Chapter 1128 — Under Review

CHAPTER 1128

Under Review

The new Tianji issue came into Pinefall in a merchant’s saddlebag, eleven sheets stitched at the corner, and within the hour the whole town had pushed itself in front of the noticeboard by the post house.

The post-house clerk pinned the sheets up one by one. He was nervous in front of so many people, and his hands shook.

“Read it out!”

“From the top! Read it from the top!”

“Why from the top? We know who’s on top! She’s sitting in the herb house!”

The clerk read it from the top anyway.

“First,” the clerk read loudly. “Long Caili. The Fourth Princess.”

The crowd cheered loudly. Somebody turned round and bowed toward the herb house, and three more people copied him.

The clerk read on down the sheet. Most of the names meant nothing in Pinefall. A few did, because they’d been argued over at the tea stalls all winter.

“Tenth,” the clerk read. “Mu Hanzhi. The Myriad Marrow Sect. Peak Shattering Void.”

“Still tenth!” a farmer shouted. “I told you! The fight on the threshing floor counted!”

“It didn’t count, it was an exchange of pointers!”

“Then why did he pay the wager?”

The clerk raised his voice over them and went back up the sheet. He had skipped one line on purpose. He had read it three times already and still didn’t know how to say it.

“Sixth,” the clerk read.

The street went quiet. Everybody in Pinefall knew who was sixth.

“Sixth,” the clerk read again, swallowing. “Shi Feng. Profound Heaven. Placement under review by the Mansion.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then everybody said something at once.

“Under review? What does under review mean?”

“The Mansion doesn’t review! It prints! It’s printed for a hundred years and it’s never reviewed anything!”

“Profound Heaven. They wrote Profound Heaven. Next to a name on the Tianxing.”

“…”

Shi Feng was standing at the back of the crowd, by the tea stall, with a cup of tea in his good hand. Lin Langtian was beside him, eating. Qin Wuyan stood a step behind both of them, watching the street instead of the board.

Nobody had noticed him yet. Then the herb boy turned round, saw him, and pointed.

The whole street turned with him.

“It’s him!”

“Young master! Young master, what does it mean?”

Shi Feng was as puzzled as they were. He drank his tea.

“I don’t know,” Shi Feng said, setting the cup down. “I’ve never seen the Mansion print that either.”

That only made it worse. The crowd started arguing again, louder than before.

A fat cloth merchant in a fox-fur hat pushed his way to the front of the board. He had brought the issue up from Hanyuan in his saddlebag, and he considered himself the town’s expert on it.

“I’ll tell you what it means!” the cloth merchant said, slapping the board so hard that the sheets jumped. “I’ve read the Tianxing for twenty years. Every issue. The top of the list is Shattering Void, all the way to forty-second. Everybody knows that! It’s been that way since my grandfather’s day. And now here’s a man under thirty at Profound Heaven, standing on the sixth rung of a ladder built for Shattering Void!”

“So?” somebody shouted.

“So the ladder’s too short!” the cloth merchant shouted back. “The Mansion doesn’t know where to put him! There’s no room for him on the list! That’s what under review means! I swear it on my shop!”

“Your shop’s in Hanyuan!”

“Then I swear it on my hat!”

The crowd roared. The cloth merchant took his hat off and held it up to show them how serious he was.

Lin Langtian finished his sweet potato and wiped his hands on his robe.

“The fat man’s cleverer than he looks,” Lin Langtian said quietly. “Junior Brother. A list that measures the young has just found a young man it can’t measure. The Mansion’s never had that problem before. They’re going to have to decide what to do about it.”

“That’s for the Mansion to decide,” Shi Feng said. “I can’t change it from Pinefall.”

“They will,” Lin Langtian agreed. “But that old Mansion Master coughed blood for you once already. I don’t think he’ll want to guess wrong twice.”

Shi Feng looked at the sixth line on the board, uneasy.

He had come onto that list at ninety-eighth, by accident, over a bowl of noodles. He had never asked for a place on it, and he had never once fought for one. It had told the Empire where he was in every issue, and the Heretic Sect had read it as carefully as anyone. Now the Mansion had printed a line about him that it had never printed about anyone, and the whole north would read it within ten days.

Shi Feng decided to wait for the Mansion’s decision before he worried about it.

Qin Wuyan spoke for the first time.

“Master Shi,” Qin Wuyan said, nodding down the street.

A maid in dark blue was coming toward them through the crowd. The townspeople moved aside for her as soon as they saw the colour. She stopped in front of Shi Feng and bowed.

“Guest elder,” the maid said. “Her Highness leaves for the south at first light tomorrow. She asks whether you will see her as far as the valley road. She says there is Long household property to account for.”

Lin Langtian opened his mouth.

Qin Wuyan looked at him. Lin Langtian closed it again.

“Tell Her Highness I’ll be there,” Shi Feng said. “Thank her for asking.”