Chapter 581 — A Guest from Upstairs

CHAPTER 581

A Guest from Upstairs

“Eat them here, if you’re going to eat them,” Bao Liang said, dropping onto the lime at the pit’s edge. “I’m not pushing that cart twice.”

“Yes, Guard Bao,” Shi Feng said meekly.

So he sat on the edge of the cart beside twelve heaped trays, and he ate the sealed order.

It took him three nights. Bao Liang snored through most of them.

The first five herbs went down warm and easy, and the Physique swallowed their worth whole. The seventh, the one that hid the sixth, melted away. The sixth didn’t go anywhere.

Every time a pill went down, the Physique pulled it apart and found the grey root, and then it stopped. It wouldn’t touch it. The root’s qi sat on his tongue in a small, hard bead.

Shi Feng spat it into his palm. Six hundred times.

On the third night, when the last tray was empty, he knelt on the lime and smoothed a patch of dust with his hand.

Then he drew the leash.

Five calming threads met at one point. The sixth bound that point, and the seventh concealed the bond. Shi Feng drew each part in the dust as he’d felt it in the pill. The design was simple. Its users wouldn’t notice it until someone took control.

Shi Feng looked at it for a long time.

I’ll know you again, he told it. Not by your paper. By the taste.

Then he swept the dust flat with his sleeve and tipped six hundred grey beads into the pit.

[Reservoir: 52% | Refused: one binding root]

“Done?” Bao Liang asked, waking up with a snort. “Heavens. You ate all of that. Your stomach should be sent upward for study.”

“I think it’s just a frontier stomach, Guard Bao,” Shi Feng said modestly.

The next morning, the chair didn’t unfold. Ning Zhe stood in the doorway of the cell with it tucked under his arm.

“A guest from upstairs asks to see you,” Ning Zhe said. “Wash.”

There was a basin of hot water in the corridor, and a clean grey robe folded beside it. Shi Feng washed his face and hands and said nothing.

The absorbed qi was still settling, so he held his Nascent Soul at its present size as he climbed. Ning Zhe led him up an unfamiliar staircase. Shi Feng watched the route while struggling to keep the gain from showing in his aura.

It was a long climb. At the top was a hall with a polished floor and two chairs.

There was a window in it.

It was only a narrow slot cut through the rock, as tall as a man and one hand wide. But through it Shi Feng saw sky, pale and blue, and a slice of green mountainside with mist lying on it. It was the first daylight he’d seen since the Lantern Festival.

He’d asked Receiver Ning for a window. Receiver Ning had remembered. That was not a comforting thought.

A man in black stood beside the window with his back to the room.

He tested the man with the hand’s width of Spirit Sense he could extend. It slid away. Ning Zhe had felt impenetrable, but this was greater still. Shi Feng couldn’t judge where the man’s strength ended. He withdrew the thread before trying to measure anything more.

He’d read about this. Volume One had grade notes in the margin, in Mo Tianheng’s angry hand, and he’d read every one of them back in Artificer Hall. Beyond Soul Formation came Deity Transformation. Beyond that, a realm where a man could fold space shut behind him.

Shattering Void.

This man was no clerk. The thing in the sky over Luoxia had felt exactly like this.

The man in black turned. He wore no badge, no ring and no mark of rank. His face was ordinary and cold, and Shi Feng forgot it while he was still looking at it.

Ning Zhe stood behind the second chair and didn’t sit. He didn’t say a word.

So, Shi Feng thought. The Receiver has a receiver.

“Sit,” the Visitor said.

Shi Feng sat on the edge of the chair like a frightened boy.

“You failed six hundred Steady Heart pills,” the Visitor said. “The appraiser blames the soil. I don’t care whose fault it was. I didn’t come about pills.”

“Y-yes, Senior,” Shi Feng said.

“The Sect needs hands. Willing ones,” the Visitor said. “Here is what willing buys. Ji Yuanhe goes free. Off the cord, out of this mountain, to any city you name. You take a rank inside the Sect, a real one, with your name in the register. You get your own hall. Your own furnaces. Herbs uncounted.”

He let that sit.

Uncounted herbs tempted him. Shi Feng knew that was deliberate. After weeks of weighing scraps and hiding each gain, they were offering him everything he needed to refine openly. He kept looking at the visitor rather than the window.

They’re offering freedom inside the same prison, Shi Feng thought. I need to know what they really want before I agree to anything.

“A wise man understands the times,” the Visitor said. “I’m not here to bargain, and I won’t come back to ask twice.”

Through the slot, a bird crossed the strip of sky and was gone.

Shi Feng sat very still. Under his ribs, the last wave of the sealed order broke over the Nascent Soul, and it pushed. He held it down with his face blank and his hands folded, in front of a man who could feel a breeze change three valleys away.

[Reservoir: 58%]

The Visitor’s cold eyes didn’t move from his face.

“Say yes now,” the Visitor said.