Chapter 243 — The Price of Cabbage

CHAPTER 243

The Price of Cabbage

An old man in a patched brown robe was pushing through the crowd with a basket on his arm and a limp cabbage in each hand.

“Two coppers,” Li Changyuan said, to nobody in particular. “And the outer leaves thrown in. I've seen better heads on a scarecrow.”

Behind him a vegetable seller trotted along, wringing his apron. “Old sir, the price is four coppers. It has always been four coppers!”

“Four for a cabbage with a worm in it? I said two,” Li Changyuan said.

“It's a very small worm!” the vegetable seller said.

“Then it should pay half,” Li Changyuan said, and kept walking.

The crowd shuffled aside for the old man and his cabbages. Most dismissed him as another poor sweeper. Shi Feng kept his face calm. He lifted his cup and watched Li Changyuan’s reflection in the tea instead of greeting him.

He thought, What is he doing in Duanyang? Then he remembered that the sect master bought his own cabbages, and never at a price he liked.

“Who's that?” Hu Kai muttered.

“A sweeper,” a stall boy whispered. “From Artificer Hall. Sweeps the lanes.”

“Out of the way, old fool!” Hu Kai snapped.

Li Changyuan was already passing in front of Elder Pang. The cabbage in his left hand bumped the broad man's belt, and he stopped. He peered up at Elder Pang's red robe and the golden fist with the squinting look of someone who couldn't quite read a sign.

“Martial Palace?” Li Changyuan asked.

Elder Pang's jaw was tight. He wasn't looking at the old man. He wasn't looking at anything but Shi Feng.

“Move,” Elder Pang said.

“I will, I will,” Li Changyuan said. He didn't. He stood scratching his ear with the stalk of a cabbage. “One question first. You'll know it, being from the Palace.”

“Is your sect's coal still overpriced?” Li Changyuan asked.

Silence.

A few people laughed at the question. Then they saw Elder Pang’s face and fell silent. The elder had been ready to close a pill stall. Nobody understood why a complaint about coal had stopped him.

“Coal,” Elder Pang repeated slowly.

“Black rocks,” Li Changyuan said helpfully. “For burning. We buy ours from a man who says he buys his from you. Sixty percent over the Duanyang price, last I heard. I wondered whether it had gone up.”

“I don't know what you…” Elder Pang said.

“No, no. Of course you don't.” Li Changyuan sighed. He turned the cabbage over and examined the worm. “Never mind. Old men ask silly things.”

Then he lifted his eyes.

It was a small thing. His eyes were pale and cloudy, like a pond in winter, and they rested on Elder Pang for exactly one breath.

Nothing happened.

No qi stirred, and Shi Feng felt no pressure at all. Elder Pang nevertheless went deathly pale. The colour left his lips, and his hand dropped to the belt he’d just been told to stop touching.

His hand dropped to his belt. It stayed there, trembling.

“Elder?” Hu Kai whispered.

“We're leaving,” Elder Pang said.

“Elder, the stall,” Hu Kai said.

“We are leaving!” Elder Pang said, and the shout cracked in the middle. He spun on his heel. Hu Kai stumbled after him, and the other five retainers followed, glancing back at the sweeper with their hands tight on their hilts.

Li Changyuan watched them go. Then he went on peering at his cabbage.

“Rude,” Li Changyuan said. “He didn't even answer.”

The crowd stood stunned. Slowly the whispers rose, the way bubbles rise in a boiled pot.

“Elder Pang ran away from the champion's stall.”

“Heaven has eyes!”

“It's the champion! It must be the champion's aura!”

“I didn't feel any aura.”

“Then it was hidden! Of course it was hidden! A true master doesn't show his face!”

“That old sweeper made him run,” a boy said, and was hit on the back of the head by his friend.

“Don't be stupid. The sweeper asked about coal.”

“…”

“Then why did the Elder look like he'd seen a ghost?”

Nobody had an answer. Shi Feng sipped his tea.

Shi Feng understood only part of it. Li Changyuan had directed something at Elder Pang that nobody else could feel. It had frightened a Golden Core elder into fleeing. Shi Feng couldn’t judge the strength behind that glance, and that troubled him more than a public display would have.

Shi Feng thought, I don't know what he is. But I just learned how little I know.

Li Changyuan shuffled over to the table. He put the better cabbage on the edge of the table, next to the cups, and squinted at the cauldron.

“That's a cheap pot,” Li Changyuan said.

“It's working,” Shi Feng said.

“Hm. Cabbage was a copper and a half in the end.” Li Changyuan took the other cabbage and wandered off toward the north gate without another word. “Sweeping won't do itself.”

Shi Feng looked at the cabbage left on his table.

“Senior Brother Shi,” Zhu Liu said in a very small voice. “Should I write a receipt for the cabbage?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

“Who's it from?” Zhu Liu asked, barely moving his lips.

“The sect master,” Shi Feng said, just as quietly.

Zhu Liu wrote it. Then he looked at the old man's back, then at the receipt, and set down the brush with extreme care.

“Senior Brother,” Zhu Liu whispered. “He asked about coal.”

“He did,” Shi Feng said.

“Nobody’s seen our sect master prove that reputation,” Sima Lan said quietly, watching the old man leave. “A Golden Core elder just ran from him, and the street is still arguing about cabbage.”

Shi Feng said nothing. He put a finger on the cabbage.

It was a very good cabbage.