Chapter 1068 — The Verdict

CHAPTER 1068

The Verdict

“Why Profound Heaven?” Nangong Futian asked, still facing the wall. “Why not wait until you’re stronger? At Heaven Trampling you’d be safer, and so would she.”

“Because at Heaven Trampling, heaven would watch me too, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “Then whatever I made for her, I’d be making in front of it. The same as you.”

Nangong Futian turned his head back.

“So it has to be the one realm where a man owns a heaven of his own,” Shi Feng said, “and heaven still isn’t looking at him.”

“And you think you’ll reach it,” Nangong Futian said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“When?” Nangong Futian asked.

“I don’t know, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t give you a day I can’t keep.”

Something moved at the corner of the old man’s mouth. It wasn’t a smile. It was gone before Shi Feng could decide what it was.

“Good,” Nangong Futian said. “The ones who give me a day are always the ones who lie.”

He sat a little straighter on the reed mat. The floor shook once under Shi Feng’s boots, hard, and the two cups jumped on the table and came down again without falling.

“Come at Profound Heaven,” Nangong Futian said. “Come before, and the gate won’t open. Don’t come, and I’ll know why.”

Shi Feng bowed.

“I’ll come,” Shi Feng said.

“Everyone says that,” Nangong Futian said.

“I’m not everyone, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said. “When I say I’ll come, I come.”

Nangong Futian looked at him. It was the first look from the door again, the one that went through everything. It lasted only a breath this time, and it didn’t hurt any less.

“You’d better not be lying,” Nangong Futian said. “If you are, not even my old friends at the Pavilion could save you.”

Then he turned back to the wall.

That was all. There was no gift. There was no token, no pass with a lotus on it, no promise of his own and no word about his granddaughter. A sect master would have sent him away with a pill box. Grand Elder Zuo would at least have poured the tea.

Shi Feng felt relieved. Nangong Futian hadn’t promised to protect him, but he’d agreed to let him return at Profound Heaven. That was the chance Shi Feng had come for.

“Junior takes his leave, Supreme Elder,” Shi Feng said, and bowed again, lower.

Nangong Futian didn’t answer, and he didn’t turn round.

Shi Feng walked backwards three steps, as a junior should, then turned and went to the door. He noticed that the floor stayed perfectly still under his boots the whole way. The old man’s attention had already left him. He’d been weighed, the weighing was over, and the hall had nothing more to say to him.

He opened the door and stepped out into the wind.

Matron Yue was standing exactly where he’d left her, three paces short of the steps, with her hands in her sleeves. Snow had gathered on her shoulders. She hadn’t moved to brush it off.

She looked at him. Then she looked at his boots, as if she needed to check that they were both on the ground.

“You walked out,” Matron Yue said.

“He heard me out,” Shi Feng said. “And he’s allowed me to return at Profound Heaven.”

“The last guest it rang for was carried,” Matron Yue said, and her voice was hoarse. “Sixty years ago. They carried him down this path on a door, and he never spoke again.”

“What did he want?” Shi Feng asked.

“Something he wasn’t qualified to ask for,” Matron Yue said. She turned and started down the path without another word.

Shi Feng followed her.

Halfway down, his knees began to shake. He hadn’t noticed it happening. He stopped for one breath on the path and let them shake, and then he walked on. The sweat on his back had frozen under his robe, and his meridians ached from the inside, all the way from his wrists to his spine. He’d held his aura down so hard for so long in that hall that his whole body was sore from it.

He didn’t regret a word of it.

He thought it through plainly as he walked. He’d made a promise to the strongest man on the continent. He was at peak Shattering Void. He didn’t know how to open an inner heaven. He didn’t know how long it would take, and he’d just told Nangong Futian so to his face. The promise was made, and it couldn’t be taken back.

So he would reach Profound Heaven. Nothing else was left to decide.

At the foot of the inner peak, where the bare rock gave way to the sect’s white walls and pine trees, a woman in white was standing alone in the snow. She had a jade lotus pin in her hair, a sword at her hip, and a white jade pass in her hand.

Shen Yaoqing had been sent to walk him out.