Chapter 865 — Red Lotus Furnace Fist

CHAPTER 865

Red Lotus Furnace Fist

Baili Xuan punched from three steps away.

His fist never touched anything. It stopped in the air between them, and the red glow on his knuckles opened into layers of fire. Petals of fire spread out from it, a dozen, then fifty, then too many to count. They flew at Shi Feng in a spiral and closed around him from every side.

Red Lotus Furnace Fist. It was the Azure Sun’s pride, and everyone on the street knew its name.

Shi Feng didn’t wait to find out what it did. He folded the space beside him and stepped.

Void-Crossing Step was a Shattering Void-grade movement art. It brought two places together along a crease in space, letting a man step from one to the other. At Entry, Shi Feng could cross about ten paces, if the space let him.

This space didn’t let him.

His foot came down on the crease and hit a wall. The fold wouldn’t close. The petals had sealed a pocket of space around him, a ball about two paces wide, and nothing inside it could fold its way out.

Then the petals pressed in, and the heat began.

It came all at once, from every direction. The air in the ball turned red and thick. Shi Feng’s sleeves began to smoke. The stone step under his feet glowed through his soles.

Down on the street, people shouted.

“He’s inside it!”

“That’s the Red Lotus! It’s sealed!”

“He’ll be cooked! Like a moth that’s flown into a lamp!”

On the third tier, Baili Xuan held his fist out steady. His face was calm.

“The Red Lotus is a furnace,” Baili Xuan said. “My master built it so the target can’t step away. It closes, and it cooks. Yield now, and I’ll open it.”

Shi Feng didn’t answer right away. He was looking at the walls.

A furnace, he thought. Fine. I know furnaces.

The heat inside the lotus wasn’t steady. It pulsed. Every petal pushed in on its own beat, and the beats didn’t match. That was what made it so cruel. A man couldn’t brace against heat that came from fifty places at fifty different times.

In his own cauldron, Shi Feng never let fire do that.

He opened his palms at his sides and lit the Thousand Forge Flame Art. A pale gold fire came up around his hands. Then he struck it, once, like a smith bringing down a hammer.

Second Anvil Fire.

At Major Success, the Second Anvil Fire didn’t fight another fire. It beat it into time. His flame hit the lotus walls, and the walls rang. He struck again, and again, slow and even. The fifty mismatched beats of the petals started to fall into his beat, one by one, the way the steam in his cauldron always did in the end.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Between each strike, for half a breath, the heat dropped.

Shi Feng stood in that half-breath. He moved his feet only in the gaps and kept his body still when the heat came in. It was exactly like working a furnace from the inside.

The price was his arms. His forearms were outside the gaps. They carried his flame against the walls, exposed to the heat at every strike. The skin from his wrists to his elbows went red, then white, then rose in blisters that broke and wept.

He didn’t stop.

On the twelfth strike, the beat was his. He stepped forward on it, and the lotus wall in front of him split along the rhythm and fell open.

Shi Feng walked out onto the third tier, smoking.

The street went silent.

“He walked out.”

“Out of the Red Lotus? On his feet?”

“His arms, look at his arms!”

“…”

Baili Xuan’s calm face changed for the first time. He looked at the burst petals fading on the steps, then at Shi Feng’s ruined forearms.

“You stood inside my lotus,” Baili Xuan said.

“I’ve stood inside hotter furnaces,” Shi Feng said. “They were mine, though. I knew where the beat was. It took me a moment to find yours.”

He flexed his fingers. They still worked. That was all he cared about. The arms would heal. The hands had to last three days.

Baili Xuan’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t waste words. He punched again, left and right, two lotuses at once.

This time Shi Feng didn’t try to step out. He let them close, struck the Second Anvil Fire on the first beat, and walked through the first lotus on the sixth strike instead of the twelfth. The second lotus caught him at the edge of the fourth tier. He was through it by the fifth strike.

His forearms blistered again on top of the old blisters. Ji Yuanhe made a sound at the foot of the steps, and the guard captain’s hand stayed firm on his shoulder.

“He’s still climbing!” someone on the walls shouted.

Shi Feng was on the fourth tier now. Baili Xuan had given ground. He stood on the sixth, two steps above, and he was breathing harder.

“You learn fast,” Baili Xuan said.

“My arms won’t take many more of those,” Shi Feng said, holding one up. “So I’m watching what you do.”

Baili Xuan lowered his fists.

He didn’t punch again. Instead he lifted his right hand, opened it, and drew a line in the air with two fingers. The air split along the line, and a black seam appeared in front of him, a hand’s length long. Its edges were rimmed with red.

He drew another seam to his left, and a third one high to his right.

Then he looked down at Shi Feng.

“Mid Shattering Void,” Baili Xuan said. “One lotus, you can beat into time. Let’s see what you do with three.”

Red petals began to spill out of the seams. They didn’t come out on Baili Xuan’s side.

They came out behind Shi Feng.