Chapter 472 — The Weight at Dusk

CHAPTER 472

The Weight at Dusk

“Eleven more pills in this ring,” Zhu Liu said. “The label says Bone-Hardening, but the writing's crooked. Senior Brother Shi, should the receipt say ‘crooked’?”

“Write the pills,” Shi Feng said.

The last of the light lay across the blanket on the step of hut nine: seven escort rings, one war seal as big as a rice bowl, and a great deal of paper. Sima Lan sat in the doorway on her stool, wrapped to the chin in her grey blanket and refusing to be called a patient. Old Soot lay on the warm doorstep, still chewing its ring hinge.

“The seal goes in column one,” Sima Lan said. “It is the only item here that is also a crime.”

“Yes, Senior Attendant Sima,” Zhu Liu said.

“Attendant,” Sima Lan said. “Not senior.”

The candle beside the blanket bent.

It didn't flicker. It leaned over slowly, as if somebody had laid a finger on its flame. Then the evening wind stopped, and the sparrows on the roof went silent all at once.

Shi Feng put down the ring in his hand.

Heavy pressure spread from the northeast, where Martial Palace stood. It settled over Thousand Forge Peak without warning, pressing down on every disciple. The air thickened. Shi Feng's shoulders dropped an inch before he'd decided anything. His right knee struck the stone step.

All down the eastern lane, doors banged open, and then bodies hit the ground.

“What is that?” somebody screamed.

“Kneel! Everyone kneel!”

“It's the Martial Palace Master!”

“He crossed three hundred li to step on us!”

“Mother...”

Zhu Liu lay flat on his face, with seven rings under his chest. Old Soot flattened itself against the doorstep. Behind them, Sima Lan's stool cracked in half. She sat down on the floor with her back perfectly straight and her jaw gone white.

“The floor,” Sima Lan said through her teeth, “came up.”

“I saw,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't help me,” Sima Lan said stubbornly, trying to hold herself upright.

“I wasn't going to,” Shi Feng replied. He couldn't rise either.

He stayed on one knee. His core, seventy-one parts in a hundred full, shook under the pressure. His sword hand rested flat on the stone. There was no Spirit Sense to read the thing, but he had skin, and bones, and a spine, and they all told him the same story. The pressure wasn't trying to crush. It was wide and flat and calm. Whoever sent it wanted them frightened, not dead.

A message, he thought. Not a blow.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian whispered beside him.

Lin Langtian knelt beside him. Shi Feng hadn't seen him arrive. He was down on one knee in the dust with a sweet potato in his fist, his head bowed and his shoulders trembling. It was a very good performance. The potato was the only thing that spoiled it.

“Lower your chin,” Lin Langtian whispered. “Look overawed. It sells better.”

“Are you overawed?” Shi Feng asked.

“Deeply,” Lin Langtian said. “I'm a respectable early Nascent Soul. Respectable people kneel. It keeps the audience calm.”

Across the lane, Wu Qiang knelt with both hands over his head. On the roof of the Register Hall, a white-faced figure in elder's robes was down on one knee. That was Tian Luo, who was a real Nascent Soul, and who was also kneeling.

Then someone began to walk.

Shi Feng saw him first as a patched brown shape coming up the lane from the furnace yard. He walked upright, with a broom over his shoulder. He didn't hurry. He passed the kneeling disciples without any difficulty, ignoring the pressure that pinned them down.

“The old sweeper!” Wu Qiang hissed. “Old Sweeper! Get down!”

“Get down, you'll be crushed!”

“He's deaf. He's deaf!”

“Somebody grab his leg!”

Nobody grabbed his leg. Nobody could lift a hand.

Li Changyuan passed hut nine without looking at it. As he went by, the candle flame beside the blanket stood back up. Just for one breath, in a circle three paces wide around his feet, the weight wasn't there.

“Watch the broom,” Lin Langtian said quietly. The jokes had gone out of his voice. “Not the old man.”

Shi Feng watched.

The old man walked on down to the gate. The great iron-bound doors stood open to the empty road, and beyond them the dusk had gone the colour of a bruise. Li Changyuan stopped on the top step, set his feet apart and began to sweep.

It was an ordinary sweep. The bristles scratched on stone.

The first stroke made the whole sky shudder.

The second stroke forced the pressure back from the peak. The third stroke was lazy, hardly more than a flick of the wrist, and the weight was simply gone. It didn't break. It didn't explode. It withdrew from the peak all at once, without damaging anything else.

The wind came back. A sparrow chirped, uncertainly.

Nobody moved for a long moment.

Shi Feng's Ledger woke in his mind, flat and polite.

[Pressure: not devourable. Note: someone swept it away first.]

“Is it... gone?” Zhu Liu said into the blanket.

“It's gone,” Shi Feng said.

“Did we... did we survive?” Zhu Liu asked, still afraid to lift his head.

“You're lying on the receipt book,” Sima Lan told him, struggling up against the wall. “You're fine. Get up before you crush the rings too.”

Down the lane, disciples began to stand, slowly, brushing off their knees. Then the whispers started.

“The sect's guardian formation!”

“It woke up! The old formation woke up and pushed him back! Heaven has eyes!”

“Heavens. We have a formation?”

“The sweeper was just in the way...”

At the gate, Li Changyuan lifted his broom and looked into the empty dusk with great dislike.

“Who sends dust at nightfall?” Li Changyuan muttered. “Costs me a broom.”

Then he turned, and for the first time his eyes crossed the lane and found hut nine.

“You,” Li Changyuan said. “Shi Feng. My hut. After supper.”

Every head in the lane turned to Shi Feng.

“The sweeper knows Senior Brother Shi?” someone whispered.

Lin Langtian got up, dusted his knee and bit into his sweet potato.

“Bring tea,” Lin Langtian said. “He likes it cold.”