Chapter 919 — Helian Ba

CHAPTER 919

Helian Ba

At dawn the whole Hulan clan stood in the snow before the gate of Black Pine Fort, and their patriarch stood in front of them with his chest bare to the cold.

Hulan Yuanlie had walked down from his hall on his own feet, and he hadn’t looked this strong in forty years. He also looked ashamed.

“Master Shi,” Hulan Yuanlie said, and bowed with both fists together. “You came to my house and saved my life. In return, my house let bandits into your court. That’s my shame, not yours.”

He held out a jade box. Inside were stone notes.

“The fee, one million eight hundred thousand,” Hulan Yuanlie said. “And six hundred thousand for the damage to your shoulder and your night’s sleep. If Master Shi refuses it, this old man will have to go and stand on the gate tower until he accepts.”

“I accept,” Shi Feng said, taking the box with his good hand. “You’ve settled this openly. I won’t make your people watch you stand out in the cold.”

Hulan Yuanlie laughed, a short, hard laugh. Then he stopped laughing and turned around.

“Chu Ze,” Hulan Yuanlie said.

Chu Ze stepped out of the crowd. His fox-fur coat was gone, and he wore plain grey wool. He wasn’t smiling.

“You took grey silver for Master Shi’s road,” Hulan Yuanlie said, loud enough for every Hulan on the slope to hear. “You sold a guest’s dates before he was a guest. From today, you’re no longer a Hulan. Leave the pine country by noon.”

The crowd murmured, but nobody spoke for him.

Chu Ze bowed to the patriarch, very low. Then he turned and bowed to Shi Feng, just as low, and walked away down the hill without looking back.

Hulan Kui stood at the patriarch’s side the whole time, with his clean hands folded. His face showed nothing at all.

“What about the bandits?” a Hulan junior called out from the crowd. “What do we tell the town?”

“We tell them bandits came for Hulan silver,” Hulan Yuanlie said heavily. “Because that’s what they were. Family ugliness shouldn’t be shown outside the gate.”

Shi Feng didn’t argue. The three dead men in the guest court had worn grey bands on their sleeves, and one of them had called the man in black “Deacon”. He knew whose bandits they were. The Hulan knew it too, by now. But if the Hulan said “Heretic Sect” out loud in the pine country, the pine country would want to know why the Heretic Sect had been inside their fort. Nobody here wanted to answer that.

He left Black Pine Fort by the east road an hour later, on foot, with Qin Wuyan three paces behind him. His left shoulder ached all the way down to the bone. The cold from the Ash-Bone Palm hadn’t left it. It had settled in.

By afternoon the road had run out of the pines onto open, frozen steppe, and a man was sitting on a boulder with an axe across his knees.

He was a big northerner with his hair tied back in a leather cord, and he had a sheepskin coat thrown off one shoulder even in this wind. The axe was nearly as long as he was tall.

“You ate?” Helian Ba asked.

“Twice,” Shi Feng said, stopping in front of the boulder. “Are you going to ask me if I’m ready to lose?”

“Not this time,” Helian Ba said, and grinned, and jumped down off the boulder. “This time I’ve come as a messenger. My elder cousin wants to see you.”

“Which cousin?” Shi Feng asked.

“Helian Zhan,” Helian Ba said. “The heir. Twelfth on the Tianxing, late Shattering Void.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, east. “He wants the cut Ba lost.”

“Is his axe like yours?” Shi Feng asked.

“Mine splits space,” Helian Ba said. “His splits it and keeps it split. The Glacier-Splitting Axe freezes every rift it cuts, so the cut stays open. By the end of a fight with Zhan, there’s more frozen void on the ground than there is ground.” He scratched his jaw. “I’ve never seen anyone walk out of it standing.”

“And the Third Prince?” Shi Feng asked.

Helian Ba’s grin went away.

“The Helian ride with the Third Prince at the hunts,” Helian Ba said bluntly. “Everyone knows it. My uncle sits at his banner. But a duel is Zhan’s, not the prince’s. Zhan doesn’t fight for anyone’s banner. If the prince wanted you dead, he wouldn’t send a Helian to do it. We’re too loud.”

That night they camped behind a ridge of stone with a fire of dry steppe brush. Shi Feng sat close to it with his robe off his left shoulder. The skin over the bone had gone grey, and the grey had spread a finger’s width since morning.

“Bone-rot,” Helian Ba said, leaning over to look, and made a face. “That’s an ugly one. What are you going to do about it?”

Shi Feng took a pill out of his ring. It was black, cracked down one side and scorched on the bottom, and it smelled of burnt pine.

“Blazing Marrow,” Shi Feng said. “From the same bad batch as the last one.”

Helian Ba stared at it.

“That’s a waste pill,” Helian Ba said. “Even I know a waste pill when I see one. You’re going to eat that?”

Shi Feng ate it.

“He ate it,” Helian Ba said to Qin Wuyan, horrified. “Senior, he actually ate it!”

“…” Qin Wuyan watched the fire.

Any other body would have thrown it back up like poison. Shi Feng’s took it down whole. The fire of the herbs came out of the scorched pill all at once and went straight to his shoulder, and met the cold in the bone. For an hour the two of them fought inside him. Sweat poured off his face and steamed in the wind. Shi Feng kept his eyes shut and guided the heat toward the cold lodged in his shoulder. It hurt, but he could feel the grey patch beginning to recede.

Near midnight the cold broke. The grey went out of his shoulder, and the bone stopped aching.

He opened his eyes. Helian Ba was still sitting across the fire, staring at him with his mouth open.

“In the north,” Helian Ba said slowly, “we’d call a man who eats burnt pills crazy.”

“In the south too,” Shi Feng said, and pulled his robe back over his shoulder. “How far is it to your cousin?”

“Two days,” Helian Ba said. “Iron Glacier Hold. He’s already sweeping the snow off the lake.”