.

Rong Tianye walked out first. He was eighty-third on the Tianxing, at peak Deity Transformation, and he carried a round bronze shield frame on his left arm, open like a wheel with no cover. He stopped in the middle of the stage, set his feet and lifted the frame.

Black qi poured out of it. It formed six-sided plates, edge to edge, until a dark shell curved in front of him from his knees to above his head. Black Tortoise Shield. The galleries murmured at once.

“That shield held off a Thunder Abyss elder for an hour!”

Qu Ming walked out onto the stage without hurrying, his red sleeves moving in the wind. He stopped twenty paces from the shell and raised his right hand.

A ball of fire formed above his palm. It grew as big as a cartwheel, and its light turned the lake gold. The Scorching Sun Flame didn’t look like fire at all. Several people in the front rows raised their sleeves to shield their faces.

Qu Ming didn’t throw it. He pushed it forward slowly, and pressed it straight against the front of the shell.

The first black plate glowed red, then cracked.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe counted in a thin voice from the gallery, one count to each breath.

Rong Tianye poured qi into the frame. A new plate grew where the old one had cracked, and two more cracked beside it. The sun didn’t move around the shield or look for a gap. Qu Ming kept its force against the same plates, burning through each replacement before Rong Tianye could strengthen the whole shield.

“Ten,” Ji Yuanhe counted. “Eleven.”

Steam began to rise off the edge of the stage where the lake water touched the hot stone. Rong Tianye’s boots slid back a hand’s width, and then another. Sweat poured down his face, and it boiled off his jaw before it could drip.

“He’s not even attacking. He’s just burning it.”

“That’s the Azure Sun for you. Why go around a wall when you can melt it?”

“Twenty,” Ji Yuanhe counted.

The last plates over Rong Tianye’s shoulder went at once, in a crackle like burning bamboo. Only the bronze frame was left on his arm. It was glowing cherry red. The leather straps had caught fire.

“Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine,” Ji Yuanhe counted.

Rong Tianye tore the frame off his arm and threw it into the lake. It hit the water with a scream of steam.

“Thirty,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“I yield,” Rong Tianye said hoarsely, holding his blistered forearm against his chest.

Qu Ming held the sun above him for one more breath, long enough for the whole shore to see it hang there over a man who’d already yielded. Then he closed his hand, and it went out.

“Thirty breaths,” someone said in the gallery. “Eighty-third on the Tianxing. Thirty breaths.”

“He’s sixty-fourth. Sixty-four to eighty-three, and it wasn’t even close.”

“…”

Qu Ming came back across the bridge to cheers from the Azure Sun stands. He stopped in front of the bench, looked down at Shi Feng and smiled.

“That’s how fire is meant to work, stamp boy,” Qu Ming said. “Watch carefully. You’ll want to remember it.”

“I’m watching,” Shi Feng said. “You burned straight through the middle. You never once looked at his feet.”

Qu Ming’s smile tightened slightly. “Why would I?”

“Then you didn’t need to,” Shi Feng said. “Rong Tianye stayed still for you. I won’t.”

Qu Ming snorted and walked on, and Yao Chen followed him with the folded red towel still on its tray.

“Bout three!” Ke Lianshu called. “Young Master Situ Jinghong, against Young Master Qiao Wending!”

Bout two had been moved to last while the healers saw to Rong Tianye. Nobody minded.

Qiao Wending stepped onto the bridge, and his first step went wrong.

His foot came down a little to the side, as if the planks had moved under it. He caught himself on the next step and walked on. But Shi Feng had leaned forward on the bench, and he was watching the man’s face now, not his feet.

Qiao Wending’s face was flushed, and the flush stopped at his collar. His pupils were wide in the bright morning light. When he passed the bench, Shi Feng caught a faint smell of something sweet and bitter on his breath.

“He’s drunk?” Cheng Mobai muttered.

“He’s medicated,” Shi Feng said quietly. “A strength pill this morning, with one herb swapped for its cousin that slows the blood. Dried, they look the same.”

Cheng Mobai stared at Shi Feng. “Who’d do that?”

“Someone who knew he’d swallow whatever they gave him,” Shi Feng said.

On the stage, Situ Jinghong took a brush from his sleeve. It was an ordinary writing brush, with a white jade handle. He wrote one character in the air between them. It hung there in shining black ink.

Qiao Wending moved to go around it, and his legs were half a breath slow.

The seal landed on his chest. He went down on one knee as if a hand had pressed him there, and he stayed down.

“I yield,” Qiao Wending said. He didn’t look up at anyone.

Situ Jinghong put his brush away and helped him up himself. The galleries applauded the young master’s kindness.

“One stroke!”

“The Situ brush! I’ve never seen it so close!”

“That’s the Prime Minister’s grandson. What did you expect?”

Shi Feng didn’t applaud. Neither did Gu Yanxing, two places down the bench. He was looking at Qiao Wending’s back as the man was led away, and his jaw was tight.

Situ Jinghong came back across the bridge, and as he passed the bench, he nodded to Shi Feng in a friendly way, with no sign of shame. The drug had made Qiao Wending’s defeat easy, and the crowd had mistaken the result for kindness.

“Bout two!” Ke Lianshu called. “Cheng Mobai, against Young Master Peng Zhenyue!”

Cheng Mobai stood up and cracked his neck. His patched sleeve flapped in the lake wind.

“Watch the third bend,” Cheng Mobai said, grinning down at Shi Feng. “I changed it.”