Chapter 540 — The Gate Bows

CHAPTER 540

The Gate Bows

The two gate guards of Qingshi Town saw the carriage first. Then they saw the Artificer Hall badge on the door. Then they saw who was sitting behind the badge.

Both of them bowed so fast that their spears clanged together.

“Young Master Shi!” Shi Gen shouted from beside the gate. “Welcome home! This Shi Gen is honoured! We were told to expect you at noon, but the whole town has been waiting since the list came!”

The younger guard hastily echoed the welcome and nodded toward the waiting crowd.

Shi Feng looked at the guard. Four years ago, Shi Gen had stood at this same gate and laughed when the “cripple” walked out with a short spear for a staff.

“Hello, Shi Gen,” Shi Feng said.

Shi Gen's face went red. “That was a misunderstanding, Young Master! A prime minister's belly can row a boat!” Shi Gen cried. “The laugh was a cough! It was a very bad cough that month!”

“Was it?” Ling Qingzhu asked from the other seat, lifting the curtain with one finger. “I heard it was a long laugh.”

“…It was both, Madam Shi!” Shi Gen stammered. “A cough, then a laugh, then I was sorry!”

Old Soot, riding Sima Lan's shoulder, yawned a small spark at the nearest spear. Both guards bowed again.

Sima Lan, sitting across from them with her ledger on her knee, wrote something down. She wrote down everything.

The carriage rolled into Qingshi Town.

It was a small town, smaller than he remembered. The main street had the same crooked paving, the same noodle stall and the same smell of pickled radish. The only new thing was the crowd. People stood three deep on both sides, pushing and whispering, and every neck craned toward the carriage.

“That's him!”

“The tournament champion! The one from the list!”

“Late Golden Core, they say! At twenty-one!”

“Shi Clan's own son! My cousin's wife's brother sold him a cabbage once!”

“The Sky Pavilion's youngest 3 Mark! Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river!”

“I always said he'd rise,” an old woman announced to nobody. “I said it to my daughter-in-law in the very first month.”

Shi Feng didn't remember her at all. He leaned back and let them look. Late Golden Core was the number the teahouses had settled on, and it suited him. Nobody had asked him to correct it, and he had no reason to start.

“They're fond of you,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“They're fond of the list,” Shi Feng said.

“It's the same thing, at that volume,” Ling Qingzhu said.

At the old well corner, the carriage had to slow. A crowd had packed itself around a wooden stand, and a thin man in a patched robe was slapping a board against his palm with enormous passion.

“And so, my friends, the champion stood before three thousand Martial Palace swords!” He Yan cried, slapping his board again. “Seven hundred meridians in his body, each one blazing like a lamp! He slew three Nascent Souls with a single glance, and the Sky Pavilion trembled, and the heavens themselves wept gold—”

“Gold?” someone said.

“Gold!” He Yan cried, delighted by the question. “And all of it began here, at this very well, where a humble boy was cruelly insulted by his own clan!”

Shi Feng knew the voice. He told the driver to stop.

He stepped down. The men near the carriage went quiet. Silence spread through the crowd until He Yan, still mid-gesture, saw everyone looking past him and turned around.

The board slipped from his hand.

“Y—Young Master Shi!” He Yan said. “I, I can explain! I told them! I told them from the very beginning!”

“You told them I fainted,” Shi Feng said.

“A setup, Young Master! Every great tale needs a low first act!” He Yan pleaded, throwing himself forward with his hands clasped. “And I did change the name! I always said ‘the fallen genius’, never ‘Shi Feng’! You can ask anyone here!”

“He did,” a man in the crowd confirmed. “For three years it was ‘the fallen genius of the eastern courtyard’. Everybody knew.”

“Everybody knew,” He Yan agreed gratefully.

Shi Feng looked at the stand. A painted sign hung from one corner, in fresh ink: THE HEAVEN-DEFYING SON OF QINGSHI. FIVE COPPERS A SEAT.

“Seven hundred meridians,” Shi Feng said.

“Poetry, Young Master. A figure of speech,” He Yan said.

“Three Nascent Souls,” Shi Feng said.

“For the rhythm, Young Master,” He Yan said.

“It was one Foundation Establishment guard,” Shi Feng said. “He had a bad knee.”

The crowd gasped. Somebody wrote it down. He Yan's mouth worked silently, and Shi Feng realised that he had just handed the storyteller two weeks of new material.

He took a string of coppers from his sleeve and put it on the stand.

“Five coppers a seat,” Shi Feng said. “For the front row. Keep the guard's knee.”

He climbed back into the carriage. Behind him, He Yan shouted, “The truth! Now you will hear the true account, on the word of the champion himself!”

“You just made his career,” Ling Qingzhu said, letting the curtain fall.

“I paid for a seat,” Shi Feng said.

“You paid for the seat and the knee,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Sima Lan closed her ledger. “That's one hundred and eighty coppers of goodwill,” Sima Lan said. “I'll file it as local expenses.”

The carriage moved on, past the noodle stall, past the pawnshop, toward the high grey wall of the Shi Clan estate. A steward in a clean robe was running down the street ahead of them, holding his skirts, waving both arms.

The steward reached the carriage window, gasping for breath. He relayed the Clan Head's greetings, added that the main hall had been swept three times, and announced that Second Elder Shi Zhen would receive Shi Feng personally at the gate.

Shi Feng raised an eyebrow.

“He asks,” Ling Qingzhu murmured, “to receive you.”

“I heard,” Shi Feng said.

He looked out at the wall. It was exactly as high as he remembered.