Chapter 638 — The Bridge Is Right There

CHAPTER 638

The Bridge Is Right There

Splash!

The canal was black and freezing, and it came up to Shi Feng’s knees before he could even shift his weight.

He climbed out onto the stone steps, wrung out his trousers and read the jade slip again by lantern light. The Riverless Step didn’t stand on water. It stood on the current: the master stepped where the river pushed up and let it carry him, the way a leaf rides a stream. One line, and it had taken him a whole evening to misread it.

The second time, he got four steps and sank to his waist.

The third time, he got halfway across and went under completely.

When he came up, coughing, a lantern was hanging over him. An old fisherman sat in a sampan, holding out his oar like a man who’d pulled a lot of drunks out of this canal.

“Brother,” the fisherman said kindly, “the bridge is right there.”

He pointed. The stone bridge was twenty paces away, lit by two red lanterns, with a noodle cart on it.

Shi Feng hung on the oar and burst out laughing.

“I know, Uncle,” Shi Feng said. “I’m trying to save the toll.”

“The bridge is free,” the fisherman said.

“I should have asked before I started,” Shi Feng said, laughing at his dripping sleeves. He climbed onto the steps and pressed a copper into the old man’s hand. “For the rescue. You came over as soon as I fell in. I appreciate it.”

The fisherman bit the copper, shook his head and rowed away, muttering about young people.

Shi Feng squeezed water from his sleeves and studied the current. Repeating the same mistake would only get him wet again.

He stopped trying to stand on the canal. He stood on the steps, closed his eyes and listened to it instead. It was going east, slow on top and fast underneath, pushing up wherever the old stones of the bed rose. He stepped where it pushed.

The water held.

He took a second step and a third. The current lifted his feet like a hand under a cup, and he walked across the black canal to the far steps with his boots dry from the ankle down.

Riverless Step, Entry.

On the bridge, the noodle seller dropped his ladle.

Ji Yuanhe had been counting for three days without a stop.

His voice had gone thin, and the numbers came faster than they should. Tao Xiaoyu sat beside him and counted with him, so that he wouldn’t have to carry them alone.

Shi Feng refined the Soul-Steadying variant at the back furnace that night. It was a 4 Mark-grade pill, with a cooler fold for the root and two herbs from Zhuo Tingsong’s stock that had cost more than the shop. Six clouds rose above the lid and blackened at the edges, and the pill hummed and pushed up against his palm until he held it still.

Ji Yuanhe swallowed it.

“Four hundred and six,” Ji Yuanhe said. Then he said nothing.

Tao Xiaoyu held her breath. A whole stick of incense burned down. Ji Yuanhe’s eyes closed, and his shoulders came down for the first time since the Pit. He slept through the night on the herb shed’s cot, and the shop was so quiet that Shi Feng could hear the canal two streets away.

Shi Feng scraped the dregs from the cauldron and tasted them.

It was the same as before. Under the sweetness there was a hole, a missing note, like a song with one string cut. Every Soul-Steadying pill he made tasted of the same gap, and he knew its shape. The missing ingredient was a Quiet Soul Lotus. Without it, he still could not make the effect last.

In the morning, Ji Yuanhe woke up and said, “One.” Then he was counting again. The pill had given him one quiet night. Shi Feng watched him rub his rested eyes, grateful for that much and angry that he could not give him more.

“Honoured guest, the Pavilion is very sorry,” Rao Yingchun said at the counter, bowing deeply. “The Quiet Soul Lotus is sold only to holders of the 4 Mark. One lot comes in each year, and this year’s lot is held in Pavilion stock.”

“And if a 3 Mark asks very nicely?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then the Pavilion apologises very nicely,” Rao Yingchun said, and poured him tea.

That night Shi Feng shut the shutters and set four pills in a row on the counter. They were the surplus from the Old House commissions, all 4 Mark-grade: two Major Success and two Perfect, the first Perfect 4 Mark-grade pills he’d ever made. Each one hummed and tried to roll off the wood.

“If I go quiet, count for me,” Shi Feng told Tao Xiaoyu. “The way you count for Uncle Ji.”

“What if you don’t stop?” Tao Xiaoyu asked.

“Then keep counting until I’m done,” Shi Feng said. “I’ve never failed to come back to a count yet.”

He swallowed them one after another.

The medicine hit his soul like a spring flood. The ocean inside him rose, broke over its old shore and kept rising. Tao Xiaoyu’s voice went on beside him, steady and small: one, two, three. At eight hundred and twelve, the tide settled on a new shore much farther out.

Mid Soul Formation.

Shi Feng opened his eyes. Tao Xiaoyu was hoarse and red-eyed and still counting.

“You can stop now,” Shi Feng said gently, reaching for the water cup. “Drink first. Your throat must hurt.”

“You took so long,” Tao Xiaoyu said. She grabbed the cup with both hands and burst into tears.

The door banged open before dawn. Tao Erniang stood there in her apron, white to the lips.

“The landlord’s cousin is selling the whole lane!” Tao Erniang shouted. “All eleven deeds, to the Jin Trading House! They’re going to knock it down for a warehouse!”