Her Fiancé Dumped Her for Crippled Roots, So She Climbed the Mountain on Ash novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Outer Yard
In front of two hundred outer disciples the Steward's strike dies in Lian's arm and he goes down, and the Discipline Hall arrives at the gate for her wrists.
By noon the Outer Yard was packed to the balconies.
Two hundred outer disciples in blue lined the dormitory railings and the steps above the packed earth.
A few inner disciples in white had come down from the summit to watch, which never happened.
Carriers weren't allowed in the yard, so the head carrier and the twins stood outside the gate in their hemp robes.
Xiu had shoved her way to the front rail and was gripping it with both hands.
Guan Shuo stood at the judge's post with a small bronze bell.
He rang it once.
"A challenge under Outer Yard law," he said. "The punishment is thirty strokes of the cane. The loser takes them."
"A fighter who can't stand by the count of ten has lost."
He looked down at Lian, and for a moment he sounded like the boy who used to walk her to the dining hall.
"Yield now," he said quietly, "and I'll ask him to give you ten instead of thirty."
"Ask him to give himself ten," Lian said.
The Steward laughed and stepped into the yard, swinging his cane.
He didn't bother with it at first.
He raised his empty palm at ten paces and pushed.
The air between them thickened and came at her.
That was Foundation, the second realm, and she had seen it knock grown men off their feet.
Lian crossed her forearms in front of her face.
The blow hit her arms and sank into them.
It felt like a stone dropped into hot mud.
There was a jolt, then nothing, then the burn in her veins flared so hard her eyes watered.
Under her long sleeves, she felt the gray race up to her elbows.
She was still standing exactly where she'd been.
The yard went silent.
The Steward frowned at his own palm.
Then he came at her with the cane, and this time it hummed with qi.
She took the first stroke on her left forearm.
It should have broken the bone.
The qi in the cane went into the ash the way the first strike had and died there.
All that reached her was wood, and wood was something a carrier's arm could take.
She stepped inside his second swing, caught him by the belt and the collar, and turned her hip into him.
He was heavier than a full bucket and lighter than two.
He went over her shoulder and hit the packed earth on his back so hard the dust jumped.
The cane rolled away across the yard.
Somebody on a balcony said a word the outer-court teachers fined people for.
Guan Shuo didn't move.
"Count," Lian said.
He looked at her, and then at the Steward, who was trying to get an elbow under himself.
"One," Guan Shuo said.
He counted slowly.
At seven the Steward got to his knees.
At nine he tried to stand, and his legs folded under him.
"Ten," Guan Shuo said.
He rang the bell once more, and his voice was perfectly flat.
"The carrier wins. The punishment is void."
The yard erupted.
Half of them were cheering and half were shouting that it was a trick.
Xiu was screaming her sister's name off the rail.
Lian picked up the cane.
She walked it to the gate and held it out through the bars to the head carrier.
"He owes thirty strokes," Lian said. "They were meant for your hands."
The head carrier took the cane and looked at it for a long time.
Then she looked past Lian at the Steward on his knees in the dirt.
She set the cane across her own knee and broke it in two.
She dropped the halves through the bars at his feet.
"Nine years I've looked at that thing," she said. "I don't want it in my hand."
"The strokes are owed," Guan Shuo said from the post.
"Then let him owe them," said the head carrier. "Let him wake up every morning owing them."
The twins grinned at each other behind her.
Lian pushed her sleeves back down to her knuckles.
The gray had sunk to her wrists again, but her arms still ached.
Guan Shuo came down from the post.
He stopped beside her, close enough that nobody else could hear.
His right hand was around his left wrist again.
"Where did a crippled girl find qi?" he asked.
"On the terraces," Lian said. "Where you sent me."
He stared at her.
For one moment he looked frightened.
Then the crowd near the gate went quiet, row by row, from the back.
A man in a black robe was standing in the open gateway.
He was broad and quiet, about twenty-four, with a scar cut straight through his left eyebrow.
He wore the plain iron token of the Discipline Hall on his belt.
Every outer disciple in the yard took a step back from him.
"Meng Lian," he said.
His voice was low and carried anyway.
"The Discipline Hall wants to see your wrists."
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