Chapter 946 — Sky-Bracing Pill

CHAPTER 946

Sky-Bracing Pill

“The wind is from the north,” Chunyu Qiong said. “Your fire will lean south.”

“Yes, Senior,” Shi Feng said, and moved the cauldron one pace north.

The Chunyu estate filled a narrow valley between white ridges, its green-roofed stone halls smoking. They arrived before dawn after a rough night on runners. Chunyu Qiong slept throughout, then woke and immediately began giving orders.

Now she sat in a covered courtyard chair between two braziers. A servant held a fur overhead. The Chunyu elders lined the hall steps in silence.

Shi Feng had read the heir’s meridians at dawn. Chunyu Xiao had a strong body, and a deity in his pagoda that was ready for the next realm. The trouble was his channels. Two failed tribulations had cracked them in eleven places, and the cracks had healed hard and thin. When the sky came down a third time, its pressure would squeeze his meridians from outside. The thin places would split, and his qi would spill out through them.

So he needed a pill that held the channels from inside while the sky pressed from outside. He called it the Sky-Bracing Pill. It was a 5 Mark-grade pill, because it served a man entering Shattering Void.

He lit the Thousand Forge Flame under the cauldron.

“Too much smoke,” Chunyu Qiong said. “Your herbs are wet.”

“They’re frost herbs, Senior,” Shi Feng said, adding the first root. “That moisture needs to come out.”

“Hmph,” Chunyu Qiong said.

He worked through the morning. Iron Ridge Bark went in first to make the frame of the pill. Then Glacier Marrow Moss, to fill the frame, and three slices of Thousand-Year Pine Heart to bind them. Each herb had to melt into the last at exactly the right heat, or the frame would crack the same way the heir’s channels had cracked.

“The sun’s gone in,” Chunyu Qiong said at noon. “That’s bad for pills.”

“The sun doesn’t reach inside the cauldron, Senior,” Shi Feng said.

“In my day alchemists waited for clear weather,” Chunyu Qiong said.

“In your day alchemists failed half their pills,” Shi Feng said, and struck the Second Anvil Fire.

The first beat went into the cauldron. The elders on the steps jumped. Chunyu Qiong didn’t move at all, but she stopped talking.

Nine beats, and a rest. Nine beats, and a rest. With each count, the herbs in the cauldron pressed closer together, the frame setting hard around the moss inside it. In the middle of the afternoon the first cloud formed over the courtyard.

Then a second, and a third.

“Clouds over our hall!” an elder whispered.

“Four. Five! That’s already a good pill!”

“Six. Seven! Seven clouds!”

“Even the Pavilion tower at Frost Pass doesn’t get seven clouds every year.”

At seven the clouds stopped, and Shi Feng let the fire die down. Seven clouds made it a Major Success pill. For a pill that would go into a body during a tribulation, he didn’t want more than that. A Perfect pill would hit the meridians too hard, too fast, and the heir would have to fight the pill and the sky at once.

He lifted the lid. One pill lay in the bottom, grey-white and hard, and it smelled of cold pine.

Chunyu Qiong looked at it from her chair for a long moment.

“It’s ugly,” Chunyu Qiong said.

“It’s meant to be hard, not pretty,” Shi Feng said, and sealed it in jade. “Where is your heir?”

Chunyu Xiao was in the east hall, sitting alone at a long table with a meridian chart spread out in front of him. He’d unwrapped his hands. The skin on both forearms was marked with thin pale lines where the sky’s lightning had run down his channels twice.

He stood up quickly when Shi Feng came in and bowed too deeply.

“Master Shi,” Chunyu Xiao said, and his voice was stiff. “Mother says you’ve finished.”

“I’ve finished the pill,” Shi Feng said, and sat down across from him. “Now we finish the plan. Show me where it hurt last time.”

Chunyu Xiao looked at the chart for a while. Then he put one finger on the left arm.

“Here first,” Chunyu Xiao said. “The Hand Lesser Yin channel, at the elbow. Both times. Then the Hand Greater Yin, and then I don’t remember.”

“How many bolts in?” Shi Feng asked.

“The first time, the sixth,” Chunyu Xiao said. “The second time, the seventh.”

Shi Feng took a brush and marked the chart. They went through every channel, one by one. The left arm was the weakest, then the right wrist, then the two channels that ran down the back of the legs. He marked each with a number for the bolt where he expected it to give.

“The pill goes in at the seventh bolt,” Shi Feng said. “Not before. If you take it too early, it will be spent before the worst of the tribulation comes. When the Lesser Yin at your left elbow splits, I’ll give it to you. Until then, you hold.”

“And if it splits at the third bolt?” Chunyu Xiao asked.

“It won’t,” Shi Feng said. “But if it does, I’ll still be standing at the edge. I’ll tell you which channel to hold.”

Chunyu Xiao looked at the chart, and then at the red marks. His hands had started to shake. He put them flat on the table to stop them.

“Master Shi,” Chunyu Xiao said quietly. “Please don’t tell my mother I was frightened.”

“I won’t,” Shi Feng said. “You’re frightened and you’re still going to face it. She’ll see you stand up.”

Chunyu Xiao let out a long breath and nodded.

That night, a little after the second watch, a deity’s pressure broke loose from the east hall and rose straight up through the roof. Every lamp in the valley flickered. Above the Chunyu hill, the stars began to go out one by one.