Chapter 488 — Worth More Dead

CHAPTER 488

Worth More Dead

The sign on the door of hut nine was in Zhu Liu's careful hand.

CLOSED. DO NOT KNOCK. RECEIPTS UNDER THE DOOR.

Below it, in smaller, upright characters, somebody had added: Visitors will be entered.

Shi Feng barred the door at dusk. The bed was already turned down, and neither of them mentioned it. Sima Lan had stood in the doorway for a moment, looked at the jade case on the table, and said only, “Clause twenty-two. Closed-door cultivation. Nobody enters.”

“Nobody,” Shi Feng said.

“I'll see to it,” Sima Lan said. “Eat slowly.”

She left. Her footsteps went down the step and stopped, and did not go any further.

He sat cross-legged on the floor with the case in front of him. Nine leaves lay pressed along the pale root, each as thin as paper and faintly gold. He broke off the first, put it in his mouth, and chewed.

It was bitter, then cold, then very hot.

The cold went down his throat and spread through his chest. Then the heat arrived behind it, and the frost cracked. His core, which had been resting at its familiar weight, turned over once and began to draw.

He ate the second leaf. Then the third.

By the fifth, the walls of the hut were sweating. The floor was damp under his knees, and the ceiling beams ticked as the heat ran along them. Outside, a cat screamed, and something that sounded like Old Soot dived under the stove.

By the seventh, the roof tiles began to rattle.

Shi Feng ate the stem. It tasted of nothing at all, which was worse.

The stem released a surge of qi far greater than the leaves.

He had been warned, and Lin Langtian was a man who rarely warned. The Nine-Leaf Soul Ginseng was a Nascent Soul-grade treasure, the kind sects kept in vaults and counted twice. A Golden Core cultivator eating it raw would have been foolish; as the saying goes, greed bites off more than it can chew. A Golden Core cultivator with a perfectly ordinary core would, by now, be coughing blood onto the floor, his dantian cracked by more qi than it could contain.

His own core strained. For one long, ugly instant the walls of it bulged outward, and he felt the pressure find a seam.

Shi Feng thought, Not like this.

He closed his eyes and called up the Thousand Forge Flame Art. He used the flame art to beat each surge flat and fold it back before it could split his core. Again and again, he compressed the incoming qi, using the same control he'd learned at the forge. The pressure eased as the power settled into his core instead of forcing its walls apart.

The hammer rose and fell. The core held.

Somewhere above him, on the roof, a sweet potato skin tapped quietly against the tiles. Lin Langtian was up there, and for once he said nothing. His silence worried Shi Feng more than his usual shouting would have.

The night passed in heat and iron.

Near dawn, the pressure ebbed. The walls stopped sweating. His breath came out of him in a long, shuddering stream, and a line of flat grey writing unrolled behind his eyes.

[Devoured: Nine-Leaf Soul Ginseng | Core: 85% | Note: it didn't ask permission.]

He sat in the grey light with his hands on his knees and let the number stand there. It was the largest single step in months. His arms felt as if he had carried the sect up the mountain on them.

After a while, he got up, lifted the bar, and opened the door.

Sima Lan was sitting on the step.

She had a grey blanket around her shoulders, still stiff with dew. Her ledger lay open across her knees, a stub of chalk tucked behind her ear, and a teapot sat on the boards beside her with a damp rag over its spout. Her left shoulder was held a little crooked, the way it did when it ached.

She'd been there all night. Her hair was damp.

“Four hours past the bell, nothing,” Sima Lan said, without looking up. “At the fifth, your walls sweated. At the sixth, the roof. At the seventh, Old Soot left the stove and hid in my sleeve. I recorded it all.”

“I'm sorry about the sleeve,” Shi Feng said.

“It's in the book,” Sima Lan replied, turning a page. “The Ledger?”

“Eighty-five,” Shi Feng said.

Her chalk made a small, neat mark. Then she shut the book, and for the first time she looked at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and perfectly steady.

“You'd have been worth more dead,” Sima Lan said.

Shi Feng looked at her.

“I did the sums at the third hour,” Sima Lan said. “The relics still hold. The stool alone was sixty. The coffin rental, the memorial, the inner court's grief fund. A sensible attendant would've put the case on the table and gone to bed.”

“Why didn't you?” Shi Feng asked.

“The clause says nobody enters,” Sima Lan said. “It doesn't say who minds the door.”

She said it flatly, with her face turned toward the lane. Her hands, he noticed, were wrapped tight around the teapot.

Shi Feng knew she hadn't stayed for the money. She was exhausted and still guarding his door. He didn't embarrass her by saying so.

Sima Lan pulled the blanket straighter and held out the pot.

“Tea,” Sima Lan said. “It's been warmed twice. Four stones.”

He took it. It was ice cold.

“Senior Brother Shi!” Zhu Liu cried, pelting up the path with a half-eaten bun in one hand and a crumpled sheet in the other, his abacus bouncing against his hip. “Have you heard what they're saying down in Duanyang?”