Chapter 826 — Void-Splitting Axe

CHAPTER 826

Void-Splitting Axe

“Helian Ba,” the big man said. “Northern Helian. I hunt for the Third Prince.”

“Shi Feng,” Shi Feng said from the bottom of the shell. “I hunt for his sister. I’d like that stone.”

“So would I,” Helian Ba said. “And I got here first.”

“You found it,” Shi Feng said. “You haven’t carried it out. That’s a different law.”

Helian Ba laughed, short and loud. He had a windburnt face and a short beard, and he wasn’t angry. A cheerful man was harder to move.

“Then come up and argue,” Helian Ba said, and swung his axe down at the shell.

It wasn’t aimed at Shi Feng. It was aimed at the plate around the stone. The axe head didn’t strike the shell. It cut the space just above it, and a black line opened in the air, edged with white, as long as a man. That was the Void-Splitting Axe. Whatever a rift crossed, it parted.

But the rift slowed as it came near the stone, as if it were cutting through mud. It shaved a thin curl off the plate before it closed.

Helian Ba frowned and raised the axe again.

Shi Feng climbed.

The plates were as broad as doors, and the tortoise shook under them. He went up three plates in three steps. On the fourth, Helian Ba swung at him.

The rift came sideways, waist-high.

Shi Feng didn’t try to block it. Iron River turned force, and a rift wasn’t force. It was a cut in the world, and it would cut the grey Sword in two. He went off the side of the shell instead. Riverless Step put him on the lake ten paces out. The black line passed where his waist had been.

It went on past the shell, across the water, and hit the shore.

The black stone of the beach split open for thirty paces. Up on the slope, Yue Shaoan shrieked and threw himself flat.

“Yue Shaoan!” Shi Feng called.

“I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m lying down! I’ll stay lying down!” Yue Shaoan shouted back.

Helian Ba was already back at the stone, swinging. Two more curls of shell came off around it. The stone shifted in its socket.

Helian Ba was cutting it loose. Three more swings, maybe four. If he carried it out of the Crater, it was his by law, and Shi Feng would face a Shattering Void tribulation without it.

The stone, Shi Feng thought. Not the man.

He came back at a run.

This time he went round the curve of the plates, low, with the ridges between him and the axe. When Helian Ba swung, the rift took the top off a ridge. Shi Feng came up through the falling chips with the grey Sword aimed at the big man’s wrist.

Helian Ba caught the sword on the haft.

That much, Iron River could use. The haft was wood and iron and a strong man’s arms. Shi Feng let the sword slide down it, turned the force aside, and opened a red line across the back of Helian Ba’s hand.

“Ha!” Helian Ba barked. He looked pleased.

Then he swung backhand, short, and the rift opened in front of Shi Feng’s chest.

Shi Feng threw himself back. The edge missed his ribs by a finger, but the torn air pulled after it and threw him off the shell. He hit the lake on his back. Only Riverless Step kept him up.

He came up thirty paces away, breathing hard on the right side.

Pushed back every exchange, Shi Feng thought. Not because the man hit harder. Because the axe wasn’t a blade. Iron River turned a blade. Sunset-Splitting cut what it touched. Falling Star needed height and a still target. The axe took all three answers away.

And he couldn’t end it with a kill. Kill a hunter, and the banner was struck from the tally, and the killer answered to Long law. Helian Ba knew it. His swings came to drive Shi Feng off, not to finish him. Shi Feng’s sword had gone to the wrist, not the throat. Both wanted the stone.

“You hit harder than late Deity Transformation,” Helian Ba called down from the shell. He was wrapping fur round his hand. “Much harder. But a realm is a realm, cook. Go home.”

He turned back to the stone and raised the axe.

The tortoise lifted its head.

Its grey-green neck came up out of the lake, streaming, until its head was higher than its own shell. The shell tilted. Helian Ba spread his feet on the ridges and rode it.

Shi Feng was already running.

He went up the tortoise’s neck on Riverless Step, up the streaming scales to its skull. The beast didn’t notice. Below him the shell lay open, with the stone in its socket and the big man beside it, axe raised.

Height, Shi Feng thought. Finally.

He jumped.

The Falling Star Sword came down from above the head like a dropped stone. At Entry it had one clean drop in it. This time, with peak Deity Transformation behind it and twenty feet of air underneath, it was clean.

Helian Ba looked up and got the haft over his head just in time.

Bang!

The sword hit the haft. Helian Ba’s knees bent. The plate under his boots cracked in a star, and the sword drove him down the curve of the shell, sliding and cursing, three plates, four, until he caught a ridge and stopped.

The force went on through the plate into the socket. The Void-Anchor Stone, already cut half loose, jumped out of the shell.

Shi Feng caught it in his left hand.

It was cold, and heavier than it looked. The instant his fingers closed on it, the air went still. The pull of the tortoise’s folds stopped.

Below him, Helian Ba got to his feet and hefted the axe in both hands.

“Put it down, cook,” Helian Ba said. He wasn’t laughing any more.