Chapter 240 — Whoever They Send

CHAPTER 240

Whoever They Send

“Thank you, miss,” the plump woman said, taking her bottle. “Please thank Young Master Shi's maid for me. She's the only one on this street who wraps the change properly.”

Sima Lan's brush stopped.

“Attendant,” Sima Lan said.

“Pardon?” the customer said.

“Attendant, not maid,” Sima Lan said politely. “I manage the stall. It’s in clause nine. I can recite it if you like, but the people behind you may object.”

“Oh,” the plump woman said. “I'm sorry. Attendant. Of course. I only meant...”

“Next,” Sima Lan said.

The plump woman hurried away, red in the face. She didn't hurry far. She stopped by the cloth dealer's door, where four of her neighbours were waiting, and said something behind her hand. All four heads turned toward the stall.

“What is it?” Shi Feng asked, without looking up from the furnace.

“Nothing,” Sima Lan said.

“You wrote a number in the margin,” Shi Feng said.

“Seven people have called me a maid,” Sima Lan said, still writing. “I’ve drafted a schedule. Ten stones each. Seventy for the stall, if I can collect it.”

“There's no schedule,” Shi Feng said.

“There is now,” Sima Lan said.

Zhu Liu bent his head low over the receipt book and wrote very small.

The rumours began at noon.

They did not begin at the stall. They began at the pharmacy, where a battered young man in a Martial Palace badge had gone through the red door a week ago and not been seen since. They travelled from there to the noodle shop, then the cloth dealer's, then every table on Salt Well Street.

“I heard the Palace is sending someone.”

“Someone from the Palace, to deal with the stall?”

“A senior. A real one.”

“A Foundation Establishment elder, I heard.”

Shi Feng drank his tea. The rumour went round the corner and came back an hour later, bigger.

“No, not Foundation Establishment. A Golden Core elder!”

“A Golden Core? For a pill stall?”

“Killing a chicken with an ox cleaver!”

“Hou Ping went crying to his master!”

“Whose master?”

“The branch master's! No, the branch master's master!”

The rumours grew with every retelling. Three men make a tiger, as the saying goes, and Salt Well Street had a hundred mouths. By midafternoon people called the visitor mid Golden Core. As the queue thinned, Zhu Liu stopped pretending to write. He kept looking down the road, afraid the next carriage would bring him.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu whispered. “They say he's late Golden Core now.”

“Who says?” Shi Feng said.

“The man at the noodle shop. He's closing early,” Zhu Liu said.

“Why?” Shi Feng said.

“He said he doesn't want to be near the stall when it happens,” Zhu Liu said.

“When what happens?” Shi Feng said.

“He didn't say,” Zhu Liu said wretchedly. “He just said it, and he was already pulling down the shutters.”

Lin Langtian leaned on the table with a sweet potato in each hand and the happiest look Shi Feng had ever seen on a human face.

“Excellent,” Lin Langtian said. “Do you know what rumours cost to start, Junior Brother?”

“Nothing,” Shi Feng said.

“Nothing!” Lin Langtian said. “By dinner he’ll be a Nascent Soul elder. At this rate every shop on the street will want new shutters before he arrives.”

“We don't sell shutters,” Sima Lan said.

“We're about to,” Lin Langtian said. “Zhu Liu, write that down.”

“Received, one new line of trade, shutters,” Zhu Liu said, and then, quietly, “Senior Brother Lin, I'm afraid the elder may be real.”

“I’m sure somebody’s coming,” Lin Langtian said. “There’s always someone sent to settle this sort of complaint. Don’t start burying us before you’ve seen him, Zhu Liu.”

Near dusk, a boy ran down Salt Well Street so fast that he lost one shoe and kept going.

The boy raced past the closed noodle shop and skidded to a stop at the stall. He bent over his knees, gasping. Everyone waited impatiently while he tried to find enough breath to speak.

“What is it?” Sima Lan asked.

“It's... it's the Palace,” the boy panted. “I was at the Pavilion gate. I saw the carriage. Eight bearers, a red banner, a sword on the roof. A man in a dark red robe stepped out, and the gate wardens bowed to him first.”

“Who?” Zhu Liu asked.

“I asked a warden. He said the name.” The boy straightened. His eyes were huge. “It's an elder of Martial Palace. A real one. His name's Pang.”

Silence fell on the street.

It spread outward. The pharmacy's shop boys stopped sweeping. The hunter, Bo Ge, who'd been loitering by the mat with a bottle in his hand, quietly put the bottle down. In the cloth dealer's window, a face appeared, then disappeared.

Sima Lan closed her ledger.

“Clear Marrow Pills,” Shi Feng said, “will be sold at the same price tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Sima Lan said. She sounded almost relieved to be asked.

“Pang,” Lin Langtian said, and for the first time all day he put down both potatoes. “Well. Zhu Liu. Put out the good tea. It's going to be a long meeting.”

“Pang?”

“Elder Pang? The Elder Pang?”

“The one who broke a gang chief's wrist with two fingers!”

“He's a Golden Core! A late one!”

“I heard Nascent Soul!”

“Elder Pang is coming!”