Chapter 534 — The Man Who Didn't Clap

CHAPTER 534

The Man Who Didn't Clap

“Candidate Shi Feng,” Examiner Ye Chengfeng said. “State your name for the record.”

The theory hall was small, closed and cold. Seven stools stood in a half circle before a long table of white stone. The two headquarters examiners sat behind it, and Yin Zhao stood at the wall with his hands in his sleeves.

“Shi Feng,” Shi Feng said.

Examiner Ye's brush stopped.

Ye Chengfeng didn’t look up. He untied the faded cord around his yellowed registers and drew out a brown-edged page. For two breaths, his thumb rested on one line near the bottom. Shi Feng noticed the pause but couldn’t tell what the examiner had recognised.

His Spirit Sense could have read the page in less than a heartbeat. Shi Feng kept it folded against his skin. An examiner like Ye Chengfeng would notice him reaching across the table. Curiosity wasn’t worth exposing the realm he was trying to hide.

“Proceed,” Ye Chengfeng said. He put the page back, closed the box, and tied the cord.

My name made him stop, Shi Feng thought. Why? He remembered the guard’s pause at the village and the old woman saying nothing. None of them had explained themselves. He would remember this pause too, without pretending he knew what joined them.

“First question,” Examiner Bo Ling said. She tapped the black jade rod against the table. “A Soul Formation pill must widen the soul without letting it spill. Name the binder, and say why.”

“Ten-thousand-year ginseng,” Master Cao Yuanzhi said at once. “It carries any dose.”

“Ginseng and white lotus pollen,” Madam Fei Yunlan said, spitting a husk into her paper cone. “For gentleness.”

“Hao Moxian?” Bo Ling said.

“Dragon-bone powder,” Hao Moxian said. “Fire first.”

“Candidate Shi,” Bo Ling said.

“Frost-lotus root,” Shi Feng said.

Master Cao Yuanzhi snorted. “A cold root, in a pill for the soul?”

“Yes,” Shi Feng said. “Ginseng carries the dose, but it also carries the heat. A soul that's being widened is raw. The heat arrives first and scalds it before the pill can do anything useful. Frost-lotus takes the heat out of the dragon marrow, and then the soul can take the rest.”

“And your source for this?” Bo Ling said.

Somewhere in his memory, an angry hand had scrawled the same words in a margin: Cold first, you fool. Ask the soul, not the purse.

“An old teacher,” Shi Feng said. “A rude one.”

Examiner Bo Ling wrote one line. Yin Zhao's face did not move, but his eyes slid, very slightly, toward Examiner Ye.

“Full marks,” Examiner Bo Ling said. “Next.”

By noon the herb hall was full.

Six hundred seats under the glass dome, and not one empty. People stood in the aisles and sat on the stair rails, and a boy lay on his stomach on the dome's iron rim, peering down through the glass. Twelve covered trays stood in a row on a white table.

“Twelve herbs,” the herald called. “Each candidate lifts the cloth, uses hand and nose only, and names the herb, the age and any flaw. No tools. No spirit tests.”

Master Cao went first. He named ten of twelve, and the crowd gave him a polite wave of applause. Madam Fei named eleven and bowed to it with a husk in her fingers.

Shi Feng stepped up when his name was called. He didn't hurry.

Shi Feng lifted the cloths slowly and let his fingers rest on each herb. His Spirit Sense had already read the trays from across the room, but he couldn’t let anyone know that. Identifying them in twelve breaths would invite questions. He moved at the pace of a careful Golden Core alchemist instead.

“Nine-Vein Dew Root, one hundred and twenty years,” Shi Feng said. “Silver-Frost Ginseng, ninety. Red Phoenix Vine, seventy-five.”

Eight more times he went on, and nobody coughed.

At the twelfth tray, he stopped.

It held a black root, thick as a wrist. The label on the tray read Thousand-Mist Root, four hundred years. The crowd leaned forward. It was easily the most valuable herb in the hall.

“It is not four hundred,” Shi Feng said.

Examiner Bo Ling's rod stopped halfway to the table.

“It's sixty,” Shi Feng said. “Soaked in old ginseng wine for a month. The wine puts age into the skin, but not into the heart. Cut it, and the heart is pale.”

For a moment the dome held its breath.

“Cut it,” Ye Chengfeng said.

A clerk brought a knife and cut through the black root. Its heart was pale. The crowd saw the difference immediately; the dark outer skin hadn’t made the root inside any older.

“Sixty,” Ye Chengfeng said quietly. “Wine-aged. Correct. The Pavilion placed that one on purpose. No candidate in twelve years has caught it.”

The hall exploded.

“He caught the fake!”

“Twenty-one years old, and he caught the fake! We had eyes and failed to see Mount Tai!”

“Sixty! He said sixty at a touch!”

“I told my wife!”

“The seven-cloud boy! From the Hall with the broom!”

The audience stood and applauded. Fei Yunlan clapped with the paper cone still in her fist. Cao Yuanzhi stared for a moment, beard drooping. Then he reluctantly struck his palms together twice. Even he couldn’t deny what the cut root proved.

Shi Feng bowed to the examiners. His eyes moved across the crowd.

Row forty, near the aisle, a man in a plain brown robe sat with his hands folded in his sleeves.

The man stayed seated while his neighbours stood and applauded. His face looked ordinary, but Shi Feng couldn’t fix its features in his memory. That failure made him wary. He looked directly at the man again before trying his Spirit Sense.

He swept the seat, lightly, once.

Nothing came back. Not weak, not hidden. A gap, as smooth as a sealed room.

Careful, Shi Feng thought.

When he looked again, the seat was empty. The cushion hadn't even been dented.