Chapter 1070 — Down the Lotus Steps

CHAPTER 1070

Down the Lotus Steps

The white stair had nine thousand and ninety steps, and halfway down it the snow turned to rain.

Shi Feng walked them one at a time. A rift would have taken him to the bottom in a breath, but a guest didn’t tear space open on the Serene Jade’s own stair, and his meridians still ached from the hall. So he walked. Qin Wuyan walked a step behind him with the road bag, as he had since the Hanli ridge, and said nothing for the first thousand steps.

At the thousand-and-first, two porters came up the stair toward them with salt sacks on their backs. They saw the white jade pass at Shi Feng’s sleeve and flattened themselves against the rail.

“Honoured guest of the sect!” the first porter said, bowing under his sack.

“It’s raining on your salt,” Shi Feng said, and stepped round them.

The porters stared after him. Then they hurried on up toward the kitchens.

“Master Shi made a promise in that hall,” Qin Wuyan said after another hundred steps.

It wasn’t a question. Qin Wuyan hadn’t been inside, but he’d stood outside the gate while the wall shook three times, and he wasn’t a fool.

“I promised to help her when I reach Profound Heaven,” Shi Feng said. “The Supreme Elder told me not to come before. And not to fail to come.”

“This one understands,” Qin Wuyan said.

They walked on. The rain thickened. Below them the cloud began to thin, and through it Shi Feng could see the outer lands at the foot of the mountain: brown fields, a river, a market town with smoke over its roofs.

He thought it through again as he walked. He’d held at peak Shattering Void since the gorge. He’d held there on purpose, because he hadn’t known what an inner heaven was or how one was built, and he didn’t break through blind. Until today, that had been a choice he could afford. He could have waited a year, or five, and nobody would have suffered for it except him.

That was over. Somewhere on the inner peak behind him, a woman was waiting behind a screen of jade beads, and she’d said she’d had practice.

At the last step, he stopped.

The stair ended in a flat stone square with a lotus carved into it, and beyond the square the road ran down into the town. Shi Feng stood on the lowest step and looked at the road, and then he turned to Qin Wuyan.

“I promised the Nangong house I’d help her,” Shi Feng said plainly. “She’s already waited fifteen years for a cure. I need Profound Heaven soon. I won’t waste another five years because I’m afraid to try.”

Qin Wuyan looked at him for a long moment. Then he shifted the bag on his shoulder.

“Then take work that pays in it,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng frowned for half a breath. Then he understood.

“Patients,” Shi Feng said.

“Profound Heaven patients,” Qin Wuyan said. “Each one has a heaven. Master Shi has only seen them from the outside.”

It was the most Qin Wuyan had said at one time in a month. Shi Feng thought it over and found nothing wrong with it. Every Profound Heaven pill he’d made so far, he’d made for a patient whose inner heaven he’d never looked into. He’d judged the herbs from the patient’s pulse, his realm and his complaint, the way any alchemist would. If he took commissions on site and put his Spirit Sense inside the patient’s heaven, he’d be paid in money and in something more useful to him than money.

“You’ve been thinking about this since the gate,” Shi Feng said.

“Since the bell,” Qin Wuyan said.

“Then why didn’t you say so on the stair?” Shi Feng asked.

“Master Shi had not yet asked,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng laughed for the first time that day. It hurt his ribs, and he didn’t care.

A man in Pavilion grey was waiting at the edge of the stone square, under the eaves of a tea stall. He’d been there some time. His boots were wet through, and there was a cold cup of tea beside him that he hadn’t touched. When he saw them come off the last step, he came forward and went down on one knee on the wet stone.

“Honoured guest elder,” the courier said, and held up a sealed packet in both hands. “From the Pavilion’s northern tower at Hanyuan. The steward said it was to go into your hands and nobody else’s. I was told to wait at the foot of the Lotus Gate until you came down, however long it took.”

“How long have you waited?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nine days, honoured guest,” the courier said. “The tea stall knows me by name.”

Shi Feng took the packet.

It was sealed in red wax. A red seal was the Pavilion’s mark for a commission on a life, one that could only go to a 6 Mark. Shi Feng had seen two of them in his life. Both had been in Tianjing, and both had been for patients who were dead within the year.

He didn’t break it. A red commission was opened before a steward of the tower that issued it, by Pavilion rule. Instead he turned it over and read what was written on the outside, in a steward’s careful hand.

Hanyuan tower. One patient. Profound Heaven. On site.

Qin Wuyan read it over his shoulder.

“Hanyuan is three days north by rift,” Qin Wuyan said.

“Then let’s see whether I can help him,” Shi Feng said, and put the red packet in his sleeve beside the Serene Jade’s white pass.