Chapter 481 — Now That It's Boring

CHAPTER 481

Now That It's Boring

The door of hut nine came off its top hinge, swung once in the air, and hung there by the bottom one.

“Junior Brother!” Lin Langtian shouted. “Great news! Happy news! News that your Senior Brother has been carrying up the mountain since breakfast, in a bedsheet, on his own back!”

He stood in the doorway with a lumpy white bundle on one shoulder and a sweet potato in the other hand. Shi Feng, who'd been cleaning the furnace for a quiet evening, set down his rag.

“You broke the hinge,” Shi Feng said.

“I knocked,” Lin Langtian said.

“You knocked with your shoulder,” Shi Feng said.

“It's the same thing, only faster,” Lin Langtian replied, stepping inside. He dropped the bundle on the table and opened it with a flourish. Under it lay thirteen small jade boxes and four oilskin packets, all sealed, all pulsing faintly in the lamplight with a pressure that made Shi Feng's teeth ache. “Look at them. Look! Go on. Smell one.”

“No,” Shi Feng said.

“Smell it anyway,” Lin Langtian said.

Shi Feng opened the nearest box a finger's width. A cold smell rolled out, like snow on iron and old incense, and the hair on his forearms stood up. It was not a Nascent Soul-grade herb. He'd handled a great many of those lately, and they didn't feel like this. The pressure from this herb made him tense even before he touched it.

“Soul Formation,” Shi Feng said.

“Soul Formation!” Lin Langtian said, delighted. “Seventeen kinds. Don't ask where I got them, because I'll say ‘a man owed me,’ and then you'll ask how many men owed me, and the answer is ‘a mountain of them.’”

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“Because the 2 Mark's boring now,” Lin Langtian declared, dropping onto a stool that cracked beneath him. “You made seven clouds in front of six hundred people. What's left to improve? You can do that one in your sleep. A pupil of mine can't do his sleeping work. It's embarrassing for both of us. So I thought—Soul Formation. Three Mark grade. A little ahead of your paper. A cultivator's road goes against heaven, after all.”

“I don't have the paper,” Shi Feng said.

“Paper,” Lin Langtian said, “is for people who can't make the pill.”

In the broken doorway, a slate rapped twice against a doorframe.

Sima Lan stood with a blanket round her shoulders and her free hand on the wall. She'd walked from hut ten, and she hadn't wanted anyone to know it. Her eyes moved over the sheet, the boxes, the hinge, and the sweet potato.

“Chief Disciple Lin Langtian,” Sima Lan said. “One door hinge, eleven stones. One stool, six. One night of lamp oil, nine.”

“Put it on the Hall,” Lin Langtian said.

“The Hall has asked me not to,” Sima Lan said.

“Put it on me, then,” Lin Langtian said, beaming at her. “You look much better, Princess. You're nearly the colour of a person.”

“Attendant,” Sima Lan said.

“Nearly the colour of an attendant!” Lin Langtian said.

Shi Feng took the first recipe sheet from the pile. It was the Hundred-River Returning Pill, and it ran to four pages, with seventeen ingredients and a footnote that began Do not attempt unless. The ending of the sentence had been scratched out in a hand he knew, and above it, in smaller letters, someone had written he'll be fine.

“Who wrote that?” Shi Feng asked.

“Me. Just now. In the lane,” Lin Langtian admitted, already lighting the furnace with his thumb. “Go on, Junior Brother. Warm it up. I have faith in you.”

It took four hours.

The first attempt made a pill the size of a pea, which hummed at a pitch no pill should and then lost its glow. The second split down the middle with a sharp crack. The third was grey, dense and round, and so heavy that when Shi Feng lifted it out with the tongs, the tongs bent. Lin Langtian, who had been keeping a running commentary on his own wisdom for the whole night, finally went quiet, and a little after the third watch Sima Lan quietly added three strokes to the tally wall outside.

Shi Feng ate all three.

[Devoured: failed pill, Soul Formation-grade herbs | Gain: the herbs' worth, not the pill's | Note: the recipe has opinions]

“That's the third waste in a row,” Lin Langtian said, watching him chew. “I'm very proud.”

“You're proud of failures,” Shi Feng said.

“I'm proud of the attempt,” Lin Langtian replied, wiping his hands on his sleeve. “Nobody on this continent has tried the Hundred-River on his first night and got a pill that hummed. I've seen men try it for ten years and make slag.”

“You've seen?” Shi Feng asked.

“Heard of,” Lin Langtian said. “Heard of. It's an expression.”

He stood, collected his sheet and left the boxes where they lay. At the broken door he stopped, and his shoulders went still. When he spoke again, he'd lost the shout. He spoke slowly and seriously, no longer trying to make Shi Feng laugh.

“A pill's easy,” Lin Langtian said. “Anyone with a good furnace can make a pill. The other kind of test comes at the top of the core, when you're not ready. Not a fight. A long sit. I knew a man who failed his by getting bored.”

“Bored?” Shi Feng asked.

“Mm. Three days in,” Lin Langtian said without turning. “Nobody told him it'd end.”

“Lesson twenty-four!” Lin Langtian suddenly shouted, cheerful again. “Never eat a Soul Formation pill on an empty head! Good night, Junior Brother! The door was a gift!”

He was gone. Sima Lan looked at the hinge for a long while.

“A long sit,” Sima Lan said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

He was already looking at the Hundred-River's footnote. Somewhere in the recipe's last page there was a note about a calming agent, and he'd need one soon.