Chapter 952 — Snowfold Screen

CHAPTER 952

Snowfold Screen

“Elder Kong called it an insult to the Supreme Elder,” Ye Wanqiu said, and poured the tea. “An outsider’s fire in the Frost Furnace Hall.”

Her three rooms overlooked the Lotus Terrace at the outer hall’s far end. A winter plum sat on the sill. Not long ago she couldn’t have poured tea at all. Now she sat straight on her cushion, and her hands were steady on the pot.

“What did the Grand Elder say?” Shi Feng asked.

“He said the Supreme Elder hasn’t lit that furnace in thirty years, and wouldn’t notice if the hall burnt down,” Ye Wanqiu said dryly. “He said it more politely than that. Elder Kong went the colour of this tea.”

Shi Feng drank, amused by Ye Wanqiu’s blunt account of the elders’ argument.

“And Elder Jing?” Shi Feng asked.

“Elder Jing was the clever one,” Ye Wanqiu said. “She didn’t argue. She said that if an outsider is to work in the sect’s furnace hall, a disciple of the inner court should stand at the door as his escort, for his own safety and for the hall’s. Then she named her own disciple.”

“Bai Ruoshuang,” Shi Feng said.

“Bai Ruoshuang,” Ye Wanqiu agreed. “Tenth on the Tianxing, and Elder Jing’s pride and joy. The Grand Elder granted the furnace, and he granted the escort. Elder Kong lost. Elder Jing got what she wanted. Everyone left looking satisfied except Elder Kong.”

“What does Elder Jing want?” Shi Feng asked.

Ye Wanqiu smiled a little and didn’t answer that directly.

“Master Shi, a tall tree catches the wind,” Ye Wanqiu said. “Ten days ago you were a guest who’d been refused. Tomorrow you’ll be the man refining a pill for the Grand Elder in the sect’s own hall. Elder Kong already says you’re the Grand Elder’s man. Elder Jing wants to see what kind of man that is before she decides what to say.”

“So the escort is there to measure me,” Shi Feng said.

“The escort is there to stand at the door,” Ye Wanqiu said, and sipped her tea. “What she sees from the door is her own business.”

The door slid open behind them.

Shen Yaoqing came in and knelt, very correctly, at the edge of the mat. She held a long jade plaque in both hands, carved with a lotus and the character for frost.

“Master,” Shen Yaoqing said to Ye Wanqiu, and then turned to Shi Feng. “The Frost Furnace Hall’s pass, honoured guest. As your host, I’m to give it to you. It opens the hall and the herb store for seven days. The herb store will be inventoried before you enter it, and again when you leave.”

“By Elder Kong,” Shi Feng said.

“By Elder Kong,” Shen Yaoqing said.

Shi Feng took the plaque with both hands and bowed. Shen Yaoqing rose to go. At the door she stopped and turned back.

“One question,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “In the Hearing Hall, you spoke a name. How does a frontier alchemist come to know the name Nangong Xiuyi?”

Ye Wanqiu set down her cup and didn’t pick it up again.

“A carriage in the rain,” Shi Feng said. “And a debt.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at him for a moment.

“The sect’s book already has that much,” Shen Yaoqing said, and left.

Ye Wanqiu sighed and poured herself more tea.

“She keeps the sect’s book better than the stewards do,” Ye Wanqiu said. “When she asks a guest a question, it’s because the book has a blank in it.”

“I’ve told her what happened,” Shi Feng said, turning the pass in his hands. “I can’t give her an explanation I don’t have.”

“It’s had blanks before,” Ye Wanqiu said.

That night, in Snowpine Court, Shi Feng opened the Chunyu case.

The Snowfold Screen was written on six sheets of white silk in a small, cramped hand, with diagrams of the body and lines of space drawn across them. The idea was simple. A Shattering Void cultivator could fold space. Most of them folded it to move, the way Void-Crossing Step did. The Snowfold Screen folded a single sheet of space and set it in front of the body. A blow that hit the sheet didn’t hit him. It went into the fold, and the fold took it.

The hard part was holding it. A sheet of folded space wanted to flatten out again, and the harder the blow, the faster it unfolded.

He worked at it through the night. The first fold he made collapsed before he’d finished it. The tenth held for a breath. By the fortieth he could set a sheet in front of his chest that held while he counted to three. Near dawn, the sheet came up the moment he called it, and he felt the art settle into his meridians.

Snowfold Screen. Entry.

He went out into the yard as the sky grew light. Qin Wuyan was standing by the gate, where he stood every morning.

“Senior,” Shi Feng said. “Would you hit me?”

Qin Wuyan looked at him. Then he lifted one finger.

Shi Feng set the Snowfold Screen in front of his chest.

Qin Wuyan touched the air.

He put no more than a single finger’s worth of his Profound Heaven force into it, and that was more than Zhangsun Lie’s whole spear. It hit the sheet of folded space and went into it. The screen shook. The fold groaned and began to flatten, and Shi Feng poured his qi into holding it.

It held for the length of one breath.

Then it broke, and the rest of the finger’s force came through and knocked him back three paces into the snow.

He sat there, winded, and looked at his chest. Not a mark.

“A single finger broke it,” Shi Feng said, rubbing his chest.

“It held one breath,” Qin Wuyan said, and put his hand back into his sleeve. “One breath is a breath.”