Chapter 366 — The Final Opens

CHAPTER 366

The Final Opens

The gong sounded, and nine furnaces lit at once.

The alchemy hall of the Duanyang Sky Pavilion tower was round, with three tiers of seats climbing the walls. Every seat was taken. Three hundred spectators leaned over the rail, and the ones in the back row had brought their own cushions and their own dried plums. Nine finalists stood in a ring on the stone floor, one behind each furnace. A water clock stood in the middle. Two hours.

The final recipe had been posted on the wall that morning. An Infant-Settling Pill, Nascent Soul-grade, ten herbs, no substitutions. Every candidate would be judged by the same rule. Three clouds over the lid, and the pill passed. Two clouds or fewer, and the candidate went home with a handshake.

Nobody in the hall had seen three clouds this year.

“Look at Master Ruan!” someone shouted from the second tier.

Master Ruan did not hurry. He was seventy years old, with a white beard combed into three neat points and a robe embroidered with cranes. He flicked his sleeves back, laid both palms flat above his furnace, and a smooth, even flame rose beneath it. It was the colour of ripe wheat. It did not flicker once.

“That's the Wheat-Gold Steady Fire!” a spectator cried.

“Fifty years of practice in one flame!”

“Look how level it is. You could balance a cup on it.”

“Does he need to be this good?”

“Master Ruan is going to pass. Mark my words.”

Ruan glanced to his left, where Shi Feng stood behind furnace number nine. His eyes travelled over the young man's plain robe, the borrowed apron, the dull black iron furnace with its three stubby legs. He stroked his beard.

“Golden Core child,” Master Ruan said, not quietly. “Last place, last furnace. You should have stayed home and eaten your supper. Today you'll see what fifty years looks like. I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice.”

“I'll watch,” Shi Feng said.

“Watch carefully. It will be the only lesson you get,” Master Ruan added, returning to his own flame.

Shi Feng didn't answer. He put his palm to the furnace's belly and began to warm it.

Up in the second tier, on the aisle seat nearest the floor, Sima Lan sat with her ledger open across her knees. A bored attendant had tried to give her a cushion. She’d returned it and billed him for his tone, refusing to be dismissed from the aisle seat. She uncapped her brush and wrote the time of the gong at the top of a clean page.

Examiner Tao Heng walked a slow circle around the ring, hands clasped behind his back. He wore the tower's grey robe with the gold border on the sleeve, and his smile was courteous and cold. When he passed furnace number nine he didn't look at it. He looked at Shi Feng, nodded once, and moved on.

Shi Feng kept his eyes on the flame.

Eight minutes in, he stopped warming the iron. He had spent a night with this furnace and knew every sound it made. The note was already wrong. It came from the left shoulder, a faint high ringing that didn't belong.

Fifteen minutes in, the ringing stopped. A thin red line appeared along the shoulder, no longer than a finger.

It glowed.

“What's that?” a spectator said, pointing.

“Furnace nine. Look at its side.”

“There's a crack in it!”

“Impossible. The Pavilion checks every furnace before the draw.”

“Then why is it glowing?”

“Maybe it's a decoration.”

“A decoration shaped like a crack?”

“…”

The shouting moved from tier to tier. Master Ruan turned his head, and for the first time a real smile reached his face. He was delighted. If the cracked furnace burst before three hundred people, Shi Feng would humiliate himself without another word from Ruan. He was, as the saying goes, watching the fire from the opposite bank.

“Ah,” Master Ruan said. “The old trouble. Cheap iron always cracks.”

Shi Feng laid a hand over the line. The metal was already hot enough to blister a normal palm. He felt the shape of the crack under his skin, and the fire inside the furnace pushing against it, looking for a way out. The flaw was narrow, but the escaping heat pressed directly against his palm. Someone had chosen it knowing how the final would strain it.

He thought, It's one hairline. It shouldn't open for an hour.

Then he considered the examiner behind him. If Tao Heng interfered, that hour could become much shorter.

Tao Heng had stopped three paces behind him.

“Candidate Shi,” Examiner Tao Heng said, in a voice pitched for the whole hall to hear. “Is there a problem with your equipment?”

“There’s a crack in its left shoulder,” Shi Feng replied, keeping his hand over it.

“The Pavilion’s furnaces are checked by hand before the lots are drawn,” Tao Heng said. “If you believe yours is faulty, say so now, and I can arrange a replacement. It will cost you the time already spent, naturally. Forty minutes.”

“It's been fifteen,” Shi Feng said.

“Forty,” Tao Heng said pleasantly. “The replacement must be heated from cold, and that's the rule.”

Up in the gallery, Sima Lan's brush paused. She wrote a line, drew a box around it, and said nothing.

Shi Feng looked at the iron under his hand. He looked at the water clock. A replacement furnace meant starting from nothing, with an hour and five minutes left for a recipe that took ninety minutes on a good day. That was a polite way of telling a man to lose.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll use the furnace I drew.”

“Is that so?” Tao Heng asked, still smiling. “It's your decision. I'll note that you declined a replacement.”

“Please do,” Shi Feng said. “In the record.”

Tao Heng walked on. Master Ruan chuckled and went back to his flame. The crowd let out a long, delighted murmur, eager to see whether the young finalist could keep the damaged furnace from bursting.

Shi Feng opened the first herb box.

Inside the furnace, behind the red line, the fire began to lean.