Chapter 783 — The Last Sun

CHAPTER 783

The Last Sun

The blood sun was small.

It rose off Qu Ming’s palm no bigger than a man’s head, dark red and almost black at the centre, and it didn’t climb high. It hung a pace above his hand and turned slowly. The air around it bent.

The Scorching Sun Flame burned on cinnabar. Without cinnabar, a cultivator could still feed it his own blood essence, and every drop cost him months of cultivation. Qu Ming had just spat out a mouthful.

“Ming’er,” Qu Hanshan said again from the gallery. This time it wasn’t loud. It was cold.

Qu Ming didn’t look round.

“Do you see it, stamp boy?” Qu Ming said hoarsely. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin. “This one doesn’t have any cinnabar in it. There’s nothing in it you can eat. It’s only this young lord. Better a broken jade than a whole tile!”

“I see it,” Shi Feng said.

He did. There was no loose cinnabar to strip out this time. The qi and blood essence were packed so tightly that he could not devour them fast enough to stop the impact. His golden bones would hold. He could endure the impact, but there was no reason to let it burn his injured flesh again.

Qu Ming held the blood sun where Shi Feng and Ji Yuanhe at the shore could both watch it form, waiting for one of them to yield. Neither did.

His left arm hung at his side, blistered to the shoulder. His right hand was burned from gripping the hilt. His stomach was clenching every few breaths. He had already studied the fire. Trading more blows would teach him nothing, so he would end this with one clean cut.

Shi Feng lifted the grey Sword in his right hand.

Fourteen paces lay between them. The stone between them was cracked with heat, and steam still rose off the lake on all four sides.

On the seconds’ step, Yao Chen reached for the red towel, then hesitated. His young lord was spending blood essence to force Shi Feng to concede. If it failed, every further drop would damage Qu Ming’s cultivation. The attendant watched the stage, ready to end it if his master could no longer control the flame.

Qu Ming threw the blood sun.

It didn’t spin or flare. It simply came, straight and fast, and the stone it passed over turned black. Behind it Qu Ming was already raising his hand again, and a second drop of blood was burning in his palm.

Shi Feng cut.

On the night the one-armed man came to the Terrace lane, the Sunset-Splitting Sword had been an evening of red light poured down a whole street. In the semi-final, cutting through Situ Jinghong’s brush, it had reached Perfection. At Perfection it didn’t pour anymore.

It was one line.

A single thin stroke of red, no wider than a thread, went out from the grey Sword and met the blood sun in the middle.

The sun split.

The two halves of it didn’t explode. They went on flying in the same direction, side by side, a hand’s breadth apart, and passed on either side of Shi Feng without touching him. Behind him, they hit the lake one after another.

Boom! Boom!

Two pillars of water rose higher than the pavilion roof and came down again as hot rain over the whole stage.

Somewhere in the gallery an old swordsman said hoarsely, “One sword breaks ten thousand methods…”

The red line hadn’t stopped. It went on past the place where the sun had been and crossed the stage. The second drop of blood in Qu Ming’s palm went out as if someone had pinched it. Qu Ming’s sleeve fell open from wrist to elbow. On the far side of the stage, the line touched the boiling water and cut a long, straight furrow into the lake that stayed open for a full breath before it closed.

Hot rain struck the stage. Qu Ming stared at his empty palm, shocked that the sword had passed through both his blood sun and the second attack he was forming.

Shi Feng was no longer standing where he had cut.

He’d stepped backward off the edge of the stage. The lake under him was hot and wild, but it was real water. Riverless Step at Major Success liked real water best. He went down the side of the stage on the face of the lake, around the corner pillar and up the far edge behind Qu Ming, in the time it took the rain to reach the stone.

Yao Chen saw him first.

“Young Lord, behind—!” Yao Chen shouted, reaching for the towel too late.

Qu Ming started to turn.

Shi Feng put his burned right palm flat in the middle of his back. He didn’t use any art for it. He pushed with all of late Deity Transformation’s strength and golden bones behind it.

Bang!

Qu Ming left the stage.

He flew thirty paces over the water, his red robe flapping, his arms reaching for nothing, and hit the lake face first. Water went up white. The suns on his sleeves went under, and so did he.

The rain stopped.

Nobody in the gallery said a word. Nobody on the balcony moved. The ripples ran out from the place where Qu Ming had gone under, all the way to the shore, and slapped softly against the shore steps where Ji Yuanhe stood.

For three breaths, Qu Ming didn’t come up.

Yao Chen was at the edge of the seconds’ step with one foot over the water. Ke Lianshu had the gong hammer lifted and seemed to have forgotten what it was for. In the gallery, Qu Hanshan’s hands closed slowly on his knees.

Shi Feng lowered the grey Sword and stood at the edge of the Lake Stage, dripping.

His stomach clenched again. He breathed slowly through the pain and watched the ripples. The bout had not been called, and he would not turn his back before he knew where Qu Ming had gone.

Then, twenty paces from the stage, the surface broke, and a hand came up out of the lake.