Chapter 868 — Mid Shattering Void

CHAPTER 868

Mid Shattering Void

“The water’s warm again, Master Shi,” Ji Yuanhe said.

He took the basin away, emptied it in the gutter, and filled it from the well. Then he set it down under the eaves again and watched Shi Feng lower both arms into it. The blisters had stopped weeping. They’d started to crack instead.

“Go to bed, Master Ji Yuanhe,” Shi Feng said. “It’s past the third watch.”

“You should go to bed too,” Ji Yuanhe said. “You have a cracked rib.”

“I’ve got something to do first,” Shi Feng said. “It won’t wait.”

Ji Yuanhe looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, went into the house, and closed the door quietly behind him.

The courtyard held one willow, a well and a stone table beneath a tiled roof that leaked in rain. Shi Feng dried his arms carefully and sat cross-legged beside the well.

Then he stopped holding the walls back.

All evening, Baili Xuan’s lotus had been pressing inside him. He’d stood inside three of them and broken a fourth, and every one had left something behind. It wasn’t fire. The fire was long gone. It was the shape of the seal itself, a pocket of space closed on every side. His body had learned that shape the hard way, and now it wouldn’t forget it.

He let the walls close.

They came in around his dantian like a second set of walls inside the first. They didn’t burn. They pressed. They folded the space inside him inward, tighter and tighter, and he didn’t fight it. He did what he’d done on the steps. He found the beat of the pressure and breathed on it.

On the ninth breath, the walls stopped pressing in and started holding.

Something inside him gave way. The space around his body steadied. He could feel its boundaries clearly and keep them steady instead of correcting them with each breath. His qi rushed into the new room it had made and kept on rushing, filling corners he hadn’t known were there.

The tiles on the roof rattled. The willow shook. The water in the basin jumped once and splashed onto the stone.

Then everything was still.

Shi Feng opened his eyes and looked at his hands.

Mid Shattering Void.

He’d broken through to early Shattering Void on Thunder-Gazing Ridge, with six tribulations and a crowd. Mid Shattering Void had come at the third watch beside a well, in his own quiet courtyard. He preferred advancing without an audience watching every breath.

[Devoured: one Red Lotus | Gain: mid Shattering Void | Note: the walls held.]

In the morning the courtyard smelled of rice.

Ji Yuanhe stood at the little stove in the corner with a long spoon, stirring a pot of congee. He was humming. He’d started humming after the cure, a few weeks ago, and he didn’t seem to know he did it.

Shi Feng came out of the house with his arms freshly bandaged and sat at the stone table.

Ji Yuanhe ladled out a bowl and put it in front of him, with a little dish of pickled radish on the side. Then he sat down opposite, folded his hands and looked at Shi Feng.

“The roof shook last night,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Sorry,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll fix the tiles.”

That was all Ji Yuanhe said about it. He didn’t ask what had happened. He just picked up his own bowl and ate.

Shi Feng ate too. Then he put down his spoon, stood up, and walked to the far wall of the courtyard. It was about twelve paces from the well.

He folded the space in front of him and stepped.

Void-Crossing Step took him from the wall to the well in one stride. That much he’d done before. But this time, when he arrived, the fold didn’t snap shut behind him at once. It held. For one breath longer than it ever had, the crease stayed open behind his heel.

Then it closed.

Shi Feng turned and looked at the empty air where the fold had been.

“Master Shi?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“It held,” Shi Feng said. “Only a breath. But it held.”

“Is that good?” Ji Yuanhe asked, looking from the well to the place where the crease had held.

“It’s very good,” Shi Feng said slowly. “A fold that holds a body for a breath can hold something smaller for longer. In the vault room I folded round the whole cauldron. Made small enough, a fold could sit inside it.”

Ji Yuanhe put his spoon down.

“Inside the cauldron?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“Inside the cauldron,” Shi Feng said. “Give it a week and we’ll see how long it holds.”

Ji Yuanhe didn’t answer. But he picked up his spoon again, and he was smiling into his congee.

Before noon, a runner came from the princess’s pavilion with a lacquered box. Inside was a jar of white burn salve with a Pavilion physician’s seal on the lid.

“Her Highness says the salve is charged to the guest’s account,” the runner said, bowing. “At cost.”

“Tell Her Highness I’m grateful,” Shi Feng said. “It’s arrived when I need it.”

The runner bowed again and left. Ji Yuanhe unscrewed the lid, sniffed the salve and raised his eyebrows.

“Master Shi, this is Snow Lotus Balm,” Ji Yuanhe said. “It’s four thousand a jar.”

“Then she’s charging me four thousand,” Shi Feng said, and held out his arm. “Go on. It’s paid for.”

Ji Yuanhe had just finished the second arm when someone knocked at the courtyard gate. It wasn’t a runner’s knock. It was slow and heavy, three times, and then it stopped.

Ji Yuanhe went to look through the crack. When he turned back, his face had gone quite still.

“Master Shi,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly. “There’s an old man at the gate. He’s wearing a burning sun on his chest.”

Shi Feng pulled his sleeves down over the bandages.

“Then put the kettle on,” Shi Feng said. “He came all this way.”