Chapter 217 — Three Mornings

CHAPTER 217

Three Mornings

On the first morning, the east wing's doors were lying flat on the ground.

“All fourteen!” a cook shouted across the dining hall. “Every door in the old wing! Face down in the weeds, like they've been executed!”

Shi Feng ate his porridge. It was thin, and he ate it anyway.

“Who'd want those doors?” an outer disciple asked.

“Nobody. That wing's been dead for thirty years.”

“Then who'd take the hinges?”

“…”

The disciples argued over their porridge and lost interest by noon. Those doors had been neglected for years. Most decided the hinges must have rusted through. Nobody wanted to inspect the abandoned wing closely enough to prove otherwise.

Across the table, Zhu Liu pushed a pickle around his bowl without eating it. He looked as if he'd swallowed the missing bell.

“Eat,” Shi Feng said.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Zhu Liu said, pushing his pickle away. “My stomach feels as though I swallowed the whole receipt book.”

“Start with the porridge,” Shi Feng said. “It’s easier to digest than the receipts.”

Zhu Liu stared at him. Shi Feng went back to his porridge. It was the closest he had come to a joke all week, and nobody was impressed.

On the second morning, the bell didn't ring.

Zheng Yu, the gate supervisor's brush-eared assistant, climbed the bell tower at dawn and pulled the rope as he did every day. The rope came down. Nothing went up. He looked into the empty frame, then at the rope in his hands, then he sat down on the top step and covered his eyes.

The outer court slept an hour late. The cook burned the bread. Three drills began without anyone to lead them, and one of them marched into a wall.

“The bell!” voices cried across the yard. “Where's the bell?”

“It was there yesterday!”

“It's been there for two hundred years!”

“It's too heavy to steal! It weighs eight hundred catties!”

“Then how is it gone?!”

Cui Hong came running with his arrival board still under his arm. He climbed the tower, looked into the frame, and came back down slowly. His burn-marked robe was inside out.

“Elder He Zhen will want a report,” Cui Hong said. “Does anyone know how to report a missing bell?”

“Is there a form?” Zheng Yu asked.

“Missing disciples have a form,” Cui Hong said doubtfully. “We could start with that. At least someone would know what to ask us.”

Shi Feng stood at the edge of the crowd and kept his face blank. The bell was in his hut, under a sack of coal, wrapped in two blankets and Lin Langtian's second-best robe. Nobody would look there. Nobody ever looked in a poor disciple's hut.

On the third morning, Gongsun Ce's workshop door lay flat in the yard.

It wasn't broken. Someone had taken the hinges off neatly, laid the door down on the paving stones, and put a little stone on its handle to keep it from blowing away. The puppets inside stood in a perfect circle, watching the sky through the empty frame.

A crowd had formed. At its centre stood Gongsun Ce in a grey inner-disciple robe, shaking.

“Martial Palace!” Gongsun Ce shouted.

“Young Master Gongsun,” Cui Hong began.

“Martial Palace! Don't you see it? First the east wing, then the bell, now my door! Spies! They've crawled into this mountain like ants! They want us to look weak!” Gongsun Ce said.

“We are weak,” an outer disciple muttered.

“We are poor,” Gongsun Ce said. “Poor and weak are different! As the saying goes, when the lips are gone, the teeth feel cold! I won't stand here while those hypocrites in Tianwu Mountain strip our doors in the dark!”

Shi Feng was surprised. He’d expected Gongsun Ce to complain about his workshop. Instead, the prince was rallying everyone around the sect’s safety. He sounded genuinely angry for Artificer Hall, and the watching disciples began to listen.

“Don't you agree, Shi Feng?” Gongsun Ce demanded.

“Your door is intact,” Shi Feng said. “Only the hinges are missing.”

“That's worse! They're mocking me!” Gongsun Ce said.

“Perhaps they only wanted the iron,” Shi Feng said.

“Nobody steals hinges for the iron!” Gongsun Ce said. “It's a message!”

Zhu Liu swallowed a squeak beside Shi Feng. Shi Feng put a hand on his shoulder without looking down.

Footsteps crunched across the yard. Lin Langtian arrived with a half-eaten sweet potato and an expression of heavy sorrow.

“I came as soon as I heard,” Lin Langtian said. “What a tragedy. Whoever did this has no respect for property. Or for doors. Gongsun, my friend, you have my sympathy.”

“Chief Disciple Lin,” Gongsun Ce said, suddenly stiff. “You see it too. This is Martial Palace's hand.”

“Who else could it be?” Lin Langtian said solemnly. “Our east wing, our bell, and now your door. They must bear a terrible grudge against the sect’s furniture.”

Lin Langtian looked at Shi Feng. Shi Feng looked back without a word. Lin Langtian had warned him the third door was “interest on the array bill”. Shi Feng had not agreed to the interest.

“Terrible,” Lin Langtian said again, and bit into his potato.

Gongsun Ce missed the entire exchange. He raised his fist to the sky, and the ring on his thumb flashed in the sunlight.

“I demand a night patrol!” Gongsun Ce said. “The whole outer court! Every night, until the spies are caught! This door will be avenged!”

The crowd groaned.

Zhu Liu leaned very close to Shi Feng's ear.

“We are completely doomed,” Zhu Liu whispered.

“Not completely,” Shi Feng said. He was looking at Gongsun Ce's fist and thinking about arithmetic. “Somebody will have to be paid.”