Chapter 49 — What the Mountains Fed

CHAPTER 49

What the Mountains Fed

The Hengyun pass opened a gate that money alone had failed to move. Beyond it lay protected valleys, shaded pools where medicinal plants lived to full age, and beasts that hadn’t yet learned to run at the sound of a cart.

The gate clerk checked the pass twice. His eyes stayed on the issuing household’s seal, then slowly travelled to the ordinary sword at the visitor’s waist.

“Gathering is allowed inside the marked valleys,” Ke Song said. “Nobody promises you’ll come back safe.”

“Which marks?” Shi Feng asked.

Ke Song pointed to a red stake beyond the gate.

“Red stakes on both sides of each gathering valley,” Ke Song said. “Past the last one, you’re outside the permitted ground.”

Shi Feng checked the path and put the pass away. He came for resources, not a quarrel with the gate clerk.

“Ling household seal,” a burly gatherer muttered in the queue behind him. “On a cripple!”

“He’ll be back by dusk, crying,” another voice said.

“…”

Shi Feng took back the pass and went through. Ke Song was already calling for the next visitor, and he didn’t look up again.

For three days Shi Feng kept away from the beaten paths. He marked water sources, tested the ground by the streams, and picked his sleeping places more carefully than the capital’s innkeepers picked their roofs.

His injuries no longer ruled every movement. He no longer planned a sword stroke around the weakness in his shoulder, and his wrist held firm when he hung from a branch to cross a flooded gully. He was pleased. Better still, his enemies would go on expecting a man who needed help to stand.

On the fourth morning, a Blackhide Mountain Bear charged him beside a fallen pine.

Shi Feng drew before its second step. The first cut laid open the side of its foreleg. The bear kept coming, jaws wide enough to close around his head.

Roar!

He ducked under the sweeping paw and drove his shoulder into its chest. Needles rained from the dead branches. The beast staggered, and Shi Feng followed it, caught its weight as it turned, and broke its neck against the pine trunk.

Crack!

Silence returned. He stood over the carcass until the forest settled, listening for anything the noise might have drawn. Then he wiped the soil from his hands before touching the flesh.

Vitality poured in, thick and steady.

The first ten refined bones in his hands and feet no longer carried the whole load. New sections answered through his hands and forearms, then his ribs and legs. His meridians had already built the roads, Shi Feng thought. Now he just needed enough strength to build along them.

He stopped when the flow got heavier than the unsettled bones could use. Greed won’t help, Shi Feng thought. Power wasted through impatience stayed wasted, however many roads a man owned.

He looked at the carcass and sighed in his heart. The manual said such progress should take months. And still, the bear’s pelt was worth a few stones, and he was too poor to waste it.

He took the pelt.

A gatherer in a straw hat watched from the ridge with his mouth open, and ran before Shi Feng could turn. By nightfall the whole valley would know.

On the sixth day, a gatherer named Chai Hu found him washing roots at a pool and stood at a careful distance.

“Brother, was that bear on the ridge yours?” Chai Hu asked.

“It was in my way,” Shi Feng said.

“Sell me the claws!” Chai Hu said.

“Four stones,” Shi Feng said. “Talk less.”

Chai Hu paid and went off.

At the foothill market, Shao Jin pinched a medicinal root between two fingers and offered half the usual price.

Shi Feng took the root back.

“You should be grateful anyone buys from a cripple!” Shao Jin said.

“I’ll sell it elsewhere,” Shi Feng said.

Shao Jin’s expression turned sour. He snorted and leaned back in his chair, sure that Shi Feng would come crawling back. Two stalls down, the roots sold. Shao Jin shot upright.

“Hey! That buyer is ruining the market!” Shao Jin shouted.

The buyer ignored him and counted out the stones. That was the whole deal.

“First time I’ve seen anyone walk away from Shao Jin,” a trader beside the scales told his neighbour.

“The cripple?”

“The cripple. He carried a Blackhide bear pelt out of the valley!”

“A Blackhide Mountain Bear? That’s a Foundation Establishment beast!”

The traders were stunned into silence.

“…”

The sale paid for food, salt, and a new seam on his boot. Shi Feng stopped at a noodle stall afterwards. The pot was nearly empty, but the woman serving him scraped out a full bowl anyway.

“Eat,” Min Chun said, adding a spoonful of chili.

At night he practised the sword movements he remembered from Wei Renshan’s attack. He didn’t know the man’s art and wouldn’t pretend that seeing it once made it his. He remembered openings instead. Where did the point travel before the body turned? Which step announced the thrust? How much movement did a stronger man waste, because he expected others to retreat?

His blade grew shorter, cleaner. Less shoulder, more power at the point.

On the ninth day, heavy rain trapped him beneath a rock shelf. Water poured over the lip in a grey curtain. He could have gone on. Instead he dried the blade, rewrapped its grip, and spread out the roots that would spoil if left crowded.

At the bottom of his pack lay the parcel of cakes Ling Qingzhu had insisted he take. Most were broken. One survived, its bean filling pressed into a corner.

He ate the broken ones first.

It didn’t mean anything, he told himself in his heart. She saw him packing dry rations and put something better beside them. Still, he remembered how she pretended to be annoyed when he checked the wrapping.

When the rain eased, he folded the empty paper and put it away instead of dropping it among the stones.

By the end of half a month his boots had split at a new seam. His pack was heavier, his purse only a little better, and his bones had advanced much farther than his gathering profits suggested. Ling Qingzhu’s expression sharpened when she looked at the boots as he came into the courtyard.

“You were gone half a month,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Not that I counted. The lane kept asking where my husband went. I ran out of answers.” She pointed at his feet. “Those boots are a crime. Buy another pair.”

“These didn’t last as long as they promised,” Shi Feng said.

“Ten thousand spirit stones,” Ling Qingzhu said, shaking her head. “And you’re arguing with a boot.”

He put the gathered medicines away in his corner of the room and gave her a small packet of dried mountain mushrooms. His bedding had been aired in the sun while he was away. He didn’t mention it, and neither did she.

“They’re good in broth,” Shi Feng said.

She opened the packet, smelled it, and was already smiling before she remembered to ask a question.

“Were they expensive? Tell me honestly,” Ling Qingzhu asked. “I’ll know if you lie.”

“I found them,” Shi Feng said.

That answer seemed to please her more. She hurried to find a bowl, humming under her breath.

Later he went out for fresh ingredients. Another expensive fish joined the mushrooms in the kitchen. The marriage payment still waited on the high shelf to refill the reserve his own purse kept spending.

He’d count it before the next big purchase, Shi Feng decided.

After supper, when the lamp burned low, Shi Feng glanced up at the high kitchen shelf where the pale white-stitched payment bag had sat untouched since registration day. Tomorrow the rent was due, and his own pouch was nearly flat. He reached up, lifted the bag down by its cord—and frowned at how strangely light it felt in his palm.