Chapter 775 — His Own Seals

CHAPTER 775

His Own Seals

Situ Jinghong saw them coming and smiled.

It was the same smile as always, polite and calm. He reached for his spare brush. He even got it halfway out of his belt.

The first seal to reach him was stop. It folded over his legs and locked them to the stone. The next was bar, and it closed over his right arm with the spare brush still in his hand. Lock took his left arm. Then hold settled over his chest, black and wet, the same character he’d written so slowly for the whole shore to read.

Situ Jinghong stood in the middle of the stage, wrapped in his own ink from neck to ankle, and couldn’t move a finger.

Shi Feng walked over to him and stopped three paces away. He was careful not to step into any square.

“Young Master Situ,” Shi Feng said. “Can you breathe?”

“In,” Situ Jinghong said. “Not out. It’s very unpleasant.” Even now, he sounded mildly interested. “I’ve never been on this side of it.”

“Do you yield?” Shi Feng asked, keeping his sword down but within reach.

“Victory and defeat are everyday matters for a soldier,” Situ Jinghong said. “This Situ yields.”

Ke Lianshu struck the gong so hard that the mallet flew out of his hand.

The shore exploded.

“He won! The stall boy won!”

“He cut the Situ brush in half! With one stroke!”

“Situ Jinghong is seventy-seventh, peak Deity Transformation! The alchemist’s only late Deity Transformation!”

“Peak, beaten by late Deity Transformation? That can’t happen!”

“I just watched it happen!”

“…My bet. I put my whole month on the Situ.”

Then somebody near the willows started chanting, and the crowd picked it up all the way round the lake.

“Shi Feng! Shi Feng! Shi Feng!”

The boys in the trees chanted loudest of all. Most of them couldn’t have said which half of the name was his surname.

In the gallery, Long Caili’s veil didn’t stir. She picked up her red brush and wrote one line in her ledger. Beside her, Shen Yaoqing sat very still with her hands in her lap. Three seats away, Qu Ming had stood up. He was gripping the gallery rail so tightly that the paint blistered under his hand.

Two Situ guards came up the steps for their young master. They stopped at the edge of the first square, afraid to go any further. The seals were already starting to dry and flake away, but slowly.

Shi Feng picked up the severed tip of the white jade brush. Ink still dripped from its hairs. He checked that the threads were no longer connected before carrying it to the guards.

He handed it to the nearer guard.

“Wait until the seals come off,” Shi Feng told the nearer guard. “Pulling at them will only tighten them. Your young master explained that himself.”

“Master Shi,” Situ Jinghong called after him, still wrapped in ink. “One thing. When did you see the threads?”

“When I stopped pulling,” Shi Feng said. “You told me to.”

Then he walked down the steps, one at a time, holding his ribs.

Under the shore end of the bridge, out of sight of the galleries, he sat down on an upturned boat and coughed until the blood stopped.

Ji Yuanhe opened his robe. Across his chest, in a dark bruise as clear as a stamp, the character for hold had been printed on his skin.

“You held your breath for forty-one counts,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“You counted?” Shi Feng asked, looking at the towel still clenched in Ji Yuanhe’s other hand.

“I always count,” Ji Yuanhe said. His voice shook a little. “You didn’t tell me you could do that.”

“I didn’t know until I did it,” Shi Feng said truthfully.

Ji Yuanhe spread salve over the bruise without another word. His hands still trembled, though he tried to keep them steady. Shi Feng stayed still and let him finish. Ji Yuanhe had watched every count without knowing whether he could escape.

Out on the shore, they were still chanting. By evening every teahouse in the West Market would have the story, and by morning the brush would have been cut in half three times over.

The Tianji Mansion printed quickly. By the next morning the paper-sellers were crying the new issue all down Willow Ford.

Ji Yuanhe bought one with his own copper, as he always did, and opened it on the bench beside Auntie Niu’s stall. He ran his finger down the Hundred Famed Tianxing until it stopped.

Seventy-sixth. Shi Feng.

He held it up. Shi Feng was eating a bun with his bandaged arms held carefully away from his chest. He looked at the number, nodded, and went on eating.

“Seventy-sixth, Shi Feng,” a bun customer read over Ji Yuanhe’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“Some sect brat,” his friend said. “Pass the vinegar.”

Auntie Niu passed the vinegar.

Before Shi Feng had finished his second bun, a pavilion runner came down the lane at a dead run. He stopped at the stall, bowed, and spoke so quickly that the words fell over each other.

“Master Shi! Chief Steward Ke begs you to come to the pavilion at once,” the runner said. “His Highness the Third Prince’s carriage is on the pavilion road.”