Chapter 570 — One Degree Wrong

CHAPTER 570

One Degree Wrong

“Still flooded,” Bao Liang said, in a voice of deep suffering. “Old rooms again. My poor feet.”

“Yes, Guard Bao,” Shi Feng said sadly, and pushed the cart.

Heaven bless that leaking pipe, Shi Feng thought. At the ninth door, Bao Liang sat on the cart’s edge with a groan and started on his boot. Shi Feng tore the saved bun in half, ate his half, and pushed the rest through the slit with two fingers.

Then the bread was gone, and behind the iron a man ate slowly, the way someone eats who has learned not to waste a crumb.

“Do not do that twice,” Pei Wuyan said at last.

“I’ll do it as often as I like, Master Pei,” Shi Feng said cheerfully, bending over the axle. “You’re terrible at stopping people through a wall. What are you going to do, glare at me through a crack?”

“…” Pei Wuyan said.

Then a low, rusty sound came out of the slit. The old man was laughing.

“You are a very rude boy,” Pei Wuyan said. “A drop of kindness must be repaid with a spring, so I will not stay in a rude boy’s debt. I have no herbs and no stones. I have nine years of listening.”

“The two at the outer gate,” Pei Wuyan said. “They are beyond Soul Formation, and they listen for one thing only: the count. Clerk Shu’s count in the halls. Master Ji’s count at his furnace. When a count stops, they come.”

“That’s why Master Ji counts aloud,” Shi Feng said slowly.

“Everyone counts aloud. It is a leash made of numbers,” Pei Wuyan said. “Second. This corridor bends three times between here and the pit behind Hall Three. Past the third bend, the wardens hear nothing. In my fourth year a man screamed there for two nights. Nobody came. Then his furnace count stopped, and they came at once.”

Shi Feng listened closely, fixing the corridor’s bends in his memory. Pei Wuyan was giving him more than a warning about the wardens. He was showing him a weakness in the way the whole prison was watched.

The wardens listened for counts, not cries for help, Shi Feng thought. Beyond the third bend, they couldn’t hear either. That was where the pit’s draught came up from the river. The strongest guards were watching the halls, while the only possible way out lay beyond their hearing.

One half-bun had earned him knowledge he couldn’t have found by wandering with the cart. Shi Feng was grateful. He’d meant to feed a lonely prisoner, not buy directions, but he wasn’t going to waste what Pei Wuyan had told him.

“Master Pei,” Shi Feng said under the noise of the boot, “that’s worth a whole bun. I’ll bring you the whole thing tomorrow.”

“You will bring half,” Pei Wuyan said. “If the cook’s buns come up short, someone may start counting.”

Nine years in a cell, and the old man was still haggling his own fee down.

That night he ate the day’s slag in the dark, down to the last thread of the herbs’ worth.

[Reservoir: 24% | Note: nobody counts the rations either.]

Two days later the second bend dried out and the cart went back to the short route. As it rolled past the junction to the old rooms, three slow taps came from far down the dark corridor.

“Come back when the cart is late,” Pei Wuyan’s voice said, pitched to reach the cart and no farther.

“Today you cook at my table,” Mei Han said, not looking up.

Mei Han’s table stood beneath Hall Two’s only lamp that never dimmed. Nobody normally cooked there. Shi Feng became wary. He kept looking at the floor while he considered why she wanted him away from his own station.

“Was yesterday’s batch wrong, Appraiser Mei?” Shi Feng asked, letting his voice shake.

“Yesterday’s batch was three passes and three slag. Exactly quota,” Mei Han said. “Sit.”

A small warm furnace stood on the corner beside five herbs and the recipe for the house’s Soul Formation-grade Ember Blood Pill. Kong Ba leaned in the doorway with his arms folded over his belly and a toothpick in his mouth.

“Don’t mind me,” Kong Ba said loudly. “It relaxes me.”

Shi Feng reached for the second herb, and his nose stopped him before his fingers did.

The red-veined root looked correct, but its scent stopped him. Ember root smelled of a banked hearth. Beneath this one’s familiar smell was an unnatural chill. His Physique reacted to it and identified cold sap before his hand touched the herb.

Ember-bark, Shi Feng thought. It grows beside ember root and looks just like it, and at the third heat its sap turns cold and kills whatever goes in after it. The Pill Pit doesn’t have careless herb boys.

He glanced at Kong Ba, who was picking his teeth and very carefully looking at nothing.

They’re testing me, Shi Feng thought. If he named the false herb, he’d expose his nose. If he saved the batch, he’d expose his hands. A nervous boy would trust the tray and fail. Kong Ba was watching for anything that didn’t fit that boy.

“Something wrong with the herbs, boy?” Kong Ba asked.

Shi Feng jumped like a startled rabbit. “N-no, Overseer Kong!” Shi Feng stammered. “They’re much better than at home. I was only counting them.”

“Counting them! He’s caught Shu’s disease,” Kong Ba guffawed. “Go on, cook.”

Shi Feng lit the fire. He dropped in the ember-bark with the honest face of a boy who trusted his herbs. At the third heat the sap went cold all at once and the furnace shook. He lowered his fire the way a frightened boy would, a little too late and a little too much.

The blood-sun moss went in on top of the cold sap and turned grey in a breath.

Shi Feng regretted wasting the moss, but saving this batch would reveal too much. He could recover its herbs’ worth afterward. He couldn’t recover the captors’ mistaken opinion once he showed them what he could do.

He finished all five steps, sweating. One thin cloud rose over the lid. It wobbled, thinned at the edges, and sank back into the iron.

“One failure,” Clerk Shu said.

Mei Han lifted the brown lump with her tongs and dropped it into the waste bucket. “Lost the heat at the third herb,” Mei Han said. “A common mistake.”

“I’m sorry, Appraiser Mei,” Shi Feng said, staring at his hands. “The fire just went.”

In the doorway, Kong Ba took out his toothpick, looked at it, and put it back. Then he pushed off the frame and walked away down the corridor, whistling.

It was the cheerful, off-key tune of a man who’d won the first round of a bet.

A man doesn’t whistle when his test is over, Shi Feng thought, and bent to scrub his furnace like a boy who’d been scolded.