Chapter 629 — The Million

CHAPTER 629

The Million

The harvest went by in smoke, steam and shouting. Sixty days later, Tao Xiaoyu put down her brush, climbed onto a stool and wrote a number on the shop wall in charcoal.

1,000,000.

She wrote it very large. Then she climbed down and stared at it with her mouth open, as if someone else had written it.

“Thirty-eight contracts at triple fees,” Tao Xiaoyu said faintly. “And the surplus. And the Situ fee, and the Valley, and Manager Jin’s hundred and sixty thousand.” She swallowed. “Master, I added it three times.”

“Then it’s right three times,” Shi Feng said, delighted.

He walked to the back furnace, where Ji Yuanhe was scraping the evening’s tray clean, and clapped the old man on the shoulder.

“Old Ji, look at that wall,” Shi Feng said. “You’re now the best-paid counter in Wanhe. If I paid you by the number, I’d be bankrupt by the end of the week.”

Ji Yuanhe looked at the wall for a long time.

“One million,” Ji Yuanhe said. “One million and one. One million and two.”

He kept going. Shi Feng laughed so hard he had to lean on the furnace.

Fan Baoshou came through the door, saw the wall and dropped straight to his knees.

“This Fan kowtows to the God of Wealth!” Fan Baoshou cried, and actually knocked his head on the floorboards. “A noodle lane and a frontier boy, and now a million! This Fan always said you’d be rich, Master Feng!”

“You said I was a bumpkin who’d be bankrupt in a month,” Shi Feng said.

“A misunderstanding!” Fan Baoshou said, still on his knees.

Tao Erniang came in from next door with a tray, looked at the wall and slammed down a bowl of noodles in front of him.

“Rent first!” Tao Erniang said. Then she set down a second bowl, with an extra egg in it. “And eat. You look like a ghost.”

Shi Feng picked up the second bowl and decided not to mention that it was the first time she’d ever given him an extra egg.

The shout came from the herb shed just after the second watch.

“Fire! Fire in the back!”

Shi Feng was through the yard in three steps. One of the porters hired for the harvest stood in the shed doorway, white-faced, with a broken lamp at his feet. Burning oil had run across the floor toward the herb crates and the big black shape in the corner. Mo’s cauldron, the Pit-Breaker, sat in the smoke with flames licking at its feet.

The lane was faster than he was.

“Buckets! Noodle water, the big pots!” Tao Erniang roared.

A line formed from Old Tao’s kitchen to the shed in the space of a few breaths. Porters, neighbours, Fan Baoshou in his good robe and Tao Xiaoyu with a ladle all passed pots of hot, cloudy noodle water from hand to hand. Ji Yuanhe counted the buckets aloud. At the twenty-third, the last flame hissed out.

The shed stank of scorched straw and pork broth. Mo’s cauldron was black anyway, and the fire hadn’t even marked it.

The porter fell to his knees in the wet.

“Master Feng, spare me! I didn’t mean it!” the porter wailed. “A clerk from the Jin Trading House gave me a silver. He just wanted me to look at the big pot and tell him if there were marks inside. I dropped the lamp when I bent over!”

The lane went quiet. Shi Feng crouched in front of the porter and looked at him for a while.

Jin Wenshan wanted that seed, Shi Feng thought. I got it instead, and he paid me a hundred and sixty thousand for the surplus pill. Now his house wants to know what I paid three hundred and twenty thousand for. Fine. Let them wonder.

“Here’s the bill,” Shi Feng said. “One bucket of noodle water, owed to Auntie Tao. You’ll carry it back yourself.” He took two silver coins from his sleeve and pressed them into the porter’s wet hand. “And that’s double what the clerk paid you. Go and tell him there’s nothing in my shed but firewood.”

The porter stared at the coins, then at him, and kowtowed three times before he ran.

Zhuo Tingsong came the next morning with a sealed commission under his arm. A salt-guild master wanted a Soul Formation-grade set, and the old man had brought it himself.

“I’ll watch you refine it,” Zhuo Tingsong said, settling onto a stool. “If you don’t mind, young friend.”

“You can watch,” Shi Feng agreed. “We'll settle the stool fee tomorrow, Grandmaster.”

Zhuo Tingsong didn't smile. He watched Shi Feng closely, troubled by his appearance rather than the joke.

“You haven’t slept,” Zhuo Tingsong said.

“The harvest just ended, Grandmaster,” Shi Feng said. “Nobody on this lane has slept.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Zhuo Tingsong said quietly. “You are not well. Don’t say you are.”

Shi Feng opened his mouth to make a joke and closed it again.

He noticed, Shi Feng thought. He'd known the old master was observant, but he hadn't expected him to see a problem Shi Feng himself couldn't yet name.

That night he lay on the floor of the back room and didn’t sleep at all. His body was full of qi. His mind was perfectly clear. And something deep in his dantian was waiting for him to look at it.

So he counted, the way Ji had taught him in the dark. Lanterns. Bowls. Stones. One. Two. Three.

Somewhere far below the count, in the dark of his dantian, the Nascent Soul opened its eyes.