Chapter 944 — The Spearhead

CHAPTER 944

The Spearhead

The spear left his shoulder, and the howl came with it.

Shi Feng went back three paces across the packed snow. Blood ran warm down his left arm and dripped off his fingers. Around the torches, two hundred Zhangsun clansmen were on their feet and roaring their heir’s name.

“Lie! Lie! Lie!”

Zhangsun Lie didn’t press. He stood in the middle of the yard with the long spear held low, its red tassel steaming in the cold. He was laughing.

“Master Shi!” Zhangsun Lie called, grinning. “You’re the first man who’s stepped through space at me and come out in the wrong place! Does it hurt?”

“It hurts,” Shi Feng said, pressing his right palm to the wound. “Your spear is very loud.”

“That’s the whole point!” Zhangsun Lie shouted, and came again.

The howl had twice disrupted his spatial step and exposed him to the spear.

Shi Feng kept his feet on the ground. The sleeve had shown him when the howl weakened; now he would try to catch the qi itself.

The first thrust came at his chest with the howl riding ahead of it. The air shook, and the snow on the ground jumped. Shi Feng swept his right sleeve across his body, and the Quiet Sleeve Art opened in the cloth.

At Major Success, Quiet Sleeve Art could absorb a dagger’s force. It caught the howl’s qi too. The cloth jerked once, then hung still.

The yard went quiet with it. Nobody there had ever heard the Wolf-Howl Spear stop howling.

Zhangsun Lie’s grin flickered. He drew the spear back and thrust again, faster, at the belly. The second howl went into the left sleeve, the third into the right. Each time, the space around Shi Feng shook a little less. By the fourth thrust the air in front of him had stopped shaking at all.

“He’s swallowing the howl!” a clansman shouted.

“With his sleeves? That’s an alchemist’s robe!”

“The Young Lord’s spear has never gone quiet!”

Zhangsun Lie stopped laughing and planted his back foot, releasing late Shattering Void pressure. The spear came forward with everything behind the point, no howl this time, only weight and speed.

Shi Feng brought the grey Sword up and met the shaft with the flat of the blade.

Iron River Sword Art didn’t block a force. It took the force and moved it somewhere else. The grey Sword ran along the shaft toward the point, and the whole thrust bent away from his chest, past his left side and into empty air. Zhangsun Lie’s own weight carried him half a step further than he’d meant to go.

Half a step was enough. The spearhead was beside Shi Feng’s hip, with the shaft stretched out behind it and nothing guarding it.

He turned his wrist, and the Sunset-Splitting Sword came down.

The stroke threw red light across the yard and went through the spear just below the head.

Clang!

The steel head spun away and buried itself in the woodpile by the gate. Zhangsun Lie stood holding a bare shaft with a clean, flat end.

Nobody spoke.

Then Zhangsun Lie looked at the shaft, threw back his head and laughed so loudly that the horses in the stable began to kick.

“I yield! I yield!” Zhangsun Lie roared, and tossed the shaft into the snow. “Father, did you see that? He cut my spear in half!”

Under the eaves, Zhangsun Gang sat wrapped in three furs, holding his wine jar. His meridians had been frozen that morning. Now he beamed with wine and pride.

“I saw,” Zhangsun Gang said, and drank from the jar. “Serves you right. You stabbed the man who saved your father.”

“He let me!” Zhangsun Lie protested.

“I didn’t let you,” Shi Feng said, sheathing the grey Sword. “You were faster than I expected.”

The crowd broke into noise.

“Mid Shattering Void! He’s only mid Shattering Void!”

“And the Young Lord is seventeenth on the Tianxing! Late Shattering Void!”

“A whole stage below him, and he shut the Wolf-Howl’s mouth!”

“No wonder the Helian heir lost. I thought the Tianji issue was bragging.”

“…”

Qin Wuyan stepped over the line he’d pressed into the snow. He looked at the shoulder, then at the spearhead in the woodpile.

“The yard was fair,” Qin Wuyan said, folding his hands into his sleeves. “This one has nothing to add.”

Master Pan Shouren hurried down the steps with a jar of salve and his sleeves already rolled up. The clan’s own 5 Mark had failed the patriarch three times, and he’d been very quiet all day. He knelt and cleaned the wound with careful hands.

“It went clean through under the collarbone,” Pan Shouren said, peering at it. “But it missed the bone, Master Shi.”

“Then the outside will close by morning,” Shi Feng said. “A thin layer is enough. Save the rest for someone who needs it.”

Pan Shouren laughed nervously and used less.

Zhangsun Lie came over with two cups and a jar, dropped cross-legged into the snow beside them and poured.

“By northern custom, the clan measured the man it owes,” Zhangsun Lie said, and pushed a cup into Shi Feng’s good hand. “Now we know. The debt’s bigger than we thought! Drink!”

Shi Feng drank. The strong wine burned going down.

“Bai Ruoshuang will hear about this before you’re back up the mountain,” Zhangsun Lie said, laughing. “She’s tenth. I’ve lost to her twice, and both times she just ran faster than my howl. She’ll want to know how a man at mid Shattering Void stood still and beat it.”

“Tell her I used my sleeves,” Shi Feng said.

“She won’t believe it,” Zhangsun Lie said.

“Your clan didn’t either,” Shi Feng said, and held out his cup.

Zhangsun Lie roared with laughter and filled it again.

By midnight, three herb traders in the outer court heard everything from the stable hands. They left for Lianxia at dawn. The Serene Jade would hear soon.