Chapter 492 — Heaven Doesn't Sign

CHAPTER 492

Heaven Doesn't Sign

The old man read the pact in two breaths.

He stood at the head of the Qingyun City tower table with Mu Shuyun's three copies spread before him. The tower hall's glass dome threw pale light across the paper. Nobody else sat. The Pavilion's chairs stood empty around them, and the only sound was Clerk Du's breathing from the third pillar.

Shi Feng stood at the back with the Artificer Hall delegation. Lin Langtian had dragged him there at dawn with one sentence: “Lesson twenty-six. Be present when paper dies.” Shi Feng hadn't asked what that meant. He was beginning to suspect he would not like the answer.

Beside the old man stood Qu Ming, bored, flicking a gold ray on his cuff. Behind them the Thunder Abyss Valley's elder, a lean woman with a hairpin shaped like a bolt, stood with her arms folded and said nothing at all. Warden Cheng of the Pavilion waited at the far wall in his white robe, careful not to show any opinion.

“Elder Yan,” Mu Shuyun said evenly. “That is the pact of the three Great Sects, sealed under the Pavilion's law. We would be glad to hear any proposals you have for the Ruin's guests.”

“Proposals,” Elder Yan Xuzhong said.

Yan Xuzhong lifted the first copy and read from it in a flat voice that hid nothing. “‘No party may open the Ruin to any outsider without the written consent of all three sects.’”

“Outsiders,” Qu Ming said, lazily. “Is that us?”

“It was meant for neighbours, Young Lord,” Tian Luo said.

“It was meant for whoever arrived second,” Qu Ming said. “That is always how it is meant.”

Elder Yan set the paper down. He looked at Mu Shuyun for the first time, and his gaze was neither angry nor cruel. It was the look of a man deciding how long a conversation would be.

“A ruin is heaven's property,” Yan Xuzhong declared. “A legend's bones belong to the sky he climbed. Heaven doesn't sign with frontier sects.”

“The Pavilion's seal—” Clerk Du began.

Elder Yan took the pact out of Mu Shuyun's hand.

She hadn't offered it. He simply took it, without asking her permission. Mu Shuyun's fingers closed on empty air. For one heartbeat the whole hall understood what had been done, and nobody moved.

Then the old man tore the pact in half. He laid the halves on the table and tore the second copy as well. The third, he folded once and dropped.

The faint tearing sound reached everyone in the silent hall. Yan Xuzhong had destroyed their agreement in front of the Pavilion itself.

“Did he just…” a voice whispered from the gallery, where a handful of Pavilion clerks and city merchants had crept in to watch.

“Torn! In front of the Valley Master!”

“The weak are meat for the strong. It has always been so.”

“Whose side is the Pavilion on?”

“Shh. The warden's looking.”

“…”

Mu Shuyun did not shout. Her hand went into her sleeve, then out again, and it was steady. “Warden Cheng,” Mu Shuyun said. “A Pavilion-sealed pact has been destroyed in the Pavilion's own hall. I request that it be recorded.”

“It is recorded,” Warden Cheng said. His voice was quiet. “The Pavilion notes that a pact was torn. The Pavilion does not enforce pacts between sects. It only witnesses them.”

“Then you witnessed it,” Mu Shuyun said.

“Yes,” Warden Cheng said, and he looked at the floor.

Shi Feng watched the room.

Qu Jiang stood beside the Valley delegation with a hand on his beard. He had been loud at the pact signing, with the Palace's thousand years in his mouth. Now he stared at a crack in the flagstones, unwilling to protest. Tian Luo's eyes were down too, his lips pressed together. The Nascent Soul elder of Artificer Hall couldn't meet the visitor's eyes. Qian Mo's abacus lay silent in his hands. Even Clerk Du had found something fascinating to read on his own scroll.

Only Mu Shuyun looked straight at the old man, with her jaw tight and her eyes dry.

And Lin Langtian, beside Shi Feng, looked at neither the elder nor the floor. He looked at the torn halves lying on the table. His potato hung motionless in his hand, and his face held no expression whatsoever.

Shi Feng filed that away with the rest.

“The Ruin opens to everyone below Nascent Soul,” Yan Xuzhong announced. “Six days from today, at dawn. The formation will do its own sorting. Anyone who claims to bar the door will be understood to bar the Empire. Those who follow heaven prosper; those who defy it perish. I would not advise it.”

“The slots—” Qian Mo began, unable to stop himself.

“There are no slots,” Qu Ming said. “There is a door.”

Elder Yan turned and walked out. The Thunder Abyss elder followed without a word, and the juniors went behind her in two clean columns. Qu Ming was the last to leave. He looked at the torn paper on the table, then at the regional elders, and smiled openly enjoying the regional elders' humiliation.

“Frontier,” Qu Ming said, and went.

The doors shut. The hall breathed again.

“That was stamped,” Clerk Du whispered shakily.

Nobody laughed.

Mu Shuyun walked to the table. She stooped, and the Valley Master of Hundred Flower Valley, ninety years a cultivator, gathered the torn halves one by one. Su Wanning started forward to help. Mu Shuyun lifted a finger and the girl stopped.

She folded the pieces into her sleeve.

“Paper keeps,” Mu Shuyun said.

Then she walked out, not hurrying, and her disciples followed. Qu Jiang, to his own surprise, found that he had stepped aside to let her pass.

Shi Feng looked once at the empty table. Three pens still lay on it, uncapped.