Chapter 360 — Fossil Talk

CHAPTER 360

Fossil Talk

The proctor announced ten questions and one stick of incense. Looking at a neighbour’s paper meant expulsion. So did talking, or eating the ink.

One candidate whispered in disbelief at the last condition. The proctor assured him that someone had done it last year, then rang his copper bell.

Thirty-two desks stood in four rows in the Written Hall, on the second floor of the Duanyang tower. A numbered tag hung from each one. Shi Feng's tag said Thirty-two, painted in black. The incense was lit, and the brushes began to scratch.

At the back of the hall sat Chief Examiner Tao Heng, a lean man in the tower's grey robe with a gold border on the sleeve. Beside him sat an older woman in plain grey, an assessor, who held a brush and never dipped it. A small brass plate on her table read Wen Lu.

Shi Feng read the first question. Then the second. They were ordinary. Which herb opened the lung meridians, which one closed them, and why you never boiled the two in one pot. He wrote six answers while the first finger-width of incense burned down.

The seventh question was longer.

A paste of frost marrow and flame-bloom sap, Nascent Soul-grade, is taken off the third fire. State the method of cooling, the ratio used, and the reason.

Three desks ahead, Master Ruan had already stopped writing. He folded his hands and smiled at the ceiling. Everyone in the hall knew the answer. The cold-spring bath, three parts spring water to one part jade powder. Every tower in the north taught it.

Shi Feng thought about the paste. The cold-spring bath was fast. It was also the reason Nascent Soul-grade batches so often cracked at the core.

Sifted ash, nine layers, he wrote. Bury the vessel. Draw off one layer each hundred breaths, so the paste cools from the outside in. Ratio: one finger of ash to one finger of paste. Reason: a fast bath shocks the core of a Nascent Soul-grade paste. A slow draw lets it settle whole.

He read it over once. The method hadn't come from any book still in print. It had come from the voice in the ring, which had insisted on it years ago, with a great many insults about fools who used a bath. He had never asked how old the method was.

He moved to question eight.

“Ash-bed cooling!” Master Ruan exclaimed, loud enough to stop the candidates beside him.

Master Ruan said it loudly enough for the whole corridor. The candidates had been released onto the landing for tea, and the old man stood in the middle of a small circle of followers with his white beard combed flat.

“I saw your paper when the proctor collected it,” Master Ruan said. “Ash! Nine layers of ash! Boy, no one has cooled a paste that way in forty years. That's fossil talk. You wanted to paint a tiger and painted a dog!”

Alchemist Lei Wen and Alchemist Yao Kun laughed obediently.

“A clever child should read the tower's own textbook. Even the cleverest housewife can't cook without rice,” Lei Wen said.

Candidates nearby were listening. One murmured that ash-bed cooling did sound like something from a ruined cave.

Shi Feng took a cup of plain water from the tray.

“The question asked for a reason,” Shi Feng said. “I gave one.”

“A reason nobody believes!” Master Ruan said.

“Then let the assessor check it,” Shi Feng replied, drinking his water. “That’s why I wrote down the reason.”

Master Ruan's beard quivered. Lei Wen looked at Yao Kun. Nobody had an answer that didn't sound worse than the question.

“Let the Golden Core child learn,” Master Ruan muttered at last, and the three of them walked off.

Shi Feng drank the rest of his water. A short distance down the landing, Sima Lan stood at the attendants' rail with the ledger open on her forearm. She had been there for an hour. A warden had tried to move her to the courtyard, and she'd explained her contract to him until he stopped.

“You're counting something,” Shi Feng said.

“Insults,” Sima Lan said. “Three. Master Ruan, Lei Wen and Yao Kun. They'll be billed when you're famous.”

“You’ve already set a price?” Shi Feng asked, glancing at the page.

“It depends how famous,” Sima Lan replied, closing the ledger. “Did you leave any answer blank?”

“No,” Shi Feng replied.

“Did you eat the ink?” Sima Lan asked, finally letting herself smile.

“No,” Shi Feng repeated.

“Then you've done better than last year,” Sima Lan said.

The results went up at dusk, on a lacquered board at the foot of the stairs.

Thirty-two names had sat. Sixteen were written in red. Candidates crowded around it and pushed. Shi Feng didn't push. He waited at the back with Sima Lan until the crowd thinned, and then he read it calmly from the far side of the landing.

Thirty-two. Fourteenth of sixteen.

“Fourteenth,” Lei Wen said loudly, from the front. “Barely in. Look at that.”

“He'll go out tomorrow,” Master Ruan said.

Beneath the list, a clerk was pasting up the marks for the individual questions. Most of them were ordinary figures. One line was not. Beside question seven on paper Thirty-two, the clerk had pressed a small red seal, and a note was written under it in a plain, small hand.

Full marks. Method verified. Source of method to be recorded. W.L.

Lei Wen stopped talking.

“Verified?” a candidate said.

“By the Pavilion's own assessor?”

“For ash?”

“…”

Chief Examiner Tao Heng was standing at the top of the stairs. He had come out to look at the board, and he read the note once. He kept his expression still, but clenched his hand inside the gold-bordered sleeve. Wen Lu had approved the answer he’d expected the hall to dismiss.

“Source,” Sima Lan said quietly, at Shi Feng's shoulder. “What do they mean, source?”

“An old teacher,” Shi Feng said.

“Which one?” Sima Lan asked.

“A rude one,” Shi Feng replied, leaving the answer there.

Tao Heng turned and went back into the examiners' corridor. He didn't look at Shi Feng. He looked, instead, at Assessor Wen Lu, who was standing at the other end of the landing with a cup of tea. The assessor lifted the cup a finger's breadth, in a polite greeting, and drank.