Chapter 606 — Three Hundred and the Slag

CHAPTER 606

Three Hundred and the Slag

“I said eleven, Grandmaster,” Shi Feng said, standing up and bowing. “Your apprentice warms the red pith on the furnace lip. Warm it in your hand instead. That’s all.”

Zhuo Tingsong stopped in front of him, breathing hard. He was a tall old man with a proud nose, and half his beard was gone.

“In the hand?” Zhuo Tingsong asked. “The Zhuo method has warmed it on the lip for three hundred years!”

“For three hundred years, the lip’s been hottest just when the pith is ready,” Shi Feng said. “It warms the herb, then burns it. Senior Brother Lin’s Lesson twenty-seven: check what a method actually does before trusting the instructions. The pith needs less heat.”

Zhuo Tingsong fell silent, working through the firing order in his head. Shi Feng let him think.

“…The lip,” Zhuo Tingsong muttered. “Heaven above. The lip.”

“That fix is three hundred stones,” Shi Feng added politely.

“Three hundred?” Zhuo Heng shouted, wiping soot off his face. “Grandfather, he’s a street hawker! He got lucky, and now he wants to rob us!”

“He told you eleven breaths before it happened,” Zhuo Tingsong snapped. “Is that luck? Pay him.”

Zhuo Heng’s black face turned a deep red under the soot. A servant counted out three hundred stones on Tao Erniang’s bench.

“And two stones for the noodles,” Shi Feng said.

The servant paid that too.

Zhuo Tingsong stayed beside the bench, already following the correction through the rest of his recipe.

“Boy,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “If the pith’s warmed in the hand, then the frost leaf—”

“Goes in half a turn earlier,” Shi Feng said. “Or the fire runs cold.”

“And the ember root at full—,” Zhuo Tingsong said.

“Three-quarters,” Shi Feng said. “Full fire was only there to make up for the hot pith.”

“Then the cooling—,” Zhuo Tingsong said.

“Shorter by ten breaths,” Shi Feng said. “The pill won’t need it anymore.”

Zhuo Tingsong stared. The boy had answered three questions before the old man could finish any of them.

Zhuo Tingsong stroked the short side of his beard and winced.

“I had eyes, but I didn’t recognise Mount Tai,” Zhuo Tingsong said. Then he straightened, and was a proud old master again. “Tea at my house tomorrow noon. I’ll send a carriage.”

He turned and marched back up the lane. Zhuo Heng followed, kicking a roof tile.

“…Eleven,” Ji Yuanhe said from the doorway, with great satisfaction.

That evening Shi Feng went up the lane to the Zhuo hall with a basket and asked the apprentices for the slag from the blown furnace.

“The slag?” the apprentice asked, baffled. “It’s poison. Even the rats won’t touch it.”

“It’s for my research,” Shi Feng said.

They gave him three full baskets and thought he was mad. That night, in the back room, he ate every lump of it. Soul Formation-grade herbs, scorched and wasted, still held every bit of their qi.

[Core of soul: filling]

The Zhuo carriage came at noon the next day, black lacquer with two white horses. The driver bowed. The Zhuo house stood at the far end of Lamp-Oil Lane, about three hundred paces away.

Shi Feng handed the driver a slip of paper before he got in.

“What’s this, Alchemist Feng?” the driver asked.

“Consultation, carriage fare, three hundred paces, twenty stones, paid by the host,” Shi Feng said. “I’m sure it’s included. I just like to have it written down.”

The driver tucked the slip into his sleeve for the steward.

The ride took as long as a cup of tea. Zhuo Heng was waiting in the doorway of the family’s furnace hall with his arms crossed. His hair had been cut short to hide the burns.

“Grandfather wants you for tea,” Zhuo Heng said coldly. “But a frontier paper can’t light a Soul Formation fire. Anyone can guess a furnace from a lane away. Trash like you just guess loudly.”

A dozen apprentices in the hall behind him turned to look.

Zhuo Heng wanted proof from the family’s own furnace, and the grandfather was willing to provide it.

“Then lend me your furnace for an hour,” Shi Feng said.

Zhuo Tingsong, at the far end of the hall, said nothing. He just waved a hand. An apprentice brought a full Soul Formation-grade set.

Shi Feng warmed the red pith in his palm before adding it. The frost leaf went in half a turn early, and he held the ember root at three-quarters fire. Everyone in the hall could hear the improvement: the furnace’s breathing stayed even through the corrected steps.

Clouds rose over the lid. Three. Five. Six. Seven.

The furnace leaned toward an eighth. He let the fire sag half a beat. Seven was a public number. Eight would make the old man too interested.

“Seven clouds,” an apprentice said, his voice shaking. “Major Success. Soul Formation-grade. On our own furnace.”

“From a regional Mark?”

“…”

Zhuo Tingsong called for the method book. An apprentice brought the bound volume and opened it at the firing order, and the old man took up the brush.

“Whose name?” Zhuo Tingsong asked.

“Pei Wuyan’s,” Shi Feng said. “He taught me this correction before he died. It’s his; I carried it down the lane.”

The brush hovered. “No,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “The Zhuo method book has taken no outside name in three hundred years. Not a grandmaster’s. Not a street alchemist’s.”

“Then leave it out,” Shi Feng said, “and warm the pith on the lip tomorrow.”

Zhuo Tingsong looked at the page a long moment. Then he wrote, in the small hand he used for debts: Warm the red pith in the hand, never on the lip. Beneath it: entered at the correction of Pei Wuyan.

He sanded the page and shut the book.

Zhuo Heng turned and strode out of the hall. He didn’t see the stool by the door. It went over with a crash, and the young master went over with it, and he got up and kept walking without looking back.

Zhuo Tingsong rose and smoothed his singed beard.

“A broken mirror can’t be made whole,” Zhuo Tingsong said quietly. Then he gestured toward the house across the water, where a teapot was already steaming. “Come, young friend. Now we can drink tea.”