Chapter 1120 — The Furnace Lord’s House

CHAPTER 1120

The Furnace Lord’s House

The Sixth Elder didn’t hurry. He came up from the valley mouth on foot, in his torn grey robe, and the array’s outer ring sounded again at every step he took.

Cold Pine Abode sat at the head of the valley, a cave mouth under a cliff of black pines. Three hundred paces of knee-deep snow lay between its door and the valley mouth. Twenty-three men in plain furs had come through the rift after the Elder, all Shattering Void. None of them looked like bandits.

Shi Feng came out of the abode’s heart and stood on the step.

His new realm still felt strange. The night before, he’d been peak Shattering Void. Now a quiet space below his dantian belonged to him, and it was still settling. Shi Feng was uneasy. He hadn’t had time to learn what it could do.

Lin Langtian sat in the doorway beside him with a cold sweet potato in his hand. He didn’t get up.

“The second one is with them,” Qin Wuyan said from the valley mouth, without turning his head. “Behind the men. In the void.”

“Can you hold both?” Shi Feng asked.

“This one will hold the men and the one behind them,” Qin Wuyan said, setting his feet in the snow. “Not the Elder.”

“Then leave the Elder to me,” Shi Feng said. “Keep the men away from the abode.”

Qin Wuyan bowed very slightly and said nothing more.

Halfway up the valley, the Sixth Elder stopped. A thin line of snow had melted there, showing old runes in the rock. Lin Langtian’s array was waking. The Elder studied the lines for a long time.

The Sixth Elder went pale. He recognised the work.

“The Furnace Lord’s own house,” the Sixth Elder said slowly, and looked up at the cliff. “So it was true.”

Then he looked at the doorway.

Lin Langtian grinned at him and took a bite of the sweet potato. His hand shook a little as he lifted it, so he lowered it to his knee. He didn’t want the Elder to see how weak he still was.

“Junior Brother, this one’s yours,” Lin Langtian said, chewing. “Senior Brother is resting.”

Behind the Elder, at the valley mouth, his men had stopped in a line in front of Qin Wuyan.

“He wants a man an hour into Profound Heaven to face me alone?” the Sixth Elder asked, turning his eyes to Shi Feng. “Pavilion’s alchemist. Your Senior Brother has become a coward since the basin.”

“My Senior Brother carried me forty li,” Shi Feng said, stepping down off the step into the snow. “He’s earned a seat. You came for me. Here I am.”

The Sixth Elder smiled coldly. He had stopped pretending to be polite.

At the valley mouth Qin Wuyan moved first. He raised one hand, and Still Mountain Seal came down on the twenty-three men. Fourteen of them were pressed to their knees in the snow. The other nine tore free and ran at him, and above them the air split, and a second Profound Heaven aura poured down from the void.

“Go,” the Sixth Elder told his men, without looking back. “Keep the old dog busy.”

Then he opened his inner heaven.

The Severed Moon Heaven came down over the middle of the valley. The snow became a grey plain, and the black pines on the cliff disappeared. Above the plain hung a moon broken into seven pieces where Lin Langtian’s hammer had struck it at the basin. Every crack between them was sealed with a pale green light that stank of grave-rot.

Before he could take another step, Shi Feng was standing inside it, eighty paces from the Elder.

He felt the change at once. Here the Elder’s will was law, and Shi Feng’s qi moved only as fast as the Elder allowed. It was the same as at the basin.

The difference was that this time he had a heaven of his own.

Shi Feng pushed his heaven outward to test it against the grey. It failed. His inner heaven was one hour old and still taking the shape he’d given it, with no strength to spare. The grey plain pressed against it, and it gave a little. Shi Feng was disappointed, but not surprised.

“You can feel it,” the Sixth Elder said, raising his left hand. “A newborn calf doesn’t fear the tiger. Your heaven can’t push anything yet. Did you think you’d just stepped up to my level?”

He brought his hand down.

Pale Moon Palm fell from all seven shards of the moon at once.

Seven palms of cold white light came down on Shi Feng from seven directions. He moved on Riverless Step to slip between them, but the grey ground slowed his feet, and he only cleared two. He drew and cut the third in half with Sunset-Splitting Sword, and the shock jarred his wrist. The fourth and fifth crossed behind him where he’d been.

He tried Void-Crossing Step to escape the last two. The space here belonged to the Elder, so the fold landed short, three body-lengths instead of thirty.

The sixth palm struck his left shoulder. The cold went into the joint and turned his arm white to the elbow. The seventh hit the ground beside him and threw him across the grey plain.

He rolled and came up on one knee, coughing blood onto the stone.

At the abode door, Lin Langtian had stopped chewing.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian called, sounding cheerful, though he was worried and had leaned forward. “You can take your time. But not too much time!”

Shi Feng didn’t answer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sword hand and studied the moon.

The Sixth Elder was patient. He’d already lost one fight to Lin Langtian, and he wasn’t going to lose a second one by being careless. He kept eighty paces between them. He raised his hand again, and the seven shards turned slowly overhead, lining up for another fall.

“I won’t take your head,” the Sixth Elder said. “There was a buyer for that once, and he’s withdrawn. But the sect still wants your hands. I’ll take you out of here with both of them, and that new heaven of yours can go to waste in a cell.”

Shi Feng stood up, ignoring the cold spreading through his shoulder.

He was watching the green light between the shards, and Shi Feng understood what it was. It wasn’t part of the moon. It was a patch. The crack from Lin Langtian’s hammer still ran underneath, right across the Elder’s heaven from one edge of the sky to the other, and the green light was only holding it shut.

He had read a jade slip about that kind of seam in the abode’s half-buried library, because Lin Langtian had kicked it across the floor to him.