Chapter 618 — The Folding Chair

CHAPTER 618

The Folding Chair

“Forty-one!” Tao Xiaoyu called.

The man who stepped up to the counter was neat and quiet, with a plain face and grey sleeves that had no badge.

Half the clerks in Wanhe wore grey, Shi Feng told himself. He told himself twice. His hand stayed on the furnace lid.

“Five sets of Nine-Sun Marrow Pills,” the servant said. He set five herb boxes on the counter, then a pouch of stones. “The full fee, now. My master will wait.”

“Your master is welcome to wait at Old Tao’s next door,” Shi Feng said pleasantly. “The noodles are hot, and the landlady only shouts at people who owe her rent.”

“My master will wait,” the servant said again, in exactly the same voice.

Tao Xiaoyu counted the pouch, wrote the contract and read the furnace clause aloud. The servant listened, nodded and signed. Then he walked off down the lane without looking back.

Shi Feng leaned toward the back room.

“Xiaoyu,” Shi Feng said quietly. “Take Uncle Ji into the back and count with him. Shut the door. If anyone asks today, Uncle Ji isn’t here, and there’s no such person.”

“Why?” Tao Xiaoyu asked.

“Don't tell anyone about him,” Shi Feng instructed quietly. “Keep quiet until dark and I’ll buy you sugar.”

“Two sticks,” Tao Xiaoyu insisted, narrowing her eyes.

“Two sticks,” Shi Feng agreed.

She took Ji Yuanhe by the sleeve. The old man went without a word, still counting softly, and the door closed behind them.

Shi Feng lit the fire.

The first set came up as nicely as any Nine-Sun Marrow set had ever come out of the shop. He boxed it, and when the servant came back for it he handed it over the counter and bowed.

The servant carried the box down the lane, past the noodle stall and the porters, all the way to the far end where the Zhuo hall’s back wall made a strip of shade.

A folding chair stood in the shade.

A thin man sat in it with a folder open across his knee. He was tidy and forgettable, the kind of man nobody looks at twice in a market. When he bent his head to read, something in his hair caught the sun.

It was a hairpin. Three crescents on the head.

Shi Feng’s blood went cold from his scalp to his heels.

Here, in Lamp-Oil Lane, Shi Feng thought. Of all the places he could've come. He forced himself not to react where the servant could see him.

Before he could stop himself, he let a thread of Spirit Sense slip down the lane. It touched the thin man but found nothing it could read. There was nothing to read. Not a realm, not a breath of qi, nothing.

He snapped the thread back so fast it stung.

The thin man turned a page. He didn’t look up.

Shi Feng stood behind the furnace with his heart thumping and made himself breathe. In, out. Again.

He doesn’t know, Shi Feng thought. He bought five sets from the famous Feng Shi, the same as the salt guild and the Tang. If he knew, he wouldn’t send a servant. He’d come and sit on my counter. He’s here for Feng Shi’s pills, not looking for Shi Feng. That’s all this is.

Then another part of his mind added, with perfect calm: and if you’re wrong, you’re dead.

He almost laughed at his own reassurance. He couldn't prove the man hadn't recognised him. He had to keep refining without giving him a reason to look closer.

He crouched a little lower behind the furnace and lit the second set.

The afternoon crawled. Every time a set was ready, the servant came up the lane, took the box from Shi Feng’s hand across the counter and carried it back to the chair. Shi Feng never stepped out from behind the furnace. He didn’t look down the lane again, either. He kept his eyes on the fire and made every movement ordinary. The man might not have recognised him, but he would recognise Ji Yuanhe if the old alchemist came outside.

Each time, the thin man opened the box, glanced at the pill and closed it. He never once looked toward the shop.

Behind the back-room door, Tao Xiaoyu’s voice rose and fell, counting steadily, and under it Ji Yuanhe counted with her.

The fifth set went out in the late afternoon.

Shi Feng heard it from forty paces away, over the porters and the noodle pot and the river carts. A small, neat click.

It was the sound of a folding chair closing. He’d heard that click in a cell under a mountain, more times than he cared to count.

When he finally raised his eyes, the shade at the end of the lane was empty.

Lamp-Oil Lane breathed out. Tao Erniang banged her ladle on the pot. Two porters started arguing about a debt. Nobody in the lane could’ve said why it had been so quiet all afternoon, but now it wasn’t.

Shi Feng realised his inner robe was soaked through.

He wiped his hands, opened the back-room door and found Tao Xiaoyu sitting on a crate, still counting, and Ji Yuanhe beside her with both hands flat on his knees.

The old man wasn’t stirring anything. He was staring at the shut window toward the lane.

“…Four hundred and nineteen,” Ji Yuanhe said.

He hadn’t said that number since the Pit.