Chapter 632 — Wrong Fire

CHAPTER 632

Wrong Fire

The lid jumped, and black smoke poured out of the vent.

Shi Feng opened the furnace. Inside sat a lump of scorched brown slag, still hissing. Ninety thousand stones’ worth of Zhuo Tingsong’s best herb stock, bought that morning, lay scorched beyond use by any ordinary alchemist.

“Burnt!” Zhuo Tingsong said from his stool. He sounded almost pleased. “Your first 4 Mark-grade set, and it’s burnt. Good. I was starting to think you weren’t human.”

“It tells me where I went wrong,” Shi Feng replied. “Go and eat, Grandmaster. I’ll work through it.”

Zhuo Tingsong grumbled, but he got up and went.

Shi Feng scraped the slag into a bowl and carried it to the back room, where Ji Yuanhe was counting over the small furnace.

“Master Ji, I’m going to tell you why that burnt,” Shi Feng said, sitting down on the floor. “Explaining it aloud is free, and failing twice isn’t.”

“Thirty-one,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Right. The fold I used came from an old master who knew more about fire than anyone in Wanhe,” Shi Feng said. “He folded his flame left on the third herb, to keep the heat soft. It’s a beautiful fold. It was beautiful sixty years ago.”

He broke the slag apart and smelled the inside. Hot. The roots had cooked from the centre out, faster than the fold expected.

“Sixty years ago, the roots grew in cooler ground,” Shi Feng said. “Now the beds are different, the seed is different, and today’s roots run hot. His fold was right for his roots. On today's roots, the same timing burns them from the inside.”

He ate the slag one piece at a time. It tasted of bitter charcoal, and the herbs’ worth went down into the ocean of his soul and spread out, quiet and full.

Mo was wrong again, Shi Feng thought. Politely, and sixty years late.

“I should've tested today's roots before trusting a sixty-year-old timing,” Shi Feng told Ji Yuanhe, licking his thumb. “Ninety thousand stones is an expensive reminder. The next set gets a cooler fold.”

“Thirty-five,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Thirty-five,” Shi Feng agreed. “So, a cooler fold. Same direction. One beat early, before the third herb goes in, so the fire’s already soft when the root arrives.”

He walked the fold through his hands ten times. The Thousand Forge Flame Art had reached Perfection only days before, and the fire moved the way he thought it.

When Zhuo Tingsong came back with oil on his beard, the second set was already in the furnace.

The third herb went in. The flame was already soft and waiting, and the root gave up its fire evenly.

White clouds rose through the vent. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The sixth came up thick and slow, and then the clouds began to darken, grey at the edges and black at the heart.

Zhuo Tingsong sat up straight.

The furnace began to hum. The lid lifted a finger’s width on its own. The pill inside was trying to rise through the iron.

Shi Feng put his hand flat on the lid and held it down.

The lid pressed up against his palm with a weight that had no business being in a pill so small. He held it until the humming faded and the black clouds thinned into nothing.

He opened the lid. A dark gold pill lay at the bottom, still faintly humming.

“Major Success. Six clouds,” Shi Feng said. “4 Mark-grade. For Deity Transformation.”

Zhuo Tingsong didn’t speak. He held out his hand, and Shi Feng put the pill in it.

The old man looked at it for a long time. Zhuo Tingsong was a 4 Mark. He’d made pills like this for forty years, and he knew exactly what he was holding.

“The candle burns brightest before it gutters,” Zhuo Tingsong murmured.

Then he looked up.

“Why does a 3 Mark make this?” Zhuo Tingsong asked quietly. “Why haven’t you sat the 4? You’d pass it in a morning. Any hall in the Empire would hang your name over the door.”

“That’s the problem, Grandmaster,” Shi Feng said, grinning. “A sitting writes my name where everyone can read it, and what follows a name like that is attention. I’m not yet strong enough to survive the kind I’d get.”

“From whom?” Zhuo Tingsong asked.

“From people who collect alchemists,” Shi Feng replied. “They don't ask whether you want to work for them. I'll sit the trial when I'm strong enough to refuse what follows it.”

Zhuo Tingsong looked at him without a word. Then he set the pill down on the bench very carefully.

“Unregistered,” Zhuo Tingsong said.

“Unregistered,” Shi Feng agreed. “And that brings us to the stool.”

“The stool?” Zhuo Tingsong asked.

“Two hundred a day, as agreed,” Shi Feng reminded him. “You saw the failed set, the corrected fold and a 4 Mark-grade pill. That’s the full lesson, not just the finished pill. Senior Brother’s Lesson thirty-three: give him a chair and send him the bill.”

Zhuo Tingsong counted out two hundred stones and put them on the bench beside the pill. His hand wasn’t quite steady.

Then Zhuo Tingsong pushed the stool back until it touched Shi Feng’s knees.

“Sit,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “I’ve watched your hands all season. Watch mine for one fold and tell me what’s wrong with it.”

Shi Feng sat. The old man took up the small crucible and worked the fold slowly, the way a man works when he expects to be corrected. His wrist turned after the root went in.

“Before,” Shi Feng said. “Turn the wrist before the root, or the fire’s already hot when it lands.”

Zhuo Tingsong stopped. He dipped a finger in the charcoal pot and wrote the word on his palm. “Before,” Zhuo Tingsong said. He counted out another two hundred stones and set them beside the first. “For the hour.”

On the stairs to the loft, somebody shifted. Shi Feng glanced up and caught a corner of silk robe whisking out of sight. Zhuo Heng had come to fetch his grandfather and had heard every word.

Shi Feng smiled and said nothing.

By evening, the whole lane was saying it over their noodles.

“A 3 Mark is making 4 Mark pills!”