Chapter 639 — The Whole Lane

CHAPTER 639

The Whole Lane

“The whole lane?” Fan Baoshou asked, his eyes going round.

“All eleven deeds,” Shi Feng said, handing him a jade note. “Before the Jin clerk finishes his breakfast. Offer the cousin six hundred thousand and not a copper more.”

“Six hundred thousand!” Fan Baoshou said, clutching the note to his chest. “Young master, with money you can make ghosts turn the millstone! This Fan will have the deeds by noon!”

He ran off down the lane with his robe flapping.

Shi Feng watched him go, very pleased. Since the first frost, eight Old House 4 Mark-grade commissions had paid. Each had paid at a fee Zhuo Tingsong called shameless, and each had left him a surplus. For the first time in his life, a street was cheaper than his week.

The deed registry smelled of ink and old paper. Notary Liao sat behind a desk piled with folders, and across from him sat the landlord’s cousin, a thin man with a new silk hat and darting eyes.

Fan Baoshou laid down the jade note. The cousin licked his lips and signed all eleven deeds, one after another, as fast as his brush would go.

Notary Liao stamped them. Then the door opened, and a clerk in the green of the Jin Trading House came in with a contract in his hand.

“Notary Liao, register this, please,” the Jin clerk said. “Eleven deeds on Lamp-Oil Lane, bought last night. Five hundred thousand, with fifty thousand paid as a deposit.”

The room went quiet. Fan Baoshou turned slowly to look at the cousin. The cousin found the ceiling very interesting.

“You sold the same lane twice?” Fan Baoshou shrieked. “To two buyers in one night?”

“It’s... it’s all a misunderstanding,” the cousin stammered.

Shi Feng, who had come along to watch, glanced at the wet signatures. The cousin had taken both payments and expected the buyers to settle the problem between themselves. No wonder he had signed so quickly.

Notary Liao didn’t look up. He pulled a fat registry book toward him and opened it to a page marked with a red string.

“Article nine of the deed registry,” Notary Liao said, and laughed once. “A deed belongs to the first stamp in this book. A second contract on a stamped deed is void, and the seller pays the second buyer back double his deposit.” He tapped the page. “The ink on Master Feng Shi’s stamp is still wet.”

The Jin clerk’s face turned red, then white. He looked at the cousin.

“A hundred thousand,” the Jin clerk said coldly. “By tonight.”

The cousin sat down on the floor.

Fan Baoshou gathered up the eleven deeds as if they were his own grandchildren and bowed so low his hat fell off.

“This Fan has done business for thirty years,” Fan Baoshou said, “and he has never seen a bumpkin buy a street!”

“You called me young master before you left,” Shi Feng said, amused. “Have I gone down in rank already? Take care of those deeds.”

Notary Liao snorted, but he didn’t look displeased.

The whole lane was waiting outside the shop when they came back.

There were eleven households on Lamp-Oil Lane. The rope-maker, the oil-seller, the widow with the ducks, the cobbler, the two brothers who mended pots. They stood in a crowd in the cold, clutching their rent bags, and none of them would look at him.

“Young master,” the rope-maker said nervously. “How much will the rent go up?”

“It won’t,” Shi Feng said. “Same rent as last year. Pay it on the same day. Tell Tao Erniang which roofs leak, and I’ll have them fixed.”

The lane went silent.

“He’s not raising it?”

“Not by a copper?”

“My mother’s going to cry.”

“...Did I hear that right?”

Then he walked to Old Tao’s Noodles, took the chalk from the counter and wiped the price board clean. Under BEEF NOODLES, he crossed out eight coppers and wrote sixteen.

Tao Erniang stared at the board. Her mouth opened and shut. Then her eyes rolled up, and she sat down heavily on the bench in a dead faint.

Tao Xiaoyu fanned her with the Commission Book. After a few breaths, Tao Erniang sat bolt upright and pointed at him with a shaking finger.

“Sixteen!” Tao Erniang shouted. “Are you trying to kill me? My regulars will call me a bloodsucker! They’ll curse my ancestors in the street!”

“Half the city comes to this lane now to watch a furnace,” Shi Feng said cheerfully. “Every one of them eats a bowl and goes home and says it was the best bowl in Wanhe. You’re working twice as hard and still charging eight coppers. I bought the lane to keep you here, not to watch you wear yourself out. Tell the customers their new landlord set the price.”

“Then who am I supposed to shout at?” Tao Erniang demanded.

“Me,” Shi Feng said. He pointed to his shop. “I’m right next door. They can come and complain after eating.”

Tao Erniang opened her mouth, closed it, and stomped into her kitchen. A moment later the whole lane heard her shouting at the noodles.

That night Tao Xiaoyu added up the Commission Book and wrote the total on the wall under the million, in bigger characters. Three million spirit stones, in hand.

Ji Yuanhe looked at it and kept counting, and for once, Shi Feng thought, the number on the wall was bigger than his.

In the morning, a red-lacquer box sat on the doorstep. It had the City Lord’s house crest on the lid, and the commission inside was sealed with Steward Tan Shou’s seal.