Chapter 213 — A Stomach Full of Iron

CHAPTER 213

A Stomach Full of Iron

“You're not going to burn it?” Zhu Liu asked.

“There's nothing left to burn it with,” Shi Feng said. He picked up the last bar of spirit iron and drew his knife.

Zhu Liu's brush stopped in the air. “Senior Brother Shi, what are you doing with the knife?”

“Shaving it,” Shi Feng said.

“Why?” Zhu Liu said.

“So I can swallow it,” Shi Feng said.

Zhu Liu sat down on his stool very slowly, as if his legs had made the decision for him.

Shi Feng had considered it carefully. His physique took the full worth of herbs from a failed pill. Spirit iron was also a spirit material. If he could absorb it, the last bar might strengthen him even though he couldn’t forge it. Eighty bars’ worth of failures had left him willing to try.

Shi Feng thought, I’ve ruined enough iron with a hammer. If my body can use this bar, it won’t be another useless lump.

“Is this allowed?” Zhu Liu asked weakly. “I need to know what to write on the receipt.”

“Write 'used',” Shi Feng said.

He peeled the bar into thin grey curls, one after another, and swallowed them with water. It took most of an hour. Zhu Liu watched every curl go down and wrote nothing, because he did not know what a witness was supposed to write.

When the last curl was gone, the Ledger answered.

[Devoured: spirit iron | Gain: its worth, exactly | Note: heavy]

Shi Feng felt it at once. A hard warmth spread through his bones and settled into his muscles. His qi hummed. It was working.

Then it reached his stomach.

Shi Feng sat down on the floor.

“Senior Brother Shi?” Zhu Liu said.

“I'm fine,” Shi Feng said. His voice came out flat and heavy.

His belly grew so heavy that sitting upright hurt. Shi Feng lay on his side and curled around the ache. The ceiling seemed to turn above him. His physique was absorbing the iron, but that didn’t make digesting it pleasant.

Zhu Liu ran. He did not know who else to run for, so he ran for the chief disciple.

Lin Langtian arrived in the outer court lane a short time later, and everyone in earshot learned about it.

“Junior Brother is pregnant with a furnace!” Lin Langtian shouted.

“What?”

“The champion is pregnant?”

“With a furnace?”

“Is that a Hall technique?”

“I heard he ate the sect's iron!”

“Ate it? Ate it how?”

“…”

Lin Langtian kicked the door open with a potato in one hand and walked in as if he owned the hut. Then he stopped and looked down at the figure on the floor.

“How much?” Lin Langtian asked.

“One bar,” Zhu Liu whispered. “Shaved. He used a knife.”

“Shaved!” Lin Langtian said, delighted. “At least he has manners.” He crouched, pressed two fingers against Shi Feng's belly, and his grin grew wider. “Raw spirit iron. Do you know how many people in the history of Artificer Hall have eaten it?”

“No,” Shi Feng said into the floor.

“Two,” Lin Langtian said, patting his shoulder. “A drunk, and me after I lost a bet. So stop worrying. It lasts six days. I know because I counted every miserable one.”

“I'll be fine,” Shi Feng said.

“You're green,” Lin Langtian said.

“It's a healthy colour,” Shi Feng said.

Lin Langtian laughed so hard that he had to lean on the bed frame. When he finished, he pressed his palm against Shi Feng's arm and went quiet for a moment.

“Hm,” Lin Langtian said. “Your flesh took it. Last month you were soft as tofu. Now you're firm tofu. That's progress! As the saying goes, a blessing in disguise.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

“Don't thank me yet. The stomach will want to speak to you first,” Lin Langtian said.

He Zhen appeared in the doorway just then, with his brush case still in his hand. He looked at the chief disciple, the potato and the man on the floor.

“What did he do?” He Zhen asked.

“He ate the sect's last bar of iron,” Lin Langtian said.

“All of it?” He Zhen said.

“One bar,” Lin Langtian said.

“Then why is this an emergency?” He Zhen asked, and went away again.

Lin Langtian stood up and stepped outside. Shi Feng heard his voice carry across the lane.

“Listen up!” Lin Langtian called across the lane. “Keep the noise away from this hut. And stop spreading tales about Junior Brother! I know who’s been talking, and I’ll charge every one of you for disturbing him!”

The lane went quiet. When Lin Langtian came back in, he left a bowl beside the bed. It smelled of ginger, and it had clearly been made by someone who would have denied it.

Shi Feng spent the next six days curled around a stomach full of iron.

For six days he couldn’t lift a hammer or sit up without pain. He sipped ginger water and watched the ceiling. Zhu Liu recorded his condition hour by hour. By the third day, the boy had filled eleven pages without finding any improvement to report.

Nobody mentioned that the tally on Sima Lan's wall had stayed at one hundred and twelve for six days. Nobody mentioned that she had slept through all six nights.

On the seventh morning, Shi Feng sat up. The anvil was gone, and his stomach felt like his own again. His skin was a little harder than before, and his qi sat deeper in his bones.

Zhu Liu was waiting at the door. Behind him stood a huge wooden barrel, covered in cobwebs.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said. “The elder says you can have this. It's been in the back of the shed for eight years.”

“What's in it?” Shi Feng asked.

“Sweepings,” Zhu Liu said, miserable. “Everything the refiners ever dropped.”