Chapter 304 — Eighteen Bolts and a Blank Jade

CHAPTER 304

Eighteen Bolts and a Blank Jade

“Listen,” Lin Langtian said happily, pushing a bowl of melon seeds across the table. “This is what fame sounds like. Eat something.”

Waiters lifted their trays over heads in the crowded Green Willow Teahouse. Shi Feng sat in a corner with his straw hat low. Sima Lan watched the bill, while Zhu Liu hugged his receipt book and tried not to draw attention to them.

At the front of the room, a storyteller in a faded blue robe slapped his wooden block on the table.

“Three days ago!” the storyteller cried. “On Thunder Cliff! Behind Artificer Hall's gate! A young disciple, a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator, walks into a stone chamber and shuts the door!”

“Foundation Establishment?” someone at the next table said. “Then what was he doing with a tribulation?”

“Quiet! The heavens answered!” the storyteller cried, slapping his block again. “Nine bolts of lightning! One after another, so thick that a hundred li away the cows stopped giving milk!”

“Nine,” Shi Feng said quietly.

“It was nine,” Zhu Liu whispered. “I counted. I have it written down.”

“Nine, the man says,” a fat merchant at the next table said, shaking his head. “My cousin lives at the foot of the range. He says eighteen.”

“Eighteen!” a girl cried.

“He counted twice. Once for the sound and once for the flash,” the merchant said.

“That's the same bolt,” Sima Lan said, very coldly, to no one.

“And the bolts,” the storyteller went on, shouting over the noise, “were not an ordinary Golden Core's! They were a Nascent Soul's! Sent by heaven itself for a boy who dared to reach too high!”

“A Nascent Soul's tribulation, on a Foundation Establishment!”

“Impossible!”

“It happened! Elder He of Artificer Hall said so in public!”

“The Hall's elders talk too much,” a thin man grumbled. “They're desperate for fame.”

Lin Langtian leaned forward, dropped a sweet potato skin on the floor and lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “Ask him how tall the boy was.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Ask him!” Lin Langtian said.

“Tall!” the storyteller shouted, as if he'd heard. “Eight feet! Hair like white snow!”

“It's black,” Sima Lan said.

“It's better when it's white,” Lin Langtian said warmly. “White hair looks tragic. It sells.”

Shi Feng drank his tea.

“And how did it end?” a boy called from the back. “Did he live?”

The storyteller waited. The whole room waited. A waiter froze with a tray over his head.

“He lived,” the storyteller said at last, in a sorrowful voice. “But the core… the core—”

“What about the core?”

“The grading jade stayed blank!” the storyteller said.

A hush went through the room. Then everyone spoke at once.

“Blank?”

“A blank jade means nothing formed!”

“So he failed!”

“Nine bolts, and it all came to nothing!”

“What a waste of lightning. A toad lusting after swan meat, that's all he was.”

“I knew it,” the thin man said, and drank, satisfied.

“They’re calling it a failure!” Zhu Liu whispered, outraged. “Senior Brother Shi, let me show them the record. I brought it. They can’t argue with what the jade actually did!”

“Sit down,” Shi Feng said.

“But—” Zhu Liu said.

“Sit, Zhu Liu,” Shi Feng said firmly. “They don’t need our record.”

Zhu Liu sat. Lin Langtian cracked a melon seed between his front teeth and watched the room with deep satisfaction.

“Give it a moment,” Lin Langtian said.

“Blank doesn't mean failed,” a deep voice said.

An old man at the next table had put down his bowl. He wore a plain grey robe with a Sky Pavilion trader's badge on the sleeve, and he spoke slowly, like someone used to being heard.

“I've seen grading jade for forty years, and I've eaten more salt than you've eaten rice,” the old man said. “Blank means the jade couldn't hold the reading. It cracks, or it fades, when the core's grade is higher than the jade is made for.”

“Higher than what?” the girl asked.

“Than anything the jade was made for. Heaven grade. Perhaps beyond,” the trader said.

“Heaven grade?” the thin man snorted. “At the Hall?”

“A hidden Heaven grade,” the fat merchant breathed.

“Then it's like the old story!” someone shouted. “A genius too great to measure!”

“Eighteen bolts and a blank jade!”

“Make it thirty,” someone else said.

“The storyteller said nine!”

“The storyteller's a liar!”

The storyteller, to everyone's surprise, got up and bowed. “The story will be longer tomorrow,” the storyteller said, and every person in the room cheered.

“Four minutes,” Sima Lan said, setting down her bowl. “One blank jade, and they’ve called him both a failure and a hidden Heaven-grade genius. Nobody’s asked to see it.”

“Isn't it wonderful?” Lin Langtian said.

“It's wrong both times,” Sima Lan said.

“And which way is better for business?” Lin Langtian asked.

Sima Lan said nothing, which was her way of answering yes.

Shi Feng was about to stand when a man two tables away caught his attention. A small red Martial Palace badge showed beneath his plain collar. He’d been taking notes. At the claim of Heaven grade, he stopped writing and looked alarmed.

He dropped three coins on the table, tucked the paper into his sleeve and walked out fast, without finishing his tea.

“Martial Palace,” Sima Lan said softly, “not even in their robes.”

“He's counting bolts,” Lin Langtian said, grinning. “He'll take the number home to someone who hates it.”

“Eighteen?” Zhu Liu asked.

“Whatever he likes best,” Lin Langtian said. “That's the beauty of rumour. It's the only thing in the world that grows when you feed it nothing.”

Shi Feng watched the empty chair where the man had been. Whatever number the man carried north, it would be in Wei Chengyuan's ears by nightfall.