Chapter 532 — The Other Face

CHAPTER 532

The Other Face

The queue on Salt Well Street was forty people long, and not one of them was there for a pill.

“He's late.”

“Maybe the face has changed.”

“Don't say that, you'll curse it.”

Shi Feng reached Salt Well Street at the second morning bell. Sima Lan followed a pace behind with the folding table. As the people at the front noticed his face, they stopped talking. Those behind them craned forward. Soon all forty heads had turned toward him.

“It's gone!” someone shouted.

“The soul-fire! It's gone! Heaven has eyes!”

“He's got both eyebrows!”

“No, you said he'd be dead by spring.”

“…”

Both brows sat level again. The corner of his mouth had settled back where it belonged. The skin was smooth and pale, a little thinner than it used to be, but it was the same face he had carried into the capital tournament.

Bo Ge pushed to the front. The hunter's eyebrow scar had gone white with shock.

“Master Shi! Your face grew back!” Bo Ge said.

“It was never gone,” Shi Feng said. “It was damaged.”

“Same thing!” Bo Ge said.

Shi Feng set out the jars.

Sima Lan chalked the price board and clapped twice.

“Permit seven fourteen, clause two,” Sima Lan said. “The passage in front of this stall must stay three feet wide. You are standing in it. Back four paces. Anyone who steps back keeps his place.”

Grumbling, they stepped back.

The stall had barely sold two jars when a green sword came down at the end of the street.

Ling Qingzhu stepped off her sword, wearing her violet inner robe beneath Valley green. Her white veil was tied. She folded her hands behind her and walked toward him slowly, plainly trying not to look as eager as the customers who’d hurried into line.

The queue parted without being told. Nobody said anything.

She stopped in front of the table and looked at his face.

She looked at it for a long breath, brows, mouth and jaw. Her thumb pressed hard into her sleeve.

“…” Ling Qingzhu said.

Shi Feng waited.

“Well,” Ling Qingzhu said. She lifted her chin and her voice came back, bright and a little too quick. “That's a pity.”

“A pity,” Shi Feng said.

“I’d just got used to the other one,” Ling Qingzhu said, tilting her head to study him. “It had character. This one’s very ordinary. You could be anyone’s cousin.”

“I'll try to look worse on visiting days,” Shi Feng said.

Her mouth twitched. She turned away at once and became extremely interested in the price board.

“Twenty-four stones,” Ling Qingzhu read aloud. “For a Clear Marrow Pill. You've gone up.”

“The face is a separate charge,” Sima Lan said.

Ling Qingzhu pretended not to hear. She picked up a jar and put it back. Shi Feng's Spirit Sense, which he was still learning to keep small, brushed across her without asking.

He found her Golden Core as steady as before. He also sensed how tired she was after sleeping badly on the stone bench. Powder covered the shadows under her eyes, but it couldn’t hide them from Spirit Sense. Shi Feng felt grateful and didn’t know how to tell her.

He said nothing about it.

“Don't look at me like that,” Ling Qingzhu said, without turning.

“I'm looking at the jars,” Shi Feng said.

“You're looking at my powder,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“…I'm looking at the jars,” Shi Feng said again, and she laughed. It was a short, surprised laugh, quickly put away.

“I'll take one,” Ling Qingzhu said. She set a handful of stones on the table. It was thirty. “Don't give me change.”

“It's twenty-four,” Shi Feng said.

“Keep the rest for the queue,” Ling Qingzhu said. She picked up the jar. “They waited so patiently to see you.”

“They've come to look at me, not you,” Shi Feng said.

“Then I'll sit here and look at them,” Ling Qingzhu said, and she took the customer's stool.

She stayed through three buyers, who were so frightened of her that they paid in exact coins. She stayed while she told him his ginseng price was wrong, and while he agreed.

Sima Lan walked down the queue. The customers backed away from her, first eight paces, then ten, leaving a clean gap around the table. She returned and concentrated on counting stones. Shi Feng knew she’d given them room to talk, though she hadn’t said a word about it.

“The permit says three feet,” Shi Feng said quietly.

“The permit is a minimum,” Sima Lan said.

Ling Qingzhu said nothing, and did not leave.

A white robe pushed through the far end of the queue, and the crowd made way for it nervously. It was Warden Cheng from the Duanyang Tower. He carried a flat lacquer case with a gold border and held it before him in both hands, as carefully as a man carrying a full bowl.

“Master Shi,” Warden Cheng said. He bowed. “Examining Elder Yin Zhao's seal, from the Qingyun regional tower.”

Shi Feng opened the case. Inside lay one sheet of cream paper with a gold edge, and nine words.

3 Mark examination. Nine days. Qingyun. Soul Formation.

Ling Qingzhu leaned over his shoulder, close enough that he could smell the Valley's lilies on her sleeve. She read it once, and her face went still.

“Soul Formation,” Ling Qingzhu said quietly. “They want a Golden Core to refine a Soul Formation pill.”

“It seems so,” Shi Feng said.

“There'll be examiners from the Empire,” Warden Cheng said. “The Pavilion's headquarters has sent two.”

Ling Qingzhu looked from the examination notice to Shi Feng. She was worried about the headquarters examiners, but she stopped herself before saying it. He waited for the warning she chose to give him instead.

“Don't blow it up,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“I don't blow things up anymore,” Shi Feng said.

“You've blown up three furnaces,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Two,” Shi Feng said.

“Then I'll count the third as a rehearsal,” Ling Qingzhu said.