Chapter 844 — Heaven’s Bystanders

CHAPTER 844

Heaven’s Bystanders

Shi Feng walked toward the south edge of the ring.

He walked slowly, with the grey Sword low and his bleeding arm at his side. Ten paces from the edge, he stopped. The three grey men in front of him looked at each other.

“He’s coming to us?” the chain man said.

“He’s baiting you,” the thin man said behind them. “Take the bait anyway. Twenty breaths.”

Shi Feng covered the remaining distance to the edge, keeping the grey Sword low. Now their hands could reach him without their feet crossing the rods.

The chain man came first. He didn’t step into the ring. He leaned over its edge and lunged with his knife at full reach, his other hand open to grab Shi Feng’s collar. The man on his right did the same from the other side, reaching for Shi Feng’s burned wrist.

Shi Feng let them both reach him.

Both hands went into his sleeves, the knife hand into the left and the grabbing hand into the right. The Quiet Sleeve Art closed over them. To the two grey men it felt as if they’d caught nothing but cloth.

Above the ridge, the fourth sky opened.

It didn’t come down as bolts. It came down as a net. Thousands of thin violet threads spread out of the cloud at once, each thread humming, each one crossing a hundred others. It was Void Lightning, the kind that cut space as well as flesh, and it fell slowly over the whole ring.

Shi Feng stepped backward into the centre of the ring.

The two grey men came with him. Their hands were still inside his sleeves, and his grip, which they couldn’t feel, was on their wrists. They were pulled off their feet across the herb-rod line before they understood what was happening.

“Let go!” the chain man shouted. “Let go of—”

The net reached them.

Heaven hated anyone who interfered with a tribulation. Whoever stood under one when it fell was judged as if the tribulation were his own. The net didn’t fall on one man. It split itself three ways, and a third of the fourth sky came down on each of them.

The two grey men had come to the ridge to fight a man. They hadn’t come ready for heaven.

The violet threads cut through their protective qi before either man could strengthen it. The chain man screamed once. The other man didn’t have time to scream. Their robes caught fire, then their hair, and then the threads crossed over them again and again until there was nothing left to cross.

Shi Feng’s third came down on him, and it was still a third of a Shattering Void tribulation.

He felt the threads slice into his shoulders and his back. Where they touched him, space itself seemed to pull apart for a moment, and then his golden bones held it together. His robe burst into flame. The burned skin on his forearm blistered again.

He stood in the smoke and let it burn.

On the slope, the people who’d fled had stopped at the treeline and turned back to look.

“He pulled them in!”

“He dragged two Shattering Void cultivators into his own tribulation!”

“Is that even allowed?”

“Heaven doesn’t care what’s allowed!”

“Heaven judges whoever stands under it,” an old cultivator said slowly, staring at the smoke. “I’ve heard that all my life. I never thought I’d see it.”

“…”

When the net thinned, two black shapes lay on the rock in the middle of the ring. Neither of them moved.

Shi Feng walked out of the smoke toward the south edge with his robe still burning on his shoulders. He didn’t put the fire out. He didn’t have the qi to spare for it.

The third grey man had stepped back from the ring the moment his partners were pulled in. He was mid Shattering Void, and he was quick. He made a short cut in the air with two fingers, and a rift opened beside him, a black slit as tall as a man.

Another rift opened inside the ring, two paces behind Shi Feng’s back.

It was the same rift, with two mouths. The grey man’s body stayed safely outside the ring while his arm and his blade came through the inside mouth, straight at Shi Feng’s spine.

Shi Feng didn’t turn round. He had felt the rift open through the soles of his feet, the same crease in space he had studied in the third sky.

He swung the grey Sword backward.

The blade turned the colour of a setting sun. Sunset-Splitting Sword had reached Perfection during the contest, and at Perfection the red light didn’t only cut what it touched. It cut whatever was holding that thing up. The stroke went across the rift mouth, and the rift closed along the line of the light like a wound being sewn shut.

The grey man was halfway through it.

His arm and his shoulder fell onto the rock inside the ring, still holding the blade. Outside the ring, the rest of him staggered once and collapsed.

The slope went silent.

“That was mid Shattering Void,” someone said hoarsely.

“And he’s only at peak Deity Transformation.”

“A whole great realm…”

“That’s three dead.”

At the north edge, the guard captain was still holding his two men off. His left sleeve was soaked with blood, and one of the grey men was bleeding from the thigh. Neither side had given an inch. Ji Yuanhe stood behind the captain’s back, counting every exchange aloud.

The thin man hadn’t moved.

He stood at the south edge and looked down at the three bodies. Above his veil, nothing showed at all. Then he looked at Shi Feng, burning and bleeding in front of him.

“You’re very expensive, Master Shi,” the thin man said mildly. “My people say so too.”

“They’re right,” Shi Feng said. “You’ve lost three men. Call the other two away from Master Ji.”

The thin man raised his bare right hand. The grey tint around his fingers deepened until it was nearly black.

He closed his hand.

All the sound around Shi Feng’s head stopped. The smoke stopped moving. The air in his mouth went dead and still, and when he tried to breathe in, there was nothing there to breathe.