Chapter 791 — The Falling Star

CHAPTER 791

The Falling Star

The grey Sword came down for the forty-first time since midnight, and the flagstone didn’t crack.

Shi Feng lowered the blade and looked at the stone. It was the same as when he started.

He’d read the manual on the Willow Ford roof until the lamp ran low. But the Willow Ford yard was too small for a sword that fell. So before midnight he’d barred the gate on a sleeping Ji Yuanhe, walked across the city with the last bun in his sleeve, and asked for the rear courtyard of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion. It was long and bare, paved in old grey stone. A single lamp burned by the gate.

“Master Shi,” Chief Steward Ke Lianshu said, bowing in the doorway. “The kitchen asks whether you’ll want breakfast here, or whether you’ll still be swinging at breakfast.”

“Here,” Shi Feng said, setting his sword down. “Tell them I’m sorry about the noise.”

“There hasn’t been any noise, Master Shi,” Ke Lianshu said apologetically.

“That’s what I’m sorry about,” Shi Feng said.

The steward bowed again and withdrew.

Shi Feng opened the manual on the step and read the first page again. The Falling Star Sword was a Deity Transformation-grade sword art from the princess’s vault, and its first line was only seven words long. The star doesn’t push. It only falls.

All night, he had pushed. Every stroke had his arms in it, his waist, his qi, and every stroke had been a good, heavy, ordinary chop. The manual called for a different movement: let the sword’s weight fall, then let the qi follow it.

He lifted the grey Sword above his head again and stopped holding it up.

That was all. He didn’t swing. He let go of the effort in his arms, kept only his grip, and let the blade’s weight and his qi drop together, straight down.

Boom!

The flagstone split in a straight line from his feet to the courtyard wall. Grit jumped a foot into the air.

Shi Feng stood looking at the crack for a long moment. Then he laughed.

So that was Entry. The stroke was clean and heavy, far heavier than anything he’d put into it. It also had a clear weakness. Once he let it fall, he couldn’t turn it by a single inch. Against a man who moved, he would have to drop it in the right place the first time, or not at all.

He swung it nine more times before the sun came up. Three of them fell true.

The crack brought the kitchen staff out into the yard with their sleeves still rolled, a groom from the west stable, and two guards who should have been at the gate. One of the cooks crouched by the split stone and took copper on how many of the next ten strokes would land.

Ke Lianshu had sent for the old man at first light, and Ji Yuanhe came in with the breakfast cart.

“Three of ten,” Ji Yuanhe said aloud, when the tenth came down, before anyone asked him.

The cook paid out and chalked it on the kitchen slate, and Ji Yuanhe went back with the cart.

The princess came at the hour of the morning tea, with Shen Yaoqing beside her and the crack in the courtyard between them.

Long Caili wore pale gold and a veil of pale gauze from brow to chin. Above it, her eyes showed nothing at all. She looked at the split flagstone, then at him, and didn’t comment on either.

“Nine days,” Long Caili said.

“It was ten yesterday,” Shi Feng said, setting down his bowl. “I’ve been reading clause nine again. It says I hunt. It doesn’t say what I hunt for.”

“Clause nine,” Long Caili said coldly. “The guest attends his lord’s banner at the Imperial Hunt, at the lord’s cost. A third reading won’t change it.”

“At the lord’s cost,” Shi Feng said. “I understand the expenses. I’m asking what you need us to bring out, and why it matters.”

“Your horse, your rations and your bandages,” Long Caili said.

Shen Yaoqing hadn’t sat down. The Serene Jade chief disciple stood by the crack with her hands in her white sleeves and studied it carefully.

“Do they have hunts on the frontier?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“They have boars,” Shi Feng said. “In my first winter out there, the boars hunted me. I learned which trees they can’t climb.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at the crack again.

“Dripping water wears through stone,” Shen Yaoqing said quietly, to nobody in particular.

Nobody replied.

“Why does it matter who wins a hunt?” Shi Feng asked the princess.

“Because the winner’s lord takes the Emperor’s first pick from the Inner Treasury,” Long Caili said. “And the right to speak first at the next court audience.”

“And the second matters more than the first,” Shi Feng said.

Long Caili lifted her teacup and didn’t drink from it.

“My brothers who are of age have entered banners, all but the eldest,” Long Caili said. “He’ll sit beside mine. So have the families and six of the great sects. The city expects me to finish somewhere in the middle and be gracious about it.”

“Where do you expect to finish?” Shi Feng asked.

“First,” Long Caili said. “That’s why I signed a man who reads clauses twice. Gu Yanxing refused the Gu’s claim on him, so Hunt custom bars him from any banner, and Cheng Mobai’s arm hasn’t closed. I’ve chosen four others. You’ll meet them at the gate.”

Ke Lianshu came in with fresh tea, saw the crack, and almost dropped the tray.

“Ke Lianshu,” Long Caili said without turning her head. “Master Shi will be practising in the eastern yard from tomorrow.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Ke Lianshu said, bowing deeply. “At once, Your Highness.”

“And Master Ji?” Shi Feng asked, tucking the manual into his sleeve. “Is the room still his?”

“The furnace room is still his,” Long Caili said. “My guard is still at the door. I don’t make an offer twice, and I don’t withdraw one either.”

“Then he moves in tomorrow,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t leave him alone at Willow Ford for seven days.”

She rose. Shen Yaoqing went with her. At the gate, the princess stopped without looking back.

“Shi Feng,” Long Caili said. “People die at the Hunt every year. Accidents, the wardens call them.”

“How many last year?” Shi Feng asked.

“Three,” Long Caili said. “All three were on banners that were beating my brothers.”

The gate closed behind her.