Chapter 1016 — Which Way the Bow Went

CHAPTER 1016

Which Way the Bow Went

The herbs came at dawn in a black iron chest carried by two Myriad Marrow disciples, and Shang Hong opened it himself on the furnace room’s bench.

Inside, on white silk, lay a thousand-year bone lotus, three stems of marrow-red ginseng, a lump of white marrow jade the size of a fist and eleven lesser herbs in paper. Shi Feng had seen a list like it in the Pavilion’s archive at Tianjing. He’d never seen the real thing in one box.

“My sect gathered these for forty years,” Shang Hong said. “There’s no second set.”

“I understand,” Shi Feng said, checking the marrow jade closely. “I’ll be careful with them.”

He lit the Thousand Forge Flame under the cauldron and shut the furnace room door.

The trouble with a Profound Marrow Pill was the marrow jade. It was hard outside and soft at the core, the same as a bone. Ordinary fire scorched the outside long before it reached the inside. An alchemist who wanted the core had to get the heat into it without touching the shell, and most of them did it by keeping the fire low and waiting for days. That was why Old Tower Master Dai had taken nine.

Shi Feng chose a faster method. He struck the Second Anvil Fire into the cauldron, controlling each beat before it reached the jade.

The Second Anvil Fire ran in beats, nine and a rest. Each beat was a single blow of heat. A blow went straight through a shell before it could spread. The shell of the marrow jade felt nine light taps. The core felt nine blows.

By noon the core had melted. By mid-afternoon the bone lotus and the ginseng had gone into it, one at a time, and the eleven lesser herbs after them.

At the last stage, the clouds came.

He felt them gathering above Northwind House’s roof, one, then two, then more. Out in the yard, Tong Xian’s porters stopped work to look up. Shi Feng had learned at the 6 Mark sitting how to fold the clouds down into the cauldron before they could be counted, so that the sky gave the pill its quality without telling the whole city how much. He folded them in now. Each one went into the cauldron as a small cold weight, and people in the street saw only grey clouds.

At dusk he opened the lid.

The pill sat at the bottom of the cauldron, bone-white, with a fine red vein around it. It smelled of nothing at all. A perfect pill of this grade held all its scent inside.

Shi Feng took it out with a jade spoon and put it in a jade box, and opened the furnace room door.

Shang Hong was standing exactly where he’d stood at dawn. He hadn’t sat down all day.

Shi Feng held out the box. Shang Hong opened it, looked at the pill and didn’t speak for a while. His big square hand was steady, but it held the box a little too carefully.

“Perfect,” Shang Hong said at last.

“Perfect,” Shi Feng agreed.

“In one day,” Shang Hong said.

“I heated the core with repeated strikes,” Shi Feng explained. “The shell stayed intact.”

Shang Hong closed the box and put it inside his robe. One of the disciples brought out a sealed Sky Pavilion draft, and Tong Xian took it and entered three million in the house ledger in a steady hand. That put Shi Feng’s cash a little over twenty-two million, which was more than most northern clans held in their vaults. He’d keep that to himself.

The residue lay at the bottom of the cauldron, a thin grey crust. It was worthless to anyone else. To him it was most of a day’s cultivation. He’d eat it tonight.

“Elder Shi,” Shang Hong said. “Walk me out.”

Shi Feng walked him out.

The street in front of Northwind House was full. Word had got round by noon that a Myriad Marrow elder had been standing in the yard all day, and half of Beiling had come to see why. Merchants stood in their doorways. Children sat on the walls. The young Tianji scribe was there too, with his slim book open.

On the top step, Shang Hong turned round, put his fists together and bowed to Shi Feng.

He bowed first, and he bowed deep.

The street went silent.

Shi Feng returned the bow at once, just as deep. But everyone in the street had seen which of them had bent first.

“Elder Shi,” Shang Hong said, loud enough to carry. “The Myriad Marrow Sect owes you a debt. If you ever come to our northern branch, you’ll be received at the main gate.”

Then he went down the steps, and his two disciples followed him with the empty iron chest, and the crowd parted for them in a hurry.

The whispers began as soon as his back was turned.

“He bowed first. A Profound Heaven elder bowed first!”

“To a man at Shattering Void!”

“That’s not Shattering Void bowing to Profound Heaven. That’s Profound Heaven bowing to a 6 Mark.”

“Men climb up and water flows down.”

“…”

By evening every house in Beiling knew which way the bow had gone. Three of the eleven houses whose gifts had come back that afternoon sent porters to Northwind House before the lamps were lit, each carrying a written commission and a price list with a box ticked on it.

Tong Xian entered all three without comment. Tong Xian looked pleased.

He ate the residue alone in the furnace room after dark, and felt its qi settle into his bones. Then he took out the Seventeenth’s map, unfolded it on the bench under the lamp and looked again at the three small words beside the kiln.

Every tenth day.

He counted the days since Eastreed, then went to the door.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said. “Come and look at this.”