Chapter 53 — The Tester's Wage
CHAPTER 53
The Tester's Wage
“Payment comes after observation,” Fang Jingyuan said, wringing his hands.
“A written rate comes before the first pill,” Shi Feng said.
Fang Jingyuan was a Foundation Establishment alchemist with no Sky Pavilion Mark. A 1 Mark alchemist could make pills for Golden Core cultivators. Foundation Establishment was the minimum realm to even try for it, but almost everyone only got there after reaching Golden Core themselves.
Fang Jingyuan never would. His furnace made common pills, and not every batch came out right. A hundred failed attempts hadn’t made him stop trying.
They had made him willing to risk somebody else’s stomach. Shi Feng wanted the medicine inside those failures, but he wouldn’t mistake the man’s eagerness for goodwill.
On the table stood a narrow stool, a cup of water, and a paper saying Fang’s Medicine House wasn’t to blame if a patient died. The line for payment was an empty blank.
“Distrust makes medicine so difficult!” Fang Jingyuan complained.
Shi Feng pointed at the disclaimer.
Fang Jingyuan looked at his own handwriting, then at the tester, and reached for the brush. Five stones a session went onto the paper. Writing things down, they both agreed, was useful.
The first pill was meant to strengthen sinews. It split during cooling and showed a pale seam across its surface. Fang Jingyuan pointed out the flaw himself, watching to see if it would scare his tester into taking a lower wage.
“Does the batch number on the tray match the paper?” Shi Feng asked.
The alchemist fixed one character, very reluctantly.
Shi Feng swallowed the pill.
Warmth spread beneath his sternum. His strange physique caught the medicine and sent clean strength down the waiting pathways. Another body would have struggled to take it in. His took it as a feast.
He sat quietly.
Fang Jingyuan waited for a tremor, a flushed face, an upset stomach, anything to write beside the batch number. The tester’s calm was getting really annoying.
“How do you feel?” Fang Jingyuan asked.
“Warm,” Shi Feng said.
“Where?” Fang Jingyuan asked.
“Inside,” Shi Feng replied.
Fang Jingyuan put his brush down and fetched a drawing of the human body. He stabbed one finger at the stomach.
“Here?” Fang Jingyuan asked.
Shi Feng nodded. The alchemist marked it eagerly, then noticed that he was writing on the shop’s only clean anatomy chart. He snatched up the sheet before the ink spread.
The brush hovered over the paper. Fang Jingyuan’s expression twitched, and his face turned red.
“Can you be more specific?” Fang Jingyuan asked anxiously.
“I’m not a physician,” Shi Feng said. He wasn’t lying. And he didn’t owe a man who valued his possible death less than a good fish a description of what happened beneath his sternum.
Fang Jingyuan was stunned by the useless answer. He made a short mark and waited longer.
The second pill was badly bound. The third was overheated. The alchemist described each flaw as he picked it up, as if explaining his problems made it fine to have somebody else swallow them.
All of them gave strength! Fang Jingyuan scratched his head and found nothing to record.
Nothing poisoned Shi Feng, and he was secretly delighted. No burden gathered behind the comfort, and yesterday’s medicine didn’t dull today’s. His body treated every scrap of medicine as pure nourishment, free of the damage Fang Jingyuan expected another man to show. This must be the secret of my body, Shi Feng thought. Everything others throw away, I can eat.
The bitter taste was the only part he could do without. After the third observation period he stood up.
“The wage,” Shi Feng said.
Fang Jingyuan studied his sheet. “The result is… inconclusive!”
“The rate isn’t,” Shi Feng said, and stayed beside the stool until five stones appeared.
Outside, the street looked pleasantly bright. He’d earned money, taken useful medicine, and spent most of the session sitting down. Compared with carrying grain, this work had a lot going for it, Shi Feng thought with satisfaction!
He came back two days later. By the fourth session Fang Jingyuan was calling him an unusually suitable tester. By the fifth, the alchemist decided that being suitable was a reason to cut the wage.
“You recover faster than others, so the work is easier for you,” Fang Jingyuan said. “Three stones would be fair. I can’t afford more!”
Shi Feng rose from the stool.
Fang Jingyuan looked at the pills already arranged for the session, and at the pile of unfinished observation sheets. He was used to regular results now. He didn’t want to go back to the troublemakers who demanded payment before touching a single pellet.
“Five is fine!” Fang Jingyuan cried at once.
Shi Feng sat down again.
The terms stayed tight. Shi Feng took only medicine named beforehand. One day Fang Jingyuan brought an unmarked preparation from a back shelf, smiling nervously.
“A tester has to be adaptable,” Fang Jingyuan said, mopping his forehead.
“An employer must read his own agreement,” Shi Feng said.
The jar went back on the shelf. Shi Feng wasn’t afraid of poison. He refused because the alchemist had promised to explain the work and was trying to dodge it.
On another visit Fang Jingyuan dragged the observation stool to the shop’s open doorway, so buyers could watch a patient swallowing his pills.
A passing woman stopped to look.
“Is that the Shi boy? Fang is testing medicine on a cripple!”
“Look, he’s swallowing the cracked ones!”
“He must be desperate! Poor boy.”
“…”
Shi Feng carried the stool back behind the shop’s back curtain and sat down. He’d agreed to test pills, not to be a living advertisement for a cure that the alchemist never delivered. Fang Jingyuan sighed and left the stool where it was. Losing a handy display was cheaper than losing a tester who counted his wage so carefully.
When Fang Jingyuan later complained that ruined meridians made some observations worthless, Shi Feng calmly asked whether he wanted to hire somebody else. The alchemist suddenly remembered how valuable the diagnosis was.
No one examined his circulation closely. Fang Jingyuan believed the matter was settled, and he preferred recording what his pills did to an unlucky body over paying to learn that his assumptions were wrong. Shi Feng did nothing to correct him.
While waiting, he watched the furnace from a distance, but the gestures and tools meant little to him. The alchemist’s skill was the alchemist’s own business.
Shi Feng watched Fang Jingyuan pinch a pellet apart and reject it before it reached the tray. The man could recognize a failure. He simply cared less about the tester than about discovering which mistake caused it.
That evening Ling Qingzhu noticed the medicine-house stamp on the payment slip he laid beside the household account.
“That’s Fang’s stamp. You work there?” Ling Qingzhu asked.
“Sometimes,” Shi Feng said.
Her gaze moved over his clean sleeves. That sounded right for a former genius, she thought: sorting roots, carrying jars, copying prescriptions he could no longer use. She felt an unexpected relief that he’d found something less degrading than lifting sacks.
Then she remembered the ten thousand stones and frowned.
“You count five stones like gold bars,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Dinner’s still greens. Where does it all go?”
“I keep careful accounts,” Shi Feng said.
“Oh, I can tell. Every stone, written down twice,” Ling Qingzhu said, her face turning cool.
He didn’t argue about the debt again. He’d stated it, written it, and she’d denied it. Repeating it wouldn’t make stones appear.
He bought rice and more greens, then made supper with mushrooms saved from the mountains. Ling Qingzhu ate enough to praise the flavour, though her eyes still drifted to the empty spot where another dish might have stood.
Later, when her breathing slowed behind the folding screen, Shi Feng sat cross-legged on his floor mat and drew the cracked pills’ medicinal heat down into his bones. Five spirit stones were only the visible part of his wage—and before he left the shop, he had seen an invitation card from the Marquis of Pingnan’s reception sitting on the lane’s delivery tray, addressed to Ling Qingzhu alone.