Chapter 623 — Above the Fifth Desk

CHAPTER 623

Above the Fifth Desk

Gongye Shou’s house was a narrow courtyard on the west bank with one pine tree and no servants.

The old man was sweeping the yard himself when Shi Feng arrived. Yesterday he’d needed a cane to stand. Today the cane was propped against the tree, and he was sweeping as if he had somewhere to be.

“You’re early,” Gongye Shou said. “Good. The young waste time and the old can’t afford to. Now I’m somewhere in the middle again.”

“Senior looks ten years younger,” Shi Feng said, bowing.

“Thirty,” Gongye Shou said. “Don’t round me down.”

He led Shi Feng to a stone table under the pine and poured tea that was actually hot this time.

“Last night I sat up and counted,” Gongye Shou said. “Eleven months became thirty years. The seed was the price of the pill. The years weren’t on the bill, and you didn’t add them.” He looked at Shi Feng sharply. “Why not?”

“I forgot,” Shi Feng said.

“Liar,” Gongye Shou said. “A man who bills a Jin manager for his own boast doesn’t forget anything.”

Shi Feng laughed.

“Fine, Senior,” Shi Feng admitted. “You offered the seed and paid exactly what we agreed. I'd rather know a man who keeps his word than charge him for every good thing the medicine does.”

Gongye Shou snorted, but he looked pleased.

“This old man owes you one favour,” Gongye Shou said. “Name it when you need it. It’s good in Wanhe and in a few places beyond.” He sipped his tea. “And this morning I’ll throw in something for free. You went to the Records Hall.”

Shi Feng’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

“The archivist bowed you out,” Gongye Shou went on. “Above the fifth desk. Half the city heard about the noodle-lane alchemist who haggled his fee back from the Pavilion. You’re more famous than you think, young man.”

“Above the fifth desk,” Shi Feng said. “So I sit a 5 Mark and ask again.”

“No,” Gongye Shou said, setting down his cup. “That's why I asked you here. You need to know which desk before you spend years trying to reach the wrong one. I asked a friend in the annex this morning. What you asked for doesn’t lie at the fifth desk. It isn’t at the sixth desk’s door. It’s at the sixth desk itself, and that desk answers to nobody below a 6 Mark.”

The pine creaked overhead.

Shi Feng sat very still. Above the fifth. Only a handful of living people held the 6 Mark.

“That’s a long way up, Senior,” Shi Feng said.

“Life and death are decided by fate,” Gongye Shou said. “That’s all this old man knows.”

Shi Feng said nothing about what he knew.

The truth was that his hands could reach the 5 Mark sooner than anyone in Wanhe would believe. But a 4 Mark sitting or higher meant Tianjing, and Tianjing meant signing the register in his true name. A Mark was sealed to a man, not to a shop sign. The moment he signed, anyone who wanted to find him could.

He wasn’t strong enough yet to survive what came after that.

So he drank his tea, thanked the old man properly, and left the favour unspent.

That night he shut the shop early and laid out what was left.

There was the grey lump from the fourth longevity furnace, turtle-shell moss cooked to failure with all its oil still inside. There was a wax-sealed bundle of Pill Pit herbs that Ji Yuanhe had scraped clean that afternoon. And there were three of the week’s failed Soul Formation-grade sets, which the furnace clause had handed him for free.

“Shall I count for you, Master?” Tao Xiaoyu asked, yawning, from the doorway.

“Go home and sleep,” Shi Feng told her. “You can't keep the Book straight tomorrow if you spend all night counting for me.”

Tao Xiaoyu rolled her eyes and went.

Shi Feng sat cross-legged on the floor of the back room and ate the grey lump first.

The moss’s years poured into him as raw, slow qi, heavy and warm. Then the Pit herbs went down, sharp and bitter, then the three failed sets one after another. The All-Devouring Physique took every herb’s worth and asked for more.

Through the wall, Ji Yuanhe started counting.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Two. Three.”

Shi Feng hadn’t asked him to. Ji had simply heard the qi move and started, the way he’d started in the Pit. Shi Feng let his breathing fall into the old man’s rhythm.

At four hundred, the Nascent Soul in his dantian stirred. At six hundred, it sat up straight. Its small body had been half clear for months. Now it filled in from the feet upward, until every limb was solid and bright.

At eight hundred and twelve, the last restriction inside him gave way. Qi rushed through every meridian at once.

Peak Nascent Soul.

Shi Feng opened his eyes and grinned at the dark ceiling. An old man’s years, a kidnapper’s herbs and a client’s failures had just pushed him to the top of a realm.

He wished Lin Langtian could see it, Shi Feng thought. His senior brother would be shouting loud enough to wake the whole lane.

“Eight hundred and thirteen,” Ji Yuanhe said through the wall. “Eight hundred and fourteen.”

“That’s enough, Old Ji,” Shi Feng called softly. “Go to sleep.”

The counting slowed and stopped.

Shi Feng lay down on the floor. Just before dawn, he heard it in the lane outside: the thin, clear ring of a small bell. It wasn’t a temple bell or a cart bell.

He’d heard that sound once before, on a broken stair at the Ruin, with violet lightning running from it into the sky.