Chapter 335 — One Cave

CHAPTER 335

One Cave

Behind them the ledge was gone, and ahead of them it was going.

Shi Feng caught Ling Qingzhu by the sleeve and pulled her against the rock. A slab the size of a cart slid past the shelf and dropped into the mist. The noise took a long time to come back up.

“There,” Ling Qingzhu said, pointing.

A crack in the cliff wall, just behind a screen of wet fern, opened into a cave. Shi Feng let go of her sleeve. They ran the last four paces together, with the downpour following them to the entrance.

The cave was ten feet by eight, with a dry floor and low ceiling. The back wall was solid stone.

Outside, the rain kept falling on the shelf and nowhere else.

Ling Qingzhu wrung out her sleeve. Shi Feng put down his Sword and looked at the ceiling. Neither of them said anything for a while.

“This is a fourth-grade rain array,” Ling Qingzhu said at last. “Eight chips, laid along the rock above the ledge. It's a good one. He set it with a timer so the water starts when two cultivators reach the bend.”

“You can tell how he arranged it?” Shi Feng asked.

“The Valley teaches array reading to first-year disciples,” Ling Qingzhu said. “The ledge was cut weak on purpose, a day ago, with a pick. And this cave is dry. Nobody in the history of the Cuiping cliffs has found a dry cave exactly where the path breaks.”

“So you saw it,” Shi Feng said, surprised that she hadn’t turned back.

“Before it started raining,” Ling Qingzhu confirmed.

“Then why did you keep walking?” Shi Feng asked.

Ling Qingzhu did not answer at once. She unclasped her cloak and hung it over a rock.

“Your senior brother,” Ling Qingzhu said, “has the subtlety of a falling roof.”

“I’ve told him,” Shi Feng replied.

“Has he listened?” Ling Qingzhu asked, almost smiling.

“He’s taken notes in the margin,” Shi Feng replied. “I wouldn’t call that listening.”

The corner of her mouth moved. Shi Feng looked at the wall.

He made a fire from dry moss and a pinch of Ember Rain qi. The little flames caught at once and gave a soft orange light. Ling Qingzhu sat on the opposite side, her knees drawn up. Outside, thunder muttered at the edge of the circle, tidy and obedient.

“I have a sword,” Ling Qingzhu said. “I could ride it down the cliff in a breath. Seventy zhang is nothing.”

“I know,” Shi Feng replied, leaving her room to explain.

“I’m saying it so you understand it’s my choice to stay,” Ling Qingzhu said, refusing to hide that much behind the rain.

“You've said it,” Shi Feng said. “I understand.”

She looked at the fire for a time, and her thumb pressed against the stone beside her.

“How full is your core?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

Shi Feng thought for a moment. He considered saying nothing, and then he considered how that would sound.

“Twelve parts in a hundred,” Shi Feng said.

“Unknown grade, the gossip said,” Ling Qingzhu told him. “It’s all over the Duanyang teahouses.”

“Unknown grade fills slowly,” Shi Feng replied.

“How slowly?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“At current herbs, a hundred and fifty days,” Shi Feng said. “Forty-two stones a day in ingredients. Call it six thousand three hundred stones.”

Ling Qingzhu blinked.

“I asked how slowly,” Ling Qingzhu said. “I didn't ask how much.”

“Those are the same question,” Shi Feng replied. “Better herbs would shorten the wait.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Ling Qingzhu asked in disbelief.

“I hear arithmetic,” Shi Feng said.

For the first time since the pavilion she laughed, once, short and surprised, and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. The cave seemed warmer.

“That is a terrible way to talk,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I’ve heard worse,” Shi Feng said, glad she was laughing instead of studying his ankle.

“From whom?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“A chief disciple,” Shi Feng replied.

She laughed again, and this time she let it go. Then, in the middle of it, she stopped and looked at him properly, and her face went quiet.

“You look tired,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“It’s been a long month,” Shi Feng replied.

“And your ankle?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“It’s healing,” Shi Feng replied.

“Still the same answer,” Ling Qingzhu said, disappointed by the familiar evasion.

“Still the same ankle,” Shi Feng said.

Ling Qingzhu shook her head. Unable to make him say more, she took her cloak from the rock and spread it over herself. Shi Feng sat with his back to the entrance and watched the fire until the rain on the shelf began to thin.

He did not sleep. He sat and counted the minutes, and he found he had started counting them for the wrong reason. He stopped.

Near dawn the rain died. The grey circle thinned to nothing and a ray of sun laid itself across the floor. Ling Qingzhu's side of the cave was empty. Her cloak was gone. The faint mark of her sword's departure lay on the stone outside the mouth.

By the fire sat a small white jar, with a green flower stamped on its lid.

Shi Feng picked it up. Valley bone-salve. Third grade, good for sprains and ankle breaks. He turned it over. There was no note or price attached, only the Valley mark on the lid.

He thought about leaving it there. Then he thought, It would be wasteful.

He put it in his sleeve.

“Misuse of weather,” Su Wanning announced, thrusting a paper into Lin Langtian's chest. “Forty stones! Big Sis Qingzhu wrote it herself, and she says it was a very rude rain!”

Lin Langtian read the bill with great concentration. Zhu Liu looked over his shoulder and wrote a receipt.

“For a fourth-grade array?” Lin Langtian said, hurt. “At that price, I'm practically being paid. Killing two birds with one stone!”

“Pay it,” Sima Lan said, without looking up from her ledger.

“Junior Brother,” Lin Langtian said, turning to Shi Feng as he walked into camp. “How was the view?”

“Wet,” Shi Feng said.