Chapter 993 — Thunder Arithmetic

CHAPTER 993

Thunder Arithmetic

At dawn the lake was empty except for two men and a great deal of black ice.

Shi Feng walked out to the centre of the ring with the grey Sword in his hand and his breath steaming. Qin Wuyan stood on the south shore with his hands in his sleeves. A few fishermen had come down to their huts to check their lines, saw who was on the ice, and stayed to watch from the doorways.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said, raising his voice to carry across the ice. “I’m going to think out loud. You don’t have to answer.”

Qin Wuyan said nothing, which was the same as agreeing.

“His Highness fights with thunder in his fists,” Shi Feng said. “I saw it in Tianjing, with Deacon Lei’s men. Thunder Abyss arts hit faster than anything I’ve fought, and they don’t stop at the skin. They go into the meridians.”

He walked a few paces, thinking.

“First, the Quiet Sleeve Art,” Shi Feng said. “It hides whatever the sleeve holds. But it can’t hold thunder. In Tianjing a thunder chain bit my arm right through the cloth. Hiding it doesn’t stop it hurting.”

He tapped his left sleeve.

“Second, Thousand Forge Flame,” Shi Feng said. “It burns whatever can burn. Thunder isn’t fuel. If I throw fire at it, it goes straight through the fire and comes out hotter.”

He stepped on the ice and slid a little. The black surface was smooth and very hard.

“Third, Riverless Step,” Shi Feng said. “It walks on anything that moves, and it slides off any blow I see coming. But a Thunder Abyss fist at peak Shattering Void moves faster than my eyes. If I don’t see it, I can’t slide off it.”

He stopped in the middle of the ring.

“So I can’t hide from the fist, burn it, or slide off it,” Shi Feng said. “That leaves one answer. I have to not be where it lands.”

He drew a breath and folded the space under his left foot against a patch of ice twenty paces ahead.

Void-Crossing Step didn’t cross the ground at all. That was the whole point of it. It folded the place he stood against the place he wanted, and let his foot fall through from one to the other. There was no line of travel. A fist that followed a man along the ground had nothing to follow.

He landed twenty paces away and deliberately tested his footing. The pause cost half a breath. Shi Feng frowned. He’d already removed it in the courtyard; on this unfamiliar ice, he’d started checking again.

He frowned and did it again. This time the foot came down at once, the way Xie Yuejian had told him. The fold held. He did it a third time, and a fourth, and then he folded back to the centre, and his breath came out white and hard.

“Too slow,” Shi Feng said to himself. “If I fold after the fist starts, I’m too slow. I have to fold before it lands, while it’s still coming, and land where it isn’t going.”

On the south shore, Qin Wuyan’s eyelids lowered slightly. It might have been agreement.

“…Mm,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng went on working until the sun was well up. He folded short and long, forward and back, and once straight up, which dropped him onto the ice on his back and made two of the fishermen laugh out loud before they remembered who he was.

When he finally stopped and looked toward the shore, there was a third watcher.

A young man in white mourning stood alone by the reeds at the east end of the lake. He had a long, narrow blade on his back. Linghu Que. He’d been standing there long enough that the frost had settled on his shoulders.

Shi Feng raised a hand.

Linghu Que didn’t raise his. He looked at the ice for a moment longer, then turned and walked back toward the city without a word.

“That one will go far,” one of the fishermen said, watching him go. “Or die young. You can see it in his back.”

Nobody answered him.

Xie Yuejian came to the tower alone that night.

She came in through the back courtyard gate just after the second watch, without a servant and without the prince. Shi Feng was sitting on the step with a bowl of noodles. She didn’t sit down. She stood in the middle of the frost with her sword on her back and looked at him.

“You were on the lake this morning,” Xie Yuejian said.

“I was,” Shi Feng said.

“Zhenlei hasn’t been beaten by anyone of his own generation,” Xie Yuejian said. “Not once. Not in the Valley, not in the capital, not by me.”

“I’ve heard,” Shi Feng said.

“Then hear the rest,” Xie Yuejian said coldly. “If you hold back on that ice, he’ll know. He can feel a held fist across a hall. He’ll take it as an insult, and so will I. A sword that’s only half drawn cuts nobody.”

Shi Feng put down his chopsticks.

Shi Feng understood what worried both women. Long Caili wanted her brother safe. Xie Yuejian wanted him respected as a fighter. Shi Feng would have to fight seriously and control the ending. First, he had to find a way to win.

“I’ll fight him seriously,” Shi Feng said, meeting Xie Yuejian’s eyes. “He’s stronger than anyone else I’ve faced in this realm. I won’t insult either of you by pretending otherwise.”

Xie Yuejian studied his face in the light from the doorway, for longer than was polite.

“Good,” Xie Yuejian said.

She turned and left by the same gate. Her steps on the frost made no sound at all.

Shi Feng picked up his bowl again. The noodles had gone cold.

Two days.