Chapter 1114 — Eight Clouds

CHAPTER 1114

Eight Clouds

The second furnace went in at dawn, with the Star Moss still cold from the snow.

This time the herbs went down quietly. The Frost Lotus settled, the moss lay over it without pulling, and the Old Heaven Pine resin bound the two together as he’d planned. Shi Feng was relieved. He kept the Second Anvil Fire low and even, nine beats and a rest, though his meridians ached under the steady work.

Lin Langtian sat on an upturned crate by the door, with Qin Wuyan standing beside him. Just inside the doorway, a boy of about twelve sat on a flat stone, wrapped in a blanket too big for him, with an empty herb basket in his lap.

The herb boy had carried a last basket up from Pinefall the evening before: fresh resin the herb house had held back for the third furnace. Qin Wuyan had met him at the valley mouth and walked him the last three li with a cloth over his eyes. The boy had been too excited by the blindfold to be scared.

“Is it working?” the herb boy whispered. “Uncle, is it working?”

“Don’t call me uncle,” Lin Langtian whispered back. “Call me Senior. And it’s working. You can tell because he hasn’t made a face yet.”

At noon the first cloud rose over the furnace and drifted out through the doorway into the valley.

A second followed it, then a third.

“Clouds,” the herb boy said. “Real ones!”

By the middle of the afternoon six of them hung over Cold Pine valley, white against the grey winter sky, and the boy was too awed to speak. At the seventh, Qin Wuyan took one step forward from the door, surprised. At the eighth, all the clouds went still and bright together, and the light in them turned silver.

Shi Feng had reached eight clouds, a perfect result.

He lifted the lid. Two clear, pale pills lay in the bottom of the furnace. When he turned them toward the doorway, their surfaces showed the cave roof upside down.

Shi Feng sealed them in jade and wiped the furnace. He didn’t stop to celebrate. He wanted the third set of herbs in while the furnace was still warm.

The third furnace went the same way. By nightfall eight clouds had stood over the valley a second time, and four Heaven-Mirror Pills sat in their jade cases on the flat stone.

Lin Langtian leaned on the doorframe and looked at the cases for a long time.

“A 6 Mark at Shattering Void,” Lin Langtian said. “Refining his own breakthrough pills, in a ruin, in a furnace older than his whole sect, on half his qi and one arm.” He shook his head. “That’s either very brave or very stupid.”

“It was faster,” Shi Feng said.

“Faster?” Lin Langtian asked.

“If I’d asked the Pavilion for four Heaven-Mirror Pills, they’d have had to find a 6 Mark to make them,” Shi Feng said, stacking the cases. “That’s me, and the Pavilion is a long way from here. I need them now.”

Lin Langtian stared at him. Then he laughed so hard he had to sit back down on the crate.

“Guardian Qin, did you hear that?” Lin Langtian said, pointing. “I ask if he’s brave or stupid, and he tells me it was faster!”

“This one heard,” Qin Wuyan said.

The herb boy didn’t follow any of it. He was thrilled to have seen eight clouds twice in one day. Nobody in Pinefall would believe him, but he ran all the way down to town the next morning to tell them anyway. Qin Wuyan walked him to the valley mouth with the cloth over his eyes.

The boy came back up the next evening, blindfolded and breathless, holding a folded paper over his head.

“The new issue!” the herb boy shouted. “The Tianji issue came up the post road! Senior, his name’s in it!”

Lin Langtian snatched it before Shi Feng could reach it, reading it aloud by the fire in a loud, grand voice.

“Sixth, Shi Feng,” Lin Langtian read. “Still sixth! And tenth, Mu Hanzhi, of the Myriad Marrow Sect, unchanged.” He lowered the paper. “Four places, Junior Brother. He fought you with both arms and he’s still four places down.”

“What are they saying in town?” Shi Feng asked the boy.

“Everyone’s arguing!” the herb boy said, bouncing on his heels. “Old Zhang at the teahouse says the bandit fight shouldn’t count, because bandits aren’t on any list. The butcher says if that one doesn’t count, then the Mu fight should count double, because you only had one arm. Then the blacksmith said a dragon stuck in shallow water is still a dragon, and they all started shouting!”

“Who won?” Lin Langtian asked eagerly.

“Nobody. The magistrate came and told them all to go home,” the herb boy said.

Lin Langtian laughed again. Shi Feng took the issue and read it through once himself. He was relieved that the Mansion had printed nothing about Weeping Pine Basin or Pinefall’s bandits. It printed only what it had confirmed, and it kept every confirmed fact on record.

At the door, Qin Wuyan had stopped listening to them. He was uneasy, looking south past the valley rim at a sky that hadn’t changed all day.

“Senior Qin?” Shi Feng asked.

“It is too quiet to the south,” Qin Wuyan said.