Chapter 37 — No Rank Above First

CHAPTER 37

No Rank Above First

“Three hundred and sixty stones? For a bottle I could hide in my fist?” Wang Peng demanded.

The angry customer at the next display case said exactly what Shi Feng was thinking.

Sky Pavilion's tower rose in pale tiers above a square big enough to swallow Yunze Town's old market. Inside, the floor shone, the counters were clean, and nobody shouted prices. The numbers written beside the bottles did enough damage without help.

“Every seal on this shelf was checked by the tower,” Qu Ming said. “Cheaper preparations are available on the floor below.”

The customer looked toward the stairs. Pride kept his feet still for another moment. Then he went down without buying anything.

Shi Feng copied the price onto a scrap of paper.

“Does the tower buy resources too?” Shi Feng asked.

“We buy what we can examine and certify,” Qu Ming said. “Beast materials go to the eastern counter.”

The clerk's Qi Condensation cultivation was plain. It hadn't made him too grand to explain where the stairs went. Shi Feng appreciated that almost as much as a lower price, although he would have preferred both.

He had money from Wei Renshan's sword. That didn't mean he could feed two hundred and six bones on bottles chosen because they looked impressive. He asked about the ordinary strengthening tonic and wrote its price beneath the first.

Qu Ming showed him three sizes, explained the difference, and left him to decide. No wounded pride. No story about an immortal finding the herbs. The most expensive bottle was still more than Shi Feng wanted to spend today.

He bought the smallest ordinary tonic.

At the payment desk, a gray-robed customer named Zeng Fu was arguing about a certificate. The man carried a furnace-shaped pendant and had the slightly scorched sleeves of somebody who worked close to fire.

“I sold three batches to hunters,” Zeng Fu said. “All three worked. Why isn't that enough?”

“Because you asked for an alchemist's Mark,” Qu Ming said. “That requires the tower's examination.”

The man slapped his own packet of medicine onto the desk. Qu Ming didn't touch it.

“Ordinary medicine can be useful without earning a Mark,” Qu Ming said. “A first Mark concerns medicine serving Golden Core cultivators. Selling a tonic doesn't complete that test.”

Shi Feng glanced at the wall behind the desk. Different certificates hung in separate frames. Alchemy occupied one side, artifact refining the other. A pair of large doors led to rooms closed to ordinary shoppers.

A passing worker carried two empty pill trays through those doors. One smelled pleasantly of herbs. The other smelled as if somebody had burned breakfast and tried to hide it with incense.

Even the tower had failures behind its polished counters.

Shi Feng took his tonic and receipt. He knew almost nothing about refining medicine. For now, a clear label mattered more than the man's wounded ambition.

Outside, the square had become louder.

A bookseller stood beside a folding screen painted with flowering branches. Half a dozen young men waited while he untied a fresh bundle of thin books. Two pretended to be studying a map on the neighboring stall.

“New edition of the Thousand Blossom Register!” Liang Wen called. “Names, households, portraits, verses! Proper binding this time!”

“What happened to the last binding?” Fan Jun asked from the front.

“You opened it too often,” Liang Wen said.

Fan Jun shut his mouth. His friends laughed until Liang Wen held up the first portrait. Then everyone leaned closer.

Shi Feng paused at the edge. He had heard the register mentioned on the road. The capital apparently ranked beautiful women with the same enthusiasm hunters brought to arguing over beast teeth.

A young scholar objected to the order on the open page. He wore a carefully brushed robe and held his fan as though he might be examined on it.

“Princess Sima Lan should be first,” Fan Jun said. “Royal bearing is also beauty.”

“Then write to the compiler,” Liang Wen said. “I'm selling the books, not marrying the rankings.”

The crowd laughed again. Fan Jun looked toward the map stall, hoping his friends would rescue his dignity. They were suddenly occupied with a distant mountain on the paper.

Shi Feng looked at the two names at the top. Ling Qingzhu. Sima Lan. He remembered Lin Shuang and her carter at the roadside warehouse describing the forty rejected bolts of royal cloud brocade. The first fairy apparently had enough admirers to keep both tailors and booksellers comfortable.

“Have you seen the portraits?” Liang Wen asked Shi Feng.

“I'm looking now,” Shi Feng said.

“Then you have good fortune. Those two argue every edition,” Liang Wen said, nodding toward Fan Jun and his companion. “Neither has spoken to either lady.”

Fan Jun went red.

“The judgment of beauty doesn't require an introduction,” Fan Jun said.

“Certainly. Payment does require spirit stones,” Liang Wen said.

Fan Jun bought a copy so quickly that his fan fell from his sleeve. His friend picked it up, handed it back, and bought one too. Shi Feng understood the bookseller's confidence now. Men would spend money just to avoid admitting why they were standing there.

He didn't buy a copy. Portraits couldn't refine bones, and the woman in the first picture had so little detail she could have been any noble daughter with a good hairpin.

Across the square, two boys had rented wooden swords and were performing a duel for younger children. The taller boy called his attack Heaven-Splitting Dragon Judgment. His opponent stepped back, tripped over the coin bowl, and demanded a second judgment.

Shi Feng watched them start over. Their grand sword art had less footwork than his common clan forms, but the children cheered loudly. A fight didn't need blood to entertain an audience.

He ate a sesame cake beside the fountain, then examined the street leading toward the beast market. That would be tomorrow's errand. Today he'd learned enough about the capital's medicine prices to know the sword money wouldn't last forever.

The tower bell rang once overhead.

The bookseller began putting his finest copies on the front edge of the table. Several men stopped talking and looked toward the carriage road. Fan Jun straightened his collar so sharply that one friend nearly laughed aloud.

Shi Feng followed their gazes. Something important was coming, or something expensive. In this square, those seemed to draw much the same crowd.