Chapter 962 — Frost Lotus Sword

CHAPTER 962

Frost Lotus Sword

The Lotus Terrace stood out from the mountainside over a drop full of cloud.

The white stone floor was ninety paces across, with a knee-high rail. People packed the paths, outer hall roofs and Hearing Hall steps. Disciples sat on the walls over the cloud. The elders watched under an awning on the top step. At their row’s end, the Tianji scribe sat ready with his brush.

Qin Wuyan sat on a bench at the terrace’s edge with his hands in his sleeves.

Bai Ruoshuang stood in the middle of the floor. She drew her sword and held it upright before her face. The blade was long and thin, and frost was already forming along its edge.

“Bai Ruoshuang of the Serene Jade,” Bai Ruoshuang said. “Asks the guest for pointers.”

Shi Feng drew the grey Sword from his ring and returned the salute.

“Shi Feng,” Shi Feng said. “Please.”

“Three exchanges, to first blood,” Elder Jing Lanting said from the top step. “This elder will call it. Begin.”

Bai Ruoshuang moved.

She didn’t come straight at him. Her sword turned once in a circle in front of her, and a petal of white frost opened off the tip, as wide as a hand. Then another, and another. The Frost Lotus Sword threw them out in a fan, and they drifted toward him slowly, turning in the air.

Wherever a petal passed, the air behind it went white and stiff.

Shi Feng stepped to fold past the fan with Void-Crossing Step, to come out behind her left shoulder.

Nothing happened.

The step failed. He’d tried to fold the space ahead, but the petals had frozen it along with the air. Void-Crossing Step couldn’t bend it. Shi Feng was surprised, then steadied his sword. He’d have to fight through the petals.

He cut the first petal with the grey Sword. Cold ran up the blade into his wrist.

The second and third came at once. He blocked one and slid aside from the other on plain feet, with no art in it at all, and the fourth caught the edge of his sleeve and froze it stiff.

Bai Ruoshuang was already through the gap the petals had opened. Her sword came at his throat. He met it, steel on steel, and the force of it pushed him back ten paces across the white stone.

“First exchange,” Elder Jing Lanting said. “No blood.”

The terraces broke into noise.

“He couldn’t step! Did you see? He tried to step and nothing happened!”

“That’s the Frost Lotus Sword. Frozen space doesn’t fold. Every Shattering Void cultivator on the mountain knows that!”

“The 6 Mark’s on the back foot!”

Bai Ruoshuang didn’t wait for the noise to stop.

The second exchange began with a ring of petals. She threw them out around him in a wide circle, then a second circle inside the first. Each petal froze its own patch of space and hung there, and the frozen patches joined into a white wall that only stayed open on one side, the side toward the edge of the terrace.

She wasn’t trying to cut him. She was herding him.

He went round the first petals on foot and cut through the second ring where it was thinnest. Every cut sent more cold up his arm. Every step he took around the frozen patches took him one more step toward the rail. On the eighth step his heel touched it.

Behind him there was only cloud.

“He’s at the edge!”

“She’s pushed a 6 Mark to the edge of the Lotus Terrace!”

“Senior Sister Bai! Senior Sister Bai!”

Bai Ruoshuang thrust straight at his chest. He beat the blade down, turned it off his hip and stepped forward off the rail, back onto the terrace, and the two of them passed each other close enough to touch shoulders.

“Second exchange,” Elder Jing Lanting said. “No blood.”

Bai Ruoshuang turned in the middle of the floor, her expression stern. He’d escaped her trap twice. She wasn’t holding back now.

She lifted her sword, and space tore.

Rifts opened around him, three on his left and two on his right, late Shattering Void rifts, black inside and full of white. Frost poured out of them. Petals came with it, not drifting now but flying, straight out of the rifts at his body from five sides at once.

He cut two. A third came out of the rift behind his left shoulder, where he couldn’t see it.

It opened his chest from the collarbone to the ribs.

Blood came out of the cut and froze before it reached his belt.

“Blood!”

“That’s blood! That’s first blood!”

“Why isn’t she calling it?”

On the top step, Elder Jing Lanting sat with her hands folded and said nothing.

“Jing Lanting, call first blood,” Ye Wanqiu said sharply beside her.

“The guest is still standing,” Elder Jing Lanting said coolly. “The exchange isn’t finished.”

Shi Feng heard it. He didn’t look up at the step. There was no time.

The rifts were still open. More petals were coming. He couldn’t fold the frozen space around him, so he stopped trying to fold it.

He put the Snowfold Screen in front of it instead.

The screen didn’t touch the frozen space. It opened one fold of clear space in front of his body, between him and the frost, a thin sheet only a hand’s breadth deep. The next petal came out of the rift and hit the screen, and went into the fold, and didn’t come out the other side.

It stuck there, turning, a hand’s breadth from his chest.

Another petal hit it. Then three more.

At Entry, the screen had held one breath against Qin Wuyan’s finger. Now petal after petal lodged in it without breaking the fold. Shi Feng felt his control settle. He could keep the space steady while the frost struck it.

The Snowfold Screen had reached Minor Success.

But the fold was filling. Every petal it caught packed more frost into it, and a full fold would break and drop all that cold on him at once.

The frost had to go somewhere. The only place close enough to take it was him.

Shi Feng put his left hand into the fold and devoured.

The frost qi came up into his palm in a rush. His All-Devouring Physique pulled it in and down, and the cold went into him faster than his sea of qi could warm it. His fingers went white. His wrist went white, then his elbow, then his whole arm to the shoulder, frozen hard, with frost standing on the skin.

The fold emptied. The petals in it were gone.

“He’s eating it!”

“His arm! Look at his arm, it’s white all the way up!”

“What kind of body takes frost like that?”

“…”

Across the terrace, Bai Ruoshuang stood very still. She looked at the empty fold in front of his chest, and then at his frozen arm, and then at his face.

Then she stepped back, raised her sword over her head in both hands, and the air around the whole Lotus Terrace began to turn white.

“Frost Lotus Burial,” Bai Ruoshuang said.