Chapter 1058 — Off the Mountain

CHAPTER 1058

Off the Mountain

The new issue came off the frames at noon on the sixth day, and the printing hall was louder than Shi Feng had ever heard it.

Forty scribes worked the long tables, pulling sheets off the inked blocks, hanging them on cords to dry and stacking the dry ones in bundles of a hundred. Runners carried the bundles out to the gate as fast as they were tied. By nightfall the first of them would be in the teahouses at the foot of the mountain, and in a month every city in the Empire would have read it.

Daoist Mingshu took a sheet off the nearest cord and handed it to him without a word.

Shi Feng read down the list with his left hand holding the corner. The first five names hadn’t moved in two issues. The sixth line read:

6. Shi Feng. Sky Pavilion, guest elder. 6 Mark. Peak Shattering Void.

Yun Zhiwei’s name was one line below his.

“Sixth,” a young scribe said at the next table, a little too loudly. “A pill-maker, sixth!”

“He beat our chief disciple in front of the whole Listing Court,” another scribe said. “What did you expect them to print? Seventh?”

“My uncle in Beiling bet on him at twentieth. He’ll never let anyone forget it.”

“…”

Shi Feng looked further along the line. In the narrow margin beside his entry there was a small note, cut into the block in a hand he didn’t recognise. It wasn’t a rank or a title. It said only:

Measured. Not read.

“What’s this?” Shi Feng asked, and touched the margin.

Daoist Mingshu looked at it for a long moment. His face didn’t change.

“I don’t know, Master Shi,” Daoist Mingshu said. “It was cut into the block during the night. None of my scribes did it, and none of them will touch the block to take it out.”

“Will you?” Shi Feng asked.

“No,” Daoist Mingshu said.

Shi Feng folded the sheet into his sleeve. He was curious, but Daoist Mingshu clearly couldn’t explain the note. He wouldn’t press him in front of his scribes.

In the courtyard outside the printing hall, eight disciples were carrying the Star-Weighing Plate down the stairs on poles. It was wrapped in grey cloth, but the cloth didn’t hide the shape of the two cracks. The disciples walked slowly and didn’t talk.

“It’ll be recast,” Daoist Mingshu said, following his eyes. “The foundry below can do it. It’ll take three years, and the stars will have to be cut again by hand.”

“I’m sorry for the plate,” Shi Feng said.

“The Mansion Master told me to tell you not to be,” Daoist Mingshu said. “He said a plate that never cracks has never been asked anything worth asking.”

Shi Feng packed that afternoon. It didn’t take long. His herbs were in his ring, and everything else fitted in one bag. The hairpin was inside his robe. His right palm had closed over in a thin pink skin that cracked if he made a fist, and his Spirit Sense had come back far enough that he could feel the whole guest hall and the stairs outside it, though it still went grey at the edges if he pushed it.

Qin Wuyan was already waiting by the door with his own small bundle. He’d had it ready since the morning after the casting.

Yun Zhiwei walked him down.

The Mansion’s chief disciple still had his arm in a sling where Falling Star Sword had opened his shoulder, and he walked carefully on the steep terraces. He didn’t talk on the way down. Disciples and scribes stopped on every terrace to bow as they passed, and Yun Zhiwei returned every bow, so Shi Feng did too.

At the lowest terrace, by the gate, he stopped.

“Seventh,” Yun Zhiwei said, and smiled a little. “I’ve never been seventh before. It’s quieter.”

“You’ll be sixth again when I’m thirty,” Shi Feng said.

“Only if I can still beat whoever’s eighth,” Yun Zhiwei said. He looked at Shi Feng’s bound hand for a moment. “Will you come back, Master Shi?”

“When I know more about what stopped the reading,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t risk your Master again.”

Yun Zhiwei laughed and bowed, properly, from the waist.

“Then I’ll read your next hundred moves before you get here,” Yun Zhiwei said.

“Read a hundred and one,” Shi Feng said.

Daoist Mingshu stood at the gate itself. He bowed Shi Feng through it with both sleeves together, the same deep bow he’d given at the waystation north of Beiling.

“Master Shi,” Daoist Mingshu said. “The mountain’s grateful. The Mansion Master’s alive because of you, and the Mansion doesn’t forget a debt either way.” He hesitated. “A mountain doesn’t move, but people meet again.”

“Thank him for receiving me,” Shi Feng said warmly. “And remind him to rest.”

Outside the gate, the road ran down between two cliffs into the clouds. Qin Wuyan stepped up beside him and looked south-east, towards the Serene Jade’s outer lands, many days away by any road a horse could walk.

“The outer lands,” Qin Wuyan said. “Rifts?”

“Rifts,” Shi Feng said. “Six a day. My Spirit Sense won’t hold more than that yet.”

He tore the first one open with his left hand. The air split along a straight line, and through it he could see snow and a frozen river a hundred li away.

He stepped through. Qin Wuyan stepped through after him, and the rift closed behind them with a soft sound.

[Tianxing: 6th]