Chapter 866 — Three Seams

CHAPTER 866

Three Seams

The first lotus opened at Shi Feng’s back, the second at his left hip, the third above his head.

Each one came out of a rift. Baili Xuan stood two tiers away, feeding fire into the seams in front of him, and every seam had a second mouth somewhere near Shi Feng. The petals didn’t have to cross the distance. They just arrived.

The crowd gasped.

“Rifts! He’s throwing it through rifts!”

“That’s real Shattering Void! Mid stage!”

“From three sides at once? How do you block that?”

The answer was that you didn’t. Shi Feng moved.

Riverless Step was the steadiest movement art he owned, and at Perfection it didn’t need to be told where to go. He read where the three lotuses pressed closest and where their force left room. His feet found that gap and slid through it, sideways and down a step, through a gap that hadn’t been there a breath ago.

The petals closed on air. Behind him, three red balls of sealed space snapped shut on nothing and burned out against the stone.

Baili Xuan opened three more seams.

Shi Feng slipped two of them. Riverless Step took him down to the third tier and back up to the fourth, left along the step’s edge, then right. The folds of space pressed at him, and he slid through the creases between them.

The third lotus caught him squarely in the chest.

There was no gap that time. Baili Xuan had seen the pattern and put the third seam exactly where the low ground would be. The petals sealed around Shi Feng, and the heat hit him all at once.

There was no time to beat it into rhythm. So he didn’t try.

He opened his mouth and let the All-Devouring Physique eat it.

The Physique took in fire the way it took in the qi of a waste pill. It didn’t care what shape the qi came in. It cared only that it was there. The red petals bent inward and poured into him, into his mouth, his chest, his burnt arms. The whole lotus went down in one swallow.

He couldn’t contain the heat cleanly. He coughed, and fire came out.

A gout of red flame burst from his mouth and splashed across the step. He staggered, caught himself on one knee, and coughed again. Smoke came out of his nose. His insides felt like he’d swallowed a hot iron.

On the street, people were shouting over each other.

“He ate it!”

“He ate the Red Lotus?”

“What kind of body is that?”

“He’s spitting fire! He’s spitting Baili Xuan’s own fire!”

Baili Xuan stared at him from the sixth tier. For a moment he didn’t move at all.

“What are you?” Baili Xuan asked.

“Hungry, apparently,” Shi Feng said hoarsely, and wiped his mouth with his wrist. “Don’t do that again. It tastes terrible.”

He stood up. The water clock above the doors showed less than half an hour left.

Baili Xuan tightened his jaw and stopped speaking.

He opened six seams at once, two on each side of Shi Feng and two above, and filled every one with red.

Shi Feng watched the seam directly over his head. It was the biggest one, and Baili Xuan was holding its other mouth open right in front of his own chest, so he could pour the most fire through it.

That meant the seam was a door. And a door went both ways.

Shi Feng drew the grey sword from his ring.

Falling Star Sword was a Deity Transformation-grade art, and he’d only had it at Entry for a few weeks. At Entry it had one stroke. The blade went straight down, with the whole weight of a falling star behind it, and nothing else. It couldn’t turn. It couldn’t be aimed sideways. It could only drop.

He lifted the grey sword above the upper rift mouth and let it drop.

The grey blade fell into that seam and came down out of its other mouth, from above, in front of Baili Xuan’s chest.

Baili Xuan saw it at the last instant. He crossed both fists over his head to guard. The cut fell on his crossed forearms.

Boom!

The sound shook the shutters on the street. Baili Xuan’s guard split open. Both his arms flew apart, his red sleeves tore from wrist to shoulder, and blood sprayed across the sixth tier. He staggered back up onto the seventh tier and almost fell.

The six seams around Shi Feng collapsed, and their lotuses died before they opened.

Shi Feng paid for it at once. Falling Star Sword didn’t care whose body it fell through. The force of the drop came back down the blade, down his arm, and into his side. Something in his ribs went crack, loud enough to hear.

He bent over and breathed through his teeth for a moment.

“Through his own rift…”

“He cut him through his own rift!”

“Early Shattering Void! He’s early! And Baili Xuan’s bleeding!”

“Luck! A blind cat running into a dead mouse!” an Azure Sun disciple shouted.

“…Is the princess’s man hurt too?”

He was. Shi Feng straightened up anyway. One rib was cracked, maybe two. His forearms were blistered to the elbows. His throat was raw from the fire he’d swallowed.

But his hands were fine, and the doors were five tiers away.

On the seventh tier, Baili Xuan wiped the blood off his forearms. He looked at the water clock. Then he looked at Shi Feng, and something in his proud face hardened into a decision.

He brought both bleeding hands together in front of his chest and began to gather every flame he had left into one place. The air around him turned from red to white.

“Master Shi!” Ji Yuanhe cried from below.

The petals of the last lotus began to open, and this one was the size of a house.