Chapter 996 — Falling Star

CHAPTER 996

Falling Star

The fist came down out of the sky with all the thunder of the lake in it.

It was the Sky-Rending Thunder Fist again, but bigger. Long Zhenlei fell toward the ice with his right arm drawn back, and the light around his fist was so bright that the people on the shore threw their sleeves over their faces. The air over the ring roared. The red circle of ice under Shi Feng’s feet hummed, and the cracks around its edges glowed blue.

This time there would be no light to read. The fist would simply arrive, the same as before.

So Shi Feng didn’t wait for it to arrive.

He pulled the grey Sword out of the ice. The Second Anvil Fire ran out of the blade and the red glow under him began to fade. While the prince was still falling, while the fist was still coming down and hadn’t chosen its last inch, he folded.

Void-Crossing Step opened under his foot, and his left foot didn’t wait for it. He didn’t fold sideways. He folded up.

He came out of the fold in the air above the prince, behind his raised arm.

Below him, the Sky-Rending Thunder Fist hit the place where he’d been standing.

Boom!

The forged circle of ice took the fist and broke in one piece. A column of white water burst up a hundred feet high, and the shockwave threw the front row on the south shore flat on their backs. Thunder went sideways across the whole lake. The Profound Heaven ring held it in, and the snow outside the line didn’t even stir.

The prince’s fist was buried in the lake to the elbow.

His guard was open. For the first time all morning, his body was turned away from Shi Feng, with his left arm raised across his head out of habit and the back of his shoulders bare.

Shi Feng turned the grey Sword point down and dropped.

The whole of the Falling Star Sword drew into the point of the blade, and the stroke came straight down out of the air above the prince.

In the middle of the fall, something in the stroke changed.

Shi Feng felt it happen. Until now the Falling Star Sword had fallen. Now it fell and kept every bit of its weight in the point, all the way down, without losing a hair of it to the air. The edge went straight through the thunder over the prince’s skin and didn’t slow. Falling Star Sword had reached Major Success. The pressure of this attack had forced his control further. Shi Feng felt the difference and kept the sword point steady through the thunder.

The point struck the prince’s raised left forearm.

Long Zhenlei felt it coming at the last instant. He twisted on the ice, ripped his right fist out of the lake and swung it backhand, blind, straight up at the falling man.

Both blows landed.

The Falling Star Sword drove the prince’s guard down onto his own shoulder and the prince down onto the ice with it. The backhand fist hit Shi Feng in the left side, under the ribs, with whatever thunder the prince had left.

Bang!

Shi Feng flew sideways twenty paces and landed on his feet.

He skidded. His heels caught on the broken ice. He bent forward and coughed, and blood came out of his mouth onto the black lake in a bright red splash. His left side had gone numb from the hip to the armpit. He couldn’t feel his left arm at all.

But he stayed on his feet.

Long Zhenlei had gone the other way. The Falling Star Sword had sent him sliding across the ice on one knee, his guard arm pinned to his shoulder, his right hand clawing at the lake to stop himself. He stopped at last with his knee down on the bare ice and his back to the north shore.

He was half a pace outside the ring line.

The snow coming in off the mountains fell on his shoulders.

The whole lake was silent.

On the north shore, Lei Wanjun let out a long breath through his scorched beard. On the south shore, Qin Wuyan didn’t move at all.

Then the shore broke.

“He’s out! The prince is out of the ring!”

“Late against peak! The guest beat the eighth on the Tianxing!”

“It was a hair! It was only a hair! The guest is spitting blood!”

“A hair’s still a win! Late Shattering Void against a peak genius! Who does that?”

“That last sword. Did you see it go through the thunder? It didn’t even slow down.”

“…”

On the west hill, Yelü Hong sat down slowly on a rock and laughed until he coughed. On the east shore, Linghu Que stood alone at the back of the white-robed clan and didn’t laugh at all. He was looking at the sword.

Long Zhenlei turned his head and saw the snow on his own shoulder.

He looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked down at the ring line under his knee, and then across the ice at Shi Feng, standing bent over with blood on his chin.

The prince’s dark face split into the widest grin yet.

“I lost!” Long Zhenlei shouted, and slammed his good fist on the ice. “I lost! Yuejian, did you see? I lost!”

“I saw,” Xie Yuejian said from the shore.

“Brother Shi!” Long Zhenlei roared, struggling up onto one foot. “Rematch! One year from today! After you’ve broken through! You hear me? Don’t you dare face me again at late Shattering Void, I’ll be insulted!”

Shi Feng straightened up slowly. His left side screamed at him. He wiped the blood off his chin with the back of his right hand.

“Then I’ll hurry,” Shi Feng said.

Long Zhenlei laughed so hard he fell over again.

The guardians lowered their pressure. The ring came down. The snow blew in across the whole lake at once, and the people on the shore surged forward to the ice and stopped at its edge, not quite daring to step on it.

Xie Yuejian walked out across the broken ice first.

She passed the prince laughing on his back in the snow and stopped before Shi Feng. Her expression was solemn as she bowed. It was a full sword-sect bow, from the waist, the bow a chief disciple of the Cangming Sword Palace gave to a man who had won.

Then she turned and went back to pick her Dao companion up off the ice.

The crowd saw her bow to Shi Feng first. She was acknowledging the winner before tending her Dao companion. By nightfall every teahouse in Shuoyang knew it.

[Art: Falling Star Sword, Major Success]