Chapter 527 — No Clouds

CHAPTER 527

No Clouds

The stone door ground shut at dawn, and the runes along its edge flared white.

“Junior Brother!” Lin Langtian's voice came through the last crack. “If you see anything big, hit it!”

“Chief Disciple,” Li Changyuan said, somewhere behind him. “Shut up.”

“I'm being supportive!” Lin Langtian said.

“You're being loud. Go and eat a potato,” Li Changyuan said.

The stone closed between him and the others. Their voices stopped. Shi Feng listened for a moment, then turned his attention to the chamber. Whatever happened next, he would have to endure it without them beside him.

Shi Feng sat down on the bare stone floor of the Thunder Cliff chamber and crossed his legs. The walls were still dark with the old sweat of his last breakthrough. A single lamp burned in the corner. He closed his eyes and pulled his qi inward.

The core answered at once.

His old-gold core hung full in his dantian. It had been full for four days, so he didn’t force more qi into it. He let it turn slowly. At its centre, something began to loosen. Shi Feng waited, careful not to rush the change.

This is how a Nascent Soul begins, he thought. Now wait for the sky.

He waited.

He remembered the Golden Core tribulation: black clouds stacking above the cliff, lightning striking before dawn finished, burned stone and glass cracking beneath his knees. Heaven had examined him then. He expected it to return, but this trial gave him none of those signs.

This time, there was nothing to smell.

He opened his eyes once, around noon, by his own count. The lamp burned steadily. The array on the wall showed no storm, no pressure. Far below, so faintly that he almost missed it, the forge hammers on the lower terraces stopped.

Then the bell tower stopped. Then the birds.

By evening, he could hear his own heartbeat in the quiet. The whole mountain had gone silent, as if every living thing on Thousand Forge Peak had been told to hold its breath.

[Devoured: nothing | Note: no clouds. No thunder.]

He closed his eyes again.

When he opened them, the chamber was gone.

He sat on packed earth in the Shi clan’s eastern courtyard. Grey walls enclosed a dead jujube tree with one branch cut off. The gutter leaked. Shi Feng recognised every part of it and dreaded what would come next. In Qingshi Town, mornings like this once meant another day of helpless waiting.

His body was thin. He looked down. His hands were the hands from those years, the wrists too narrow, the nails ridged.

An illusion, Shi Feng thought. Don't fight it. Sit.

A servant came across the yard with a bowl. He was a heavy man in a stained apron, and he had never learned to be quiet while walking.

“Cripple,” the servant said, and dropped the bowl.

It hit the stones and rolled. A little thin congee ran out of it, grey as dishwater, and the dog by the wall got to it first.

“Dog's fed,” the servant said, laughing. “Next.”

Shi Feng watched the congee soak into the dirt. The Ledger stirred in him, out of habit, looking for food. It found none.

[Devoured: nothing | Note: this is not food]

He stayed where he was.

Day one passed that way. The bowl came, and it was dropped. Then it didn't come at all. Then Shi Hong strolled through the gate in a clean blue robe, looked at him, and laughed so hard he had to hold the wall.

“Still alive?” Shi Hong asked. “A tiger fallen onto the plains is bullied by dogs, cripple, and you aren't even a tiger. How? I told them to cut the rations to nothing.”

“Nobody followed your orders,” Shi Feng said. “There was a bowl yesterday.”

“It was a dog's bowl!” Shi Hong said.

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

Shi Hong’s grin faltered. He wanted tears or anger, not a plain answer about yesterday’s bowl. The illusion rippled and began again. Shi Feng watched the servant cross the stones with the same ration, understanding that it would keep trying until he yielded.

So it went. The bowls came and fell, then stopped. The cold crept in at night. Each time, the illusion offered a door out: a cart leaving the gate, a kind-faced steward with a full bowl, a voice calling him inside. And each time it asked for one thing in return.

Give up, the yard said, in every voice at once. Take the bowl. Leave. It's easier.

Shi Feng sat through it.

He couldn’t fight his way through this trial. There was no enemy to hit and nothing to devour. Shi Feng had to remain in the courtyard, hungry and cold, without accepting its offer to leave. He understood the rule, but enduring those old feelings was harder than another bolt of lightning.

By the end of day two the illusion had stopped bothering with Shi Hong. The courtyard was empty. The jujube tree had lost its last branch. The only thing left in the whole grey world was an empty ration bowl, a hand's width from his knee, rocking slightly in the wind.

He looked at it for a long time.

I remember this one, Shi Feng thought. The last bowl.

The bowl stopped rocking.

[Note: the easy part is over]

The Ledger never commented on the future. Shi Feng did not like it at all.