Chapter 1121 — First Heaven

CHAPTER 1121

First Heaven

The jade slip was called Heaven-Folding Palm, and it held a Profound Heaven art. Shi Feng had read it four times since the library and practised it only on the air of his own cave. It taught one thing: a Profound Heaven cultivator could take a piece of space in his palm and fold it along a seam.

He had never tried it on anyone’s heaven.

Above him the seven shards of the broken moon lined up again.

Shi Feng didn’t wait for them. He ran straight at the Elder across the grey plain, but not in a line. He followed the shadow the crack threw on the ground, a thin pale road beneath the green light between two shards. He needed to reach the seam before he could use the art.

“Running at me?” the Sixth Elder said, bringing his hand down.

The seven palms fell. Shi Feng cut the first in half and let the second hit the ground behind him. He couldn’t dodge the third without leaving the road, so he took it. It struck him across the back and frosted his robe to the skin, and he kept running.

Forty paces from the Elder he dropped to one knee and laid his left palm flat on the pale road.

His left arm was white with cold to the elbow, and it hurt to open the hand. He opened it anyway.

Heaven-Folding Palm, Entry.

The space under his hand folded along the crack. It didn’t tear. It bent cleanly where Lin Langtian’s hammer had weakened it, and a piece of the grey plain the size of a courtyard came up off the Elder’s heaven, with one shard of the moon hanging over it.

Shi Feng had meant to throw the piece aside, out of the Elder’s heaven and into the valley.

His own heaven took it first.

The quiet space below his dantian opened by itself and swallowed the folded piece whole. The piece was cold, broken and full of a stranger’s law. His inner heaven broke it down and kept it. He felt the shard of moon dissolve inside him into grey light that was now his.

The Sixth Elder staggered. Blood came out of his nose.

“What did you do?” the Sixth Elder shouted. “What did you just do?”

At the doorway, Lin Langtian slowly put the sweet potato down. He was stunned.

No Profound Heaven art could do that. One heaven could press on another, crack it or push it back. A heaven couldn’t eat another heaven. Shi Feng was shaken, because he knew it even as he did it. He decided at once that nobody would hear him say so.

The Elder raised his hand again. Six shards fell instead of seven.

This time Shi Feng didn’t run. He kept his palm on the pale road and folded again. A second piece of grey came up along the crack and went into him. The fourth palm-light, falling from that piece’s shard, went out in the air before it reached him.

He chose to take the fifth and sixth on his right side rather than lift his palm. His ribs cracked again under the bandages. He folded a third time.

The Severed Moon Heaven was shrinking. Its edge had been far out over the pines. Now it ran forty paces from the Elder’s back, then thirty. Four shards of moon were left in the sky, and the green light between them was flickering.

Shi Feng felt his own heaven straining at its edge. It was too young to take in this much at once. Something at its rim pulled tight, close to splitting, so he stopped folding.

Shi Feng judged that three pieces were enough.

The Elder’s heaven was small now. Its broken sky hung low over the two of them, close enough that Shi Feng could see the real sky over the valley through the gaps between the shards.

He stood up and raised Falling Star Sword.

Until today the stroke had fallen through space. This time he dropped the sword into the gap between two shards, through the Elder’s own heaven. It passed down through the broken moon and out of the Severed Moon Heaven, then came down from the real sky over the Elder’s right shoulder. The Elder’s heaven had no wall there to stop it.

Falling Star Sword, Perfection.

The Sixth Elder’s right arm came off at the shoulder and dropped into the snow.

The grey plain went out. The valley came back all at once, with the black pines and the white snow and the cold wind off the cliff. The Elder stood in a red patch of snow with his left hand clamped to the stump.

The Sixth Elder didn’t say anything. He looked at Shi Feng, then at the abode, and he was afraid. He tore a rift open with his left hand and threw himself into it, and it closed behind him.

At the valley mouth, the second aura in the void pulled back the moment the Elder fled. Qin Wuyan had already brought down all but two of the running men. The last two broke for the mouth, and he caught them both before they reached it.

Three of the kneeling Heretic men were still alive under Still Mountain Seal. They had seen all of it.

“The Elder’s heaven,” one of them said hoarsely. “It got smaller.”

“He took it. I saw him take it.”

“He’s an hour into Profound Heaven! An hour!”

“The Elder ran. Our Elder ran…”

“…”

Lin Langtian got up slowly from the doorway. He walked out into the snow until he could see the Elder’s arm.

“An hour at Profound Heaven,” Lin Langtian said, turning the arm over with his boot. “And a mid Profound Heaven Elder runs away with one arm left. Junior Brother, they’ll be talking about this in places that don’t even have teahouses.”

Shi Feng sheathed his sword. His left arm was still white, and every breath scraped his ribs.

“Bury it outside the array,” Shi Feng said, nodding at the arm. “It’s Senior Brother’s house. I don’t want to leave rubbish in it.”

Then his legs gave way, and Shi Feng sat down in the snow.