Chapter 535 — Four Clouds

CHAPTER 535

Four Clouds

Master Cao Yuanzhi's furnace cracked at the second hour.

A black crack climbed the furnace’s bronze belly. Its flame guttered, and the pill collapsed into grey ash. Six hundred spectators groaned. Cao Yuanzhi stared at the damage, unable to do anything now to save either the pill or his examination.

“A hundred and one years,” somebody muttered in the third row.

“And that furnace is older than I am.”

“The herbs cost more than my house!”

Master Cao stood with his hands hanging at his sides. Then he bowed to the examiners, stiffly, and walked off the terrace without once looking at the board.

Fei Yunlan passed next. After an hour and fifty minutes, four pale clouds rose under the glass dome. She laughed, wept into her sleeve and ate three sweet seeds at once. Zhong Dehai produced only three clouds. Hao Moxian produced none. When the water clock was refilled, five candidates had tried and only Fei Yunlan had passed.

“Four clouds is a pass,” the herald called. “Candidate Shi Feng. Age twenty-one.”

The hall changed. He felt it through his skin, six hundred breaths drawn in at the same time.

Shi Feng walked to the last furnace. Sima Lan stood a pace behind with her slate flat against her chest. Zhu Liu held the herb chest and tried very hard not to look at the crowd. On the rim of the dome, the boy had gone quiet.

The herbs were laid out in twelve jade dishes, each worth more than a village. He didn't hurry.

Frost-lotus first, then dragon marrow. Thirty-one batches of this recipe had failed in the sect’s furnace room. Lin Langtian had supplied every batch, loudly insisting the herbs were gifts. Shi Feng remembered exactly where each attempt went wrong. He knew the ingredients well enough to correct those failures now.

He lit the furnace.

The flame came up red and thin, exactly the size a late Golden Core's fire should be. Not a coal brighter. The crowd saw it, and the whispering started.

“That's all?”

“It's so small.”

“A boy with a Golden Core flame, and a Soul Formation pill? That's throwing an egg at a rock!”

“It'll starve before the first hour.”

Examiner Bo Ling's rod tapped the table once. “The candidate is permitted to use any method,” Bo Ling said. “Silence, please.”

The hall hushed. The fire kept its size.

Hour one passed. Hour two came. Shi Feng worked in short, even movements, feeding the herbs in, one by one, in the order Mo Tianheng's furious margins had taught him. On the fifth herb the furnace wall hummed. On the ninth, a thin cold wind came off the dishes, and the crowd shivered.

Inside the furnace, his Spirit Sense watched the pill form.

Spirit Sense let him follow the pill’s soul-wide pattern as it opened ring by ring. He’d practised with it since his breakthrough, but he still had to conceal it here. Master Ruan once insisted a 2 Mark candidate needed Spirit Sense to see through furnace walls. He’d been wrong about that requirement. Shi Feng held the flame to a needle’s width.

Slower, he told himself. Slower. Let them come to the door.

At the third hour, the water clock ticked its last drop. The furnace lid lifted by itself.

“One,” Examiner Bo Ling said.

A silver cloud rose from the open furnace and spread beneath the dome. The hall breathed in.

“Two,” Bo Ling said.

The second was gold at the edges.

“Three,” Bo Ling said.

The third cloud lit the upper dome. Every spectator looked up. Ye Chengfeng put down his brush and watched too. After two days of keeping his expression flat, the old examiner finally showed how closely he was following this pill.

“Four,” Examiner Bo Ling said.

Her voice shook, only slightly. It was the voice of a woman who had counted clouds at the headquarters for forty years.

Shi Feng felt the fifth cloud gathering at the furnace mouth, bright and complete. It only needed him to let it rise. A sixth and seventh could follow; he knew what another record would do. By dusk, everyone in the region would hear of it. He didn’t need that attention.

Be slow, Shi Feng thought. Be late.

He closed the lid.

The fifth cloud folded back into the pill. The hall gasped.

“He stopped!”

“Why would he stop?”

“He had a fifth! I saw it!”

“Did he lose control?”

“…”

Nobody answered. Shi Feng took the pill out, small and plain, the colour of dark water. He set it on the examiners' table and stepped back.

Ye Chengfeng held the pill for a long time. Shi Feng felt his Spirit Sense examine it from its outer edge to its heart. Then the old man looked directly at him. He’d noticed that stopping at four clouds hadn’t been a failure.

“Soul Formation-grade,” Ye Chengfeng said. “Sound all the way through. Four clouds, with the fifth held in the pill by choice. That is unusual.”

“I was told to be careful,” Shi Feng said.

“By whom?” Ye Chengfeng said.

“An old teacher,” Shi Feng said.

Examiner Ye said nothing. He wrote one line and handed it to Yin Zhao, who read it, and then lifted his voice to the whole hall.

“3 Mark,” Yin Zhao said. “Shi Feng, age twenty-one. The Sky Pavilion records the previous youngest on its rolls as Duanmu Rui of the Empire's capital tower, aged eighty-six, forty-one years ago.”

He let it settle.

“By sixty-five years,” Yin Zhao said, “the youngest 3 Mark the Pavilion has ever certified, anywhere.”

For three breaths no one made a sound.

Then the hall came apart.

“Twenty-one!”

“Sixty-five years younger than the old record!”

“A Golden Core! A late Golden Core boy!”

“A Soul Formation pill from a late Golden Core!”

“Impossible!”

“It happened, you idiot, I watched it happen!”

Over all of them came a bellow, pushing through the aisles and shoving three men into their neighbours' laps.

“Out of the way! Junior brother! JUNIOR BROTHER!” Lin Langtian said.

Lin Langtian arrived at the terrace rail with a potato in one hand and tears running openly down his face.

“Told you! Real gold fears no fire!” Lin Langtian bellowed. “I told you the herbs were for your own good! Thirty-one failed batches, and not one wasted! Did anyone write that down? Somebody write that down!”

“I wrote it down,” Sima Lan said, without looking up from her slate.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu whispered, “I'm going to need a bigger receipt book.”

Master Cao Yuanzhi, who had stayed in the hall after all, stood by the wall with his beard drooping. From that day on, he never again mentioned a sack of luck.