Chapter 1130 — The Promise Is Due

CHAPTER 1130

The Promise Is Due

The ridge above Cold Pine Abode was the only place in the valley where the wind didn’t come straight off the cliff.

Shi Feng climbed up to it in the middle of the morning with his small private book in his sleeve. Below him lay the sealed valley: the black pines, the abode’s dark mouth and the thin line in the snow where the array ran. To the south, the road ran past Pinefall toward Hanyuan. The white peaks of the Serene Jade lay far beyond it, too far to see.

He sat down on a flat stone, opened the book on his knee and wet the brush.

He turned back first, past the tally from the ridge above Hanli and the line from the Mansion, to the one he’d written at the Wanyan estate.

Two heavens seen. One promise due at Profound Heaven.

He wrote the tally under it, one line at a time.

Early Profound Heaven.

Inner heaven: opened. Cracked once at the edge. Set.

Sixth on the Tianxing. Under review by the Mansion.

6 Mark. No longer the exception. The Pavilion has struck the line.

Cash: twenty-nine million one hundred and thirty thousand at the Hanyuan tower, near enough. Ji Yuanhe’s furnace account in Her Highness’s vault, untouched, for a Quiet Soul Lotus.

Shuoyang: accepted. Paid. To refine at Hanyuan.

Shi Feng paused there. The money lines had been easy to write. The debts were harder.

Lin Langtian: owed. Forty li. A Cage. A hand that shook from the basin to Pinefall.

Qin Wuyan: owed. Half a trap held off alone. A door kept every night since the basin.

Long Caili: account open.

He looked at that line a long time. Then he added one more under it, because he wanted the record complete.

Her half of the token: at my belt. Until the account is settled.

He didn’t write what account. She hadn’t said, and he wouldn’t guess.

Footsteps came up the ridge behind him, loud and complaining.

“Junior Brother! Why does a man at Profound Heaven need to sit on the highest rock in the valley to write in a book?” Lin Langtian shouted from twenty paces down. “Can’t you write in the warm? Senior Brother has climbed all this way with the wine!”

He came up over the edge puffing, with a jar under one arm and his travelling bag over the other shoulder, and sat down on the stone beside Shi Feng without being asked.

“It’s a better view,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s snow,” Lin Langtian said. “All views here are snow.” He leaned over and looked at the page. “What’s that? Accounts? On a morning like this?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said. “I want to know what I owe before we leave.”

Lin Langtian ran his eye down the page. He saw his own name and the words after it. He was moved, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he pointed at the line.

“A hand that shook from the basin to Pinefall,” Lin Langtian read. “That’s slander. It was the cold.”

“It was the cold,” Shi Feng agreed.

“Cross it out,” Lin Langtian said.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “I want to remember it.”

Lin Langtian looked at him. Then he laughed out loud and pulled the stopper out of the jar.

“Shameless!” Lin Langtian said, drinking. “Completely shameless. A good teacher makes a good student. I’ve done my work too well.”

Qin Wuyan came up the ridge a little after, without a sound. He stopped two steps below the top, as always.

“The array will close behind us at noon,” Qin Wuyan said. “The road to Hanyuan is clear. No presence in the void since the Sixth Elder ran.”

“Then we go at noon,” Shi Feng said.

“This one has sent word to the Hanyuan tower,” Qin Wuyan said, pausing. “And to the Lotus Gate, under the Pavilion’s seal, that the guest elder is coming.”

“Thank you, Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said. He turned back to the page and wet the brush one last time.

Under the tally, he left a line empty. Then he wrote two lines more.

Serene Jade.

The promise is due.

He held the book open on his knee while the ink dried in the cold. Lin Langtian watched him over the wine jar and, for once, didn’t read the page aloud.

Down in the valley the abode’s mouth was dark, and the clean stone beside it was bare. Shi Feng had been carried in through that door with his golden bones cracked and his qi gone, while the Sixth Elder’s men hunted him across the north. Now the Sixth Elder had one arm, and Shi Feng had an inner heaven that nobody else could measure.

Tribulation clouds had gathered over this valley and passed without striking.

Shi Feng closed the book and put it in his sleeve. Her half of the token hung at his belt.

“Let’s go,” Shi Feng said, standing up. “Hanyuan first. Then the gate.”

“Then the gate,” Lin Langtian said, corking the jar.

Qin Wuyan said nothing. He turned and went down the ridge first, the way he always went first on a road, and the other two followed him.

[Mark: 6 | Note: heaven looked, and passed.]