Chapter 799 — Night in the Pines

CHAPTER 799

Night in the Pines

They came on the second night, as Shi Feng had said they would.

The second day had gone quietly. The banner had worked the north of the Silver-Pine Ring from dawn to dusk, taken nine more Soul Formation-grade cores and seen nobody but a Situ banner in the distance, who saw the Gu pouch on Shi Feng’s belt and went the other way. At dusk the tokens showed the princess’s banner fifth.

They made camp on a flat of soft needles beside a stream. The fire burned in the middle. The stream ran ten paces to the east, black and quick, about knee-deep. Pines stood all around, tall and close.

Shi Feng sat with his back to a pine on the west side of the fire, with the grey Sword across his knees. He wasn’t asleep.

At the second watch, Yue Shaoan sat straight up in his blanket.

“Ash,” Yue Shaoan whispered. “Ash and cold iron. Close. Very—”

The air behind him bent.

It did not tear open. A narrow fold appeared in it, and a man in grey sleeves began to step through the crease out of nothing, two paces from Yue Shaoan’s back. His hand was already reaching for the tracker’s collar.

Grey Fold Art. Shi Feng had seen it in the Terrace lane. The one-armed man had used it to make the dark come close.

The pressure of Shattering Void came down on the camp all at once.

Hou Tieshou, half out of his blanket, was pressed back to one knee. Yue Shaoan couldn’t turn his head. Jiao Lanyin, on the watch log, had her bow half-drawn and couldn’t finish the draw.

Shi Feng was already moving.

He crossed the fire in one step and swung the grey Sword at the empty air beside Yue Shaoan’s shoulder. At the edge of the fold, the light of the fire ran down the blade and turned it red. The Sunset-Splitting Sword had reached Perfection in the Lake Stage bracket. Its red light no longer spilled across everything before him. A thin, controlled line cut along the fold’s edge, exactly where he aimed it.

The red light went into the crease of the fold and cut along it.

The fold snapped shut.

The grey man was halfway through. The fold snapped shut across him, severing his right leg and left hand. He fell screaming onto the pine needles; the missing limbs remained on the far side of the closed fold. Blood sprayed across the ground and hissed in the fire.

“He—he cut the space shut!” Yue Shaoan gasped. “With a sword!”

The first taker wasn’t finished. As he fell, his remaining hand came up with a short hooked knife and slashed upward at Shi Feng. The hook bit into Shi Feng’s left forearm and opened it from wrist to elbow.

Shi Feng stamped on the man’s wrist, and the knife fell.

“Stay by the fire!” Shi Feng told his banner without looking round. “Back to back. Don’t step outside the light.”

The second taker came out of the pines on the east side.

He didn’t fold. He walked, quickly and easily, a square-faced man with grey sleeves rolled to the elbow. Both his palms were the colour of old ash. The pressure of early Shattering Void came off him as steadily as the first man’s had, and his eyes were fixed on Shi Feng’s face.

“Alchemist,” the second taker said pleasantly. “Come with me, and your friends can go back to sleep.”

“Late Deity Transformation,” Hou Tieshou choked, still on one knee. “Against two Shattering Void! That’s a whole realm, Brother Shi! It’s an egg against a rock!”

Shi Feng didn’t answer him. He watched the ash-grey hands.

The Ash-Bone Palm came at his chest.

It was fast, and it was close, and there was no room left on the needles between the fire and the pines to go round it. So Shi Feng went the other way.

He stepped back onto the stream.

Riverless Step at Major Success liked real water best, and the stream was cold and quick and real. His foot landed on the black surface and didn’t sink. The second step carried him three paces downstream with the current, and the palm went through the empty place where his chest had been and struck the bank. Frost and ash burst out of the soil in a grey ring.

The second taker turned to follow. Shi Feng was already behind him.

The current carried him through a curve downstream. He used its lift for the next step and came up the bank behind the man, before the taker could turn far enough to guard his back. The grey Sword came down on the second taker’s right shoulder, flat-first. Iron River sent the force of the blow straight down through the man’s body into his own knees, and his knees hit the needles.

He tried to rise. A white arrow hissed out of the firelight and nailed his left sleeve to the ground. Frost spread out from it across the needles. Jiao Lanyin had finished her draw at last.

The man tore the sleeve free in one movement. It had bought half a breath.

Half a breath was enough. Shi Feng put the grey Sword’s point under the second taker’s chin and held it there.

The camp was suddenly very quiet. The fire crackled. The first taker had stopped screaming and lay still in the needles, grey-faced, breathing in short gasps. The stream ran on.

“…He did it,” Yue Shaoan said faintly.

“Two Shattering Void,” Hou Tieshou said, getting up slowly. “Two. And he’s only late Deity Transformation.”

“His arm’s open to the bone,” Jiao Lanyin said. “Don’t call it nothing.”

Blood was running off Shi Feng’s left fingers onto the needles. He didn’t look at it.

“Who sent you?” Shi Feng asked the kneeling man.

The second taker looked up at him over the blade, and smiled. It was the same mild smile the one-armed man had worn in the Terrace lane, as he died.