Chapter 460 — Full Price

CHAPTER 460

Full Price

By the second bell, the great ground hall of the Duanyang Tower held six hundred people, and every one of them wanted to see the poor sect lose its last coin.

Benches filled the floor in white-stone rows. A gallery ran around the second storey, with curtained boxes for the sects. The Palace had taken the long box on the left, hung with crimson cloth. The Valley's green box was still empty. Artificer Hall had a bench in the third row, with a plain jade bidding plate on the seat marked 7.

Sima Lan sat on Shi Feng's right with her slate on her knee.

“Chief Disciple Lin is outside,” Sima Lan said. “The wardens took his sweet potato at the door.”

“And?” Shi Feng asked.

“He's negotiating,” Sima Lan said.

A white-robed auctioneer climbed the dais with a white jade hammer. Sang Ping was famous in three kingdoms for never raising his voice, which made the hall lean forward to hear him. Beside him, Assessor Wen Lu took a chair at the side, in a plain grey robe with silver at the hem. She held a brush she never dipped.

“Lot one,” Sang Ping said. “Crimson Pillar Halberd, Golden Core-grade refined artifact, consigned by the Hall of Ten Thousand Strikes. Opening at three thousand.”

In the gallery, a thin man in a dark blue robe sat down in the crimson box with a jade abacus. Qiao Shou took the seat beside him. Behind them, a young man in cloud-white silk opened a fan with a snap.

“Qiao Wenyan,” Sima Lan murmured. “And the Palace's treasurer. Peng Yan.”

“Three thousand five hundred!” Zhu Liu called in a thin voice from the back row.

Every head turned. A young man in a borrowed brown robe and a hat pulled to his eyebrows sat beside a pillar, clutching plate 19 in both hands. His knuckles were white. He was desperately trying not to look toward the Hall's bench.

“Who's that?” someone whispered.

“Some nobody!”

“Four thousand,” Shi Feng said, raising plate 7 two fingers' width.

“Four thousand six hundred!” Zhu Liu squeaked from beneath the hat.

“Five thousand two hundred,” Shi Feng said.

The back row fell silent. Zhu Liu stared at his plate, relieved that Shi Feng had bid again.

“I'm out,” Zhu Liu declared in a very small voice.

“Sold!” Sang Ping said, and the hammer touched the block. “Five thousand two hundred, to plate seven.”

The crimson box exploded with delight. Peng Yan's beads clicked rapidly. Qiao Shou laughed aloud and clapped Qiao Wenyan on the shoulder. The Pavilion estimate had been four thousand five hundred.

“Artificer Hall must be desperate!” somebody shouted. “A drowning man will grab at any straw!”

“Buying Martial Palace's old halberd at war prices!”

“Slapping its own face to look fat!”

“They'll starve by autumn and have a halberd to show for it!”

“…”

Qiao Wenyan fanned himself lazily and leaned over the gallery rail.

“Mind your pockets, cliff boy,” Qiao Wenyan called down. “You know neither the height of heaven nor the depth of the earth. Blank cores can't eat halberds!”

“Young Master Qiao,” Sima Lan said, without turning. “The receipts are numbered.”

Qiao Wenyan's fan stopped. He sat back.

Lot two was the Mountain-Splitting Gauntlets. The hat opened at three thousand. “Three thousand four hundred,” Shi Feng said, and the hat gave up with visible relief. The gauntlets sold. Iron Fist Gate's representative, a stout man in a black cruiser's sash, wept openly into his sleeve. He had come expecting to sell his ancestors' pride for rice, and instead he was being paid like a king.

Lot three, the coral chest of herbs, went at four thousand one hundred. Lot four, the thunder-bronze war drum from Shimen Pass, went at six thousand. It took four porters to carry it to the Hall's bench. Zhu Liu bid against it eleven times, shaking so hard his plate rattled.

“He's overdoing the trembling,” Sima Lan murmured, trying not to laugh. “That hat's shaking as much as the plate.”

“It's convincing,” Shi Feng said.

“I don't think he's pretending anymore,” Sima Lan replied, watching Zhu Liu struggle to lower his plate.

Each time the hammer fell, Peng Yan's abacus clicked. Each time Sang Ping read out the price, the crimson box got louder. Qiao Shou no longer bothered announcing each bit of good news. He simply smiled wider with every sale.

By noon the Pavilion's wall board carried a running total in red characters. By the third hour it was eighteen thousand. The Hall's bench was now surrounded by a ring of strange objects. A Crimson Pillar Halberd rested against a drum. Four lacquered chests had been stacked on top of the gauntlets. A porter carried in the Pillar-Tempering Pills and almost dropped them in Zhu Liu's lap.

The crowd ran out of patience.

“He's bought every Palace lot so far!”

“Is he mad?”

“The Hall can't even pay its coal bill!”

“The cliff boy is giving away the sect for a face!”

“Maybe he's got a patron.”

“He's got the Valley's wife!” someone cackled, and several benches laughed.

Sima Lan's pen paused. She didn't look up. She wrote a small mark in the margin and moved on.

Shi Feng sat quite still. In his sleeve, the Slag Weight lay quiet against his wrist. He thought, Every stone I pay them is walking home. They only have to carry it.

By the sixth hour the last Palace lot sold. It was a cracked bronze mirror from the Qiao house that nobody had wanted, and Shi Feng bought it for nine hundred, because Sima Lan had written the figure on the slate and tapped it twice. The hall gasped. Surely even a fool wouldn't pay that.

“Thirty-one lots,” Sang Ping announced. “Thirty-two thousand stones.”

He lowered the hammer and bowed to the crimson box. Qiao Shou and Peng Yan were on their feet. Peng Yan's abacus was held above his head like a child's toy, and he was smiling freely for the first time in a month.

“Thirty-two thousand,” Peng Yan said. He sounded drunk. “And the Pavilion's estimate was twenty-six! This poor sect has paid for our whole war!”

“Almost,” Qiao Shou said. “Tomorrow it'll come to a close with the Hall's own lots. Let's see if they have anything worth buying.”

Peng Yan began to laugh.

Shi Feng let them laugh. They'd sold the Hall their treasures and taken back their own stones. Tomorrow, he would make them pay for his lots too.