Chapter 17 — The Report

CHAPTER 17

The Report

Lu Qingxue waited beside the well when Shi Feng returned from the western track.

She wore White Crane Pavilion's white robe, with a plain traveling cloak over it. Her cultivation was at Qi Condensation. In Qingshi Town, people would have gathered just to watch her draw water. Here the washerwomen wanted her to move away from the good side of the well.

Shi Feng stepped around a bucket.

“You're blocking the rope,” Shi Feng said.

Lu Qingxue looked down and moved at once. A woman hauled up the next pail, splashed both their boots, and continued with her work.

“Can we speak somewhere else?” Lu Qingxue asked.

“Here is fine,” Shi Feng said.

He wasn't angry. He simply had bread in his pack and wanted to eat it while it was warm. Their engagement was over. He didn't see why that required another private meeting.

Lu Qingxue held a narrow sealed envelope inside her sleeve. She had practiced several ways of beginning this conversation. None included a washerwoman arguing that the water tasted of clay.

“I saw what happened with Fang Ze,” Lu Qingxue said.

“Then you saw him wash his face,” Shi Feng said.

“He shouldn't have treated you that way,” Lu Qingxue said.

“Tell him,” Shi Feng said. “I wasn't the one holding his basin.”

Lu Qingxue lowered her eyes. He spoke as though the incident were finished, because to him it was. Fang Ze's opinion hadn't become important merely because she witnessed it.

She glanced once toward the square to make sure none of Mu Yong’s disciples had followed her, then took out the narrow envelope from her sleeve.

“This is the Pavilion physicians’ examination from eighteen months ago,” Lu Qingxue said quietly. “I copied it from the sealed outer-hall archive before we left the mountain.”

Shi Feng put his bread down on a clean corner of the well wall.

That did interest him.

The outer paper bore the silver-crane watermark of White Crane Pavilion’s medicine hall, and across the corner sat a red archival restriction mark. Taking a sealed record out of the sect registry was no small offense for a newly elevated disciple.

Lu Qingxue handed the envelope over.

“I tried to give it to you in Qingshi Town,” Lu Qingxue said, her voice dropping. “Steward Han was watching every word in that hall.”

“Why was it sealed?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because when our Pavilion’s two physicians examined you after your collapse, they didn’t write what Steward Han announced to the two families,” Lu Qingxue said. “Steward Han ordered the original buried in the restricted ledger so my master would accept the annulment without waiting another year.”

Shi Feng broke the wax and read beside the well. The Pavilion physicians had measured against the standard diagram of three hundred and sixty channels—the private count he had reached in the stone chamber remained hidden, along with the five Epoch Meridians beyond it.

A sentence halfway down made his fingers tighten.

The principal network shows extreme dormancy. Total destruction cannot be confirmed. Repeat examination is advised after eighteen months once the acute shock settles.

Below the physicians’ signatures sat a terse docket line in Han Zheng’s sharp clerical hand: Record publicly as meridian destruction. Seal original; clear Disciple Lu’s betrothal before the Cloud Ascension intake.

Dormant and destroyed weren’t the same thing.

Shi Feng read the docket line twice. White Crane Pavilion’s own physicians had written dormant, and White Crane Pavilion had buried the truth to tidy up a promising disciple’s marriage contract.

Eighteen months of Qingshi Town calling him ruined beyond repair because a Pavilion steward wanted a cleaner ledger.

He felt a brief, cold anger. Then he folded the page. The living root had already stirred the sleeping network. Knowing this earlier might have changed where he searched, but it wouldn't make the lost months come back.

“Did you know what it said before the meeting?” Shi Feng asked.

“I knew it questioned the diagnosis,” Lu Qingxue said. “I hadn't read the whole thing.”

“Yet you came with the annulment paper,” Shi Feng said.

Lu Qingxue's face paled.

“Yes,” Lu Qingxue said.

She didn't offer another excuse. For that much, Shi Feng gave her a second look. He still felt no wish to reopen the engagement.

“I didn't bring it to ask you to change anything,” Lu Qingxue said. “You should have the report. It concerns your body.”

“Then I'll keep it,” Shi Feng said.

He slipped it inside the manual in his pack. His expression returned to its ordinary calm, and he picked up the bread. Lu Qingxue seemed to be waiting for something else.

“Have you found a physician here?” Lu Qingxue asked.

“I've found what I need for now,” Shi Feng said.

“Mu Yong knows people across the border,” Lu Qingxue said. “I can ask—”

“No need,” Shi Feng said.

He didn't tell her he had restored all three hundred and sixty-five meridians. He didn't need her help carrying a secret back to the sect. Her guilt belonged to her, and his recovery belonged to him.

A recruitment gong sounded from the square. Lu Qingxue turned toward it.

“The caravan leaves tomorrow,” Lu Qingxue said.

“Then don't miss it,” Shi Feng said.

For a moment she looked as though she wanted to ask whether he hated her. She swallowed the question. His bread mattered more to him than this conversation now, and that answered something she hadn't wanted to know.

“Take care,” Lu Qingxue said.

Shi Feng nodded. He left by the side lane, walking toward his lodging instead of looking back at the square.

The washerwoman reached for the bucket again.

Lu Qingxue moved without being asked this time.

Near the wine shop, Wei Kuo watched the white-robed figure return toward the sect wagons.

He knew who she was. Everyone from Qingshi Town knew. Lu Qingxue had broken her engagement to a cripple, yet she still sought him out alone beside a well.

Wei Kuo's fingers tightened around his fan.

After the stone challenge, he'd spent the afternoon listening to servants insist that nobody was laughing at him. Now he could see Lu Qingxue watching the lane Shi Feng had taken. The sight made those assurances useless.

“What did she give him?” Wei Kuo asked.

“A letter, young master,” Luo San said.

Wei Kuo snapped the fan shut. A letter could mean anything. That was precisely why it annoyed him.

“Follow him tomorrow,” Wei Kuo said. “When the sect caravan goes, nobody will have reason to keep staring at that cripple.”

Luo San bowed. His Qi Condensation cultivation put him above most Yunze hunters. Dealing with one medicine-fed youth would be easy, especially on an empty track.

At his lodging, Shi Feng read the report once more and put it away. He didn't spend the night imagining what Lu Qingxue might regret.

He practiced his sword cuts until the courtyard shadows lengthened, ate the rest of his bread, and prepared for another hunt. His strength had returned. He intended to use it.