Chapter 1096 — Two Heavens

CHAPTER 1096

Two Heavens

By the fourth night Shi Feng could sit up, and Lin Langtian had dragged his two chairs over to the brazier.

The house was asleep. Qin Wuyan sat just inside the door on a stool, with his bound arm against his chest and his eyes half closed. Outside it, Hong Lie was still standing. Nobody had been able to make him stop.

Lin Langtian was roasting chestnuts in the coals with his bare fingers. In the red light his face was very pale. He’d been coughing less since yesterday, but he still hadn’t picked up the hammer once.

“Senior Brother,” Shi Feng said. “The Furnace Lord.”

“Never heard of him,” Lin Langtian said at once, and flicked a chestnut out of the coals. “Sounds like a very handsome man, though. Probably tall.”

“The Sixth Elder had heard of him,” Shi Feng said.

“The Sixth Elder had a cracked heaven and a bad mask,” Lin Langtian said, peeling a chestnut. “Don’t believe everything he says. Here, eat this. You need some colour in your face.”

Shi Feng took the chestnut. He didn’t ask again. He’d told himself on the road that he wouldn’t, and he’d only broken that once.

Lin Langtian ate three chestnuts without saying anything, which was the longest he had ever gone without saying anything. The coals ticked. Qin Wuyan didn’t move.

“I once built a heaven so strong,” Lin Langtian said, staring into the brazier, “that I stopped listening to anyone else. I thought I knew enough.”

He didn’t smile. He didn’t add anything to make it funny.

“I don’t recommend it,” Lin Langtian said.

Then he threw a chestnut shell into the fire, and the moment was gone.

Shi Feng heard the regret in his voice. He didn’t know what had happened then and wouldn’t force Lin Langtian to explain. He quietly held the warm chestnut.

“I’ve looked inside two heavens this month,” Shi Feng said at last. “One cracked, one whole. And one array that locked space like a heaven. I want to tell you what I saw.”

Lin Langtian looked up at him. A little colour came back into his face.

“Teach Senior Brother something, then,” Lin Langtian said. “Go on. I’m listening. I’ll even stop eating.”

He didn’t stop eating.

“First, Wanyan Bo’s,” Shi Feng said. “When I mended it, I put my Spirit Sense inside. It was a sealed space with its own sky and its own ground. It copied heaven’s laws, rain and cold and up and down, but the copy was his. The crack ran from the ground to the sky, and wherever it ran, his laws didn’t hold. Outside things leaked in.”

“Mm,” Lin Langtian said, chewing.

“Second, the Severed Moon,” Shi Feng said. “From the inside. Everything in it obeyed the Sixth Elder. My qi moved as fast as he allowed. But it was still a copy. It copied heaven’s moon and heaven’s ice, and the reflection of the moon in the ice was the thinnest part, because he had to copy it twice. That’s where I cut it.”

Lin Langtian’s chewing slowed.

“Third, the Cage,” Shi Feng said. “That wasn’t a heaven. It was an array. But it locked space the way a heaven does, and all hundred li of it were tied to one point. When you broke that point, everything let go at the same moment. I felt it go.”

He stopped there. He’d also seen Lin Langtian’s forge, red over half the sky, pushing the grey back without even trying. He didn’t say that. Lin Langtian knew what his own heaven looked like.

“So,” Shi Feng said. “A heaven is a copy. It holds because one man holds it. Where the copy is thin, it breaks. If everything is tied to one point, it breaks all at once.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Then Lin Langtian started laughing.

It was his real laugh, loud and delighted, and it went on until he started coughing again and had to hold his ribs. Qin Wuyan opened his eyes by the door and looked at him.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said, wiping his eyes. “Do you know how many men at Profound Heaven die without ever seeing the inside of someone else’s heaven? Most of them. Nearly all of them. They spend three hundred years building their own, and they never once see how anybody else built theirs. Hearing a hundred times isn’t as good as seeing once.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Shi Feng said. “I was thrown in.”

“Then the Sixth Elder taught you more than he meant to,” Lin Langtian said, grinning. “Don’t waste it. He won’t be so helpful next time.”

He leaned forward and dropped a hot chestnut into Shi Feng’s bandaged palm.

“You’ve seen two heavens this month,” Lin Langtian said. “Next time, build your own.”

Shi Feng looked at the chestnut.

He was peak Shattering Void, and he had been for a long time. Profound Heaven meant opening an inner heaven. Until this month he had only known it as words. Now he’d stood inside two of them. He knew what they were made of, and where they broke.

He also knew he was in no state to build anything. His meridians were scorched, and his golden bones were cracked.

“When I can stand,” Shi Feng said.

“When you can stand,” Lin Langtian agreed, and went back to the chestnuts.

Someone knocked at the outer door.

Qin Wuyan was on his feet at once. Hong Lie’s voice spoke low through the wood, and then a groom’s, hurried and nervous.

“Senior Qin,” Hong Lie said through the door. “A rider at the gate. A woman in white, alone. She says she’s from the Serene Jade Sect, and that she won’t wait until morning.”