Chapter 1053 — Nine Clouds over the Mountain

CHAPTER 1053

Nine Clouds over the Mountain

The yarrow burned all night.

Shi Feng fed it in one bundle at a time, slowly, and each one turned the Thousand Forge Flame silver for as long as it lasted. The smoke didn’t rise. It went down into the cauldron and into the gold core. That was the whole reason he’d asked for the stalks. Every one of them had lain on a table beside someone’s fate, and now they led the herbs the same way.

He didn’t let the core take it all at once. If the guide went in too fast, the gold would follow it too fast and tear the resin shell. So he held the Second Anvil Fire steady and let the smoke in a little at a time. His burned forearm ached the whole night from holding it.

By midnight there were three clouds over the bronze tower.

By dawn there were five.

Disciples watched from every terrace rail through the night. At sunrise, nobody left to put out the lamps.

“Five! That’s already a Minor Success pill!”

“Shut up, I’m counting.”

“Five is enough for the Master, isn’t it? He doesn’t need more than five!”

“Then why is there a sixth?”

The sixth cloud came at mid-morning, and the seventh soon after it.

Then the diviners came out.

They came out of every hall on every terrace, old men and old women in Mansion white and Mansion grey, with yarrow and coins and turtle shells and bronze plates in their hands. The Tianji Mansion read fate for a living. Nine clouds over a 6 Mark-grade pill was a sign in the sky over their own mountain, and they weren’t going to let it go unread.

They stood on the terraces with their faces turned up, reading the clouds, arguing with each other in low voices.

“Seven, auspicious. It means the debt is paid in full.”

“It means nothing of the kind! Seven over a tower is a road opening.”

“A road to where?”

“If I knew that, I’d be the Mansion Master.”

Shi Feng was worried by a hairline crack in the shell. He kept his attention on the cauldron, the last bundle of yarrow ready in his hand.

He fed in the last bundle, very slowly. The smoke went down. The gold core took it and went still. The crack in the resin closed itself over, because the core was no longer pushing to get out. It had found the way it wanted to go.

The eighth cloud formed over the tower.

Then the ninth.

Nine clouds stood over Star-Reckoning Mountain in the bright noon sky, white and still, in a ring around the bronze tower. They didn’t blacken. They didn’t move. A tenth would have called down a pill tribulation. Nine was the top of what an ordinary pill could reach.

Perfect.

On every terrace, the diviners went silent.

Shi Feng let the Thousand Forge Flame go out. He waited until the cauldron had cooled enough to touch, then lifted the lid.

One pill lay inside, the size of a longan. Its shell was dark amber, almost black, and under the shell a faint gold light moved slowly round and round, never stopping. It smelled of pine and old smoke.

Relieved, Shi Feng sealed the pill in jade. His knees nearly buckled when he stood; he’d knelt there for a day and a night.

“Mansion Master,” Shi Feng said, and held it out in both hands. “Your second coin.”

Taishi Xu stood up from the stone bench. For once he wasn’t smiling. He took the jade box in both hands, very carefully, opened it and looked at the pill for a long time. Then he closed it.

He didn’t eat it. He tucked it into his sleeve.

“For afterwards,” Taishi Xu said, and the smile came back, though more thinly than usual. “A pill like this is wasted on a man who hasn’t been hurt yet. Thank you, Master Shi. The Mansion is paid in full. More than in full.”

“Then the reading,” Shi Feng said.

“The dark of the moon,” Taishi Xu said. “Eleven nights from now. A reading that goes back twenty-one years has to be cast when heaven is looking somewhere else, and the dark of the moon is the only time it does. As the old saying goes, heaven’s secret must not be spoken.” He bowed, deeply. “Rest until then. You’ll need to be awake for it.”

He went down the stair with the jade box in his sleeve and one hand on it.

Below, the terraces were starting to talk again, loudly and all at once.

“Nine clouds! On our mountain!”

“A hundred and forty years since anyone refined that pill, and he did it in a day and a night!”

“With Elder Sang’s yarrow. Elder Sang gave him her yarrow!”

“I’m going to read this for the next ten years.”

“…”

Daoist Mingshu approached with his open ledger, then saw how exhausted Shi Feng was. He closed it without asking any questions.

Shi Feng sat down on the stone beside the cauldron. The nine clouds were already starting to thin. He looked up at them for the first time.

Qin Wuyan wasn’t looking at the clouds.

He was standing at the edge of the terrace, facing west, with his hands in his sleeves. He was looking out past the grey plain at the far ridges on the horizon, low and dark and a long way off. He’d been standing that way, Shi Feng realised, since the eighth cloud.

“Senior Qin?” Shi Feng said.

“The one from the gorge,” Qin Wuyan said, without turning his head. “It is out there. On those ridges.”

“Watching the clouds?” Shi Feng asked, following his gaze.

“Watching the same clouds,” Qin Wuyan said. “Counting.”