Chapter 795 — Ironbark

CHAPTER 795

Ironbark

The first boar came out of the pines at full charge.

It was the size of an ox cart, and its back was covered in thick plates of grey bark that grew straight out of its hide. Its tusks were as long as a man’s forearm. Pine needles and dirt sprayed up behind it, and the ground shook under its feet.

“Ironbark Boar!” Yue Shaoan squeaked, and was up a tree before anyone saw him move.

Hou Tieshou laughed and planted his feet.

“Leave it to me!” Hou Tieshou bellowed. “Mountain-Carrying Fist!”

His whole body swelled. The muscles of his back stood up under the leather vest, and his skin took on the dull brown sheen of river stone. He drew back his right fist as the boar lowered its head, and he met the charge head-on.

Boom!

The fist hit the boar between the eyes. The boar didn’t stop.

Hou Tieshou went backward across the hollow with his heels digging two long furrows in the soil. He held on for ten paces. On the eleventh, his feet left the ground, and the boar carried him toward the trunk of a pine as thick as a well.

“Brother Hou!” Yue Shaoan screamed from the branches.

Shi Feng was already beside them.

He did not need to halt the charge by force. Its head was already passing the pine, leaving the side of its neck open. He laid the grey Sword flat against the side of its neck, behind the jaw, where the bark plates gave way to hide.

Iron River Sword Art had been at Perfection for a long time. It didn’t stop force. It moved it. The whole force of the charge ran into the blade, along it and down, the way a river turns at a bank, and Shi Feng sent all of it into the boar’s own front legs.

Crack.

Both legs folded at once. The boar’s snout ploughed into the soil a foot from the pine, and its own weight came down on its neck. It shuddered once and lay still.

Hou Tieshou dropped off its tusks and sat down hard in the dirt.

The hollow was very quiet.

“One blow,” Yue Shaoan said from his branch.

“He didn’t even swing,” Hou Tieshou said slowly. He looked at his own fist, then at the boar. “I hit it as hard as I can hit anything, and it didn’t even notice. He touched it, and it fell over.”

“Its own weight did most of the work,” Shi Feng said, wiping the blade on the pine needles. “You slowed it down first. That helped.”

“Did it?” Hou Tieshou asked hopefully.

“A little,” Shi Feng said, checking that Hou Tieshou could move both hands. “You’re all right? Good. Get clear of the tusks next time.”

The second boar came from the left while they were talking.

It was smaller than the first, but faster, and it came straight for Shi Feng’s back. He heard the hoofbeats and turned, and before he’d finished turning, something white went past his ear with a hiss.

The arrow hit the boar in the left eye.

Frost spread out from the shaft across the boar’s face in a white star. Its charge broke apart into a stumble, and it slid the last few paces on its chin and stopped against Shi Feng’s boots. Ice crackled over its head and down its neck, and its breath stopped steaming.

Shi Feng looked down at the boar, then across the hollow.

Jiao Lanyin was standing on a fallen log thirty paces away, already nocking a second arrow. Her face showed nothing at all.

“Frost Feather Arrow,” Yue Shaoan whispered, climbing down. “Through the eye. At full run. At thirty paces.”

“The third one is running east,” Jiao Lanyin said. “It’s not worth following.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

“It was coming at the banner,” Jiao Lanyin said coldly. “You were standing in front of the banner.”

She stepped off the log and walked to the boar she had killed. She did not compare her kill with the larger boar at Shi Feng’s feet. He was pleased. She wanted to prove herself, but she had still taken the clean shot that protected the banner.

The cores came out of the skulls. Hou Tieshou did the cutting with a short knife and visible pleasure. Each core was the size of a walnut and the dark red of old wine. They glowed faintly with Soul Formation-grade qi.

“Two cores before noon on the first day!” Hou Tieshou shouted, holding them up to the green light. “We’re going to win this Hunt!”

“Two Soul Formation-grade cores,” Jiao Lanyin said, “are worth half of one from the marsh.”

“Then we’ll get a lot of them!” Hou Tieshou said, not discouraged in the slightest.

Shi Feng took the cores, weighed them in his palm and put them in a pouch at his belt. He didn’t put them in his storage ring. The law said whatever was carried out belonged to whoever carried it. A ring was a fine place to carry things, but a pouch could be seen, and a pouch that could be seen would invite trouble. He wanted to know where the trouble was coming from before it arrived.

They worked north through the ring until afternoon. Yue Shaoan’s nose found boars, a nest of horned hares and once a great viper coiled in a hollow trunk. He was terrible in a fight and wonderful at everything else. Every time he raised his hand, they found a beast within three hundred paces. By the time the sun was slanting through the pines, the pouch held eleven cores.

At the edge of a stream, Yue Shaoan stopped and lifted his nose. Then he lowered it slowly and turned around.

“Men,” Yue Shaoan said nervously. “Five of them. At the ford ahead, where the stream crosses the trail. They’ve been sitting there since morning. I can smell their tea.”

“Whose?” Shi Feng asked.

“Steel polish and red tassels,” Yue Shaoan said after another sniff. “And someone’s using the Gu family’s horse liniment.”

Hou Tieshou cracked his knuckles.

“They’ve been waiting at the only ford for half a day,” Shi Feng said. He checked the visible pouch at his belt. “They’re not following beasts. They’re waiting for hunters to bring cores to them. Stay together when we reach the bank.”