Chapter 1076 — The Second Half

CHAPTER 1076

The Second Half

The crack closed a little before dawn.

Shi Feng had sat by Wanyan Bo’s bed all night with two fingers on the old man’s wrist and his Spirit Sense inside the inner heaven. If the Heaven-Mending Pill stalled halfway, he had to know at once.

Inside, the patriarch’s heaven was a grey-blue sky over a plain of black stone, with one river that ran to the edge and came back. For most of a year a crack had crossed that sky from horizon to horizon. It was the one place where the imitation had failed and real heaven could look in. All night the pill’s medicine crept along both edges of the line and drew them together. Before dawn even the scar was gone.

Shi Feng was relieved. He took his fingers from the patriarch’s wrist.

“It’s closed,” Shi Feng said, rubbing the stiffness out of his hand.

Hong Lie had stood in the doorway all night too. Now he stepped into the room, afraid to believe it.

“The whole crack?” Hong Lie asked hoarsely.

“The whole crack,” Shi Feng said. “He’ll be weak for a month. Keep him off his own sword for three. The seal needs time.”

Wanyan Bo opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling for a long moment, and then at his own hand. Then he pushed back the quilt, put his feet on the floor and stood up.

Nobody helped him. Hong Lie had raised both arms to catch him, and the old man walked straight past them to the door.

The courtyard outside was full. Half the household had slept in the galleries in their coats, waiting. When the patriarch came out into the cold grey light on his own feet, the whole courtyard went silent.

Then a maid dropped a bucket, and everyone started shouting at once.

“The Patriarch’s standing!”

“He’s walking! Look, he’s walking by himself!”

“The ancestors are watching over us! The Wanyan house isn’t finished!”

An old cook was crying into her apron. Wanyan Che came running across the courtyard with his coat half on, stopped three paces from his father and dropped to his knees with his forehead on the stones.

“Father,” Wanyan Che said, his voice breaking.

Wanyan Bo looked down at his son for a long while and didn’t tell him to rise. Shi Feng couldn’t tell whether the old man was moved or angry.

By noon the house steward had brought the second half of the fee to the guest hall. It was a Pavilion draft on the Hanyuan tower for one million eight hundred thousand, the same as the first, sealed in red wax with the tower’s mark. Shi Feng checked the seal and put it in his ring.

That brought his savings to about twenty-six million nine hundred and thirty thousand. Shi Feng valued the night more. He had seen the inside of a Profound Heaven cultivator’s heaven.

In the afternoon Wanyan Bo sent for him.

The patriarch sat on a bench in the east gallery with a fur over his knees, and Wanyan Che stood beside him.

“Che. Go and see that the escort riders are fed,” Wanyan Bo said.

“Father, the riders were fed this morning…” Wanyan Che began.

“Then feed them again,” Wanyan Bo said firmly.

Wanyan Che bowed to them both and went. Shi Feng understood the errand had been an excuse. Wanyan Bo waited until the gallery door had closed.

“Master Shi,” Wanyan Bo said quietly. “You went down into my vault for the herbs. You saw the shelves.”

“I saw that half of them were empty,” Shi Feng said, sitting on the other end of the bench.

“My son emptied them,” Wanyan Bo said. “Not to steal. To pay. Gaming houses in Hanyuan, a bad horse trade, a silver mine with no silver in it.” He was quiet for a moment. “A family’s shame shouldn’t be carried outside the gate. This old man is carrying it out anyway.”

“Why tell me?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because last spring it stopped,” Wanyan Bo said. “The letters from Hanyuan stopped coming. Someone bought every one of my son’s debts. Every note, from every house. And in a whole year they’ve never sent him a bill.”

“Did you ask who it was?” Shi Feng asked.

“Che says a friend,” Wanyan Bo said, pulling the fur higher on his knees. “Che has no friends with that much silver. A creditor who doesn’t collect is waiting to collect something else. I don’t know what. I’m telling you only that I don’t know, because you’re a guest of my house and you closed my heaven.”

“Thank you for trusting me with it,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll remember it.”

Wanyan Bo nodded, relieved, and looked out at the snow.

That evening a long, low roar came from the mountain to the south.

It went on for a long time and rattled the cups on the guest hall table. Half an hour later a rider came in at the gate.

“The Ox-Back cut is gone!” the rider shouted from the saddle. “The whole slope came down on the main road!”

“How long to dig?” Wanyan Che asked sharply, coming down the steps.

“Twenty days, young master, if the weather holds,” the rider said.

An hour later a Pavilion courier bird landed on the gallery rail with a tube on its leg. It held the Hanyuan tower’s road chart for the south. The main road was struck through in black at the Ox-Back cut. A second road further west was marked in red ink: Weeping Pine Basin. Clear.

“The basin road,” Wanyan Che said courteously. “It’s two days shorter, Master Shi. The house can have thirty riders ready by dawn.”

“Not the basin,” Qin Wuyan said from the corner.

Everyone turned to him. Qin Wuyan had been sitting by the wall with his eyes shut.

“Why not?” Shi Feng asked.

“Low ground. One road. Pines on both rims,” Qin Wuyan said, shutting his eyes again.

Shi Feng studied the red ink. A road chart from the Pavilion’s own tower should have been the most trustworthy paper in the north. But Qin Wuyan had said only four words in Hanyuan, and the last of them had been “watch”. Shi Feng chose to trust the guardian over the chart.

“Then I’ll wait for the main road,” Shi Feng said. “Twenty days. If the house will have me.”

Wanyan Che was quiet for half a breath too long. Shi Feng noticed it.

“The house is honoured,” Wanyan Che said, bowing. He rolled up the chart.

Shi Feng was uneasy, but he said nothing.

A little after midnight, the dogs at the south gate began to bark, and somebody started beating on the gate with both fists.