Chapter 378 — Thrown Out

CHAPTER 378

Thrown Out

The gold letters on the wall flared white, and the whole hall shook.

“Insincerity has been noticed,” the bronze attendant announced in a voice like two millstones grinding.

Behind the great bronze furnace, something moved. A figure the size of a child stepped out into the light on stiff, jointed legs. It was made of green-black bronze, with a round smooth face, a pair of empty eye-holes and a ceremonial apron stamped with tiny kilns. It had been standing behind the furnace the whole time, and all of them had taken it for a decoration.

Along the row of mats, twenty-six Martial Palace disciples froze with their foreheads half raised.

“A proxy is not a heart,” the bronze attendant said. It walked down the row, past the staring kneelers, and stopped in front of Shi Feng. The empty eye-holes looked up at him. “The toad's count is struck.”

The number over the toad's mat, which had just passed 2,300, went dark.

Old Soot opened one gold-rimmed eye, saw the figure and looked deeply offended.

“The inscription doesn't say whose head,” Shi Feng said.

“It does not,” the bronze attendant agreed. “It says a sincere heart. The toad was sincere. The one who carried it was not.”

“Fair,” Gongsun Ce whispered. “As the saying goes, a sincere heart can move metal and stone.”

“Out,” the bronze attendant said.

It took hold of Shi Feng's belt with one bronze hand and lifted him off the floor, the way a man lifts a sack of coal. Shi Feng didn't resist. Struggling would only have made the carrying longer. He hung in the air and watched the pillars slide past while Sima Lan hurried after, holding her ledger above her head.

“The hall would like to be reminded,” Sima Lan said, “that the sect has not signed anything.”

“Out,” the bronze attendant repeated, and threw him through the doors.

Shi Feng landed on his feet on the stone ramp. Old Soot landed on his head. Sima Lan followed with her ledger shut firmly under one arm. She stepped around the toad and brushed ash off her skirt without looking back. Gongsun Ce came after her with his sleeves over his face, unwilling to meet the kneelers' eyes.

Behind them, the doors did not shut. They weren't there. The thudding started up again, wet and steady.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Sima Lan took a stick of chalk from her sleeve and wrote on the ramp stone, in neat characters, Ejected from a legacy hall: one.

“Is that billed to me?” Shi Feng asked.

“Chalk is charged to your account,” Sima Lan said.

They sat on the ramp for eleven hours.

The ash rain came back. Night fell inside the realm without any stars, only a faint red glow from the rim of the nearest kiln. Sima Lan produced cold rice and shared it out without being asked. Gongsun Ce lay on his back and recited the odds he might have had. Old Soot sat on Shi Feng's knee and sulked.

Sometime before dawn the thudding stopped.

It stopped all at once, as if a hand had closed on it.

A bell rang in the hall, deep and slow, and then a pale gold light poured out through the doorway and lay across the ramp. Shi Feng stood and looked inside.

The great bronze furnace had opened. A column of warm light rose from it, and in the centre of the column a small jade slip, no longer than a finger, hung turning.

At the fourth mat, one man was standing.

He swayed. His forehead was a dark mess, and one eye was swollen shut. On the green stone beside him, the gold number read 9,999. Behind him, the twenty-five others lay on their sides or on their faces, too tired even to resent him.

The jade slip drifted across the hall and settled into Duan Yichen's open hand.

“That's the Palace's!” Yuan Kuang shouted from the far wall. He sounded hoarse. “Give it here! Duan Yichen, that belongs to Martial Palace!”

“I'm a Martial Palace disciple,” Duan Yichen said. He closed his fingers. “It's in the Palace.”

“Bring it to me!” Yuan Kuang shouted, reaching out for the slip.

Duan Yichen walked down the hall. He passed Yuan Kuang. He passed the twenty-five fallen men who had bled the same blood for the same prize, and he did not look at any of them, or say a word. He had the shuttered face of a man who had finished a job, and he apologised to nobody.

At the doorway, he stopped beside Shi Feng.

“Disgraceful,” Duan Yichen said loudly, to the air. “Cheating with a toad.”

Then he walked down the ramp into the ash with his head high, and he did not turn around.

“Did he just—” Gongsun Ce began.

“He won,” Sima Lan said. “It was a fair count.”

“I could have won it with a toad,” Gongsun Ce said. “If we'd had another one.”

“It was a toad,” Sima Lan said. “It lost.”

The bronze figure was standing in the empty doorway.

Shi Feng hadn't heard it come. It held something out in both hands, stiffly, the way a servant offers a dish. It was a book as thick as his wrist, bound in cracked black leather, with a thin coat of dust over the cover. On the spine, in worn gold, were two characters.

Volume One.

“The toad's sincerity is noted,” the bronze attendant said. “The hall does not leave a sincere heart empty-handed. Take it.”

“What's in volume two?” Sima Lan asked.

“Not for proxies,” the bronze attendant said.

Shi Feng took the book. It was heavier than it looked. The dust smelled of old smoke.

“Do not return it,” the bronze attendant said, turning away. “The last reader did not.”

“The last reader?” Shi Feng asked.

But the doorway was empty, and the golden light was already fading behind it.