Chapter 371 — Doesn't Count

CHAPTER 371

Doesn't Count

“Two Mark,” Clerk Du announced, and the whole registry hall held its breath.

Clerk Du stood behind the registry counter with a jade seal in one hand and a sheet of silver paper in the other. His hands were shaking. He had stamped the wrong box once already, and he had apologised to the paper.

“Candidate Shi Feng, of Artificer Hall,” Clerk Du read. “Age, twenty. Realm on record: not stated at the candidate's request. Result of final: Infant-Settling Pill, Nascent Soul-grade, five clouds. The Duanyang tower certifies one 2 Mark alchemist.” He swallowed. “The youngest in the Sky Pavilion's records for the region. The previous youngest was sixty-one.”

“Sixty-one,” a spectator at the door breathed. “And this one's twenty.”

“Was he even born when the old one passed?”

“He was born the year after!”

“What kind of monster is this? A dragon among men!”

“…”

Shi Feng stood at the counter with his right hand in a clean white bandage. The burn had stopped weeping an hour ago. By tonight, under the cloth, it would be pink and new. Beside him, Sima Lan held the ledger open on the counter, and she was watching the clerk with fierce satisfaction.

“There is a certification fee,” Clerk Du said, apologetically. “For the 2 Mark. It's, ah, five thousand spirit stones.”

“Five thousand,” Sima Lan said. “For paper.”

“It’s silver paper, Attendant,” Clerk Du explained.

“Silver paper costs nine stones a sheet,” Sima Lan replied. “I checked on the way in.”

“It’s the seal—” Clerk Du tried again.

“The seal is jade. It’s yours,” Sima Lan interrupted. “You’ll use it again tomorrow.”

Clerk Du looked helplessly toward the ceiling, searching for another explanation.

The registry door banged open.

“Is the price five thousand?” Li Changyuan called cheerfully. “Five thousand? For a bit of paper? A lion opening its great mouth!”

Everyone turned.

An old man stood in the doorway. He wore a patched brown robe with a sweat stain on the back and carried a broom on his shoulder, and he had a bundle of cabbages tied to his belt. He was out of breath. A Pavilion guard behind him was trying to explain that this was a restricted hall. The old man ignored him.

“Sect Master!” Zhu Liu whispered from somewhere near the wall, and then clapped a hand over his own mouth. “I mean, the old sweeper. You came!”

“Of course I came,” Li Changyuan said, striding up to the counter. “Somebody has to. The boy is going to be robbed, and he'll thank them for it.”

People stared at the old sweeper and his cabbages. They hadn’t expected him to challenge a Pavilion fee.

“Is that Artificer Hall's night sweeper?” a clerk whispered.

“What's a sweeper doing at the counter?”

“He walked here with cabbages!”

“Artificer Hall is poorer than I thought.”

“…”

Li Changyuan put both elbows on the counter and smiled at Clerk Du, very kindly.

“Now,” Li Changyuan said. “Five thousand stones. Let's talk about that.”

What followed took two hours. Shi Feng sat on a bench by the door, drinking tea that nobody charged him for, and watched. Clerk Du offered four thousand eight hundred, then four thousand five. Li Changyuan pointed out that the youngest 2 Mark in the region was so good for the tower's reputation that the tower should pay him. Clerk Du pointed out that this had never happened. Li Changyuan said that this had never happened because no tower had ever been this lucky, and he accepted the tea Clerk Du had brought for himself.

The final figure was nine hundred and sixty stones. It included a ten percent discount for a first-time registrant, a five percent discount for paying in cash, and a rebate for the cracked furnace.

“Nine hundred and sixty,” Clerk Du said weakly. “From five thousand.”

“I did say the boy would thank them,” Li Changyuan said, looking at Shi Feng. “I didn't say the tower would.”

He swept up his cabbages and left.

Later that afternoon, the 2 Mark record went into the tower's northward courier case, sealed and labelled, together with the month's list. It would reach the capital of the region in six days.

Lin Langtian was not there to hear any of it. He had left the tower before the first gong, Zhu Liu reported, with his empty sack and a promise to hear the number “from the street, where it's louder.”

That night, in the candidates' quarters, Shi Feng lay on the narrow bed with his bandaged hand on his chest, listening to chalk.

Sima Lan stood at the plaster wall by his pillow. She’d started this copy of the hut nine tally on the night of the lot draw. Leaving the sect hadn’t persuaded her to let his failures pass unrecorded. It had a lot of lines. Most of them said failed. A few said exploded.

She drew one more. It was long and straight. He watched her write a character beside it. Passed.

She stood back and looked at it.

Then she raised the chalk again and drew a thick line through the new mark. Slowly, firmly, from end to end.

“What was that?” Shi Feng asked.

“A correction,” Sima Lan said.

“I passed,” Shi Feng reminded her, following the new chalk line.

“You were supposed to pass,” Sima Lan said. She did not turn around. Her crisp answer couldn’t hide her relief. “Doesn't count.”

She capped the chalk and put it in her sleeve. At the door, she stopped with her hand on the frame.

“Your hand,” Sima Lan said. “Keep it on your chest. If it moves in the night, I'll charge you for the bandage.”

She went out. The door closed. After a moment Shi Feng turned his head and looked at the wall.

The neat strike left every stroke of the passed mark readable beneath it.

Shi Feng closed his eyes. It was the first night in a week that he fell asleep before the walls stopped ringing.