Chapter 52 — Work for a Former Genius

CHAPTER 52

Work for a Former Genius

“Six spirit stones for a day of lifting,” Ke De said, tapping his work slate.

Then a porter by the cart whispered a name, and Ke De’s brush stopped.

“Four,” Ke De said.

Shi Feng looked at the stacked sacks. The nearest one was patched twice and already leaking grain from a seam.

“It was six a moment ago,” Shi Feng said.

“Then find someone paying six!” Ke De barked.

The porters waiting by the cart stared at the ground.

“That’s him, the Shi boy. Two hundred and thirty-seven meridians, they said.”

“Now he lifts sacks for four stones!”

“Quiet. Don’t get noticed.”

“…”

Shi Feng didn’t say another word. He lifted the first sack onto the cart. Then he lifted the second beside it, and held Ke De’s gaze the whole time.

Shi Feng used no visible qi, but Ke De’s expression changed. A cripple shouldn’t be able to carry two sacks without shaking! The porters were stunned.

“Eight,” Shi Feng said. “Or go find someone else’s arms.”

Ke De glanced at the loading yard. Two carts were late, and the owner had sent a runner three times already. The sacks wouldn’t carry themselves.

“Eight, if the loading is done before sunset!” Ke De said, scowling.

“That seam was already open when I got here,” Shi Feng said, pointing at the leaking sack.

Ke De scowled and made a mark on his slate.

The work only needed a steady pace, and the will to keep it while others rested. Shi Feng stacked the heavy sacks low and left room for the uneven ones. When a wheel sank into soft ground, the porters began shouting over who had chosen the spot. Shi Feng slid a board beneath it and told the driver to start when he said go.

The cart came free at once.

Ke De didn’t say a word of praise. He just bellowed at the other porters to keep moving.

Shi Feng kept the same pace through the next cart. There was no reason to throw sacks around to impress the yard. The work just needed finishing. Let them see a stubborn former cultivator who won’t admit his decline, he thought. It’s the safest face I can wear.

He had no plan to become a grain porter. The work filled the gap between mountain trips and brought in cash. It also gave the curious an easy answer. A cripple who hunted roots and carried sacks was easy to understand. A cripple who could kill Foundation Establishment cultivators was not.

At midday, Ke De waved a hand toward the last six sacks.

“Onto the front cart!” Ke De shouted.

The driver stopped Shi Feng before he lifted the first.

“Those are seed beans,” Tu Dali said. “The front cart goes to the mill.”

Ke De looked at the painted mark on the sacks. Then he looked at the merchant’s son standing beside the gate.

“I said the back cart!” Ke De barked.

“You pointed at this one,” Tu Dali replied.

“I was pointing past it!” Ke De shouted.

Shi Feng put the beans on the correct cart. Tu Dali tucked his head down and checked the load himself. Ke De strode away to find somebody who hadn’t heard the mistake.

A sack split as the last worker lifted it. Beans rattled across the yard. All three men froze.

“Not that seam,” Shi Feng said. “Catch it underneath.”

He lowered his end and spread the empty wrapping beneath the spill. Tu Dali caught the other side. They tipped most of the beans back in before Ke De returned.

The foreman opened his mouth, saw the seed mark, and shut it. This time, his shouting would bring the merchant’s son over. He found a broom instead.

Before the break, Tu Dali brought over a torn sack and a coil of string.

“Can you hold that corner?” Tu Dali asked. “If I lift it alone, the beans go everywhere again.”

Shi Feng held it while Tu Dali stitched a rough seam. The driver worked quickly and didn't ask why a fairy's husband needed loading wages. Shi Feng appreciated that more than he expected.

“My mother used to mend those,” Tu Dali said. “I never learned properly until the first load spilled.”

“This one will hold,” Shi Feng said.

Tu Dali tugged it twice, satisfied, and went back to his cart. The next sack reached the right place without shouting. For several quiet minutes the yard was just men doing work.

Shi Feng ate his packed rice under the eaves. A husk stuck to his thumb, and his water was warm. Beside the well, two porters argued about a wedding feast. One remembered the bride, and the other remembered only the pork.

At sunset Ke De tried to deduct money for sack damage that was there before the loading. Shi Feng pointed to the mark on the slate from that morning.

The foreman stared at his own handwriting, and his expression turned sour. Then he counted out eight stones in full.

Shi Feng counted them and left before Ke De found another cart. His arms weren’t tired. Spending a day listening to the foreman had been the harder work.

Walking back, he stopped at a pump to rinse the dust from his neck. Granny Qin’s nephew Qin Bao stared at the sword on his belt, then at the sack fibres clinging to his robe.

“Are you a swordsman or a porter, Big Brother?” Qin Bao asked.

“Today, a porter,” Shi Feng said.

Shi Feng walked on. He didn’t need a stranger’s understanding to eat supper. At the medicine lane he noticed a sheet pasted outside Fang’s Medicine House.

Pill testers wanted. Daily payment. Prior cultivation history preferred.

He read it twice.

Through the half-open door came the hot, bitter smell of a furnace being cleaned. On a side table lay a tray of dark pellets in uneven rows, several of them split along the surface.

Shi Feng’s stomach stirred. Beneath his sternum, the hunger woke up, quiet but very interested. A side door opened before he finished looking.

Fang Jingyuan looked him up and down. The alchemist’s gaze paused on the old shoulder scar under Shi Feng’s loosened collar, then moved to the travel paper in his hand.

“You were a cultivator,” Fang Jingyuan said.

“That’s what the notice asks,” Shi Feng said.

Fang Jingyuan took the paper, read the name, and his expression turned eager.

Ruined meridians, the alchemist thought. A former genius, now carrying grain, judging by the fibres on his sleeve. A desperate man like this would take a very low wage.

“Five stones a session,” Fang Jingyuan said, wringing his hands. “You swallow the test batch and I—I record the effect.”

“These are medicine?” Shi Feng asked, looking past him at the tray.

“Sinew nourishment, marrow support, circulation aid,” Fang Jingyuan said quickly. “Different preparations. You’ll be told what you need to know. Probably.”

“I’ll be told before I swallow,” Shi Feng said.

The alchemist gave a nervous laugh. Caution, he thought, was just a habit of people who couldn’t negotiate better terms.

“Of course, of course!” Fang Jingyuan said.

Shi Feng studied the pellets again. He didn’t know how they were refined or what mistakes had cracked them. But he could feel medicine still inside them, and his strange physique answered with a clear hunger.

“And you supply the pills?” Shi Feng asked.

Fang Jingyuan let out a shaky breath. The ruined genius was worried the pills might cost extra! Heaven had sent the perfect worker to a poor, struggling shop.

Shi Feng smoothed down the loose corner of the notice against the wall.

Both men, he thought, had just found a fool.

He decided he would return after the next hunt. Honest work and a quiet yard were useful.