Chapter 602 — Free Noodles

CHAPTER 602

Free Noodles

For seven days, nobody came.

Porters passed the crooked sign without stopping. One read it and spat. A dog slept on the step all afternoon. Shi Feng watched it from his empty counter, frustrated that even selling cheaply hadn’t given anyone a reason to try his pills.

On the eighth morning, Shi Feng sat down at Tao Erniang’s bench with an empty bowl.

“Auntie Tao,” Shi Feng said pleasantly. “I’d like to put a pill in every porter’s bowl. Free.”

“Free?” Tao Erniang shouted, so loudly that two porters ducked. “You owe me three thousand four hundred and twenty, and you want to give things away? Rent first!”

“Rent first,” Shi Feng agreed. “That’s why I’m here. Let me show you the sums.”

He held up one finger.

“First. You sell about forty bowls a morning,” Shi Feng said. “Every one of those men has a bad back. A Common Stamina Pill fixes a bad back for three days. The herbs cost half a stone a pill, from the grass market.”

“And who pays for the grass?” Tao Erniang demanded.

“You do,” Shi Feng said. “Second. When the lane hears there’s a free pill in Old Tao’s noodles, you’ll sell eighty bowls a morning, not forty. That’s eighty more stones a day, and the pills cost you forty. Third. Every man who eats one walks past my sign afterwards. In a month, the shop pays your rent, and your board says zero.”

Tao Erniang gripped her ladle and glared. She wanted the rent, but she didn’t like being asked to pay first for the plan that would earn it. Shi Feng waited while she tested his figures.

She has to risk something for the extra customers, Shi Feng thought. Forty stones of herbs sounded large only because she was being asked before the new bowls had sold.

“If one porter gets sick,” Tao Erniang said slowly, “I’ll put you in the pot myself.”

“That’s fair,” Shi Feng said.

The Stamina Pills were simple. He made them three to a furnace, at three clouds each, with exactly the colour and smell of a cheap pill. He didn’t push for a fourth cloud. More clouds would draw the wrong kind of customer.

On the first morning, Tao Erniang dropped one pill into each bowl like a coin into a well, scowling.

By noon, a porter who’d carried rice sacks for twenty years stood up from the bench and touched his toes.

“My back!” the porter shouted. “Auntie, my back’s gone quiet!”

“Mine too!”

“What did you put in the broth?”

“It’s the pill! The boy next door made it!”

“The frontier boy?”

The next morning, the queue for noodles went round the corner. On the third morning, it reached the fish market.

In the back room, Shi Feng had a problem, and it was a happy one. The orders were coming faster than he could roll the pills.

Tao Xiaoyu solved it. She came in with a jar from the cellar, a dusty one with an old wax seal, left behind by the dead apothecary.

“Nascent Soul-grade bone-moss,” Tao Xiaoyu said. “It’s been down there a year. Mother says it’s yours with the shop. Can the old man use it?”

Shi Feng looked at Ji Yuanhe. The old man was tapping on his knee again, faster than yesterday.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said gently. “Would you like to cook?”

Ji Yuanhe didn’t answer. But he moved to the furnace.

His hands found the lid. They were steady for a moment, then lost the rhythm and started to shake.

Tao Xiaoyu watched Ji Yuanhe’s shaking hands from the doorway. Her long spoon kept circling in the noodle pot. After a few breaths, she began counting with each turn, slowly enough for the old man to follow.

“One. Two. Three. Four,” Tao Xiaoyu counted.

Ji Yuanhe’s hands settled. He added the bone-moss. He turned the flame.

“Five,” Ji Yuanhe said with her. “Six.”

Eight clouds rose over the furnace, pale gold, one after another. When Ji Yuanhe lifted the lid, the tray held twelve Nascent Soul-grade pills, glossy and perfect, without a single flaw.

Perfect.

Shi Feng was delighted. Ji Yuanhe’s damaged soul still needed care, but his hands remembered their work when someone helped him keep time. The tray held the finest pills Shi Feng had seen made in this lane.

“How did you know to count?” Shi Feng asked.

“He counts,” Tao Xiaoyu said, as if it was obvious. “So I count with him.”

On the fifth day, a sergeant of the City Lord’s patrol pushed through the queue with two men behind him. Shi Feng put down his bowl and waited.

“This shop’s selling pills,” the patrol sergeant said. “Paper.”

Shi Feng showed him the stamp. FENG SHI, UNMARKED RATES. The patrol sergeant read it, grunted, and didn’t leave.

“My captain’s got an old arrow wound in his hip,” the patrol sergeant said at last, more quietly. “The physicians say it’s a Nascent Soul-grade bone pill or a cane. The Pavilion halls want a year. I hear you’re quick.”

“I’m very quick,” Shi Feng said. “Bring me two sets of herbs and six hundred stones.”

The sergeant returned that afternoon with both herbs and payment. Tao Xiaoyu opened a new account book and wrote carefully: Commission One. Patrol sergeant. Bone pill. Six hundred. Shi Feng watched, pleased to have a real order on the counter at last.

“Harmony brings wealth,” Tao Erniang said from her bench, very satisfied with herself, and rubbed out a hundred on her board.

The lane was full. The noodle pot was full. For the first time since the Pit, Shi Feng’s pouch had something in it.

Then he noticed three men standing at the mouth of the lane.

They weren’t eating. They wore red rope knotted at their belts, and one of them was moving his lips as he looked down the queue, counting heads.