Chapter 1031 — The Fifteenth

CHAPTER 1031

The Fifteenth

Shi Feng crossed onto Bitter Sky Plateau. Bare grey stone stretched a li across above the snow line. Wind swept grit past his boots.

A man was sitting on a rock in the middle of it.

He wore grey with long grey sleeves. He looked about fifty, with a lined face and plainly tied greying hair. His hands rested on his knee. Shi Feng recognised him at once.

At the plateau’s southern edge, the witnesses had lined up in three groups that didn’t stand too close to each other. Helian Ba and his ten warriors stood on the left with their axes grounded. Shen Yaoqing and the Serene Jade patrol stood in the middle in white. On the right were six scouts in the brown leather of the Ninth Beacon Fort, with a clerk among them holding a writing board.

Shi Feng walked out across the stone with Qin Wuyan one pace behind him, and stopped twenty paces from the rock.

The man looked up.

“Master Shi,” the man said, and smiled a little. “You came. And you brought the old man. Good.”

“You asked me to,” Shi Feng said.

“So I did,” the grey-robed man replied, unfolding his hands to bow from his seat. “The Heavenly Sect’s Fifteenth Elder, Rong Tianshou. Peak Shattering Void, as you are now. I watched you get there. You took the second sky slowly. That was clever.”

“You left something on the ice,” Shi Feng said.

“I did,” Rong Tianshou said. “You looked at that stall just before I took you. I remembered it. I thought you might like to have one, since you never got to eat it.”

Shi Feng didn’t answer.

At the edge of the plateau, the Ninth Beacon clerk was writing fast. Helian Ba leaned over to read the board, and the clerk turned it away from him.

“I want to tell you something before we begin,” Rong Tianshou said. “Not to make you feel better. I don’t think anything I say will do that. I just like things to be in order.”

“Go on,” Shi Feng said.

“Luoxia was never meant to be mine,” Rong Tianshou said. “The order for the youngest 3 Mark in the Pavilion’s records was a small errand. A Soul Formation taker was assigned to it. I happened to be in the south that season for my own reasons. I was looking for someone else.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t find what I was looking for. I found you instead, standing in an alley, smiling at a sweet stall. It seemed a waste to let a Soul Formation man make a mess of it, so I did it myself.”

“Who were you looking for?” Shi Feng asked.

“Someone who wasn’t there,” Rong Tianshou said pleasantly. “That’s all you’ll get on that.”

He stood up from the rock. He wasn’t tall. Standing, he still looked ordinary.

“Your order says alive,” Shi Feng said. “With my hands unharmed.”

“It does,” Rong Tianshou agreed. “I asked for a different one. I asked to meet you when you were whole, at my own realm, on my own ground, and see who was better. They agreed. They don’t think I’ll lose.” He smiled again, a little tiredly. “Nobody reaches peak Shattering Void by losing. A man who climbs that high doesn’t expect to fall.”

At that moment the sky changed.

Far above the plateau, in the pale clouds, a pressure settled. It wasn’t directed at anyone. It simply stood there, vast and heavy, and every person on the stone felt it in their chest. Two of the Ninth Beacon scouts sat down hard. The Helian warriors gripped their axes. Shen Yaoqing’s patrol disciples went white, and she put a hand flat between two of their shoulders without looking at them.

“Profound Heaven,” one of the scouts gasped. “That’s Profound Heaven up there!”

“Who? Who is it?”

“Don’t look up! Don’t look at it!”

Qin Wuyan looked up at it.

Then he looked at Shi Feng.

“Below the clouds is yours,” Qin Wuyan said.

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

The old man nodded once. Qin Wuyan rose into the air. His grey robe dwindled against the white clouds until he disappeared. A moment later, high overhead, two pressures met. The clouds shook. Nothing fell. Nothing could be heard.

“He’s gone up to hold it,” Shen Yaoqing said to her patrol, quietly. “Stay where you are.”

On the plateau, Rong Tianshou watched the old man go with mild interest.

“He’s very good,” Rong Tianshou said. “Tell him that, afterwards, if you get the chance.”

“You should worry about your own fight,” Shi Feng said, drawing the grey Sword.

“No,” Rong Tianshou said kindly. “I don’t think so.”

He lifted one hand, palm down, and closed it. It was a small gesture.

“Hollow Sky Fold,” Rong Tianshou said.

Shi Feng had already started his step. He’d known the fold would come, and he’d meant to be inside the man’s reach before it closed. He was a quarter of the way there, with one foot in the air, when the space around them both went quiet.

At the plateau’s edge, Helian Ba saw it happen.

One instant, Shi Feng was in mid-step on the grey stone, sword out, and Rong Tianshou was standing beside his rock. The next instant, the stone was empty. The rock was still there. The wind still blew across the plateau. There was no rift, no flash and no sound.

Both men were simply gone.

“Where—” Helian Ba said, and his voice cracked. “Where did they go?”

“They were right there! They were right there a breath ago!”

“Write it down! Clerk, write it down!”

“Write what? There’s nothing to write! There’s nobody there!”

“…”

Shen Yaoqing stood very still in front of her patrol, looking at the empty stone. Shen Yaoqing was worried. She kept her hand on her sword, but had no target to strike.

“Inside,” Shen Yaoqing said. “He’s taken him inside.”