Chapter 529 — Not Finished

CHAPTER 529

Not Finished

At dawn on the fourth day, the sky above Thunder Cliff turned the grey of old iron.

Gongsun Ce stood at the foot of the path with a silver crane puppet clutched to his chest. The puppet had been trembling since midnight. Nobody had touched its strings.

“No clouds,” Tian Luo said. His voice was strained. “No thunder. No wind. And yet, as the saying goes, when the mountain rain is about to come, the wind fills the tower. My Nascent Soul is screaming at me to kneel.”

“Then kneel,” Li Changyuan said.

He was sweeping the path. The broom went back and forth in short, tired strokes, and each stroke moved a little dust and a little of the weight from the air. It didn't seem to do much.

“Sect Master, forgive me, but I have never—” Tian Luo said.

“Nobody has,” Li Changyuan said. “Shut your mouth and hold your qi. It's looking.”

“Looking at what?” He Zhen asked hoarsely.

“At the boy. It's the second time,” Li Changyuan said.

Lin Langtian sat on a boulder above them with his knees drawn up. He hadn’t bitten the potato in his hand. His silence no longer surprised the younger disciples. They were too frightened by what hung over Thunder Cliff to expect a joke.

“Heavier than last time,” Lin Langtian said quietly.

“Much,” Li Changyuan said.

“Is he…” Lin Langtian said.

“He's sitting still,” Li Changyuan said. “That's all that's asked of him. Don't ruin it.”

Gongsun Ce looked down at the crane in his arms. Its glass eyes had gone dark.

“It's counting him,” Gongsun Ce whispered. “That's what it's doing. It isn't measuring. It's counting.”

Nobody told him he was wrong.

In the chamber, the weight arrived without a sound.

There was no pressure to push against. It was simply there, as if the room had always held it. The lamp stopped burning. The courtyard of grey walls dissolved, and Shi Feng sat on the stone floor in a place with no corners.

Heaven’s first inspection at Golden Core had stayed outside him. This one passed through his skin and bones, then entered the core beginning to loosen in his dantian. Shi Feng felt it examine each of his three hundred and sixty-five meridians. It took its time. He couldn’t hide a single one.

He couldn't breathe. He didn't try. Breath was something you did when you were allowed.

[Devoured: — | Note: not edible]

The Ledger fell quiet. Even its flat comments stopped. Shi Feng could still feel it inside him, but it offered nothing he could use against this inspection.

It's checking something, Shi Feng thought. It saw me before. Now it's checking whether it was right.

His knees pressed into the stone. His ribs were being pushed in. He did the only thing the rule allowed, which was nothing at all. He sat. He stayed Shi Feng. He didn't make a single sound.

The weight pressed harder.

Then it asked.

The question entered his mind without spoken words. Whatever asked it was old and patient. Shi Feng felt no hurry in it, only a demand he couldn’t pretend not to understand. It expected an answer from him.

What are you?

Shi Feng thought about it honestly.

He was not a cripple, not anymore. He was not a genius, either, because that word was too small and everyone used it. He wasn't a champion, or a core disciple, or a debtor, or a man with a face that frightened children. He was the boy in the eastern courtyard, hungry, and he was the man who had walked out of it. He had a foundation with no name. He had a core with no grade. He had a physique that ate what was thrown away.

None of those answered it.

What are you?

The weight leaned. A crack ran through the corner of his vision. He tasted blood, though he wasn't sure where it came from.

Shi Feng became calm. He remembered lying beside the empty road with his face burning. Even then, he’d resented being stopped before he was done. That feeling was still true here, under heaven’s inspection. He didn’t need to invent a grand answer.

He wasn't done. That was all.

“Not finished,” Shi Feng said.

His voice came out hoarse, small, and entirely level.

The weight did not move.

For a long time, he felt something vast consider his answer. It examined the three hundred and sixty-five meridians again, the full core and his damaged face. Shi Feng had the distinct impression it was checking his words for a lie. He kept still.

It found none.

The pressure lifted, slowly, the way a creditor leaves a door he intends to come back to. Shi Feng's lungs filled with air so sharp it hurt. The lamp flickered back to life in the corner. The stone floor was cold under his palms, and wet.

He looked down. The wet was blood from his nose. It was only a little.

It will come again, Shi Feng thought. Not this time. But it'll be back.

That was all right. He had once overheard that heaven kept books too. Now he understood it, and he meant to pay whatever he owed. He just wouldn't be hurried.

Behind his eyes, something small and bright began to open.