Chapter 201 — Ring Four, Decent

CHAPTER 201

Ring Four, Decent

The sun was going down when Shi Feng walked out of the Flame Cavern.

The crowd had thinned, but not by much. Twenty or thirty outer-court disciples were still sitting on the glassy rocks, and three of them were arguing over a small pile of copper coins. Zhu Liu stood at the front, holding Shi Feng's bag against his chest with both arms. His eyes were red.

“Senior Brother!” Zhu Liu cried. “You're alive!”

“I said I would be,” Shi Feng said.

“You said you’d remember the deposit!” Zhu Liu protested, fumbling through his book. “How was I supposed to know whether you meant to survive? I’ve been writing your incense receipt all afternoon. I even used red ink!”

“Cross it out,” Shi Feng said.

“I'm crossing it out!” Zhu Liu wept, and crossed it out.

Shi Feng took his bag. His robe was in a state. Both sleeves were gone to the elbow, the hem was brown, and his forearms had faded to the pink of a bad sunburn. The skin had healed in the dark of the tunnel, but a man who had walked out of a fire couldn't look entirely fresh. He kept his arms loose and let the crowd look.

They looked.

“His sleeves!”

“Gone. Both of them.”

“Ring three, I bet. Maybe four.”

“Ring four? Come on, nobody gets ring four on their first try.”

Mu Gang rose from his stool without hurry, walked to the stone board and squinted at the fourth column. He ran one finger down the characters, nodded to himself and spoke in the same bored voice he used for everything.

“Shi Feng,” Mu Gang said. “Ring four.”

The crowd was silent for one breath, and then it exploded.

“Four!”

“The champion got ring four!”

“On his first try!”

“His first week, you fool! Having eyes but failing to see Mount Tai!”

“I bet three coppers on ring two!”

“I bet he'd die!”

“That's not a bet, that's a hope.”

Shi Feng stood quietly in the middle of it. He thought, Four is the right answer. It's loud enough to be believed and small enough to be forgotten.

Then he noticed which sentences were being repeated. Nobody said “he went to ring four.” They said, again and again, “ring four, not bad.” “Decent for a newcomer.” “A little more than I expected.”

A few of the voices were louder than the rest, and they belonged to two men in clean grey robes who had been standing near the front all afternoon. One, a round-faced man named Fu Heng, was waving his arms. The other, Ma Xiao, nodded along to everything his friend said.

“Ring four! That’s respectable for a newcomer,” Fu Heng called. “Of course, Prince Gongsun managed five. But he’s a prince, and he brought a very good puppet. We shouldn’t expect the same from everyone.”

“A very good puppet,” Ma Xiao agreed.

“Give him time to settle in,” Fu Heng told the crowd, waving away objections. “There’s no need to expect too much just yet.”

“Very generous. We should be generous,” Ma Xiao said. “Four is perfectly fine for someone from a small kingdom. A frog at the bottom of a well can only see so much sky.”

Shi Feng understood what they were doing. They wanted the crowd to praise him as a promising newcomer, not compare him with Gongsun Ce. Ring four would become his limit in their stories. That suited Shi Feng perfectly.

He thought, They're helping me, and they don't know it. Let them.

“Thank you for the encouragement,” Shi Feng said politely.

Fu Heng stopped mid-wave. Ma Xiao looked at the ground. Neither seemed to have expected to be thanked.

“Er. Of course,” Fu Heng said. “Anyone would.”

A footstep sounded on the glass-like rock. Gongsun Ce had come out of the crowd with the wooden puppet on his arm, and his face was composed.

“Four,” Gongsun Ce said.

“Four,” Shi Feng agreed.

“And lost both sleeves doing it?” Gongsun Ce asked, studying the healed skin. “Was the fourth ring that bad?”

“Bad enough for the robe,” Shi Feng said. “I managed.”

Gongsun Ce was silent for a moment. Then he gave one short nod, the kind a man gives when he has decided to be fair.

“Four is a good result,” Gongsun Ce said. “I said ring three. I was wrong.” He turned and walked away, then paused. “Don't rest on it.”

“I won't,” Shi Feng said.

The crowd began to drift away, still talking. Zhu Liu was walking backward in front of Shi Feng, trying to write something down and avoid the stones at the same time.

“Senior Brother, I’ve worked out your refund,” Zhu Liu said, writing as he walked. “Three stones, less the red ink. That leaves two and nine tenths. Will you take coin?”

“Keep the nine tenths,” Shi Feng said. “For the ink.”

Zhu Liu stopped walking. “You're too kind,” Zhu Liu whispered, and went on writing.

It was fully dark by the time they reached the outer court. Lamps were being lit along the row of huts. Shi Feng said goodnight to Zhu Liu at the corner and walked the last stretch alone.

He stopped ten paces from his door.

Someone was sitting on his step.

The figure wore a plain grey robe with a scorched hem. A grass string held its hair in a crooked knot. Beside it, leaning against the doorframe, sat a big empty canvas sack.

The stranger looked up and smiled.

“Lesson one,” the stranger said. “Bring a knife.”