Chapter 136 — The Old Man Who Bought Broken Tools

CHAPTER 136

The Old Man Who Bought Broken Tools

The small bronze puppet had only one arm, and that arm kept slapping the stall.

Shi Feng stopped because the third slap knocked a pin out of its shoulder. The seller, Chen Lu, caught the pin, looked at the watching crowd, and put it behind his back.

An old man in a patched brown robe scratched his chin. His beard needed trimming. A straw basket at his feet held two cracked furnace lids and what looked like the handle of a shovel.

“Show me the core,” Li Changyuan said.

Shi Feng waited. Before the seller answered, a neighbouring merchant leaned over the partition.

“Li Changyuan, you've been asking that since breakfast,” Jin Sheng said. “Buy it or let him eat.”

“Then he should stop feeding it qi,” Li Changyuan replied. “He'll crack the seat before he sells anything.”

Chen Lu snorted. He was a Bone Refinement cultivator with blackened fingers and the patient anger of someone who repaired other people's mistakes all day.

“You want a working puppet at scrap price,” Chen Lu said.

“I want scrap that knows it's scrap,” Li Changyuan replied.

Shi Feng smiled despite himself. He had come out to stretch his legs after practising medicine, and the puppet was more interesting than another banner advertising tournament champions who hadn't fought yet.

Chen Lu lifted the puppet's chest plate. Three bronze channels led into a round stone seat. A crack crossed the casing beneath it.

Shi Feng leaned slightly closer.

“The crack isn't the only problem,” Shi Feng said.

Both men looked at him. Li Changyuan's eyes dropped briefly to the sword at his waist, then returned to the puppet.

“Go on,” Li Changyuan said.

“The shoulder pin was replaced,” Shi Feng said. “It fits the hole, but the arm catches before it finishes turning. The core keeps driving against it.”

Chen Lu brought the pin from behind his back. He didn't look pleased, but he didn't try to conceal it again.

“The old pin was gone,” Chen Lu said. “I used what I had.”

“That doesn't make the new one fit,” Li Changyuan said.

Li Changyuan turned the puppet on its side. Shi Feng pointed to a bright crescent where the metal had rubbed against the shoulder socket.

He recognized the fault because Xu Changhe had drawn almost the same crescent beside a gate-hinge repair. The notes had included measurements, failed replacements and a short complaint about disciples who thought force could substitute for filing.

Nothing about the little puppet required a miraculous inheritance.

Chen Lu fetched a narrower pin from a drawer. Li Changyuan rolled it between his fingers and shook his head.

“Too thin,” Li Changyuan said. “It'll walk out under load.”

Shi Feng looked through the drawer after Chen Lu moved it toward him. There were several pins, three washers and a spring bent into a useless hook. He selected a straight pin with a rough collar.

“The collar needs shortening,” Shi Feng said. “The shaft looks close.”

“Looks close isn't a measurement,” Li Changyuan replied.

He passed over a pair of worn calipers.

Shi Feng accepted the correction. He measured the socket, then the pin. The difference was small enough to repair with a thin sleeve. He said so, and Chen Lu took a strip of bronze from beneath the counter.

Li Changyuan watched without offering praise. That suited Shi Feng. A stranger didn't need to declare him a genius because he'd noticed a rubbing mark.

They fitted the sleeve and shortened the collar. Chen Lu did the filing; his practiced hands were faster than Shi Feng's would have been. The arm moved freely when he turned it by hand.

Then Chen Lu sent a thread of qi into the chest.

The arm rose, paused, and slapped the stall again.

Jin Sheng laughed from the other side of the partition.

“Good repair,” Jin Sheng said. “Now it hits without squeaking.”

Chen Lu glared toward the partition. Shi Feng crouched to watch through the open chest instead of looking at the arm.

A faint light travelled through the upper bronze channel. It faded before reaching the return junction.

“The qi isn't coming back properly,” Shi Feng said.

Li Changyuan's beard shifted with a small smile.

“That's a different fault,” Li Changyuan said. “Can you tell which part?”

Shi Feng studied the exposed channels. The simple loop resembled the return passages used to keep heat even around a small pill furnace. Resembled didn't mean identical. He wouldn't pretend to know the puppet's whole design.

He pointed to the darkened junction.

“Somewhere here,” Shi Feng said. “I can see where the flow fails. I can't tell whether the plate underneath is broken without opening it.”

“Then don't claim more,” Li Changyuan replied.

Chen Lu folded his arms.

“If you open that seat, you're buying it,” Chen Lu said.

Li Changyuan named a fair scrap price. Chen Lu accepted at once, looking relieved that the puppet would become somebody else's problem.

The entire bargain took two sentences.

Li Changyuan moved to the stone bench beside the market well. Shi Feng helped carry the puppet because its remaining arm caught on the basket handle every few steps.

Children watched until Li Changyuan placed the arm facing the wall. Disappointed that it wouldn't slap anything, they ran after a cart selling warm buns.

The old man loosened the core seat. Beneath it, a thin bronze plate had split along an old repair.

Shi Feng looked at the break and exhaled.

“So both faults were real,” Shi Feng said.

“Usually are,” Li Changyuan replied. “People like finding one mistake. Makes them stop looking.”

He wrapped the damaged plate in cloth. He didn't reveal a hidden treasure inside it or ask Shi Feng to swear secrecy. He simply set it aside and checked whether the casing could still be used.

“Do you make puppets?” Li Changyuan asked.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “I've read some ordinary repair notes. I make medicine.”

“Medicine has pots, pipes and men who overheat things,” Li Changyuan said. “You'll find plenty to repair.”

Shi Feng laughed. It came easily, which surprised him a little. Most of the morning had passed without his mind returning to the room in Great Liang.

Li Changyuan looked at the tournament plate hanging from his everyday bag.

“Going to fight?” Li Changyuan asked.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't carry that loose knot onto a platform,” Li Changyuan said.

Shi Feng checked the tie. One end had worked free while he crouched beside the stall. He tightened it and put the bag strap firmly over his shoulder.

It was sensible advice. Nothing more needed to be made of it.

Li Changyuan began gathering his purchases. Shi Feng passed him the missing washer before it could roll into the gutter, noticing as their fingers neared that he couldn't sense a trace of qi from the old man—not Bone Refinement, not Foundation Establishment, not even the faint heat of an ordinary meridian circuit. Yet when two hurrying Foundation Establishment swordsmen barrelled down the well lane behind them, their footsteps drifted half a pace aside around the old man's straw basket without either youth realizing he had yielded the path.

“Which notes taught you to check rubbing marks?” Li Changyuan asked.

“An enforcer's repair journal,” Shi Feng replied. “He also used a sword.”

Li Changyuan nodded as though that was an ordinary answer. He didn't demand the journal or press for the dead man's name in the street.

Shi Feng liked him a little better for it.

At the end of the lane, Shi Feng stopped to buy two buns. He offered one to Li Changyuan when the old man caught up with his basket.

Li Changyuan accepted without ceremony and bit into it while it was still too hot.

“Bad choice,” Li Changyuan muttered.

“Wait for it to cool,” Shi Feng said.

“I know that now,” Li Changyuan replied.

They stood beside the wall until the crowd thinned. Above the market roofs, the arena bells sounded a practice sequence. Porters were still hanging banners near the northern avenue.

Li Changyuan brushed crumbs from his beard and went back toward the tool stalls. There was apparently another broken thing he wanted to examine.

Shi Feng returned to the inn.

His furnace waited where he'd left it. The next practice batch would demand steady hands and a clean cooling turn. He sat down, checked the heat passages, and found a small piece of ash lodged beside the air inlet.

Yesterday, he would probably have increased the flame first.

Today, he cleared the passage.

The flame settled evenly beneath the furnace. Shi Feng placed the first measured ingredient inside and began again—knowing that at dawn the arena gates would open on one hundred and eight contenders, and that Sima Yu's name was on the same list.