Chapter 958 — Black Clouds

CHAPTER 958

Black Clouds

“One!”

The whole mountain counted.

It started on the terraces above the Frost Furnace Hall and spread outward. Disciples on the seven peaks came out onto their walls to look. Stewards on the herb terraces put down their baskets. The count rolled back to the cut from far away, a few breaths behind.

“Two!”

“Three!”

Shi Feng sat with his back to the cauldron and his palm on the bronze, and didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. He could feel each cloud form, a tug from far above, pulling on the pill.

“Four! Five!”

“Six!”

“Seven! That’s a Major Success pill. Profound Heaven-grade, Major Success!”

“In the sect’s own cauldron! From a guest!”

He stood up slowly. His legs were stiff from the night on the floor.

“Eight!”

“Nine!”

The ninth cloud closed over the cut, and the whole mountain went silent.

Nine was Perfect. Nine was the top of the ladder, and every alchemist on the terraces knew what came after it. A pill that went past nine clouds called down its own tribulation.

The nine white clouds began to turn grey. Then they went black, all at once, from their centres outward, and joined together into one thick lid over the cut. The light in the Frost Furnace Hall went dim. Thunder rolled in the cloud, low and long.

“It’s going over,” an inner disciple whispered on the second ring. “It’s going to be a Tribulation Pill.”

“A Profound Heaven Tribulation Pill? Has that ever happened here?”

“Not since…” the disciple began, and stopped.

On the top terrace, Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian rose from his chair.

Shi Feng felt the tribulation take hold before the first bolt fell.

It didn’t come down. It pulled up. A Profound Heaven pill’s tribulation didn’t only test the pill. It tested the space around it, the way Profound Heaven itself worked on space, and it took hold of his fold from above and began to pull it open.

His Shattering Void fold couldn’t withstand a Profound Heaven tribulation unaided. Shi Feng felt the difference as its seams stretched.

The seams of the shell started to come apart. He felt them go, one by one, along the top of the fold where it met the cauldron’s rim. If the shell opened, the cold vein would come in under it and the bolts would come in over it, and the pill would meet both at once.

There wasn’t time to fold it again. There was only one thing on hand that could hold the seams closed.

Shi Feng stepped up to the cauldron and put both palms flat on the top of the fold, one on each side of the rim, and poured his qi straight into the seams through his own hands.

The shell closed.

“What is he doing?” Elder Jing Lanting said sharply on the top terrace. “Get his hands off the cauldron! The bolts will come straight through him!”

“Senior Qin!” Shen Yaoqing called down from behind her master’s chair. “He’s standing in the path of the strike!”

Qin Wuyan stood at the edge of the hall with his hands in his sleeves, and didn’t move.

“A tribulation is not an enemy,” Qin Wuyan said. “This one does not stand in front of heaven over a pill. That is his work.”

Shen Yaoqing went pale but said no more. Qin Wuyan wouldn’t interfere. She could only watch Shi Feng hold the fold shut.

The first bolt fell.

Boom!

It came through the smoke hole in one white line and hit the fold where his hands held it. The fold took it, and the bolt ran along the shell and found the only way through, which was him. It went into his palms, up his arms, across his shoulders, and down into the floor through his feet. The stones under him cracked in a star.

His sleeves burnt away to the elbow. The skin on his forearms went red, then black.

He didn’t take his hands off.

The second bolt hit the same place. The third came down a breath behind it. Each one ran through the fold, into the cauldron, through the pill, and then out through his arms, and each time the pill inside took a little of the bolt and kept it. That was what a pill tribulation was for. A pill that survived it came out stronger than its grade.

“He’s taking it through his own arms!”

“Does he want to die? That’s Profound Heaven lightning!”

“Look at the cauldron. Not a mark on it. It’s all going through him!”

“He’s using his own body as the rod.”

The fourth bolt brought him down to one knee. His hands stayed on the fold. He could smell his own skin burning, and his arm bones hummed with what the lightning left behind in them. His sea of qi had been nearly empty since the third bolt. By the fifth he was holding the seams with whatever the bolts left behind.

The sixth bolt was the biggest. It came down white enough to blind half the terraces, and the thunder after it shook snow off every roof in the outer hall.

Then the black lid over the cut began to thin. Grey light came through it in patches. A wind came down the cut and blew the smoke away.

Shi Feng knelt beside the cauldron with his hands still flat on the fold. His forearms were black to the elbow. Blood ran from under his fingernails and hissed on the hot bronze.

Four hundred people on the terraces said nothing at all.

He let go of the fold. The shell came apart quietly, and the cold vein came up through the floor into a cauldron that didn’t need protecting any more.

Then he got one foot under himself and stood, and lifted the lid.