Chapter 831 — Ten Days

CHAPTER 831

Ten Days

The Void-Anchor Stone sat on the table between a teapot and a basket of Orchard herbs, and Shi Feng had been looking at the two of them since breakfast.

The pavilion courtyard was quiet in the mornings. Plum trees lined the walls, and the staff swept the paths in soft cloth shoes so the gravel wouldn’t crunch.

Since dawn there’d been a pressure under his breastbone. It wasn’t pain. It was the sky noticing him, patient, waiting for him to look up.

Peak Deity Transformation didn’t last forever. Sooner or later heaven came to ask whether a man deserved to step into Shattering Void, and it asked with lightning. Shi Feng had counted it all morning, the way Ji Yuanhe had once counted pills, and it came out at ten days.

Ji Yuanhe crossed the courtyard with a tray of pill bottles and set it down on the table hard enough to rattle them.

“The east wing steward wants a Bone-Settling Pill,” Ji Yuanhe said. “For a horse.”

“Is it a good horse?” Shi Feng asked.

“That’s not the point,” Ji Yuanhe said. “For a whole year nobody wanted anything from me except numbers. Now I’ve got three orders before noon and a horse.”

He sounded annoyed. There was colour in his face, and his hands didn’t shake when he poured the tea.

“Ten days,” Shi Feng said.

Ji Yuanhe stopped pouring. “Until what?”

Shi Feng pointed one finger at the sky.

The teapot went down. Ji Yuanhe’s hand stayed on the lid.

“Ten days?” Ji Yuanhe said. “For the Shattering Void tribulation? Men in the capital spend ten years getting ready for that! They buy guardians and whole mountains!”

“Then ten days is exactly enough to be late,” Shi Feng said. “So we don’t waste any of it.”

He picked up the Void-Anchor Stone. It was the size of a man’s fist, grey and dull, and the air around it felt thick. It steadied space around whoever held it.

Then he looked at the Orchard herbs. About two million four hundred thousand worth were left. Eaten in a tribulation ring, they could refill him between strikes.

“The stone or the herbs?” Ji Yuanhe asked, following his eyes.

“The stone,” Shi Feng said. “The herbs stay. Somebody in this city needs a pill harder than a tribulation, and when they finally ask, I don’t want to tell them I ate the ingredients.”

Ji Yuanhe looked at him. He knew whose master was sick in the east wing.

“Sharpening the spear right before the battle,” Ji Yuanhe muttered.

Shi Feng put the stone in his sleeve.

“So we buy tribulation stock,” Shi Feng said. “Lightning-ground herbs, enough to set a ring. And we find a place where nobody gets hurt when the sky misses.”

Footsteps came along the gravel path, and this time it did crunch. The staff never walked like that.

Long Caili stopped beside the plum tree. She wore pale gold today, and her maid stood two steps behind her holding a ledger. Ji Yuanhe got up at once and bowed.

“Your Highness,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Sit,” Long Caili said. Her eyes went to where the robe covered his stitches, and then to his face. “My steward says you asked him this morning whether the pavilion owns any empty hills.”

“I asked whether the capital has any,” Shi Feng said. “He worked out the rest. Your steward is very clever.”

“My steward is paid to be clever,” Long Caili said coldly. “You were planning to do it on a public road.”

“The north road is wide and nobody’s using it at night,” Shi Feng said.

“A tribulation on the north road,” Long Caili said, “with half the capital on the verges taking bets on how long you last. My recruit will not die on a public road. It would be bad for business.”

“I wasn’t planning to die anywhere,” Shi Feng said.

“Nobody plans it,” Long Caili said.

She held out her hand without turning round, and the maid put a folded deed into it. Long Caili dropped it on the table beside the pill bottles.

“Thunder-Gazing Ridge,” Long Caili said. “Thirty li north of the city. Long family land. Bare rock, a few pines, and a hut nobody has slept in for forty years.”

Shi Feng unfolded it. The seal at the bottom was the Long family’s, a real deed, not a loan note.

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because the rent is already paid,” Long Caili said. “Land that sits empty is wasted money, and I don’t like wasting money.”

“Then I’ll take it,” Shi Feng said, folding the deed into his robe. “And I’ll pay for any stone the sky breaks.”

“You’ll pay for the pines as well,” Long Caili said. “There are eleven. My steward has counted them.”

Ke Lianshu came up the path behind her with a lacquer tray of calling cards, by rank.

Shi Feng took the top one, borrowed Ke Lianshu’s brush, and wrote on its back: lightning pine bark, thunder-scarred moss, storm-root. He put it back on the tray.

“A recruitment wasted on a shopping list,” Long Caili said.

She turned and walked back down the path. The maid followed, and the gravel crunched to the corridor.

Ji Yuanhe let out a long breath and sat down.

“She gave you a mountain,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“She billed me for the pines,” Shi Feng said. “Now we have somewhere to stand.”

The lamps were being lit along the front court when wheels came through the gate.

It wasn’t one of the pavilion’s carts. It was too heavy, and the wheels were iron-rimmed. They went to the end of the corridor and looked down.

A carriage of red lacquer had stopped on the flagstones. Eight banners stood along its roof, each stitched with a flame in gold thread. Eight disciples in red walked beside it.

“Azure Sun,” Ji Yuanhe whispered.

The pavilion staff came out of every door at once and lined the court. When the carriage door opened, they bowed low together.

“Welcome, Grandmaster Qu.”

An old man in a red robe stepped down. His eyes went straight up the corridor to where Shi Feng stood.

This wasn’t a courtesy visit. A grandmaster didn’t ride across the city for a horse pill.