Chapter 306 — Floor Two

CHAPTER 306

Floor Two

Keeper Ou had put a mop beside the door before Shi Feng even reached the bamboo grove.

“Floor two,” Keeper Ou said. He didn't look up from his stool. His teacup sat on the ground a full arm's length away, where his elbows couldn't find it. “Golden Core-grade sword arts. Forty points a day.”

“One day,” Shi Feng said, and put down the token.

“They all say one day,” Keeper Ou muttered. He took the token anyway. “I saw the sky from this stool last week. I thought, that's either the end of the world or the boy who owes the Treasury for the cliff.”

“It was the cliff,” Shi Feng said.

“I know. Go up,” Keeper Ou said.

Zhu Liu stayed at the door with his receipt book. He wrote Floor two, forty points, one mop (standing by) and decided that last part was not his place to bill.

The second floor was smaller than the first. Last time only one circle had been lit for him. Now all twelve were awake, and each stone tablet was darker and older than the last. The air tasted faintly of ash. The floor keeper, Keeper Yan, a thin woman with a record book, took one look at his robe and moved her stool toward the stairs.

Shi Feng picked the Cinder Tide Sword.

The figure’s cuts were slow but forceful. Shi Feng followed the qi path with his new core. Cinder Tide used fire in a way familiar from Ember Rain Sword, which helped him keep the movement steady through the first pass.

By the second pass he stopped counting. By noon the tablet flickered and went dim.

Entry.

“Slow,” Shi Feng said to himself. “Chief Disciple Lin would've done it in one look.”

Behind him, Keeper Yan's record book hit the stone.

The trouble was on the shelf by the stairs.

A single tablet stood there under a layer of dust, set apart from the sword arts. A strip of paper was pasted to it. Drifting Ash Step. Foundation Establishment-grade. Nobody wants it.

“Why not?” Shi Feng asked.

“It makes people fall over,” Keeper Yan said. “In public. Most disciples decide a sword doesn't need feet.”

He stepped into its circle. The pale figure drifted left, dropped a shoulder, slid right, and vanished in a puff of light like blown ash. He copied it.

His ankle rolled. He hit the floor.

He tried again. His knee rolled the other way.

On his fifth attempt, Lin Langtian called from the stairs. “Junior Brother, that was a fine fall! Are you learning a step or trying to polish the floor?” Lin Langtian asked.

Lin Langtian sat on the third step with a sweet potato in each hand. Nobody had heard him come up. He grinned, took a large bite, and leaned on the wall as if it were the best seat in a theatre.

“I'm learning,” Shi Feng said.

“You're sliding,” Lin Langtian said. “Beautifully. Keep going.”

Shi Feng kept going.

The next day, Lin Langtian was on the same step. The day after that, he had brought a cushion. By the end of the first week, he had brought a teapot and begun giving scores.

“Four out of ten!” Lin Langtian shouted when Shi Feng struck the wall. “The wall held its ground better than you did. Try again; I’m watching.”

Shi Feng picked himself off the floor and went back to the circle.

He reached Entry on the twenty-first day.

It happened at dusk, with the lamps lit and Zhu Liu asleep against the doorframe. The figure of light drifted left, and Shi Feng drifted with it. His foot found the right place. His shoulder dropped. For three heartbeats, he moved like ash in a draft.

Then he stopped, and nothing hurt.

The tablet flickered once. Entry.

“Three weeks!” Lin Langtian howled from the stairwell, and clapped so hard that a sweet potato rolled down the steps. “Three weeks! A fall into the pit, a gain in your wit! A crippled crane learns faster!”

“I reached Entry,” Shi Feng said, brushing dust off his robe. “After three weeks of your advice, I’d call that a relief.”

Zhu Liu woke up with a start and wrote down Entry, day 21, then underlined it twice.

Shi Feng went into the bamboo and sat on the bottom step. He checked the qi gathered in his core, as he’d done every night since the tribulation. The Ledger gave him the result before he could persuade himself it felt fuller.

[Core: 3% | Note: waste pills give the herbs' worth, not the pill's]

Three percent. In three weeks.

He had thought it would be faster. He had a core of his own now, a bigger vessel than anyone's, and every night it asked for more than he gave.

A broom swept in the dark behind him.

“Hm,” Li Changyuan said. The old man was pushing a heap of bamboo leaves toward the grove's edge. He didn't look up. “Three percent, is it?”

“How did you know?” Shi Feng asked.

“I can count,” Li Changyuan said. He swept another leaf. “An Unknown core is the slowest to fill.”

The broom moved on, and the dark closed over him.

Shi Feng sat for a long time on the step, with the lamps burning behind him and the figure of ash still turning in his mind.