Chapter 1067 — First, Second, Third

CHAPTER 1067

First, Second, Third

“You’ve read my claim, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“I read it,” Nangong Futian said, his hands still on his knees. “Now say it to my face. Paper doesn’t sweat.”

Shi Feng had written the claim at Star-Reckoning Mountain, on the night Jiang Xu’s answer came. He’d worked it through three times on scrap paper and burned the scraps. He didn’t need them now.

“First,” Shi Feng said. “No pill can change what heaven has decided for her.”

“I’ve made pills that Heaven Trampling elders wept to hold,” Nangong Futian said coldly. “Do you know how many I’ve made for her?”

“The Pavilion knows, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “For fifteen years you’ve sold it treasures and bought, with every coin, things that open what heaven has closed.”

“Jiang Xu talks too much,” Nangong Futian said.

“He said none of it worked,” Shi Feng said.

“It didn’t,” Nangong Futian said.

The floor didn’t shake at that. Shi Feng had half expected it to.

“A pill multiplies what its herbs can do,” Shi Feng went on. “It can’t change who’s allowed to keep the result. Qi goes into her, and heaven takes it back. A better pill doesn’t fix that. It just gives heaven more to take. Every pill you made for her was better than the last, and every one of them was taken back the same way.”

Nangong Futian said nothing. His eyes didn’t leave Shi Feng’s face.

“Second,” Shi Feng said. “At Profound Heaven a cultivator opens an inner heaven. It has its own sky, its own ground and its own law. No tribulation falls when it opens, because it deceives heaven by imitating it. Heaven looks at it and sees itself, and moves on.”

“I know what Profound Heaven is, boy,” Nangong Futian said.

“Yes, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “Then you know what it means. Inside an inner heaven, the law isn’t heaven’s. It’s a copy, and the man who made the copy decides what it says. Heaven’s law takes her qi back. A copy can be made to leave one door open.”

“You don’t have one,” Nangong Futian said.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “That’s why I’m not offering anything today. Only the reason.”

Nangong Futian was silent for a breath.

“And the third?” Nangong Futian asked.

Shi Feng had known from the start that the third point would be the hard one. The first two were about pills and realms. The third was about the old man himself, and he’d have to say it to his face.

“Third, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “You won’t like it.”

“I haven’t liked anything you’ve said yet,” Nangong Futian said. “Go on.”

“Heaven watches a Heaven Trampling cultivator more closely than anyone alive,” Shi Feng said steadily. “That’s what the tribulations are for. It sends one every nine years so it never loses sight of you. You’re the strongest of them all, and you’ve passed nearly every tribulation it has. So it watches you more closely than anyone.”

He let that sit for one breath. Then he said the last line.

“Everything you made for her, you made in front of it,” Shi Feng said.

The hall went still.

It wasn’t the stillness of a quiet room. The cups stopped trembling. The dust stopped drifting in the light from the window. Outside, Matron Yue’s slow breathing stopped altogether. For a long moment Shi Feng couldn’t hear his own heartbeat, and he wasn’t sure whether that was because his heart had stopped or because the old man had stopped it.

Nangong Futian’s hand lay on his knee.

It closed, once. The fingers drew in slowly until the knuckles stood out, and then they opened again and lay flat, exactly where they’d been.

That was all. Shi Feng had seen men smash tables and draw swords when they heard something they didn’t want to hear. This was worse. Fifteen years of work and almost everything the old man owned, every treasure sold and every pill refined, and the reason it had failed had been sitting in this hall the whole time. Nangong Futian had been the one standing between his granddaughter and the cure, because heaven had never once stopped looking at him.

Shi Feng didn’t add anything to it. There was nothing he could add that wouldn’t sound like gloating.

“Who else has heard this?” Nangong Futian asked at last.

“Qin Wuyan carried the query under the Pavilion’s seal,” Shi Feng said. “Master Jiang answered the question about your account. Neither of them has read the claim. Nobody has heard the reasoning except you.”

“The blind woman?” Nangong Futian asked.

“She read the vessel, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “Not the cure. I didn’t tell her what I meant to write.”

Nangong Futian looked at him for a long time. Shi Feng had the feeling, under that look, that every word he’d said was being weighed again from the beginning, one at a time, by a man who’d had many centuries to learn when a young man was lying.

“Jiang Xu said you were clever,” Nangong Futian said.

“Master Jiang told me to ask once and wait, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “I did. What I’m telling you now is the reason I think a Profound Heaven cultivator might succeed.”

“A Profound Heaven cultivator,” Nangong Futian repeated.

He turned his face away, toward the bare wall beside the window, and said nothing more for so long that Shi Feng began to count his own breaths. Fifty. A hundred. At a hundred and thirty, the old man’s hand moved on his knee again, and this time it didn’t close.

Shi Feng waited. He’d promised Jiang Xu he would.

When Nangong Futian finally spoke again, he didn’t waste a single word on courtesy.