Chapter 582 — Terms in Writing

CHAPTER 582

Terms in Writing

“Terms in writing,” Shi Feng said. “Who signs, who guarantees, and what happens to Ji Yuanhe?”

Shi Feng made himself stop looking at the sky. The Visitor sat an arm’s length away, unreadable to his Spirit Sense. Ning Zhe remained standing behind him with the folder closed against his chest. Neither man would let him pretend this was an ordinary discussion.

“You want paper,” the Visitor said.

“I want paper, Honoured Guest,” Shi Feng said politely. “In my village, a man selling a cow gets a receipt. You’re asking me to sell a lot more than a cow.”

“The Heavenly Sect does not sign for what it already holds,” the Visitor said.

“Then you don’t need my yes,” Shi Feng said. “But you still came all the way down here to ask for it.”

Ning Zhe’s thumb stopped moving on the folder.

The Visitor looked at him for a long moment. His eyes were flat and patient, and they kept dropping to Shi Feng’s hands. Not his face. His hands.

They need something they can’t force from me, Shi Feng thought. Otherwise there’d be no offer. The Visitor kept examining his hands. He needed to find out what made those hands worth bargaining over before he agreed to use them.

“Show me your hands,” the Visitor said.

Shi Feng laid them on his knees, palms up, like a boy at a physician’s stall. The Visitor studied them without touching them. Then he took a small jade box from his sleeve and opened it.

A pill lay inside, the colour of old ivory, with a faint gold ring around its middle. The smell of it filled the room at once. Shi Feng knew the grade from Mo’s notes in Volume One before he’d even finished breathing in. Shattering Void-grade. A lifespan pill.

“For a Soul Formation cultivator, a hundred years,” the Visitor said. “For you, more. It is a gift, not a price. Eat it and think.”

Shi Feng leaned in to smell it, like a greedy boy who’d never seen anything so fine.

Beneath the sweet scent, Shi Feng recognised the same inward pull as the binding root. It matched the pattern he’d drawn in dust the night before. His Physique rejected it at once. Whatever lifespan the pill offered, obedience came with it.

The sealed order had taught him exactly what to distrust. Shi Feng kept his expression greedy for another moment, then straightened without taking the pill.

He pushed the box back toward the Visitor with one finger.

“Have your own clerk eat it first, Honoured Guest,” Shi Feng said. “I’m fussy. In my village, a seller tastes his own wine.”

Ning Zhe coughed into his sleeve. It sounded a lot like a laugh.

The Visitor closed the box. His expression didn’t change at all, but the room felt colder.

“You have a nose,” the Visitor said.

“Just a country nose, Honoured Guest,” Shi Feng said. “It’s sneezed at worse.” He folded his hands on his knees as if they were finally getting down to business. “So, this hall of mine. How many furnaces does it come with?”

“As many as you need,” the Visitor said.

“Does it have a window?” Shi Feng asked.

“If you want one,” the Visitor said.

“And who pays for the charcoal?” Shi Feng asked. “If the herbs aren’t counted, who counts the pills? And where do the pills go?”

“Where the Sect sends them,” the Visitor said coldly. “Markets downriver. You would never need to see them.”

Pills containing that bond were going to markets downriver. Shi Feng memorised the answer. They wanted him making medicine for people who wouldn’t recognise the hidden ingredient. His own hall would mean taking part in that work willingly.

“That’s a lot of hall for no rent,” Shi Feng said. “Senior Brother always said the free room is the one with the most expensive door.”

The Visitor stood. He was taller than he’d looked sitting down.

“Understand this, Alchemist Shi,” the Visitor said. “A leashed hand cooks a leashed pill. It fails at the last cloud, every time. The Sect has tried. So we need willing hands.” He tucked the jade box away. “A willing hand or none. When the water comes, the channel forms by itself. The Sect can wait.”

He walked out without giving his name. Nobody bowed him out. The door simply closed behind him, and the slot let in its strip of sky as if nothing had happened.

Ning Zhe unfolded his chair at last, looked at it, and folded it again with a small click.

“That was not wise, Alchemist Shi,” Ning Zhe said mildly.

“I’m sorry, Receiver Ning,” Shi Feng said, and let his shoulders drop. “I got nervous. When I’m nervous I ask about money.”

“Yes,” Ning Zhe said. “I’ve noticed.”

He didn’t say anything else on the long walk down.

That night the guards changed their rounds.

Shi Feng lay on his shelf and counted boots in the corridor. Four rounds a night since the day he arrived. Tonight there were three. The second patrol never came, and when the third passed his door, the two men were talking about dice.

The lighter patrols gave him more room, but Shi Feng didn’t mistake them for trust. They’d decided he would come round if allowed time. He would have to use that time before the Visitor changed his mind.

He lay still and thought about the Visitor’s eyes, going back to his hands again and again.

He came all this way to see what my hands can do, Shi Feng thought, and grinned at the ceiling.

So do I.