Chapter 575 — Two Hundred and Twelve Tags

CHAPTER 575

Two Hundred and Twelve Tags

“Failure,” Clerk Shu said. “Trial set, the eleventh.”

Ten more batches had died in the same corner of Hall Two over the next two weeks, and every one of them had died honestly.

Each attempt taught him something. The frost leaf needed cold hands. The humming seed pod cracked when he stirred against its rhythm and quieted when he followed it. Nothing he tried affected the bone-white root. He was learning the ingredients without yet being able to refine them.

None of them gave a single cloud. The wall was still the wall.

Ning Zhe unfolded his chair and read the eleven lines in his folder with obvious pleasure.

“Everyone before you failed louder,” Ning Zhe said. “Burst lids. One man wept. You fail quietly and differently every time, Alchemist Shi. That’s a man learning, not a man guessing.”

“I’m sorry about the herbs, Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng said, wringing his rag.

“Don’t be. Herbs are only money,” Ning Zhe said, and nodded to the men in grey. Six more sets went into the crate. It was the second time he’d filled it. “The roads are long. We’ll keep walking.”

Kong Ba waited until the hall had emptied before he cleared his throat.

“Receiver Ning,” Kong Ba said, lowering his big voice as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. “The boy’s eating them. The trial lumps, I mean. Bao Liang saw crumbs on his shelf. Not so much as a bellyache.”

“I know,” Ning Zhe said.

“That’s Deity Transformation-grade herb, Receiver Ning. Into a frontier boy’s stomach!” Kong Ba said.

“Which his Nascent Soul can’t use,” Ning Zhe said calmly. “If a Physique eats, it grows, and if it grows, I’ll see what it is. I’d rather feed it in front of me than guess at it behind my back. The herbs are cheaper than the guessing.”

Kong Ba scratched his head and said nothing more.

Shi Feng scrubbed station nine and listened, pleased. Ning Zhe knew about the trial waste and wanted it to feed him.

He expects the Physique to reveal itself, Shi Feng thought. Let him keep expecting that. For now, every failed batch strengthened a Reservoir the receiver hadn’t noticed.

Ning Zhe was patient enough to be dangerous. Shi Feng couldn’t forget that just because the arrangement fed him. Eventually the receiver would demand results. He needed to be ready before then.

“You. Frontier boy,” Kong Ba said the next cycle, and tossed him a strip of bamboo with a red seal on it. “Weighing runner. Bring Appraiser Mei the trial herbs for weighing, and bring back what she doesn’t want. Every cycle.”

Shi Feng caught it and stared at it like a boy holding a live snake.

“Me, Overseer Kong?” Shi Feng asked. “But the herb room...”

“That’s a key-slip, not the key. You stand at the alcove and the herb boy hands things out,” Kong Ba said. “Use a man and don’t doubt him, doubt a man and don’t use him. You eat your own rubbish and don’t steal the good stuff. You’re the most honest fool in this house.”

“Thank you, Overseer Kong!” Shi Feng said, and bowed so low his forehead nearly hit the stool.

Being trusted as a fool had earned him another route through the Pit. Shi Feng bowed, hiding his satisfaction.

The herb room sat behind Hall One, down six steps. An iron grille filled the alcove, and through it Shi Feng could see shelf after shelf of jars and bundles in the yellow light of one lamp.

There was no ledger on the table. There was no clerk.

Instead, every lot carried a small paper tag, ink-stamped in red with the same square seal. The herb boy checked his slip and brought out the trial roots.

Shi Feng waited at the grille with his eyes lowered, and he counted the tags.

He counted them by shelf, the way Clerk Shu counted pills. Forty on the left wall. Sixty-eight on the long rack. Fifty-five on the back shelves, and forty-nine in the low bins.

Two hundred and twelve lots.

So they don’t write the herbs down, Shi Feng thought. They stamp them. Nobody keeps a book for a room this big unless they trust the tags to keep it for them.

He filed the number away beside the cold flue and the draught at the pit.

Mei Han weighed every trial root twice on her brass scale.

“The pod’s light,” Mei Han said. “By one grain of rice.”

“Does one grain matter, Appraiser Mei?” Shi Feng asked timidly.

“Miss by a hair at the start, and you miss by a thousand li at the end,” Mei Han said. “Write it down, Shu.”

“One grain light,” Clerk Shu said, writing.

She reached for the counterweight, and her cuff slid back. A thin grey ring circled her left wrist, smooth and old, like the mark a cord leaves when it has been worn for years and then taken off.

Mei Han tugged the cuff down without looking at it.

Shi Feng looked at the scale and let her cover the old mark. Whatever had left it, she didn’t want him watching. He wouldn’t force the question while she held his trial herbs in her hands.

That night, he scraped the last threads of the eleventh batch and ate them slowly. The qi went down, and most of it went where it always went. But some of it didn’t.

It gathered just under his Nascent Soul, dense and cold and heavy. The Physique had pulled it apart, but his body couldn’t take it in. It just sat there like a swallowed stone.

[Reservoir: 40% | Knot: Deity Transformation-grade, undigested]

Shi Feng pressed his hand flat against his stomach and frowned at the ceiling.

Then the slot in the door scraped open, and Kong Ba’s voice boomed through it.

“Good news, boy!” Kong Ba said. “Receiver Ning wants a number for his investment. Next week, you cook against Yan Boru.”