Chapter 850 — The First Fold

CHAPTER 850

The First Fold

The first bolt came down out of the black clouds and struck the cauldron lid.

Boom!

The sound filled the sealed room and shook dust from the ceiling. The gold ward lines in the walls flared bright. Shi Feng’s hands stayed flat on the bronze, and the shock ran up both his arms and into his strapped ribs.

Inside the cauldron, the pill screamed.

It wasn’t a sound a man could hear with his ears. It was a pull, like the rift wind on the ridge, and it came from inside the bronze. Black lines opened across the cauldron’s belly, one, three, six of them, as the pill tried to tear its way out through space. A Void-Mending Pill under tribulation wanted to run, and space was the road it knew.

If it got through, it would scatter itself across a hundred li in a thousand pieces.

Shi Feng let go of the cauldron.

He reached out with his new realm the way he had at the breakfast table. This time he didn’t take hold of the space under a teacup. He took hold of the space around the whole cauldron, from its three bronze legs to the top of its lid.

Then he folded it.

His head rang. His burned arm went numb to the shoulder. For a breath, he couldn’t keep the fold fixed around the bronze. He set his teeth and held it, and the black lines on the bronze stopped growing. Where they reached the fold, they simply ended. There was nowhere for them to go.

“He’s holding it,” Ji Yuanhe whispered.

Shen Yaoqing said nothing. Her knuckles were white on her sword hilt.

The second bolt came down.

It struck the fold, not the bronze. Shi Feng felt it land on the space he was holding, as if a hammer had come down on his own hands. The fold bent under it. It didn’t break. The bolt ran down through it into the cauldron, and the pill took the strike inside a room it couldn’t leave.

“Two,” Ji Yuanhe said.

The third bolt came, and the fourth. Each one hit the fold, and each time Shi Feng felt the shape of it more clearly. It was the same crease he’d watched heaven make on the ridge. Space had a grain, and a fold lay along the grain. As long as he held it along the grain, it held.

On the ninth bolt, the black clouds broke apart and thinned.

“It survived,” Ji Yuanhe said. “One tribulation.”

“Not yet,” Shi Feng said hoarsely.

The clouds hadn’t gone. They were gathering again under the ceiling, and this time they were blacker than before. A pill that survived one tribulation could call down a second, if it was strong enough to want one. This one wanted it badly.

The second tribulation fell all at once. Nine bolts came down together in one white column.

The fold buckled.

Shi Feng felt it give at one corner, the corner nearest the door. A black line ran out through the gap. The pill went with it.

It tore out of the cauldron through the side of the fold and came out of the air twelve paces away, a hand’s width in front of the iron door. It hung there, glowing, a bead the size of a longan with black lines crawling over its skin. It was already opening the next rift to run through.

Shen Yaoqing was a step from it. Her hand came off her sword and reached for it.

“Don’t touch it!” Shi Feng said sharply. “It’ll take your hand with it.”

She stopped.

Twelve paces. Two Riverless Steps, if the floor were water. The pill would be gone before his second foot came down.

He thought of the movement manual from the princess’s library, the one he’d read a dozen times since signing and never understood. Void-Crossing Step. It had only one line worth remembering. Don’t cross the ground. Fold it.

He’d just spent nine bolts holding a fold.

Shi Feng stepped.

He didn’t cross the floor. The space between the cauldron and the door folded under his foot, and when the foot came down, it came down beside Shen Yaoqing. One step. Twelve paces of granite had never passed under him.

Shen Yaoqing’s head turned. He was standing beside her shoulder, close enough that his sleeve brushed hers.

“…” Shen Yaoqing stood motionless beside him, stunned by the step.

Shi Feng cupped his right hand under the pill and folded the space above his palm, small and tight, no bigger than a fist.

The last column of the second tribulation came down through the ceiling and landed on his hand.

It hurt more than anything on the ridge. The fold above his palm shook with each part of the strike. He held it. The pill took the strike inside the fold, and the black lines on its skin burned away one after another until it was smooth and bright.

The clouds under the ceiling faded. The ward lines in the walls dimmed back to gold. The room was quiet except for Ji Yuanhe’s breathing.

“Two,” Ji Yuanhe said, very softly. “Two tribulations.”

The old man stood up. His knees cracked. He looked at the cauldron, then at the empty twelve paces of floor, then at Shi Feng standing by the door.

“Twelve paces in one step,” Ji Yuanhe said. “I didn’t think I’d live to see that.”

Shi Feng laughed. It hurt his ribs, and he laughed anyway.

[Pill: Void-Mending Pill, Two-Tribulation, 5 Mark-grade | Record: none | Art: Void-Crossing Step, Entry]

Shen Yaoqing was still looking at the bright bead turning slowly above his palm.

“What is it now?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“A 5 Mark-grade pill that’s been through the sky twice and is still in one piece,” Shi Feng said. “It sits at the edge of the 6 Mark. Qu Hanshan’s was Perfect, but it was never held. This one was.”

“It’s still trying to leave,” Shen Yaoqing said, watching the space above his palm.

“It’ll settle by morning,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll hold it until then. Don’t give it to your master early; the fold is still all that keeps it from tearing away. She takes it at dawn.”

Shen Yaoqing took her eyes off the pill and looked at him. She’d stood guard at the door all night and hadn’t once sat down.

“The price,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“Whatever’s in your purse,” Shi Feng said. “That was the deal.”

“You haven’t seen my purse,” Shen Yaoqing said, studying his face for any sign he meant to change the terms.

“No,” Shi Feng said cheerfully. “I’ll find out tomorrow.”