Chapter 605 — Eleven Breaths

CHAPTER 605

Eleven Breaths

By the end of the month the queue on Lamp-Oil Lane was twenty deep before the noodle pot boiled.

Porters came for the free pill. Their bosses came for the Nascent Soul-grade pills. A few nervous men in better robes came with herb sets wrapped in silk and asked, in low voices, whether the frontier alchemist really finished in three days.

The man in the Zhuo robe came too. This time he walked all the way down the lane with two servants behind him and stopped in front of the bench.

He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, handsome and pale, with the crest of the Zhuo Old House stitched in gold on his chest. People in the queue lowered their heads as he passed.

“That’s Young Master Zhuo Heng,” a porter whispered. “A 3 Mark at thirty-four!”

“His grandfather’s a 4 Mark. That whole hall at the end of the lane’s theirs.”

Zhuo Heng looked down at Shi Feng, who was sitting on the bench with a bowl of noodles.

“So this is the noodle-bowl alchemist,” Zhuo Heng said loudly. “To think that the Zhuo Old House shares a lane with a man who sells pills in soup.”

“Only the free ones, Young Master Zhuo,” Shi Feng said. “The others I sell in bottles.”

The queue laughed, then stopped laughing very quickly.

Zhuo Heng’s face darkened. He pointed back up the lane at his own hall, where a thin column of smoke rose from a tall chimney.

“Do you hear that, frontier boy?” Zhuo Heng asked. “That’s a Soul Formation-grade furnace. My apprentice is running my firing order right now. Ember root at full fire. Frost leaf at the turn. The third herb, red pith, warmed on the lip and dropped at the second bell. Every step’s the Zhuo method. Three hundred years of it. Sit and listen. You might learn something.”

Shi Feng did listen.

Beneath the noise of the street, the distant furnace gave an even roar, then dropped abruptly by a third. He held his chopsticks still. That change wasn’t part of the confident sequence Zhuo Heng had just described.

From inside the Zhuo hall, an apprentice yelped.

Shi Feng put his chopsticks down.

“Your third herb went in hot,” Shi Feng said. “Eleven breaths.”

Zhuo Heng stared at him.

“What did you just say?” Zhuo Heng asked. “You don’t even know what’s in my furnace!”

“The red pith was warmed on the lip too long, and it went in hot,” Shi Feng explained. “The fire’s swallowed it all at once, and now it’s dropped. In eleven breaths it’ll come back up harder than the lid can hold.”

Three hundred years hadn’t made the method immune to a badly timed herb.

For a moment the whole queue was silent.

Then Zhuo Heng laughed, and his servants laughed with him.

“Eleven breaths!” Zhuo Heng said. “Fine. If my furnace is still standing after eleven breaths, you’ll take down that crooked sign and kneel in this lane until sunset. Do you dare?”

“And if it isn’t?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then I’ll kneel!” Zhuo Heng said, without thinking.

“You don’t need to kneel,” Shi Feng said kindly. “Just pay for my noodles. Two stones.”

Zhuo Heng was too angry to hear the furnace now. Shi Feng watched him boast and waited.

“One,” said a porter.

“Two,” said the whole queue.

“Three. Four.”

Ji Yuanhe came to the shop door and counted with them, perfectly in time.

“Five. Six. Seven.”

Zhuo Heng kept smiling as the sound returned. It rose unevenly, in short bursts instead of a steady roar. People near Shi Feng’s bench began looking toward the chimney rather than the young master.

“Eight. Nine.”

Zhuo Heng’s smile slipped. He turned round.

“Ten…” the queue said.

The count stopped there. Zhuo Heng’s mouth worked; the wager was his, and the lane had turned to watch him leave it unclosed.

Ji Yuanhe came down off the step, stood at his shoulder, and said, “Eleven.”

Zhuo Heng flinched as if the word had struck him. “Eleven,” he said himself, aloud, and the wager closed on his own word.

Boom!

The chimney of the Zhuo hall jumped a foot into the air. A fountain of black soot shot out of it, and roof tiles came sailing down the lane. Half the queue threw themselves flat. The other half covered their noodles.

Zhuo Heng stood in the settling dust, face black with soot. The gold crest on his chest was scorched brown, and smoke rose from his hair. His servants stopped laughing. Nobody offered to explain away the timing.

“…” said Zhuo Heng.

“It blew!”

“Eleven! He said eleven!”

“He heard it from here? With a bowl in his hand?”

“My noodles are full of tiles…”

Shi Feng picked his chopsticks back up and finished his noodles. Then he set the empty bowl on the bench and looked at Zhuo Heng politely.

“Two stones, Young Master Zhuo,” Shi Feng said.

Before Zhuo Heng could open his mouth, a voice roared from the top of the lane.

An old man was running down Lamp-Oil Lane in a smoking grey robe. His long white beard had been singed short on one side, and the badge of a 4 Mark swung on his chest. Every porter in the lane scrambled out of his way.

“Who said eleven?” Grandmaster Zhuo Tingsong bellowed. “Which one of you said eleven?”