Chapter 820 — The Vajra Bell

CHAPTER 820

The Vajra Bell

Huikong stood up.

He did it slowly and calmly. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight. His whole body shone gold from his shaven head to his bare feet, and his beads hung from his wrist. He didn’t take a stance. He put his palms together in front of his chest and waited.

“Come as far as you can, Benefactor,” Huikong said.

The Vajra Bell Body was the Great Compassion Temple’s oldest art. It turned a monk’s body into a bell, and a bell gave back every blow that struck it.

Shi Feng walked to ten paces from him and drew the grey Sword.

The first exchange was a test. He came in low along the left edge of the causeway and sent the grey Sword at the monk’s shoulder in a long, flowing cut. Iron River Sword Art. If the monk pushed back with any force at all, Iron River would take that force and move it somewhere else, off the causeway and into the marsh.

The monk didn’t push. He just stood there and let the edge land.

Bong!

The bell tolled. The cut didn’t go in. It came back up the blade into Shi Feng’s wrist and elbow, twice as hard as he’d sent it. The grey Sword jumped out of line, his right arm went numb to the shoulder, and he gave two steps back along the stones.

Huikong took one step forward.

At the gate end, the four monks had not moved. At every toll the eldest’s thumb went once along the black staff across his knees, keeping the count.

“Hey!” Hou Tieshou shouted from the bank. “He’s moving! The Situ said he didn’t move!”

“He doesn’t need to hit,” Jiao Lanyin said flatly. “He walks, and you go backwards.”

She was right. Every toll pushed Shi Feng back. Every step back put him nearer the bank, and the bank meant he’d lost.

Shi Feng shook the feeling back into his hand. Iron River needed the other man’s force, and the monk gave it none. Fine. Then he’d try weight.

The second exchange, he put the sword away.

He went in with nothing in his hands. Riverless Step took him across the gap in one breath, and he set his feet and drove a controlled palm into the monk’s ribs. He wanted to test the reflection without adding a sword art’s force to it.

Bong!

It went back through his palm and up his arm and into his shoulder, and his feet slid half a pace on the wet stones. He’d hit a bronze bell with his bare hand, and the bell had hit him back.

Huikong took another step.

“Benefactor,” Huikong said gently, “a bell doesn’t care how hard it’s struck. It only answers.”

Outside the array wall, the crowd in front of the eighth Mirror was shouting all at once.

“It’s the Vajra Bell! Every blow you give it, you get back twice!”

“That’s the forty-fifth on the Tianxing! Peak Deity Transformation! The alchemist’s only late!”

“He’ll break himself on that bell…”

“…”

On the causeway, Shi Feng drew the grey Sword again.

Iron River could not redirect a force that returned only after he struck. A palm strike had met the same response.

For the third exchange he tested the sharpness of the art instead of increasing raw strength. He came straight down the middle of the causeway, and the light on the grey Sword turned the colour of the setting sun. Sunset-Splitting Sword at Perfection. It opened a seam in anything it touched. Last night, it had opened a python king’s neck three paces long.

The red light reached the monk’s chest.

Bong!

The light didn’t open anything. It hit the gold and shattered into a spray of red sparks over the water. Then the whole stroke came back, and it came back into Shi Feng’s own chest.

The reflected force struck the flesh around two ribs hard enough to drive the breath from his chest. The golden bones held, but the deep bruising hurt at once. He flew backward five paces along the causeway and his heels skidded to a stop at the very edge of the last stone, with black marsh water a hand’s breadth behind them.

Shi Feng spat blood on the stones.

Behind him on the bank, he heard Yue Shaoan cry out, and Hou Tieshou swear.

“Benefactor,” Huikong said. He hadn’t moved his hands. “That’s enough. You’ve shown this humble monk you would bleed for him. Turn back now, and I’ll carry the lotus to your Ji Yuanhe myself.”

Shi Feng wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He didn’t answer. He was watching the monk’s chest.

After the third toll, something there had changed.

It was very small. The gold at the hollow of Huikong’s throat had dimmed for an instant, as metal dims while it cools. Then the monk breathed in, slow and deep through his nose, and the gold came back to full brightness.

Shi Feng recalled the first two exchanges. After each toll, Huikong had breathed in before advancing. The gold dimmed during that breath, not when the sword landed.

Every toll cost the bell one breath.

For the length of that breath, there was nothing to ring.

“Thank you, Master,” Shi Feng said, his voice hoarse but steady. “I believe you mean it. But Ji Yuanhe is waiting for me, and I’m going to take him that lotus. I haven’t asked you to stop the test.”

Huikong sighed and stood still.

Shi Feng straightened up. Each breath pulled painfully at the strained flesh around those ribs, but his bones were intact. He breathed slowly until he could keep the rhythm steady. He held the grey Sword low at his side and didn’t raise it.

One breath, Shi Feng thought. That’s all I’ll get.

He watched the gold at the monk’s throat, and waited for the bell to ring again.