Chapter 554 — The Lantern Streets

CHAPTER 554

The Lantern Streets

Luoxia had three lantern streets, and the third was the best.

Shi Feng stood at the top of it with his hands in his sleeves and tried to count. Carp, hares, gourds, cranes, a dragon forty paces long that wound from roof to roof, and a row of paper lotuses floating on wires above the canal. Behind each one a small flame turned the street red and gold. Ling Qingzhu had said looking up was a clause. It turned out to be an easy one.

“You're counting them,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Two hundred and six so far,” Shi Feng said.

“Item nine says look. It doesn't say audit,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“It doesn't say I can't,” Shi Feng said.

She sighed, but she took his arm again, and they went down into the crowd.

The street was packed. Merchants in fur collars haggled over river-silk. Children ran under the lanterns with sugar-paste rabbits. A man with a hawk on his glove argued with a woman who said the hawk had eaten her lantern, and the hawk looked proud of it. Every few steps somebody noticed the white veil, then the badge at Shi Feng's waist, and nudged a neighbour.

“Is that…”

“Hundred Flower Valley's first fairy.”

“With a man?”

“It's her husband! The Artificer Hall champion!”

“I heard he was a cripple. And the toad still ate the swan meat!”

“Who told you that? That was years ago.”

“…”

Ling Qingzhu's thumb pressed once against her sleeve. Shi Feng kept walking and let them talk. Three years ago, a crowd like this had pitied him. Tonight they argued about his old reputation instead. He preferred that to their pity.

They stopped at a stall hung with small paper lamps, each with a slip of paper dangling from its base. A thin old scholar in a patched gown sat behind them, with an ink stone and a bowl of copper cash.

“Lantern riddles,” the old scholar said. “Three coppers a try. Answer correctly and take the lamp.”

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Here,” Shi Feng said. He paid.

The old scholar chose a slip and read aloud: “‘It has a thousand threads and ten thousand knots. It catches fish and never eats one. What is it?’”

“A net,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“That was fast,” the old scholar said, blinking at her.

“You said I answer fast,” Ling Qingzhu told Shi Feng.

“It was an accusation,” Shi Feng said.

“I'm taking it as a boast,” Ling Qingzhu said.

The scholar handed over a small lamp shaped like a white rabbit. Ling Qingzhu examined it carefully. She gave its whiskers the attention she might have given a Nascent Soul-grade refined artifact. Then she tried the second riddle, and the third. By the fifth, the scholar was sweating, his shelf of lamps had gone from full to half empty, and a small crowd had gathered to watch the veiled woman empty his stall.

“Please,” the old scholar said weakly. “I have a family.”

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said. “Your turn.”

“I don't do riddles,” Shi Feng said.

“Why not?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“They don't pay,” Shi Feng said.

There was a short, appreciative silence. The scholar looked at him gratefully. Ling Qingzhu gave him an annoyed look, then turned back to the slips.

It was while she was choosing a last riddle that Shi Feng felt it.

He kept his Spirit Sense thin in crowds. Fully open, it could sweep the whole street, and a street full of people was too much noise to hold in his head. He let one thread out, no wider than a hair, and kept it near his feet. It was a habit he'd built since the tribulation, and so far it had cost him nothing.

The thread brushed something above them.

It was very high, far above the lanterns and higher than the cloud layer. It was heavy and still. It wasn't moving with the wind. It hung above Luoxia, motionless. His Spirit Sense couldn't enter it; the thin thread slid away without finding an edge.

Shi Feng stopped.

Nothing answered. No pressure leaned back at him, no aura turned. He drew the thread in and held very still, and the feeling faded to nothing.

He thought it over. The Sky Pavilion ran huge cargo ships along the river routes. They had array hulls that dulled every sense, and they hung in the high air just like that, silent and heavy and uninterested. One had probably crossed above the city on its way north.

It was a Pavilion ship. Let it pass.

“Husband,” Ling Qingzhu said.

Shi Feng looked down. Ling Qingzhu was standing in front of him, the rabbit lamp in one hand, her face tilted up. The veil had slipped from her ear.

“You went away,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“A ship,” Shi Feng said.

“Where?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“High up. It's gone,” Shi Feng said.

“Is it a work ship?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“It's nothing to do with us,” Shi Feng said.

She studied him for a moment longer. He could tell she wanted to ask what kind of man hears a ship that high over a noisy street. She looked at the lamp. She looked at him.

“Clause three,” Ling Qingzhu said gently. “No work.”

“No work,” Shi Feng said.

“Say it as if you mean it,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“No work,” Shi Feng said.

“Better,” Ling Qingzhu said, pressing the rabbit lamp into his hand. “Carry him. I'm busy.”

“With what?” Shi Feng asked.

“Being looked at,” Ling Qingzhu said.

He took the lamp. It was light and warm, and the little flame inside shook a bit in the wind. Above them, between the dragon's coils, there was only the dark sky and a few cold stars.

He didn't look up again.