Chapter 680 — The Squeeze

CHAPTER 680

The Squeeze

On the twelfth night the whole Orchard groaned, and the sky began to fold.

The light shuddered. The terraces at the far edge of the Court bent inward. Under the tree the thread-thin stem slipped its last fold, and the golden fruit dropped.

Five holders moved at once.

Huo Weiran’s sword, an Azure Sun palm, a Thunder Abyss bell, a hooked pole from the merchant company and Pan Hongzhu’s own bare hand all reached the fruit in the same instant. It burst between them. Golden pulp sprayed across the grass in every direction.

“Mine!”

“You ruined it!”

“Kill them!”

The Gardener lifted its straw hat for the first time. All around the Court, the Pruner puppets stood up out of the grass with their shears open, and the five parties fell on each other and on the Gardener at the same time.

“Back to the terrace!” Pan Hongzhu roared, wiping pulp off his face. “It’s gone! Back! Everybody back!”

Shi Feng didn’t go back.

He tied Old Zuo’s rope tight round his waist and walked the other way, toward the strip of grass under the tree that nobody ran across.

It was covered in fallen fruit, three hundred years of it. Old fruit lay in black, wrinkled heaps, one on top of another. Every sect in the Empire knew it was poison. On the first night, a hunter from the brown company had picked one up to look at it, and his hand had gone grey to the elbow.

Now fresh golden pulp lay splashed over the black heaps. It smelled so sour Shi Feng’s eyes watered.

The fallen fruit still held its full worth. Shi Feng wasn’t leaving it behind just because everyone else found it poisonous.

“Ah Fu!” Old Zuo shrieked from the end of the rope. “That’s the poison patch, you idiot! Get out of there!”

“Just a moment, Master Zuo,” Shi Feng said, kneeling. “I dropped something.”

He scooped up black fruit and golden pulp together with his left hand and ate.

It was sour. It was sour in a way that bent. The taste was folded, and it went down in two places at once. To any other body it was poison. The All-Devouring Physique took it in as if it had been waiting three hundred years for dinner, and it took the full worth and the full sourness, exactly, not a hair more or less.

He ate another handful. Then another.

A Cangming disciple stumbled backward out of the fighting, kicked him hard in the ribs without even looking down, and ran on.

Shi Feng kept chewing.

Nobody was watching the poison patch. Shi Feng took another handful while the fighting kept their eyes on the fresh fruit.

Then the roof of the Court folded in.

The sky came down. The terraces leaned in from every side. The pocket couldn’t hold a second sky inside it, and it began to squeeze everything that was left in it, the grass, the trees, the people, into a smaller and smaller space.

All across the Court, men screamed. Qi shields flared up blue and gold and violet and cracked one after another. The fighting stopped all at once. Everyone ran for the terraces.

Shi Feng didn’t raise a shield. A shield would have broken. He let the pressure in.

It came down on the deity inside him as heavy as a mountain. The first floor of the pagoda took the load and held. The second took the next and held. The third, the fourth, the fifth.

He counted while it pressed. One, two, three, a little rest, four. Auntie Niu’s buns going onto the tray. The shutters of Lamp-Oil Lane opening one at a time, the way they did every morning.

The sixth floor held. The seventh groaned and held.

Seven is the legendary limit, Shi Feng thought, with sweat running into his eyes. Seven would have cracked right about now.

The eighth floor took it. The ninth took the last of it, and the squeeze had nowhere else to go.

So it went through him instead.

The pressure drove the fruit’s worth down through the deity. Three hundred years of sour gold was crushed into him in a few breaths. The deity solidified, broadened and settled heavier on its seat. At the same time, the Quiet Sleeve Art folded itself tighter around his aura without being asked, because it had been squeezed into shape along with everything else.

Mid Deity Transformation.

Shi Feng breathed out carefully. The pressure had forced the fruit’s worth into his deity, but his enemies still couldn’t know what had changed.

[Devoured: three hundred years of fallen Orchard fruit, plus the fresh heart | Gain: Mid Deity Transformation; Quiet Sleeve Art Minor Success | Note: cost, left hand a finger off true.]

He looked at his left hand. It was the one that had done all the scooping. When he reached for the rope, the hand closed a finger’s width to the left of where he’d aimed it. The sourness had folded it, just a little.

Nobody had seen any of it. Nobody would ever see why a porter under that much sky hadn’t cracked. On the outside he was a dirty man in a straw hat on his knees in a poison patch, with pulp on his chin.

“AH FU!” Old Zuo screamed. The rope jerked hard at his waist. “The door! The door’s closing!”

Shi Feng stood up and looked.

Far above the last terrace, the white door hung in the folding sky. It had been as wide as a city gate. Now it was a hand’s width wide and getting narrower.

He had four breaths, a coil of rope, and the whole Orchard falling in behind him.