Chapter 1124 — Some Dead Man’s House

CHAPTER 1124

Some Dead Man’s House

Two nights later Lin Langtian went out to the stone with a knife.

There was no wind. Shi Feng sat by the furnace with his left arm in a sling Lin Langtian had cut badly from spare cloth. In the quiet he could hear the blade scrape across the stone from inside the abode, so he got up and went to the door.

Lin Langtian was crouched in front of the inscription, scraping the moss off one line at a time with the knife held flat. He laid each grey-green strip on the snow beside him in a neat pile.

Lin Langtian didn’t make a single joke while he worked. Shi Feng understood how much this mattered to him and stayed in the doorway.

The inscription was eleven lines long, in characters older than any script Shi Feng had learned. Someone patient had cut them deep and straight. He couldn’t read any of them.

Lin Langtian read them once, slowly, from top to bottom, his lips moving. Then he sat back on his heels and looked at them for a long time.

Then he picked up the pile of moss, struck a spark from his fingers and burned it.

“Senior Brother,” Shi Feng said from the door.

“Mm,” Lin Langtian said, without turning.

“If you want me to go back inside, say so,” Shi Feng said.

“No,” Lin Langtian said, watching the moss burn. “Stay. A man shouldn’t read a grave by himself. It’s bad luck.”

Shi Feng came and crouched beside him in the snow. He didn’t ask what the eleven lines said. Lin Langtian wiped the knife on his sleeve and put it away.

“You saw my sky at the basin,” Lin Langtian said. “The forge. The red one.”

“I saw it,” Shi Feng said.

“That wasn’t my heaven,” Lin Langtian said quietly. “That was what was left of it. I had a heaven once that was a hundred times the size of that. The man who took it from me isn’t dead.”

The fire went out, leaving grey ash on the snow.

Shi Feng chose to wait in silence. If he pushed, Lin Langtian would laugh and say nothing more.

Then Lin Langtian laughed loudly and slapped Shi Feng on the back so hard that his ribs hurt.

“There! Senior Brother has told you a secret. Now you owe me one,” Lin Langtian said. “Don’t bother asking my old name, either. Nobody remembers it except bandits with one arm, and he got it wrong. My new name is much better-looking.”

“The Sixth Elder seemed very sure of it,” Shi Feng said.

“The Sixth Elder was very sure of a lot of things,” Lin Langtian said. “He was sure he’d leave this valley with your hands.”

He stood up and brushed the snow off his knees. Shi Feng stayed crouched, looking at the clean stone.

“Senior Brother,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll give you one back, then. Since I owe you.”

Lin Langtian looked down at him.

“At the Tianji Mansion,” Shi Feng said, “I asked them to read for my mother. I had nothing of hers but a hairpin. The Mansion Master cast the reading himself, on the Star-Weighing Plate. The plate cracked across. Taishi Xu coughed blood and went down, and his hair went white. I put a Fate-Settling Pill in his mouth or he’d have died there.”

Lin Langtian didn’t say anything.

“When he woke up, he told me the reading didn’t fail to find her,” Shi Feng said. “It was thrown back. He couldn’t tell me why. He couldn’t even tell me if she’s alive.”

Lin Langtian was quiet for a long time. He looked at the clean stone, then at Shi Feng, then up at the stars over the valley. Shi Feng had never seen him silent for so long, and it worried him.

“Taishi Xu is Profound Heaven,” Lin Langtian said at last.

“He is,” Shi Feng said.

“A diviner at Profound Heaven doesn’t fall reading a frontier woman,” Lin Langtian said slowly. “Either she’s bigger than his sky, or someone who is stands over her.”

Shi Feng felt cold. Both answers frightened him.

“Which one?” Shi Feng asked.

“I don’t know,” Lin Langtian said, sounding honest for once. “I’m a smith, Junior Brother. I don’t read stars. But I know what it takes to break a man’s plate from the other side. It doesn’t happen by accident.”

He stood a while longer. Then he rubbed his hands together and turned back toward the abode.

“That’s enough of that! It’s cold, and Senior Brother has been sober since the basin,” Lin Langtian said. “Senior Brother wants a drink. Junior Brother can have what’s left. There used to be a wine cellar under the library. If the dead man who lived here had any taste, there’s still something down there.”

“You said you’re borrowing the house,” Shi Feng said, getting up.

“I’m borrowing his wine too,” Lin Langtian said. “He won’t mind. He never drank it anyway. He was always too busy.”

He went in. A moment later Shi Feng heard him in the library, kicking aside rubble and swearing cheerfully at it.

Shi Feng stayed outside by the stone, thinking over Lin Langtian’s words. Either his mother was bigger than a Profound Heaven diviner’s sky, or someone who was stood over her. He had come into the Empire to find the woman the hairpin belonged to, and he’d thought finding her would be the hard part. Now he was worried about what he would find. He took the hairpin out of his sleeve and looked at the three crescents in the starlight. Then he wrapped it again and put it away.

From under the library floor, Lin Langtian gave a shout of triumph.

“Junior Brother! Three jars! Only one of them has gone to vinegar!”