Chapter 882 — Seven

CHAPTER 882

Seven

The light under the glass roof dimmed, and the first cloud came out of the silent cauldron.

It didn’t rise the way the 5 Mark’s clouds had, in a thin thread from under the lid. It came up through the bronze itself, as if the lid weren’t there, and spread under the roof in a broad white sheet.

The board-caller fell off his stool, picked himself up and grabbed his brush. At the examiners’ bench, Song Wuya had stopped writing.

“One cloud!” the board-caller shouted.

The whole hall sat up.

“It’s alive!”

“The pill’s alive! After five hours of silence?”

“Two clouds! Three!”

They came fast now, much faster than the 5 Mark’s. By the time the gallery had finished shouting about the first, the fourth had spread out above it. Every one of them was broad and thick and very white, and every one of them was silent. No hum came from the cauldron at all.

“Five clouds! Six!”

In the Azure Sun box, Qu Ming had begun to rise. He sat back down slowly.

Shi Feng got to his feet and laid his palm on the lid once more.

Under the bronze, the nine pockets of folded space were still turning. He could feel each of them, closed and tight. And now, above each one, he could feel something pulling. Nine pockets, and nine clouds forming over them, one for one. Each cloud rose from one pocket and hung straight above it under the roof.

So that’s how a 6 Mark pill calls its sky, Shi Feng thought. One cloud for every essence in it.

“Seven clouds!” the board-caller called, and his voice cracked. “The 6 Mark line is reached!”

For a breath, the hall didn’t understand what it had heard.

Then it did. The noise came up out of the first ring and hit the glass.

“Seven! He’s passed! He’s passed the 6 Mark!”

“A 6 Mark! At twenty-three!”

“A 6 Mark is supposed to stand at Profound Heaven! He’s mid Shattering Void!”

“There are only a handful of 6 Marks on the whole continent!”

“And now there’s one more!”

“…”

In the princess’s box, Long Caili’s hands came out of her lap and took hold of the arms of her chair. That was all. Her veil didn’t even stir.

Shen Yaoqing saw it and said nothing.

In the third ring, Jia Lianshou had gone grey. The petition’s signers round him were looking at their own feet. Every one of their names was written in the register under a petition that said this man couldn’t do this.

Shi Feng didn’t hear any of it. He was counting pockets.

Seven was a pass. Seven was safe. He could stop here, pull the clouds down to nothing, take the pill out at seven, and walk out of the Glass Hall a 6 Mark. Nobody alive would blame him.

But there were nine pockets in the bowl, not seven. Two essences would be left without a sky. If he stopped at seven, the pill would come out lopsided, a 6 Mark pill with two dead corners in it. It would pass. It would also be the kind of pill a man made when he was afraid.

He’d made nine pockets. He wasn’t going to leave two of them empty.

He opened the eighth pocket.

“Eight clouds!”

The gallery turned to the Azure Sun box again.

Eight was Qu Hanshan’s number. He’d reached it with a 5 Mark pill. Here it hung over a 6 Mark pill, broad and white and silent, and the old man stared up at it with his white beard trembling on his chest.

“Eight, at a 6 Mark sitting! Old Master Qu only ever made eight at the 5!”

“One step to heaven,” the old alchemist in the first ring said quietly.

He opened the ninth pocket.

The ninth cloud came up through the bronze and spread out above the other eight, so wide that it touched the edges of the glass roof on every side. The light in the hall turned soft and white, the colour of a snowy morning.

“Nine clouds!” the board-caller screamed. “Nine!”

The gallery stood.

It didn’t stand row by row, the way it had for the 4 Mark. It stood all at once. Chairs went over behind them. Nobody picked them up. A thousand people got to their feet at the same time, and the sound of it rolled round the Glass Hall like thunder.

In the Azure Sun box, Qu Hanshan stood with them.

He didn’t seem to know he’d done it. He stood at the rail with his hands at his sides, staring up at nine clouds over a 6 Mark pill, and his mouth was open. Beside him, Qu Ming looked up at his grandfather in horror.

“Grandfather!” Qu Ming hissed. “Sit down!”

Qu Hanshan didn’t hear him.

Behind the glass, Old Tower Master Dai had set his teacup down on the tray. Jiang Xu’s brush lay still on his book. Xuanyuan Gui’s hands had come off his knees for the second time in three days.

And on the stand, Shi Feng’s palm was flat on the lid, and he could feel the nine clouds pulling at the nine pockets below them, harder with every breath.

Nine clouds was the number where the sky turned black. Everyone in this hall knew it. A 5 Mark pill’s tribulation had burned his sleeves off. A 6 Mark pill’s tribulation would be a sky meant for alchemists at Profound Heaven, and he was standing under it at mid Shattering Void.

He’d known that, too, since he wrote the second line in the register.

The edges of the ninth cloud began to turn grey.

The whole hall held its breath and waited for the black.