Chapter 513 — The Vow at the Well

CHAPTER 513

The Vow at the Well

The carriage lifted away to the north without a word of farewell.

Shi Feng watched it go. The green lanterns shrank to two small lights, then to one, then to the colour of the cloud behind them. The dog behind the half-closed door finally allowed itself a second bark.

Nobody in Willow Ford came out.

He picked up the Sword, sat down on the stone lip of the well and let his legs go. They were his own again. They shook anyway, and so did his left hand.

Then he did the thing he'd put off since the ditch, and counted what he had left.

His bones were whole and his meridians had closed. The legend’s essence still turned slowly inside his near-full core. He could draw qi, stand and walk. In a day or two, he thought he could fight again. The pill had restored almost everything the three men had destroyed.

Except his face.

Shi Feng untied the grey cloth with one hand. Water stood in the well bucket beside him, dark and still. He lowered his head over it and looked.

The left side of the face in the water was stiff and shiny, red in the middle and grey along the seams. The eyebrow was gone. One corner of the mouth was drawn up, so that the face seemed caught halfway into a smile. It belonged to a stranger. He looked at it for a long time.

Then he put the cloth back on, tying the knot neatly, and set his hands on his knees.

That’s what it cost, Shi Feng thought. He wasn’t complaining. He needed to understand what had happened to him before he decided what to do next. Looking away from the damage wouldn’t undo it.

The silence in the village settled round him. He let it. A cooking fire cracked behind one of the walls.

He thought of three white robes on a hill road.

Qu Ming had called him frontier trash without a trace of anger. The lamp, compass, gold chain and lantern made that confidence possible. Hundred Flower Valley couldn’t have bought all those treasures together, and their owners weren’t even the strongest people in Azure Sun Sect. They were juniors.

And a servant of the Serene Jade had stepped down from a carriage that flew without a beast, and nobody on her side had even been alarmed. The old woman who drove it stood where Li Changyuan stood. She was only the driver.

Shi Feng finally understood how small his region was. Great Liang’s strength had seemed immense when he left Qingshi Town. Now Qingyun City was only the last familiar gate before a world he knew nothing about. Beyond it were sects whose juniors could overpower him with treasures alone.

The Empire had stopped being a rumour tonight.

That frightened him. It also pulled at him, the way the road out of Qingshi Town had once pulled at him, and he found that he could not tell the two apart.

There was one more thing, and it was simpler than the rest.

He’d been left in a ditch to die. A woman who didn’t know him, whose face he hadn’t seen, stopped for him anyway. She asked for no payment. Her people gave him water and a pill worth a sect’s vault, and she gave him her name before leaving. She hadn’t waited for his thanks.

He could not stand it.

He was grateful, but gratitude alone couldn’t satisfy him. She’d saved his life. He couldn’t simply walk away from a debt that large and tell himself that feeling thankful was enough. He wanted to repay her properly, even though he had no idea how to begin. He’d bargained over countless prices and written countless invoices, but this was different. He couldn’t put a number beside his own life.

And he did not know the sum.

Shi Feng stood up.

He didn't speak loudly. There was no one to hear but the well and the dog and a door that had shut again. He said it in the voice he used for a promise he did not intend to break.

“Nangong Xiuyi,” Shi Feng said. “Serene Jade Sect. Jade lotus.”

He paused.

“I'll find you,” Shi Feng said. “I'll repay you. All of it.”

The wind moved over the well. Nothing answered.

He’d given his word. The old fear remained, and he knew it wouldn’t disappear just because he stood up from the well. But he no longer had only a burned face and a memory of the ditch to think about. He had someone to find.

North.

He walked toward the nearest door, a squat farmhouse with a tile roof and a lamp burning behind oiled paper. He knocked twice.

The door opened a hand's width. A man peered out. He was young, a farmer, with soot on his forearms and a wooden spoon in one fist.

“Pardon me,” Shi Feng said. “Which road leads back toward Thousand Forge Peak?”

The man's gaze rose to the grey cloth. It dipped to the stain at its edge. His face went tight.

“You...” the farmer said. He stepped back, and the door began to close. “Not here. Each man sweeps the snow from his own doorstep and leaves the frost on other men's roofs. We've nothing for the likes of you. Take the east road, and go.”

“Thank you,” Shi Feng said.

The door shut. The bolt slid home.

On a peg beside the well hung a bamboo hat, left there by someone's field work. He set two coppers on the stone lip, took the hat and pulled it low over the grey cloth. Then he turned east, with the Sword in his hand and the lotus behind his eyes.