Chapter 807 — Needles in Threes

CHAPTER 807

Needles in Threes

“Down!” Shi Feng said.

He pulled Yue Shaoan flat by the collar. Something hissed through the space where the tracker’s head had been, three thin hisses close together, and struck the log behind them.

Thock. Thock. Thock.

Three steel needles, each as long as a finger, stood in the wood in a neat row. Around each one, the log was turning grey. The grey spread a hand’s width in a single breath, and then the wood under it simply crumbled away like old ash.

“Bone-Marrow Needles,” Yue Shaoan whispered. His teeth were chattering. “The poison goes into the marrow. It rots you from the inside. My uncle saw a man lose his leg to one. The bone went soft as tofu.”

“Then don’t get hit,” Hou Tieshou said hoarsely.

Shi Feng sent his Spirit Sense into the fog. It went a few yards, touched reeds and water and nothing else, and came back. The thrower was further than that. The fog hid her completely.

“How many?” Shi Feng asked quietly.

Yue Shaoan lifted his nose and sniffed, trembling.

“Five,” Yue Shaoan said. “All round us. They’re far apart. That bitter smell is only on one of them. The others smell of sweat and reeds. They’re just waiting.”

So Shangguan Ruo threw, and her four hunters waited in the dark for the banner to fall. Then they would walk in and pick the cores off four bodies by the carry-out law. Nobody would need to kill anyone. A banner whose hunters were all down would crush its own tokens before it let its bones rot.

She meant to cripple someone until the whole banner withdrew, Shi Feng thought. The fog let her do it without giving them a clear target. He had to stop her before another set reached his teammates.

“Backs together,” Shi Feng said. “Jiao Lanyin, can you shoot at a sound?”

“I can shoot at anything,” Jiao Lanyin said coldly. “Give me a sound.”

The next three came from the left.

Shi Feng heard them this time and swept the grey Sword through the dark. Iron River caught two and threw them into the water. The third went past his elbow and buried itself in the ground between Hou Tieshou’s boots.

Jiao Lanyin turned and loosed at the hiss.

Her Frost Feather Arrow flew into the fog trailing white cold. Somewhere out there, a patch of marsh froze with a sharp crackle. Nobody screamed.

“Missed,” Jiao Lanyin said flatly, and drew another arrow. “She moves after every throw.”

The third set came from behind.

Yue Shaoan smelled it a moment too late. “Behind—!” Yue Shaoan shouted, dragging at Hou Tieshou’s vest.

Hou Tieshou was already moving. He threw his huge body sideways in front of the tracker, arms up, chest out. Body cultivators trusted their skin. A Mountain-Carrying Fist man could take a sword cut on the forearm and shrug it off.

Two needles struck his forearms and bounced away into the dark.

The third found the gap below his guarded forearms and struck his thigh.

It didn’t bounce. It went straight through the skin, through the muscle, into the bone, and stuck there quivering. Hou Tieshou’s iron skin might as well have been paper. These needles had been made for exactly this kind of man.

Hou Tieshou didn’t make a sound for a moment. Then his leg folded under him, and he went down heavily on one knee.

“Tieshou!” Yue Shaoan cried.

“It’s nothing!” Hou Tieshou said through his teeth. “It’s a little needle! It’s—”

He looked down. Around the needle, his trouser leg was turning dark. Under it, the skin had gone the colour of wet ash, and the grey was already creeping toward his knee.

Hou Tieshou stopped talking.

Jiao Lanyin loosed two arrows at the place the needles had come from. Two patches of marsh froze. Again, nobody screamed.

Out in the fog, very faintly, someone laughed.

“Crush his token!” Yue Shaoan begged, grabbing Shi Feng’s arm. “The wardens have antidotes! They’ll come in a quarter of an hour! Please, Brother Shi, if it reaches his hip—”

“No!” Hou Tieshou snarled, and clamped his big hand over the jade token at his belt. “I’m not being carried out on the third day by a woman with sewing needles!”

Shi Feng looked at Hou Tieshou’s leg. Then he looked into the fog, where the laugh had come from.

He couldn’t sense her, and she moved after every throw. Jiao Lanyin could freeze half the marsh and not hit her. Shangguan Ruo could keep this up until dawn, and every three needles, one of them would find somebody.

Shi Feng couldn’t find the thrower in the fog. But if he stood in front, every needle she threw would come straight to him.

Shi Feng rose, keeping his body between the fog and Hou Tieshou’s injured leg.

“Brother Shi!” Yue Shaoan gasped. “Get down! She’ll—”

“I know she will,” Shi Feng said. He shook out his right sleeve and let it hang open and loose. “That’s the idea. Shaoan, keep your nose up. When the bitter smell comes again, tell me which way, and say it loudly.”

He stepped out in front of the others, alone, on the open edge of the little island, and waited for the next three.