Chapter 1065 — Star Picker

CHAPTER 1065

Star Picker

“Walk behind me,” Matron Yue said, without looking round. “Not beside me. Behind.”

The path above the Nangong pavilion had no rail and no lanterns. It ran up the bare rock of the inner peak in a thin white line, and the wind came across it hard enough to flatten a man’s sleeves against his arms. Below them, the small pavilion had already dropped out of sight.

Shi Feng walked behind her.

Matron Yue climbed fast for a woman her age. Her face had gone grey when the bell rang, and it was still grey now.

“How often does that bell ring?” Shi Feng asked, keeping two steps back.

“Four times in sixty years,” Matron Yue said, her eyes on the path. “The last was four years ago. Twice for the young lady. Once for the Sect Master. Once for a man who didn’t walk back down.”

“And today?” Shi Feng asked.

“Today makes five,” Matron Yue said, and climbed faster.

The hall stood alone at the top of the inner peak. It was plain grey stone, with no plaque over the door and no lions at the steps, and its door was unpainted wood.

Matron Yue stopped three paces short of it.

“I don’t go in,” Matron Yue said, folding her hands into her sleeves. “Nobody goes in unless he’s sent for. When the mountain’s master calls, even the tiger waits outside.”

“Then I’ll go in alone,” Shi Feng said.

Matron Yue looked at his bound right palm, and then at his face, the same long look she’d given him in Snowpine Court.

“Don’t be clever in there,” Matron Yue said quietly.

“I came to tell him the truth,” Shi Feng said, pushing the door open.

His foot crossed the threshold, and the room shook.

The floor trembled under his boots. Two cups on a low table rattled against each other. The dark beams overhead groaned, and a thin line of dust came down from them and hung in the cold air. Nobody had struck anything. Nobody had moved. The man at the far end of the hall was simply there, and the stone around him couldn’t keep still.

Shi Feng stopped where he stood.

In the same instant, he felt himself being seen through. It wasn’t a Spirit Sense sweep. There was no touch and no beginning. Shi Feng felt as if his meridians, bones, sea of qi and every old wound lay exposed before that gaze. His heart sank, and he couldn’t tell how much the old man had seen.

The man sat cross-legged on a reed mat against the far wall. He was small and lean, in a grey robe patched at one elbow, with his white hair tied up by a plain wooden pin. His feet were bare on the stone. His hands rested on his knees.

Nangong Futian, the Star Picker. Supreme Elder of the Serene Jade Sect, Heaven Trampling, and the strongest cultivator on the continent.

Shi Feng raised his eyes and met Nangong Futian’s gaze.

He held the gaze for three breaths. Nangong Futian’s strength frightened him. He couldn’t judge its limit, even while standing in the same room. His Spirit Sense, still tender from the Star-Weighing Plate and folded tight inside him, could not have measured it.

Shi Feng looked away first.

There was cold sweat on his back under his robe. He’d stood before the Grand Elder, the Mansion Master and five Heretic Elders, and none of them had made him look at the floor.

He put his hands together and bowed.

“Junior Shi Feng greets the Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said.

Nangong Futian didn’t ask him to sit. There was no second mat. The kettle on the low table was cold, and nobody had poured anything into the two cups.

“Stand there,” Nangong Futian said.

Shi Feng stood there.

“Hold out your hands,” Nangong Futian said, without moving his own.

Shi Feng held them out, palms up. The right one was still bound from the plate. Nangong Futian didn’t come any closer to look. He didn’t need to.

“Old flame burns, under new ones,” Nangong Futian said. “The new ones aren’t from flame. That’s fold heat. Only a fold held inside a furnace leaves that mark. You’ve held one with your bare hands, more than once, and you’ll keep doing it until you lose the hands.”

“Yes, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“I didn’t ask,” Nangong Futian said flatly.

Shi Feng closed his mouth.

“Second,” Nangong Futian said, and one finger lifted from his knee. “Your body was rebuilt. Every channel, every bone, every inch of skin, by a restoration pill. A good one.” He paused for a breath. “I know the pill.”

Shi Feng kept silent. That pill had come out of a carriage in the rain, from a soft voice behind a curtain, and the man in front of him had paid for it.

“Third,” Nangong Futian said. “Your aura. Peak Shattering Void, held down. A man at the top of his realm leaks at the edges, because his sea is full and pushing. You don’t leak at all. You hold it too smoothly for peak Shattering Void.”

The cups on the table rattled once more, very softly.

“I won’t ask what you’re holding,” Nangong Futian said. “I’d know if you lied.”

Shi Feng thought it through fast. If he said there was nothing, it would be a lie, and the old man had just told him what a lie in this hall would cost. If he explained, he’d be handing over the one thing he’d hidden from everyone. So he gave the only answer that was both true and his own.

“Then I won’t say anything about it, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said.

Nangong Futian looked at him for a while.

He gave no sign of anything. Every hall on this mountain had treated Shi Feng as an honoured guest, and the Tianji Mansion’s own Master had bowed to his Mark. In this hall, the Mark wasn’t worth a cushion.

Shi Feng found he didn’t mind. A man who wanted nothing from him couldn’t be bargained with, but he couldn’t be fooled either.

“Good,” Nangong Futian said. “Then we’ll talk about the thing you didn’t hide.”

He laid the finger back on his knee, and the dust that had been hanging in the air finally settled.

“You stood at my sect’s gate and asked for my granddaughter,” Nangong Futian said. “Once, they tell me. Plainly. Why?”