Chapter 574 — The Locked Crate

CHAPTER 574

The Locked Crate

The chair went down beside station nine, and two men in grey set a crate at Ning Zhe’s feet.

It was black lacquer bound in iron, with a lock the size of a fist. Even closed, it smelled. Deep in Shi Feng’s stomach, the Physique stirred.

“Good morning, Alchemist Shi,” Ning Zhe said pleasantly, turning the key. “I promised you something better to cook.”

The lid came up. On black silk lay nine herbs in nine compartments: a root as white as bone, a leaf that glittered with frost in a hall hot enough to bake bread, and a seed pod that hummed very faintly to itself.

Shi Feng didn’t need the label. Every one of them was Deity Transformation-grade, the grade a 4 Mark alchemist cooked.

On the frontier, people still argued over whether any realm above Soul Formation existed at all. Here, someone had packed it in a box.

“The house’s Deity-Gate Pill. There are four more sets under the silk,” Ning Zhe said. “When they’re gone, I’ll bring more. A 4 Mark pill within the year, Alchemist Shi. I said it on your first day, and I’d like you to see that I meant it.”

Ning Zhe placed his chair between the crate and the arch. Shi Feng could see the Deity Transformation-grade herbs in front of him and Ji Yuanhe’s rows of pale gold pills behind. The old man’s hammer kept counting. The receiver had chosen the view deliberately.

He didn’t need to point at either.

He’s showing me what cooperation earns, Shi Feng thought. And behind him is what years of it can leave of a man.

“R-Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng stammered, staring at the crate. “I’m only a 3 Mark. I’ll waste them.”

“You’ll waste the first ones. Everyone does,” Ning Zhe said. “A clever bird chooses its tree, Alchemist Shi. I’m only showing you what grows on this one.”

Shi Feng bowed his head like a boy who’d been handed far too much.

The herbs tempted him despite the threat. Four more sets, with replacements promised. Lin Langtian once spent an afternoon haggling over a single Nascent Soul-grade mushroom. Shi Feng wished his senior brother could see what this house treated as an ordinary trial allowance.

He wouldn’t fake the first attempt. Shi Feng wanted to find his real limit, and these herbs gave him a chance he couldn’t have bought on the frontier. Ning Zhe would get one honest failure from him.

“Lighting, Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng said.

“Do,” Ning Zhe said, and opened his folder.

He gave the furnace everything a Nascent Soul had.

The flame went from red to white. Sweat ran into his eyes.

The bone-white root lay in the furnace and sweated. It didn’t melt. The frost leaf curled at the edges and kept its frost. The seed pod stopped humming for a moment, then started again.

A Nascent Soul’s fire could only climb so hot, and Deity Transformation-grade herbs slept straight through it.

He pushed harder anyway, to feel the wall with his own hands. It didn’t move at all.

No steam rose. No clouds came. After a long time, the herbs went dull and grey.

“No steam,” Clerk Shu said. “One failure.”

“Ha! He bored the herbs to death!” Kong Ba roared from the doorway. “I’ve never seen a batch die of boredom before!”

“S-sorry, Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng said, his face pale and miserable.

“Don’t be,” Ning Zhe said, and wrote one line. “That’s the heat ceiling. Every man meets it. What interests me is what he does next.”

He folded the chair and left the crate where it was. One of the men in grey locked it and gave the key to Kong Ba.

What I do next, Shi Feng thought, is have supper.

The grey lump had gone into his sleeve at the pit instead of into the dark.

In the cell, Shi Feng held it up to the dim lamp-stone. It was ugly and heavy, and it was still warm.

Even this ruined batch held more qi than any Soul Formation-grade pill he’d made. Shi Feng studied its dull surface. Failed medicine multiplied nothing, but these ingredients were still Deity Transformation-grade. He’d need to be careful about taking their full worth.

He bit off a corner.

Heat struck as soon as he swallowed. The Physique broke the waste pill down, releasing qi so dense it hurt. His Nascent Soul rose in his dantian, pulled awake by the sudden gain. Shi Feng clenched his teeth and fought to keep it from growing.

Down, Shi Feng told it, gritting his teeth.

It took a long time to settle. When it finally did, he was soaked through, and the corner he’d eaten was the size of a rice grain.

So he scraped the lump with his thumbnail instead, a thread at a time. A thread, then a hundred breaths of holding still while the Physique worked. Then another thread.

Halfway through the night, faint through the stone at the back of the cell, a hammer tapped. Three slow taps, and then a fourth that stopped short and hung there, like a question nobody had finished asking.

Alive?

Shi Feng smiled in the dark. He knocked the debt collector’s knock on the wall with two knuckles: two quick and one slow. Yes. And the bill comes later.

The hammer went back to its ordinary rhythm.

[Devoured: 4 Mark trial batch ×1 | Note: eat slowly. Nobody counts this.]

Clerk Shu had written “one failure” and closed the book on it. A trial batch wasn’t quota, so no one tallied the waste.

Shi Feng scraped another thread and did the sum. At this speed one dead batch would take about ten nights. There were four more sets in the crate, and Receiver Ning had promised to bring more when they were gone.

Receiver Ning wanted him to fail until he succeeded.

Shi Feng was perfectly happy to fail for a very long time.