Chapter 947 — The Chunyu Hill

CHAPTER 947

The Chunyu Hill

The first bolt came down before Chunyu Xiao had finished climbing.

It hit the bare top of the Chunyu hill, a white fork of lightning, and the snow there turned to steam with a roar. Chunyu Xiao staggered the last ten paces up through the steam and sat down cross-legged in the scorched circle. His face was grey. His bandages were gone, and his bare forearms were already glowing with the qi he was pulling into his channels.

Shi Feng stood at the edge of the hilltop, twenty paces away, with the jade case in his left hand. Any closer and the tribulation would count him as part of it.

Below, the whole Chunyu clan stood on the slope in the dark. Chunyu Qiong’s covered chair sat at the front. She’d refused the servants’ offer of a fur over her head. Lightning lit her rigid face every few breaths. Chunyu Qiong gripped her hand warmer but kept her eyes on her son.

“Breathe through the Foot Greater Yang,” Shi Feng said. He didn’t shout. On a hilltop at night, an even voice carried further. “Down the back of the legs. Let the bolt run into the ground.”

The second bolt came down.

Chunyu Xiao jerked and held. The lightning ran down his back, down his legs, and into the scorched rock under him, and the rock cracked.

“Good,” Shi Feng said. “That’s two. The third will come in at the crown. Close the Governing Vessel above the neck and let it go round.”

“I know,” Chunyu Xiao said through his teeth.

“Then do it,” Shi Feng said.

The third bolt hit the crown of his head and split around it and ran down both shoulders. The fourth went into his right wrist, and Shi Feng called the Hand Bright Yang a breath before it landed. The heir’s wrist turned red, then white, and held.

On the slope, the clan had stopped breathing.

“Four bolts. He’s never been this steady.”

“Last time he was screaming by the fourth.”

“Listen to that alchemist. He sounds like he’s reading a recipe.”

The fifth and sixth bolts came down together. Chunyu Xiao’s back bowed under them. Blood ran out of his nose and froze on his lip. He didn’t fall.

“Six,” Shi Feng said. “Now the left elbow. The seventh will go for the Lesser Yin. Don’t fight it. Hold the channel open and let it split if it wants to. I’m coming.”

The seventh bolt was bigger than the first six put together.

It came down purple-white, so bright that the hill and the slope and the matriarch’s chair all went flat and colourless. It went into Chunyu Xiao’s left shoulder and ran down the arm, and at the elbow the Hand Lesser Yin channel split open with a sharp crack. Qi spilled out of the heir’s arm in a white spray.

Shi Feng was already moving.

Void-Crossing Step folded the twenty paces into one. The tribulation’s pressure shook the fold, and it set him down a little to the left, but that was close enough. He came out of the fold beside the heir with the jade case open. The lightning was still running in the air. It caught the back of his right hand and burnt the skin there black.

He pushed the grey-white pill between Chunyu Xiao’s teeth.

“Swallow,” Shi Feng said.

Chunyu Xiao swallowed.

Shi Feng stepped back out of the circle with his burnt hand held against his chest. Behind him, the Sky-Bracing Pill opened inside the heir’s channels. It didn’t heal the split. It held it. The frame of Iron Ridge Bark set hard inside the Lesser Yin channel, and the spray of qi from the elbow stopped at once.

The eighth bolt came down, and the arm held.

The ninth came down, and the arm held.

Then the clouds above the hill opened, and nothing else fell. A little silver light came down out of the gap instead, slow and quiet, and settled on Chunyu Xiao’s shoulders.

The air around him tore.

It was a very small tear, no longer than a finger, hanging in the air beside his left ear. Chunyu Xiao turned his head and stared at it. Then he reached out with his bad arm, and it closed under his fingers.

“Early Shattering Void,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t do that again for a month. Your elbow needs to set.”

The slope erupted.

“He’s through! The Young Lord is through!”

“Three tries! He made it on the third!”

“The ancestors are watching over the Chunyu!”

“The ancestors? Did you see who was standing at the edge?”

Chunyu Xiao got to his feet. He swayed, and caught himself, and looked down the slope toward the covered chair. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, so she could see him standing.

Chunyu Qiong looked at her son for a long time. Then she said something to the servant behind her, and the servant came up the hill at a run with the white lacquer case and a thick packet of stone notes.

Chunyu Qiong didn’t come up herself. She didn’t send a word of thanks either. By the time Shi Feng had wrapped his burnt hand, her chair was already being carried back toward the halls.

“Mother says the roads will be bad by morning,” Chunyu Xiao said, from beside him. He was smiling. “She’s ordered a carriage for you tonight.”

“Tell her I’m grateful,” Shi Feng said. “And keep that elbow still. You’ve made it through; don’t undo the healing now.”

“She knows,” Chunyu Xiao said, smiling at the warning. “That’s why she didn’t stay.”

Shi Feng counted the notes in the carriage, by lamplight, on the way back west. Nine hundred thousand. With the Zhangsun fee, he was carrying a little over twelve and a half million. He put the Snowfold Screen’s case on the seat beside him and didn’t open it yet. He wanted a clear head and a quiet room for that.

Half a night out from the Chunyu valley, someone shouted behind them on the road. Qin Wuyan’s hand went to his sleeve.

A second Chunyu carriage was racing after them through the dark, its lamps swinging. When it caught up, the driver jumped down, bowed and opened the door. The whole inside was packed to the roof with furs: white fox, grey wolf and one black sable coat that must have cost more than the horses.

“From the matriarch,” the driver said, breathless. “She says the honoured guest dresses like a southerner, and the north will kill him.”