Chapter 188 — News for Great Liang

CHAPTER 188

News for Great Liang

Wen Shou read the regional report twice before signing the capital copy.

The first reading confirmed the names. The second confirmed that nobody had written the results in the wrong order.

Shi Feng, champion. Artificer Hall, direct inner-disciple entry.

A clerk waited beside his desk with a fresh sheet and the worried expression of a man who had to carry facts into the royal household.

“Should the crown prince's result go first?” Lu Sen asked.

“The stages go in order,” Wen Shou said.

Lu Sen lowered his brush.

Sima Yu had been eliminated in Round Two after taking forbidden medicine. The officials' account recorded the forbidden-pill violation and his removal alive under medical care. There was no later placing to make the sentence more comfortable.

Below that came Ling Qingzhu's withdrawal after the trials, following Hundred Flower Valley's direct inner-disciple offer. No final rank was assigned to her.

Then the ten recruited places.

“Princess Sima Lan, tenth,” Lu Sen read. “Artificer Hall, outer court.”

“Yes,” Wen Shou said.

“The princess?” Lu Sen asked.

“The name hasn't changed since you read it,” Wen Shou said.

Lu Sen wrote carefully. Great Liang had sent three representatives and somehow received news about four of its most discussed young people. The one who had left without a royal place had entered through Moon Lake Sect and finished above most of the field.

The copy for the palace needed no jokes attached.

By afternoon, the market had supplied its own.

“Round Two! Before the sect trials!”

“The princess took tenth!”

“The first fairy went straight to the Valley!”

“And the cripple won?”

“He's not a cripple, you fool. How many reports do you need?”

Bao Shun stood outside Qingliu Lane holding a new rental notice. He had written that the kingdom's champion once lived in the courtyard before remembering that Jiang Meilan owned the lease.

Jiang Meilan took the notice from him.

“Once lived?” Jiang Meilan said. “The rent period isn't even over.”

“That's better,” Bao Shun said. “Still paying. Excellent tenants.”

“The roof leaked while he was here,” Granny Qin called from her brazier.

Jiang Meilan folded the notice over the offending line.

“The roof was repaired,” Jiang Meilan said.

“After his blanket got wet,” Granny Qin said.

Bao Shun looked at the courtyard gate, then at the three women listening nearby. A promising advertisement was becoming a record of complaints.

He took the paper back to correct it.

Granny Qin turned her cakes over. For once none had burned. She put two aside before remembering that the young man who warned her about the brazier was far beyond the capital now.

She sold them to a labourer instead, with an extra one because he looked hungry.

Ling Zhen received the clan copy while checking travel expenses.

He read Ling Qingzhu's entry first. Direct inner disciple. Her choice had carried her beyond the household's careful plans, and he felt relieved enough to put down his account brush.

Then he read Shi Feng's result.

For a moment he remembered laughing at an empty pale bag.

He didn't laugh now.

Ling Rong stood beside the table holding a list of gifts somebody wanted to send to Artificer Hall. Eleven names filled the margin. Apparently relatives who once needed free medicine now needed introductions.

“Should I prepare these?” Ling Rong asked.

“Prepare our congratulations,” Ling Zhen said. “Ask before sending anything in his name.”

Ling Rong looked at the list, crossed out the heading and took a fresh sheet. The instruction was plain enough to make the old shortcuts uncomfortable.

Ling Zhen kept the result beside his niece's letter. He would send her the official copy. Whether she answered her husband, or he answered her, wasn't a matter a clan steward could arrange.

The news reached Qingshi Town with a merchant carrying winter cloth.

By the time the written copy reached the Shi household, the street had already given Shi Feng three different titles. One version claimed he had become a sect elder. Another insisted he was travelling in a royal carriage drawn by spirit beasts.

Shi Rong put the actual report on the council table.

“Champion,” Shi Rong said. “Artificer Hall inner disciple. Read the rest before adding anything.”

Shi Hong leaned across the table. His finger stopped above Sima Yu's result, then moved lower until it found Shi Feng's name again.

“Perhaps his opponents were injured,” Shi Hong said.

“By everyone else's opponents?” Shi Rong asked.

Two elders coughed into their sleeves. Shi Hong sat back, red around the ears.

Shi Zhen kept his face stern. On the shelf behind him stood the ledger that had once made a courtyard and its medicine allowance look like gifts from his own hand.

“Clan rules still matter,” Shi Zhen said.

“They do,” Shi Rong said. “So do records.”

He tapped the date on the report before folding it closed.

“He'll be expected at the year-end test,” Shi Rong added.

Shi Hong looked up sharply. That test once sounded like an easy way to disgrace the eastern household. A champion returning from a Great Sect would make it a very different gathering.

Nobody needed to explain which old record he meant. The eastern household's settlement remained tied in red cord where the clan head had ordered it kept.

Shi Zhen reached for his tea and found the cup empty. He set it down without calling for more.

The elders began discussing a congratulatory letter. For once, Shi Hong offered no suggestion about what Shi Feng ought to contribute in return.

Shi Yulan heard the street version first and refused to believe the carriage.

“He'd ask what feeding the beasts costs,” Shi Yulan said.

Meng Shou laughed. He had come from the clinic with the merchant's written copy, folded carefully away from a packet of ordinary medicine.

Shi Yulan read it in the eastern courtyard. When she reached the champion's name, she stopped pretending to be calm.

“He got there,” Shi Yulan said.

“He did,” Meng Shou said.

She read the line again, then checked the recruitment entry. Artificer Hall. She knew little about its mountain and less about its teachers. She knew it was a place Shi Feng had chosen after the whole field heard his name.

That mattered.

“Your living root?” Shi Yulan asked.

“Still alive,” Meng Shou said. “I keep it in its mineral bed. The delivery boy was more careful with it than with his lunch.”

“He remembered to send it,” Shi Yulan said.

Meng Shou nodded. The physician hadn't forgotten the small parcel or its receipt. A young man who kept that promise deserved to have this piece of news read properly.

Shi Yulan folded the report and carried it inside. There was no official trumpet in the courtyard, only a kettle beginning to boil and a neighbour calling that the merchant still had cloth to sell.

“Let him wait,” Shi Yulan said. “Today I'm buying better tea.”