Chapter 1098 — Lin’s Old Place

CHAPTER 1098

Lin’s Old Place

“This house is too polite to heal in,” Lin Langtian said, and coughed into his sleeve.

The door slid open before he’d finished coughing. Two Wanyan maids hurried in with a fresh brazier, a third came behind them with ginger soup, and a steward bowed on the threshold and asked whether the honoured senior wanted a physician, a warmer quilt, or both.

“Neither!” Lin Langtian said, flapping his sleeve at them. “Out, out. Yours Truly is resting.”

The maids bowed, set everything down anyway and backed out. The door slid shut. It had opened eleven times since breakfast. Shi Feng had counted.

He lay propped on three cushions on the guest bed, his ribs bound and his left arm strapped across his chest. Five days had passed since the Cage fell. Shen Yaoqing’s pill had stopped the burning in his meridians, but they were still scorched, and his qi came back a thread at a time. Every deep breath ground the broken ribs together. Wanyan Bo’s herbs sat in jade boxes along the wall. He couldn’t refine yet. He could sit up, but not for long.

“They mean well,” Shi Feng said, looking at the door.

“That’s the problem,” Lin Langtian said, and dragged his stool closer to the new brazier. “Every time I cough, a maid runs in. Every time you groan, the patriarch sends a steward to ask if the 6 Mark is satisfied with his hospitality. Junior Brother, a man can’t heal while he’s being thanked. He has to lie in the dirt and feel sorry for himself in peace.”

By the door, Qin Wuyan stood with his back to the frame and his bound arm against his chest. He’d hardly rested in five days.

“Where would you go?” Shi Feng asked.

Lin Langtian didn’t answer at once. He held his palms out to the brazier and turned them over slowly, back and front.

“I have an old place,” Lin Langtian said. “In the mountains north of here. Ten days by sledge, and then a walk.”

“Yours?” Shi Feng asked.

“From before,” Lin Langtian said lightly.

He didn’t say before what, and Shi Feng didn’t ask. In the basin the Sixth Elder had looked up at Lin’s forge sky and said a name nobody had spoken in three thousand years, and Lin had answered to it. A man who answered to that name could have an old place anywhere.

“Is it safe?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nobody’s been there since before the patriarch’s grandfather was born,” Lin Langtian said. “No road. No village. Snow, a roof that probably leaks, and a furnace nobody has lit in a very long time.” He grinned. “You’ll love it. It’s free.”

Shi Feng thought it through. Everyone in the north knew he was lying in the Wanyan guest wing. The Sixth Elder had fled with a cracked inner heaven, and a man like that didn’t give up a buyer’s money because his heaven hurt. The ownerless counting house in Hanyuan had shut its doors, but whoever owned it was still out there. Here, any servant could sell the layout of this wing the way Wanyan Che had sold the road.

Shi Feng decided to leave. Hidden in the mountains, he could recover without putting the Wanyan servants and household in another attacker’s path.

“Senior Qin,” Shi Feng said, turning his head toward the door. “What do your orders say?”

Qin Wuyan was silent for one breath.

“This one’s orders say to stay beside the Pavilion’s alchemist,” Qin Wuyan said. “They don’t say where.”

“Then you’ll come?” Lin Langtian asked, looking round.

“This one will guard its door,” Qin Wuyan said, and inclined his head to Lin Langtian, an inch lower than a Pavilion guardian bows to a guest.

Lin Langtian saw the inch and pretended he hadn’t.

Wanyan Bo came himself that afternoon. The patriarch still walked slowly, but he walked, and the grey was gone from his face. When Shi Feng told him they would leave in the morning, the old man’s expression fell.

“This old man’s house has failed you once already,” Wanyan Bo said, and his hand tightened on his cane. “Now it can’t even keep you long enough to heal.”

“Your herbs were fair compensation,” Shi Feng said. “I’m grateful for the care. But anyone hunting me will look here first. I won’t leave your people in danger.”

Wanyan Bo was quiet for a while. Then he bowed, properly, from the waist.

“Take my best sledge and my two quietest drivers,” Wanyan Bo said. “They’ll turn back wherever you tell them to, and this old man won’t ask where that is. If my house doesn’t know, my house can’t sell it.” He straightened. “A debt of life is carried for three generations. Wanyan owes you one, Master Shi. Whenever you come for it.”

Shi Feng nodded, and the patriarch left.

That night the maids stopped coming. Lin fell asleep on his stool with his chin on his chest. Qin Wuyan stood in the doorway with his eyes half shut, and Shi Feng knew he was awake.

Shi Feng worked his private book out of his sleeve with one hand and opened it on the quilt. Writing hurt. He wrote slowly.

Peak Shattering Void. Held.

Ribs broken. Meridians burned, left side. Arm frozen, thawing.

About 26.93 million in the Pavilion’s account. Herbs, about 1.35 million, the Wanyan compensation among them.

Wanyan commission: closed. Wanyan Che: closed.

He stopped there and looked at the brazier.

Twice this month a heaven had opened in front of him. The Sixth Elder’s had been a grey plain under a broken moon, where the Elder’s will was law, and it had nearly killed him. Then a red sky had opened over an endless forge, and a man who ate sweet potatoes had beaten the broken moon flat with a hammer.

Next time, build your own, Lin had said.

Shi Feng wet the brush again.

Two heavens seen. One promise due at Profound Heaven.

He let the ink dry. In the morning they would go north, to a place with no road, and he would have to be carried there. Shi Feng hated needing someone to carry him. Still, he had to recover before he could protect himself or keep his promise.

He closed the book, and then opened it once more and wrote the last line under the rest.

[Mark: 6 | Note: Senior Brother was holding back.]