Chapter 995 — The Thunder Prison

CHAPTER 995

The Thunder Prison

“Nine Abyss Thunder Prison,” Long Zhenlei said.

The nine pillars rose twice a man’s height. Lightning bars leapt between them and closed in a dome. The violet cage around Shi Feng was ten paces across, and already shrinking.

The cage was shrinking. Every time the prince breathed out, the pillars slid a foot closer across the ice.

“It’s the Valley’s prison art!”

“It closes until there’s nothing left inside!”

“Somebody stop it!”

“Nobody’s stopping anything! Look at the guardians!”

On both shores, the guardians stood exactly where they had stood all morning.

Shi Feng first tried folding the space underfoot against the ice outside. He wanted to test whether the thunder only sealed the cage’s visible edges, or also reached into the surrounding space.

The fold opened, and thunder came through it. The bars weren’t only light. They hummed through space as well, and the space between them was full of the same thunder. His foot came down on the inside of the cage again, and the soles of his boots smoked.

Nine paces. Then eight.

The Sunset-Splitting Sword cut a bar cleanly, but its ends rejoined before the blade’s red light faded. The bar wasn’t solid. Its current simply closed again.

Seven paces.

Shi Feng stopped trying the bars and looked up.

Nine bars went up from nine pillars and met over his head at one point, at the top of the dome. Every bar in the cage ran through that point. It was where the prince’s thunder was gathered and sent out again. If the cage had a centre, that was it.

The Sunset-Splitting Sword was made to split a thing at its centre.

He bent his knees and jumped straight up. The grey Sword went red from guard to tip, and he cut the top of the dome where the nine bars crossed.

The cage split open.

It didn’t close again. With its centre cut, the nine currents had nothing to run through. The bars sprang apart and the dome tore open from the top, and all the thunder that had been gathered in it came down through the gap at once, straight onto him.

Shi Feng couldn’t dodge it in the air. So he didn’t try.

He opened the All-Devouring Physique and swallowed the thunder.

Violet light flooded through his chest, hands and burned arm. His physique swallowed the raw thunder and kept the outer blast from killing him. Shi Feng braced himself for the pain inside.

But it went into his meridians, every one of them, and it burned them from the inside instead.

He landed on the ice outside the broken pillars, on his feet. Smoke rose off his shoulders. His meridians burned from end to end, and the black burn in his left arm had climbed past the elbow toward the shoulder. He breathed in, and his chest hurt.

The shore had gone quiet again.

“He cut the cage from inside.”

“He ate the thunder. I saw it go into him. He ate it.”

“That’s impossible. Thunder burns a man’s meridians to ash.”

“Look at him smoking. It’s burning him right now.”

“…”

Long Zhenlei stood ninety paces away with his hands still raised. He looked at the empty pillars, then at Shi Feng, and a huge grin spread across his dark face.

“Brother Shi!” Long Zhenlei shouted. “Brother Shi, you’re wonderful! Nobody has ever got out of the Prison! Uncle Lei hasn’t got out of the Prison!”

“I’d rather not have been in it,” Shi Feng said.

“Then I’ll give you something better!” Long Zhenlei said.

He stamped once on the ice with his right foot. Then he dropped to one knee and laid both palms flat on the lake.

All over the ring, the black footprints lit up.

There were hundreds of them. Every step the prince had taken since the start of the fight had burned a print into the ice, and every print had carried thunder down into it. He hadn’t been stamping because he was angry. He’d been planting it.

“Abyss Thunder Return,” Long Zhenlei said.

The thunder came up out of the lake.

It came up through the ice in columns, from every footprint at once, roaring, and the ice between them split and heaved. Black slabs tipped up on end. Water fountained white. The whole ring turned into a field of rising lightning, and every column bent toward the one man standing in it.

On the north shore, Lei Wanjun’s right hand came out of his sleeve.

He didn’t step. He didn’t speak. But his hand lifted, and the people near him felt the Profound Heaven pressure move behind it.

On the south shore, Qin Wuyan turned his head and looked at him.

Across three hundred paces of breaking ice, Qin Wuyan met Lei Wanjun’s eyes. The old man’s hand stopped, then returned to his sleeve.

A life wasn’t at stake. Not yet. Qin Wuyan had decided, and Lei Wanjun had accepted it.

Shi Feng drove the grey Sword point-first into the ice at his feet and put his right palm on the pommel.

He struck the Second Anvil Fire.

Clang!

The fire went down the blade into the ice. The first beat melted a circle around his feet. The second beat hit the meltwater and fused it back, hard, into one sheet. He struck again. Clang! And again. He kept the hammer count, nine beats and a rest, and with every beat the patch of ice under him grew wider and glowed red from within.

The columns of thunder came up through the cracks in the lake. Where he stood, there were no cracks. The anvil count had forged the ice into one piece, ten paces wide, and the thunder had nowhere to come through. It came up around the edges of his circle instead, roaring.

And the red light shone out through the black ice, all the way across the ring. Every crack the thunder was racing along showed up dark against the glow, a moment before the column broke the surface.

He could see where it was coming from now.

He stood in his circle of red ice with his hand on the sword and kept the count. Eight. Nine. Rest. One. The thunder broke on the edges of the circle and went past him into the sky.

“He’s forging the lake!”

“He’s standing in the middle of all that and he’s not moving!”

“Has anyone ever seen anything like this?”

Long Zhenlei rose from his knee.

The prince panted, the thunder flickering thinly on his skin. The Return had drained most of his strength without defeating Shi Feng. He was delighted to have found someone who could withstand it.

He bent his legs and leapt straight up into the air above the lake. Every column of thunder still standing in the ring bent toward him and poured into his raised right fist.

“Last one, Brother Shi!” Long Zhenlei roared from the sky.