Chapter 446 — Seven Clouds

CHAPTER 446

Seven Clouds

The lid came up, and for a moment nothing happened.

Shi Feng looked into the furnace. A single pill lay on the bed of ash, small and round and the colour of the sky before the sun. It gave off no light and no smell. Shi Feng checked its smooth surface before reaching into the furnace.

He picked it up.

Behind him, Sima Lan stopped breathing.

“One,” said the crowd.

It came as a murmur first, from the front rows, and then it spread. A cloud rose from the pill, silver and clean, and unrolled across the terrace like a bolt of cloth. Above it, the sky over Qingyun City was blue and empty.

“Two!” the square cried. “Three!”

The second cloud was gold at the edges. The third was pale as milk. They were no bigger than the clouds from Master Qi's pill, but they were thicker, and they rose in a perfect line, one after the other.

“Four!”

“Five!”

“Six...”

The word came out of the crowd in a ragged breath, and then the shouting thinned. Six clouds hung over the city, and a seventh was still unfolding in the heart of the pill. People on the rooftops stood up. In the gallery, someone dropped a teacup.

The herald forgot the rule against speaking during the count. He whispered that six was the Pavilion's showcase record, set by Grandmaster Lu a hundred and ninety years ago. Nobody had ever surpassed it.

The seventh cloud came out.

It was dawn-coloured, the red and gold of a morning sky. It climbed past the others, spread right across the city, and stopped. The light of it fell across the terrace so that the rail glowed, the masters' faces glowed, and even the tower's old stone shone gold.

“Seven,” somebody said, in a small voice.

Nobody else said anything.

The crowd of tens of thousands, on a roof and in a square and in every window around it, had gone entirely silent. There was no applause. There was not even a cough. Far off, a dog barked once. Everyone on the terrace heard it.

Shi Feng stood at the end of the line with the pill in his hand and waited for someone to say something.

“It's quiet,” Shi Feng said.

“Yes,” Sima Lan said, behind him. Her voice sounded odd.

“Did I frighten them?” Shi Feng asked, looking toward the silent square.

“They've just watched you break a record nobody's touched for a hundred and ninety years,” Sima Lan said, still stunned. “Give them a moment!”

Master Qi was the first to move. The old man set down his cup, walked the length of the terrace at an unhurried pace, and stopped in front of Shi Feng. He looked at the pill, then at the boy, then at the pill again.

Then he bowed, very low, to a man eighty years his junior.

“The waves behind push the waves ahead,” Master Qi Zhengming said. “A hundred and sixty-three years, and I thought I knew what a showcase was. Thank you, Master Shi.”

“Please get up,” Shi Feng said. “Your beard is on my boot.”

Behind Master Qi, Master Lian Fu sat down on his stool, put his head in his hands and began to mutter. Madam Xiang covered her mouth. Master Bi picked up his cup of wine and, after a moment, poured the rest of it onto the floor for luck.

Then the square erupted.

“SEVEN!” the crowd bellowed, all at once, like a wave hitting a wall. “SEVEN CLOUDS!”

“The Pavilion's record! He broke the record!”

“By a whole cloud!” “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river! Don't bully the young for being poor!”

“Give me his name! I want to know where to send my son!”

In the gallery, where the Hall's elders sat, Elder He Zhen had risen from his bench. Gongsun Ce was on his knees at the rail with his book open on the floor, and he'd turned over a page and found nothing to write on it. He looked up at the sky and moved his lips.

“I should have taken the over,” Gongsun Ce said hollowly.

Across the terrace, at the far side of the gallery, a woman in a pale green sash stood up.

It was Valley Master Mu Shuyun. She stood a little too quickly, the way a person does who has not meant to, and then she folded her hands and stayed standing with her chin lifted. After a breath, the whole Valley delegation was on its feet behind her. Disciples in green sashes, elders in deeper green, and in the front row, in violet, Ling Qingzhu.

She had stood without knowing it. Her amazement and pride showed openly as she watched him. Her thumb was pressed hard against her sleeve.

Their eyes met across forty paces of white stone.

Ling Qingzhu lifted her chin the width of a finger. Then she sat down, very straight, and fixed her eyes on the sky.

“She's gone red,” Sima Lan said.

“It's the sunrise,” Shi Feng said. “It's a red cloud.”

“You answered before I even asked about her,” Sima Lan pointed out.

“The cloud is red,” Shi Feng replied calmly.

Sima Lan said nothing. Her chalk made a mark on her slate, and for once he did not see whether she crossed it out.

On the other side of the terrace, a man had risen from the Martial Palace bench. It was Wei Chengyuan. He stood stiffly in his grey robe, and for a moment he looked at the seventh cloud with open anger. Qu Jiang half-rose beside him. Wei Chengyuan said something short and quiet, and Qu Jiang sat down again.

Then the old elder turned and walked to the stairs. He did not hurry and he did not look back. The Palace disciples around him hastily followed, covering their rings as they went.

The last cloud was still thick when he left. By the time it began to thin, Wei Chengyuan's chair was empty.

“He paid a ruinous price for a lump of slag,” Sima Lan said, in a voice of great satisfaction, “and now he has to watch this. A bad week.”

“I'd call it expensive,” Shi Feng said.

The herald was reading the result of the showcase when a white-robed figure crossed the terrace.

He was a tall old man with a gold-bordered sleeve and a stern expression. The crowd moved aside for him without being asked. This was Examining Elder Yin Zhao of the Sky Pavilion's regional tower, and the people on the stairs lowered their voices when he passed. He did not stop at the furnaces. He did not look at the boy with the seven clouds.

He crossed the whole terrace and stopped in front of a stooped old man at the foot of the stairs, who was sitting on an upturned bucket with a broom across his knees and a basket of cabbages by his foot.

“Sect Master Li,” Yin Zhao said, in a low voice meant for the cabbages. “I wonder if I might have a word about the boy's future.”

Li Changyuan looked up from the cabbages.

“How much,” Li Changyuan said, “is the word?”