Chapter 621 — The Pit-Breaker

CHAPTER 621

The Pit-Breaker

“Three hundred and twenty thousand,” Shi Feng said.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The hall fell silent before the auctioneer could bring down his raised hammer.

Every head in the boxes turned up toward the beams.

“From the cheap gallery?”

“Who bids three hundred thousand from a silver bench?”

“That’s the noodle-lane alchemist! Feng Shi!”

“The one who caught Pang Qi with his own receipt?”

“…”

In the Zhuo box, Zhuo Heng had gone very still. His face went red, then white, then red again.

Shi Feng gave him a friendly wave.

“Young Master Zhuo,” Shi Feng called down. “We keep meeting. It must be fate.”

“Three hundred and twenty thousand, from the gallery,” the auctioneer said calmly, and turned to the Zhuo box with a bow. “Does the Zhuo Old House wish to bid?”

Zhuo Heng’s hand was already on the seal. He looked at the sealed letter by his elbow, the one his grandfather had written. Then he looked up at the gallery, at the bumpkin who’d watched him bow two days ago.

Zhuo Heng wants to beat me more than he wants the furnace, Shi Feng thought. He'd already reached his grandfather's limit, but Shi Feng could see him preparing to bid again.

“Three hundred and forty thousand!” Zhuo Heng shouted.

The gallery gasped.

The auctioneer didn’t lower his hammer. He bowed again, just as politely as before.

“Young Master Zhuo, the Zhuo Old House’s sealed limit is three hundred thousand,” the auctioneer said. “For the amount above it, would you please show the deposit?”

Zhuo Heng opened his mouth.

“My grandfather will…” Zhuo Heng said. “The house is good for…”

“The Pavilion regrets it,” the auctioneer said gently. “Without the deposit, the bid can’t stand.”

There was a long, terrible pause. Zhuo Heng’s hand slid off the seal.

“Steal a chicken and lose the handful of rice,” someone in the gallery muttered. Nobody laughed. It was worse than laughing.

“Three hundred and twenty thousand, to the gallery,” the auctioneer said. “Once. Twice.”

Crack.

“Sold,” the auctioneer said.

[Stones: 410,000 → 90,000 | Cauldron: Mo’s]

Fan Baoshou groaned in dismay and sat down on the bench beside the two old men.

“Ninety thousand left, Master Feng,” Fan Baoshou whispered. “Ninety thousand, for a pot.”

“It’s a furnace,” Shi Feng said. “And it’ll earn that back before the frost. Stop crying on my sleeve, Broker Fan. You’re getting your fee.”

Fan Baoshou stopped crying at once.

Below, the door of the Zhuo box opened and closed. Zhuo Heng was gone. From that day on, he never again came to watch Shi Feng fail.

The Pavilion’s collection room was small and dim. Lot Forty-One sat on a square of grey felt in the middle of it, and the clerk in charge bowed twice, had Shi Feng sign for it, and left him alone with it.

Shi Feng stood and looked at the cauldron for a while.

Up close, it was even uglier. The bronze had gone black with sixty years of somebody’s storeroom. The gold seam on the lid had been put there by a master’s hand, then ignored by everyone since. There was soot still caked in the corners of the legs.

The greatest alchemist south of the river, Shi Feng thought, and his furnace ended up in storage for sixty years. Now it belonged to a man who bought the cheapest auction seat. He wondered what Mo Tianheng would've said about that.

He lifted the lid. It was heavy, and it moved without a sound.

Inside, the wall was smooth and dark. He ran his fingertips around it the way he’d run them along the Pit’s flues, slowly, by feel.

Halfway down, his fingers stopped.

There were small dents in the bronze. They were too even to be damage. Somebody had struck the inside wall with a tiny hammer, one mark at a time, in short rows that circled the whole wall. Three marks close together. A gap. Five marks. A longer gap. Two. Then three again.

It wasn’t decoration. Decoration went on the outside, where people could see it.

Shi Feng tapped the rhythm out softly on the rim with one knuckle. The rhythm reminded him of Ji Yuanhe tapping a lid, or Pei knocking through a cell door. But it didn’t match either of them, and when he tried to read it as a count, it fell apart.

You left a message in the furnace, Shi Feng thought, smiling despite his frustration. But he couldn't read it yet. He'd need the key to the rhythm before those marks meant anything.

He closed the lid gently.

Someone knocked on the door frame. A Pavilion runner in blue stood there, bowing.

“Honoured guest,” the runner said. “Forgive the intrusion. The seller of Lot Forty-Two asks to meet the buyer of Lot Forty-One.”

“Why?” Shi Feng asked.

“He didn’t say, honoured guest,” the runner said. He hesitated. “He only said that he hasn’t much time.”