Chapter 480 — So-So

CHAPTER 480

So-So

Keeper Bian's lantern had burned for nine days on the third floor, and nobody had dared ask him why it never needed oil.

“Again,” Keeper Bian said.

He stood in the corner of the circular chamber, bent over his cane, a stooped shape in a patched grey robe. The room was bare except for a stone basin set into the ceiling and the curtain of water that fell from it into a drain in the floor. The water never splashed. It came down in one smooth glassy sheet, thin as a hand, and it had been falling since before the Pagoda had a roof.

Shi Feng stood in the circle three paces from it with the blade in his right hand. His left shoulder still complained when he lifted it past his ear, so he'd stopped lifting it.

He had spent nine days on the floor. The first six had gone to the last tablets. The hundred-and-eighth, a long grey slab called Last Lantern Sword, had taken him one afternoon and a headache. The remaining three days he had spent in front of the water.

Cut what has no edge.

Tablet thirty-one. Entry on the first day, Minor Success on a roof. Today he'd come to find out if the next step existed.

“Minor Success holds the line for five breaths,” Keeper Bian said. “Everyone gets five. Even I got five, and I'm a keeper.”

“And Major Success?” Shi Feng asked.

“It keeps the water apart longer,” Keeper Bian replied, swinging his lantern. “Nobody's ever told me how long that is. I've only been here sixty years.”

Shi Feng breathed in.

He didn't lift the blade like a swordsman. He let it hang, and then he let his arm move as the water moved: straight, without hurry, with no thought for the edge. He followed the tablet's instruction, concentrating on the line his sword left behind. A sharp edge wasn't enough; the cut had to remain after the blade passed.

The blade went into the curtain of water, and out the other side.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then the water parted. A clean, narrow gap opened where the blade had passed, no wider than a finger. The falling sheet stood on either side of it like two walls and did not close. A thread of daylight from the window showed through the gap, perfectly straight.

“One,” Keeper Bian said, softly. “Two. Three. Four. Five.”

The gap held.

“Six. Seven,” Keeper Bian said.

“Eleven,” Keeper Bian said. His voice had begun to shake. “Twelve. Thirteen.”

“Is it true?” Keeper Ou shouted breathlessly from the stairwell.

Keeper Ou came up the last step with his tea tray in both hands and his robe on crooked. Behind him came Keeper Yan with her record book, thin and sharp, trying to look as if she hadn't run.

“Major Success!” Keeper Ou said. “In forty-nine days! The last man on this tablet took thirty years, and he's dead, and I attended the funeral! The waves behind push the waves ahead!”

“Forty-nine days since Entry,” Keeper Yan said, writing. “Nine on this floor. I'll record the dates.”

“Don't write the dates!” Keeper Ou said. “They'll want a pool!”

“There's already a pool,” Keeper Yan said. “Wu Qiang runs it.”

At thirty-four, the water closed.

The two walls met with a quiet chime. The gap vanished, leaving the falling water smooth. The sheet ran on into the drain as if nothing had touched it. A single drop flicked out and landed on Keeper Bian's cane.

Shi Feng lowered the blade and checked his hand. It was steady.

“Well?” Keeper Ou said, almost whispering. “How was it? Tell us. How do you feel?”

“So-so,” Shi Feng said.

Keeper Ou made a wounded noise. Keeper Yan, very precisely, wrote it down.

“Compared to what?” Keeper Yan asked.

“Compared to Lin Langtian,” Shi Feng said.

“Of course,” Keeper Yan said, with immense satisfaction, and ticked the box.

Keeper Bian hadn't moved. He stood with his cane planted and his lantern lowered, and he looked at the spot in the curtain where the gap had been. He was too stunned to speak for a moment. He'd watched Shi Feng learn it, but the speed still seemed impossible.

“Major Success,” Keeper Bian said. “Thirty-four breaths.”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“And you've cleared the floor. All a hundred and eight tablets,” Keeper Bian said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

The old keeper turned. He took four careful steps across the chamber, then lifted the lantern toward a plain door that Shi Feng had taken for part of the wall. It was set in the far side of the room, narrow and low, with no handle. A single character was carved in the lintel.

“Above this floor,” Keeper Bian said, “is the last door. One tablet. One art. In sixty years I have swept the stair outside it and never once opened it.” His voice grew hoarse with excitement. “The sect master's leave hasn't been written. I'll write it myself, if you ask. I'd like to be there.”

Shi Feng looked at the door.

He was not unmoved. Behind that door was a Soul Formation-grade art, and it would still be there next month. His core stood at seventy-one parts in a hundred, his left shoulder was cracked, and he'd just spent nine days learning how little he knew. Shi Feng thought he should recover before attempting an even higher art. That door could wait.

“So-so,” Shi Feng said. “Not yet.”

Keeper Bian looked at him a long moment.

Then his cane slid sideways. He lowered himself, very slowly, onto the stone floor, and sat there with the lantern in his lap and his legs stretched out in front of him.

Keeper Ou put down the tea tray, and sat down beside him.

After a moment, so did Keeper Yan.