Chapter 762 — The Clean Bout

CHAPTER 762

The Clean Bout

Peng Zhenyue opened by slapping the stage.

His right palm came down flat on the stone, and the stone answered. A ridge of rock rose from the stone and raced toward Cheng Mobai, and where it reached his feet, it closed over his boots up to the ankle. Earth-Sealing Palm. Peng Zhenyue meant to hold him in place before attacking. Once both boots were caught, Cheng Mobai couldn’t dodge the next palm.

“That’s it, he’s stuck!”

“Peng’s palm sealed a wild boar king for three days once!”

Cheng Mobai didn’t try to pull his feet out. He drew his sword instead, and the sword came out crooked.

It wasn’t bent. It was a straight, cheap blade with a cord-wrapped hilt. But the way he swung it, it never travelled in a straight line. It went left, then right, then down, and every bend came from an angle nobody expected. The Nine Bends Sword kept changing its target. Peng Zhenyue had to watch the blade even while Cheng Mobai’s feet stayed trapped. The first bend went at Peng’s eyes. The second went at his wrist. The third bent back on itself and cut the stone around Cheng Mobai’s own left boot.

The ridge cracked, and he stepped out of it.

Shi Feng sat up a little on the bench. So that was what Cheng had meant. The third bend used to go out, toward the opponent. Now it came back in. A man who’d heard it named would be waiting for it in the wrong place.

“He cut his own trap!”

“Who does that?”

Peng Zhenyue laughed, a big honest bellow, and slapped the stage with both palms at once.

After that, the bout went on for a long time.

Shi Feng had watched a great many fights. Most of them were short, because one man was much stronger, or because someone had cheated before the first exchange. This one wasn’t short. Peng Zhenyue sealed the stage piece by piece, ridge by ridge, until half of it was a field of broken rock and only narrow paths ran between. Cheng Mobai cut his way out every time. Every time, it cost him something. His right boot went into the lake, torn off at the heel. A palm grazed his ribs, and he coughed blood onto the stone. His crooked sword opened a long cut across Peng’s forearm, then another across the big man’s thigh.

Neither of them said a word. Neither of them looked at the galleries. They just fought, for sixty exchanges and then seventy, and the shore slowly went quiet as people forgot to talk.

“They’re both peak Deity Transformation?” someone whispered.

“Cheng’s only late. He isn’t even on the list.”

“Late against peak, and he’s still standing?”

“…Shut up and watch.”

On the eightieth exchange, Peng Zhenyue sealed the last open path. Cheng Mobai was standing on a single slab at the stage’s edge, with rock risen on three sides of him and the lake behind his heels.

Peng raised both palms high. One more slap would close the slab over Cheng’s feet, and then he could walk over and push him in at his leisure.

Cheng Mobai bent his sword for the ninth time.

The ninth bend didn’t go at Peng at all. It went down into the slab under Cheng Mobai’s own feet, and the whole slab tipped up under him. Cheng Mobai rode it up and over the risen rock, landed inside Peng’s raised arms, and put the sword’s crooked edge against the big man’s throat.

Everything stopped.

Peng Zhenyue looked down at the blade. Then he looked at Cheng’s bare, bleeding foot standing on his own boot.

“Good!” Peng Zhenyue roared. “Heroes know heroes! I yield!”

He lowered his arms, and the risen stone all over the stage sank back into it with a long grinding sound. Then he threw one huge arm around Cheng’s neck and nearly dragged him into the lake out of sheer happiness.

The galleries exploded.

“He did it! The man with no rank did it!”

“Eighty-first on the Tianxing! Gone!”

“Who’s Cheng Mobai? Who’s his master?”

“Nobody! He’s from the Ninth Dyers’ Lane! My cousin owes him money!”

Shi Feng stood up on the bench, so that the people near it could hear him clearly.

“That was the only clean bout of the day,” Shi Feng said.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t have to. The people around him repeated it, and the people behind them repeated it, and in a few breaths it had run along the whole shore.

At the far end of the bench, Situ Jinghong was listening with a pleasant expression. He didn’t say anything. Two places down, Qu Ming’s face went dark red.

“What did you say, stamp boy?” Qu Ming demanded.

“I said Cheng Mobai won a clean bout,” Shi Feng said. “Did I say something else?”

Qu Ming opened his mouth, then closed it. Arguing would mean saying out loud which bout hadn’t been clean, and there were three thousand people listening.

“…Hmph,” Qu Ming snorted, turning away from the watching crowd.

Cheng Mobai came back across the bridge barefoot, with Peng Zhenyue’s arm still around his shoulders and blood dripping from both of them. He dropped onto the bench next to Shi Feng and grinned with red teeth.

“Did you see the third bend?” Cheng Mobai asked.

“I saw it,” Shi Feng said. “You went in instead of out. I’d have been waiting on the wrong side.”

“That’s the idea,” Cheng Mobai said, wiping his mouth. “You named it in front of half the city. So I had to fix it.”

“You made it harder to read,” Shi Feng said. “Next time, I’ll have to watch you properly.”

“You owe me a boot,” Cheng Mobai said. “It’s in the lake.”

Gu Yanxing stood up from the bench.

He hadn’t spoken once all day. He settled his long iron spear on his shoulder and looked down at Shi Feng with the same steady soldier’s eyes.

“First bell tomorrow,” Gu Yanxing said. “I won’t hold back. Don’t hold back either.”

He walked off along the shore without waiting for an answer, and the crowd made way for him on both sides.