Chapter 209 — An Old Fossil

CHAPTER 209

An Old Fossil

“You've made a prince cry, Junior Brother!” Lin Langtian said. “I'm so proud.”

“He didn't cry,” Shi Feng said.

“He nearly did,” Lin Langtian said, biting into his potato. “I watched from the roof. Don’t rob your senior brother of a proud moment.”

He sat on a crate in the yard behind the array hall with his legs crossed and a sack of potatoes beside him. His chief disciple's robe was spotless. Somehow the potato skins never touched it.

Shi Feng didn't look up. He was kneeling in front of a small portable furnace, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, with a tray of herbs laid out in a neat row. The array hall was locked for two days “for inspection,” which everyone knew meant Gongsun Ce was busy. So Shi Feng had a free afternoon and a debt of pills.

“Song Tai needs another bottle by tonight,” Shi Feng said. “I promised.”

“You keep your promise even after wrecking his puppets,” Lin Langtian said. “Good. A word once spoken can’t be pulled back even by four horses. Song Tai won’t have to chase you round the mountain with that broom.”

“It's a lease,” Shi Feng said.

“And a beautifully arranged one,” Lin Langtian said. “Go on, don’t let me interrupt the medicine.”

Shi Feng ignored that. He fed fire into the furnace, and the herbs began to soften and darken in the pot. He didn't hurry. He had made this pill many times, so he let his hands do it while he watched the colour.

Song Tai himself was sweeping splinters from the back door. He stopped to pick up a broken wooden elbow, and rolled something small and pale between his fingers.

“Was that wax?” Shi Feng asked.

“Cooling wax,” Song Tai said. “Young Master Gongsun seals every joint with it. The big puppets run hot, you see. If the wax cracks the joint seizes, so he pours fresh wax every week.” He sighed. “He's very careful. Nine days a body, he said.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said.

He took the pale lump from the keeper's hand. It was soft at the edges and smelled faintly of pine. He looked at it for a moment, then set it beside a clay jar of furnace lye. The lye was for scrubbing the pot afterward, because dried herb residue stuck like glue.

Then he turned back to the fire.

When the pot reached the right shade, he lowered the lid. He tapped it three times with one finger, then gave it a quarter turn to the left, the way he did every time.

The yard went quiet.

Shi Feng looked up. Lin Langtian had stopped chewing.

The chief disciple was staring at the lid. His face wasn't joking and it wasn't grave. It was simply very still.

“Three taps,” Lin Langtian said. “And a left turn.”

“Is something wrong?” Shi Feng asked.

“No,” Lin Langtian said. “That's… no.”

He put down the potato.

“You refine like an old fossil I once knew,” Lin Langtian said.

Shi Feng waited. Song Tai had stopped sweeping.

“Who?” Shi Feng asked.

For a breath, Lin Langtian looked much older than his smiling face. Shi Feng grew curious. Then the grin returned, and the chief disciple picked up his potato as if the question had never troubled him.

“An unimportant old fossil,” Lin Langtian said lightly. “Probably dead. Very rude, too. He’d tap the lid and make everyone wait while he finished.”

“I wasn't waiting for anyone,” Shi Feng said.

“You were, Junior Brother. Look, the pill's done,” Lin Langtian said.

It was. Shi Feng opened the pot and found six dark pills in a neat ring, each as round as a bean. He tipped them into a bottle and corked it.

Shi Feng thought, He didn't answer the question. Either the fossil was dead, or he wasn't, and Lin Langtian didn't want to say which.

He let it go. A man was allowed to have a past in his own sect.

“Here,” Shi Feng said, and gave the bottle to Song Tai.

The keeper took it with both hands. “Thank you, Senior Brother Shi. You've no idea how my back…” Song Tai said.

He didn't finish. His eyes went past Shi Feng's shoulder, to the corner of the yard.

A sound was coming around the wall. It was low and heavy, the slow grinding of iron wheels on stone. A crowd of outer disciples was following it at a safe distance, whispering.

“Is that…?”

“They said he'd need two days.”

“It took him one?”

“What is that?”

Six inner disciples hauled a flat cart into the yard. Something shaped like a man stood beneath a black cloth, a head and a half taller than its bearers. The axles groaned under the weight. Shi Feng put down his tools and watched it approach.

Gongsun Ce walked beside it with one hand on the cloth.

He stopped ten paces from the furnace. The six disciples let go of the ropes and stepped back as if the cart might bite.

“This prince doesn't wait,” Gongsun Ce said. “Tonight.”

He pulled the cloth.

Underneath stood a puppet made of dark iron-wood, banded with steel at every joint. It had a face carved with a faint, calm smile, two short broadswords on its back, and a number painted on its chest in clean white strokes.

7.

Song Tai dropped his bottle.

“A Grade Seven war puppet,” a disciple whispered. “That's early Golden Core strength.”

“That's not a training puppet. That's a killing puppet!”

“Is he trying to kill him?”

“…”

Lin Langtian picked up his potato again.

“Oh, wonderful,” Lin Langtian said, and took a bite. “Junior Brother, I'm going to need a better seat.”