Chapter 501 — The Third Arch

CHAPTER 501

The Third Arch

Floating stone slabs formed the stair to the third arch.

Slabs hung in the pale air, one above another, each a few paces from the last. The path climbed across them in a long, lazy curve. Shi Feng started up it, and on the fourth slab he found the first body.

It wasn't dead. It was a Hundred Flower Valley disciple in green, folded over her knees, breathing in short sips. On the next slab lay three men in the grey of a small sect, one with his face in his own sleeve. On the one after that a boy in crimson clawed at the stone with both hands, trying to crawl and not managing.

“Don't step on me!”

“Can't breathe—”

“It's pressing on my bones!”

“I just want to go home…”

“Mother, I want to go home!”

Shi Feng stepped round them. The pressure here was no longer a weight on the shoulders. It pressed on his whole chest, making it harder to breathe. It had been heavy at the gate. It was cruel at the second arch. Now, with the third a hundred paces above, even his teeth ached.

He felt it find the edges of his meridians and press, curious. Three hundred and sixty-five of them, he thought. Let it press. The pressure wasn't aimed at him. It lingered from a cultivator whose strength far surpassed this region's elders.

But he dared not walk upright.

He saw that quickly. Every other soul on the stair was crawling or kneeling, and he alone could climb at a steady pace. A man who climbed like that would be noticed by whoever stood at the top.

So he stooped. He let one shoulder sag. He dragged the Sword's point along the stone and stopped on every second slab to lean on a pillar and cough, as if his lungs were full of sand. It was a poor performance. But the stair was crowded with real suffering, and an extra sufferer wouldn't be noticed.

Lin Langtian would have charged admission, Shi Feng thought. And have made it look natural.

“You,” Kuang Hai called weakly from beside a pillar.

He turned. Against the pillar of the sixth slab, propped on one elbow, sat Kuang Hai. His face was grey, but the bruises had faded. The pill had worked.

“You came after me,” Kuang Hai said.

“I'm going the same way,” Shi Feng replied, stopping beside him.

“Are you out of your mind? Going up there is throwing an egg at a rock! Look around!” Kuang Hai demanded, waving a trembling hand toward the other disciples. “Forty people went up this morning. I counted. Twenty have come back down on their own, or been carried. The rest are lying where they fell.”

“And you?” Shi Feng asked, looking at his propped elbow.

“I'm resting,” Kuang Hai said stiffly. “It's different.”

“Why did you come this far?” Shi Feng asked, no longer teasing him.

Kuang Hai said nothing for a while. Then he looked at the arch above them.

“The Palace is finished,” Kuang Hai said. “Wei Chengyuan is stripped of his seat. When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter. Half our elders sit with their eyes on the ground. If I go back with nothing, I'm the man who lost a pearl to a stranger and never got up.” His voice cracked. “I wanted one thing. Just one thing from this place that didn't belong to somebody else.”

“Then take it slowly,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't pity me,” Kuang Hai muttered, angry with himself for saying so much.

“I don't,” Shi Feng said. “I'm saying the stair is long.”

Kuang Hai gave a short, ugly laugh. Then he stopped.

Voices were coming down the slabs.

Shi Feng went still. A cluster of coloured robes came into view above, six in yellow-trimmed white and four in violet, and between them walked a young man in a white robe edged in gold, bright as the morning sun. He was tall and unlined, with a jade crown in his hair and eight gold rays stitched at each cuff, and he did not climb as the rest of them climbed. He stepped from slab to slab as if the stones were rising to meet him.

“Qu Ming,” Kuang Hai whispered. “That's him. The Young Lord.”

Shi Feng stooped lower and rested against the pillar. He didn't raise his head.

“Ao Tong,” Qu Ming called in a clear, pleasant voice that carried down the stair. “I'm told your Abyss has opinions about the pact.”

“We have no opinions,” Ao Tong said. He walked a pace behind Qu Ming's shoulder, plain sword at his hip, no more hurried than before. “The pact was torn. There is nothing to have opinions about.”

“Then we understand each other,” Qu Ming said. “The essence belongs to Azure Sun. Your Abyss may have its pick of the treasures.”

“We'll see what's in the room,” Ao Tong replied calmly.

“Yes, we will,” Qu Ming said.

He glanced down at the stair as he passed. His eyes touched the girl in green, the three grey men and the crawling boy, and slid over Shi Feng and Kuang Hai as if they were stones.

“Look at them,” Qu Ming said. “All these locals. They climb to the third arch and then they lie down. How tiring.”

“Shall I clear the stair, Young Lord?” Xie Yun asked.

“Leave them. They'll fall at the first breath inside,” Qu Ming said dismissively.

“And if they don't?” Xie Yun asked, glancing down the stair.

“Then they can watch,” Qu Ming said, “and be grateful.”

The party went by. The gold-edged robe disappeared round the bend of the slabs. Shi Feng did not move until the voices had gone, and then he stayed an instant longer, counting. Seven from Azure Sun, counting Qu Ming. Four from Thunder Abyss Valley. Eleven peak Golden Core cultivators, with their treasures.

“You really are going up,” Kuang Hai said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng confirmed, straightening just enough to continue.

“They'll kill you,” Kuang Hai warned bitterly.

“They didn't notice me,” Shi Feng said.

He pushed off the pillar. Above him, between two black pillars, the third arch opened onto a light so pale it was almost white. An even stronger pressure poured through it. He lowered his head and climbed.