Chapter 560 — Acquired

CHAPTER 560

Acquired

The door opened without a sound, and the man who came in carried his own chair.

He was thin and tidy, in grey sleeves with no badge, and he looked about forty. His face was the sort people forget while they're still looking at it. He set the chair down three paces from the stone shelf, sat, and laid a slim folder across his knee.

Shi Feng reached out with his Spirit Sense, the hand's breadth he had, and touched the man.

It slid off. There was nothing to hold. Shi Feng couldn't find a trace of his cultivation or hold his sense against him.

Not Nascent Soul, Shi Feng thought. Not close.

“You tried,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly, watching Shi Feng's face. “Everyone does. It's all right. I'm Ning Zhe, a receiver. Please sit up properly, Alchemist Shi. I'd hate to start by being rude to a guest.”

“I'm a guest?” Shi Feng asked.

“Of a sort,” Ning Zhe said.

“The door locks from the outside,” Shi Feng said.

“So does a treasury,” Ning Zhe said. “Nobody calls the gold a prisoner.”

He opened the folder. Shi Feng saw a long list of lines in a neat hand, and at the top, a sketch of a young man's face. It was a good likeness. Somebody had stood on a street corner for a long time.

“Let me save us both some trouble,” Ning Zhe said. “You've been acquired.”

“By whom?” Shi Feng asked.

“By a frontier division,” Ning Zhe said. “They watch the lists the regional towers post, all of them, and a name rose to the top. Youngest three Mark on record. A Soul Formation pill refined in public, in front of a full hall.” He turned a page. “Their field people are good at finding things. They're not good at keeping them. So you were sent upward.”

“Upward to where?” Shi Feng asked.

“To us,” Ning Zhe said. “To the Heavenly Sect.”

Shi Feng said nothing. He had never heard the name. He kept the surprise off his face, the way he'd kept it off for years in the eastern courtyard.

“You don't know it,” Ning Zhe said, watching him. “No. They wouldn't have taught it to a country sect. It doesn't matter. Everyone who needs to know us finds out soon enough.”

“And what do the Heavenly Sect want with me?” Shi Feng asked, keeping his hands still.

“Your hands,” Ning Zhe said, tapping the folder. “Soul Formation pills, to begin with. We have a use for them every day. Then higher ones, as you grow. You'll grow quickly here, Alchemist Shi. That's the entire reason you're sitting in a nice quiet room instead of a worse one.”

“You haven't sealed me,” Shi Feng said.

“No,” Ning Zhe said.

“Why not?” Shi Feng asked.

Ning Zhe looked almost sorry for him.

“Early Nascent Soul,” Ning Zhe said. “It's very young, and it's very pretty. Where would you go? If you broke the door, there is a second door, and a third. If you broke those, there are people. They aren't cruel. They're only unpleasant to argue with.” He closed the folder. “A seal is a courtesy we save for those who frighten us. We don't believe you do.”

“That's honest,” Shi Feng said.

“I try to be. It saves time,” Ning Zhe said.

Shi Feng looked at his own hands, resting on his knees, empty.

He's not lying, he thought. He believes every word. They measured me by the Nascent Soul they could see, and they measured wrong, and nobody here knows it.

“My things?” Shi Feng asked.

“Safe. Catalogued,” Ning Zhe said with a small smile. “Your ring held a surprising number of broken receipts. And one iron weight that everyone who touched it complained about.”

“It's heavy,” Shi Feng said.

“It is,” Ning Zhe agreed. “One of my men couldn't lift it with qi. He lifted it with both arms and looked ashamed. We'll return it. In time. When you've shown us you're comfortable.”

“And if I'm not comfortable?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then you'll be comfortable later,” Ning Zhe said.

Shi Feng let that sit.

“What about the people at home?” Shi Feng asked.

Ning Zhe paused with his hand on the folder, and for the first time there was something that wasn't polite in his face. He seemed curious about the question. Shi Feng regretted giving him a subject he could use.

“That depends entirely on you,” Ning Zhe said. “When pulling weeds, one pulls out the roots, as they say. We never mention anyone's sect, or anyone's wife. We'd consider it rude.”

He stood. The chair folded flat in his hand, and he tucked it under his arm.

“Rest, Alchemist Shi,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly. “Tomorrow you'll see how we treat the cooperative. I think you'll find it very reasonable.”

At the door he stopped.

“One more thing,” Ning Zhe added at the door. “You'll hear a furnace in the corridor tonight. Do try to sleep through it. Everyone does, after the first week.”

The door closed. A bolt slid home.

Shi Feng sat for a long time in the dim light and thought of nothing at all, which was how he put a feeling away when he couldn't yet afford it.

Anyone's wife.

They had known about Ling Qingzhu. They had stood close enough to know.

Shi Feng forced himself to remember the exact words. Ning Zhe had made the threat without promising to do anything at all. Then he lay back on the mat and listened to the furnace breathe.