Chapter 1113 — Designing a Sky

CHAPTER 1113

Designing a Sky

Shi Feng designed his inner heaven sitting cross-legged on the cave floor, with his eyes shut and nothing in his hands.

It took him two days. He told no one what went into it.

He began with the walls, because he understood them best. Shattering Void was the realm of space, and Void-Crossing Step at Perfection had taught him to fold space, cross it and stitch it shut. A heaven needed an edge that held, so he would build that edge from folded space, turned inward instead of out.

The ground would be his foundation. Nobody had ever been told its grade, and nobody would be. The sun would be his core. For the pillar that held the sky up, he would use the Nine-layer pagoda, which nobody had seen and nobody would. His three hundred and sixty-five meridians would be its rivers.

Shi Feng put the pieces together and was uneasy. The sky he’d designed was far larger than a valley.

He opened his eyes. Lin Langtian was sitting across the fire from him, watching him with his chin in his hand.

“You’re not going to tell me what’s in it,” Lin Langtian said.

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Good. Don’t tell anyone. Not me, not the guardian, not the princess with the veil.” Lin Langtian picked a splinter off the woodpile and rolled it between his fingers. “But Yours Truly will tell you one thing. Whatever you’re hiding, it’s going to make your sky bigger. I can see it on your face. And a bigger sky is harder to fake. More stars, more wind, more places for a gap.”

“Then I’ll need a pill to hold it steady while I build,” Shi Feng said.

“The Heaven-Mirror Pill,” Lin Langtian said at once.

“You know it?” Shi Feng asked.

“Everyone at Profound Heaven knows it. Hardly anyone can get one, because whoever makes it has to be a 6 Mark, and 6 Marks don’t make pills for strangers in ruins.” Lin Langtian pointed the splinter at him. “Except you, for yourself. Which is very convenient for you, and very unfair to everyone else.”

The Heaven-Mirror Pill was a Profound Heaven-grade pill. It didn’t add strength. It steadied the copy, so that an inner heaven held its shape while the cultivator was still filling it in.

He had the herbs. Long Caili’s herb house had weighed them out at cost in Pinefall: Mirror-Lake Frost Lotus, Ninefold Star Moss, a jar of Old Heaven Pine resin and a dozen smaller things, about one million four hundred thousand in all. Shi Feng had bought them for his recovery and with this pill in mind. He was grateful again for Long Caili’s preparations.

The abode’s bronze furnace was three-legged, green with age and older than anything in the Pavilion. Lin Langtian had found it and scrubbed it clean without saying how he knew where it was. Shi Feng lit it with the Second Anvil Fire and laid out the herbs on a flat stone in order.

Qin Wuyan left the door to stand three paces behind him. He was curious, and he watched in silence.

The first furnace went in at dusk.

The Frost Lotus went down cleanly. The Star Moss went in after it, and he slowly folded the two together in the heat. For the first hour they held. In the second hour, the lotus’s cold began to sink and the moss’s light began to rise, pulling the mixture apart. Shi Feng pressed the fire down to hold them together. His scorched meridians flinched under the effort, and for one beat the heat slipped.

The furnace lid jumped.

Thin black smoke came out of the vent. The smell was bitter and burnt.

“Ah,” Lin Langtian said from the fire. “Yours Truly knows that smell. That’s a ruined furnace.”

Shi Feng was annoyed with himself. He lifted the lid. One pill lay at the bottom, cracked in half, grey on one side and black on the other. It was a waste pill, and any other cultivator’s body would throw it straight back up.

Shi Feng picked it up and ate it. He wasn’t going to waste the herbs.

The herbs’ qi ran into him at once, cold and bright, and went straight to his damaged meridians. The pill had failed, but every herb in it still held its qi, and his All-Devouring Physique took all of it.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said. “Those were Profound Heaven herbs. That pill cost as much as a house, and you just ate it.”

“Nothing in it was wasted,” Shi Feng said, wiping his mouth. “And I know where it went wrong. The moss goes in second, but it has to go in cold. I warmed it to make the fold easier.”

“A whole house, eaten because he was in a hurry,” Lin Langtian said, shaking his head. “Even Yours Truly isn’t that greedy.”

Qin Wuyan looked at the cracked shell on the stone, then at Shi Feng.

“There are herbs for two more,” Qin Wuyan said.

“Then I’ll make the next one carefully,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t rush the moss again.”

Shi Feng banked the fire and laid out the second set of herbs. This time he put the Star Moss in a jade dish and set it in the snow outside the door to cool through the night.

Lin Langtian watched him do it. Then he went to the door and stood beside the dish for a while, looking up at the stars over the valley rim and counting them under his breath.

“What are you doing?” Shi Feng asked.

“Counting the stars,” Lin Langtian said. “You’ll want to know how many there are.”