Chapter 587 — Eight Clouds

CHAPTER 587

Eight Clouds

“Practice allotment,” Shi Feng said at the herb-room hatch, holding out his quota slip with both hands. “For the 4 Mark attempt, Clerk. Receiver Ning promised.”

The duty clerk was a sleepy young man with ink on his chin. He squinted at the slip.

“You’ve got a crate of Deity Transformation-grade herbs for that,” the duty clerk said.

“I’ve burned eleven of them, Clerk,” Shi Feng said sadly. “My fire won’t go high enough. I thought if I practised on something I can actually cook, my hands might learn. Just one Soul Formation-grade set. As a top-up on the quota.”

The duty clerk sighed and carried the slip to the far table.

Clerk Shu read it once. He didn’t look up.

“Soul Formation-grade. One set. Practice pills are the alchemist’s own,” Clerk Shu said, and stamped it. “Normal at that grade.”

Normal, Shi Feng thought, taking the herbs. You keep saying that word, Clerk Shu. One day I’ll miss it.

The night shift was quiet. Four furnaces burned in Hall Two. Kong Ba snored on a bench by the ramp with his tongs on his belly. Across the arch, Ji Yuanhe’s hammer kept time, and in the soot beside station nine, the little machine slept unwound.

Shi Feng laid the herbs out in order and lit his fire.

For three months, he’d matched their expectations. Three quota passes at four clouds; five only for the duel, held there by one careful breath. They’d seen the results he chose to show. Tonight he wanted to measure his own work without stopping at their number.

Tonight he wanted the truth, just once. He just didn’t want anyone else to see it.

The herbs went in. The steam rose. The pill took shape, and the first cloud gathered over the lid, white and soft.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Station nine,” Clerk Shu said from the far table. “Five.”

Five was what they expected since the duel. Anything above it would make this practice set worth investigating. Shi Feng watched Clerk Shu’s distant brush before pressing on.

The sixth cloud began to form.

Shi Feng closed his left hand into a fist on his knee, and pressed down with his Spirit Sense. He did what he had done with the scrap batch, but harder. Instead of letting the steam rise, he held it down over the pill. The sixth cloud flattened. It sank, thin and grey, and settled just under the furnace’s rim, where nobody could see.

The seventh came, and he pressed that down too. Then the eighth.

Sweat ran down his back. He was suppressing the clouds, not truly hiding them. Anyone touching the furnace might notice that the pill was unnaturally still. He needed to finish before an appraiser came near enough to test it.

Then a ninth cloud began to rise, on its own, with no help from him at all.

Shi Feng’s heart jumped. For one breath he wanted to let it go, and see it, and see what came after.

He didn’t. He lowered the fire a hair, and the ninth cloud died before it was born.

He opened the lid.

The pill sat in the bottom of the furnace, round and quiet and deep gold. It didn’t hum. It didn’t move. But when he picked it up, he felt it at once, eight clouds pressed down and held in it, too still.

[Reservoir: 80% | Pill: Soul Formation-grade, Perfect (8), hidden]

Perfect, Shi Feng thought. At the Nascent Soul heat ceiling, in a stolen hall, on a practice set. Senior Brother, you’d faint.

No one else would know what he’d made. Shi Feng felt proud anyway. The pill was proof that months of carefully ordinary work hadn’t made his real skills ordinary too.

He put the pill in his mouth and swallowed.

It went down like warm water, and then it went off like a furnace.

Soul Formation-grade medicine at Perfect, the full multiplied effect, poured through his meridians in a flood. The Reservoir in his dantian had been filling for three months on slag, scraps, failed orders and stone. Now it rose, and rose, and reached the brim.

[Reservoir: full | Note: not yet.]

The Nascent Soul woke up.

The Nascent Soul pushed against his dantian, demanding the stored qi. His aura began to waver. Shi Feng held it steady in alarm. Anyone in Hall Two with Spirit Sense would notice a breakthrough, however anxious he made his face look.

An aura change was a confession. A frightened, average boy didn’t break through at the night furnace on a practice pill.

Shi Feng sat on his stool with his eyes closed and held it down. Not yet, he told it. Not here. Not in front of them.

“Station nine,” Clerk Shu said. “Done?”

“Done, Clerk Shu,” Shi Feng said, and his voice came out perfectly steady. “Five. I ate it. I think it helped.”

“Five,” Clerk Shu said, and wrote it down.

Shi Feng picked up a rag and started wiping the furnace. He wiped away the soot, the steam marks and the faint grey ring where the hidden clouds had pressed against the rim. He wiped it until the black iron shone.

Then he looked at it, and his hand stopped. It was far too clean.

Before he could reach for the ash bucket, the dawn bell rang, and at the top of the ramp a folding chair clicked open.