Chapter 640 — Shutters Up

CHAPTER 640

Shutters Up

Steward Tan Shou arrived an hour after his box, as if to make sure nobody had stolen it.

“Six Marrow-Returning Pills,” Steward Tan Shou said, opening the red-lacquer box on the counter. “For the old guard commander. His bones have stopped mending, and the City Lord would like them to start again before the new year.”

Early winter had come to Wanhe overnight. Frost lay on the canal steps, and steam from the noodle pots next door drifted across the lane.

Shi Feng read the commission paper once, slowly, and smiled. It’s a good paper, he thought. It’s just short.

“Tan Shou,” Shi Feng said pleasantly, “there are three lines missing.”

“Missing?” Tan Shou asked.

“First, the furnace clause. Whatever is wasted belongs to the furnace,” Shi Feng said, tapping the margin. “Second, a time fee. Three hundred thousand, because the City Lord wants it before the new year, and the queue outside wanted it before him. Third, damages. Anything the refining breaks, the commission pays for.”

Tan Shou looked at the paper, then at the shop. The shop had a counter, two furnaces, a stool and a girl with a brush. There wasn’t anything in it worth breaking.

“What exactly do you expect to break, Master Feng?” Tan Shou asked.

“Nothing, I hope,” Shi Feng said cheerfully. “That’s why the line is cheap for you to sign.”

Tan Shou sighed through his nose and signed all three. Shi Feng checked the signature before putting the paper away. With so many people waiting, he could not afford to let the City Lord dispute the fee afterward.

Then Shi Feng walked to the front of the shop and raised the shutters, every board, until the main furnace stood open to the whole lane.

“You’re going to do it outside?” Tao Xiaoyu asked, clutching the Commission Book.

“In front of everyone,” Shi Feng said, already dragging the furnace to the doorway. “The City Lord’s commission, in public. Senior Brother would call it advertising you get paid for.”

“The fragrance of wine fears no deep alley,” Tao Erniang said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking up and down the narrow lane.

Shi Feng pointed out a clear space where the customers could sit without blocking the furnace. Tao Erniang looked at the queue, understood, and began shouting for the porters to bring every bench she owned.

By noon the lane was packed from wall to wall. Tao Erniang was selling noodle seats at four coppers a stool and six for a stool with a bowl. Fan Baoshou had climbed onto a water barrel with a slate and was taking bets.

“Bang or no bang!” Fan Baoshou shouted. “The Zhuo furnace banged, and this Fan has the scar to prove it! Three to one on bang!”

“I’m betting no bang!” a porter yelled.

“I’m betting on the roof!” someone else shouted, and the crowd roared.

Tan Shou sat on the best stool with his hands in his sleeves. He’d paid for it himself. He looked like a man who had come to collect six pills and had found a temple fair.

Shi Feng lit the Thousand Forge fire.

The herbs went in one after another: marrow root, old-bone moss, red crane vine, each at its own heat. The lane went quiet as the fire turned from orange to a clean, pale gold. Inside the furnace, six pills began to turn.

“One!” Tao Xiaoyu shouted, standing on a crate so the back rows could hear. “Two! Three!”

White clouds gathered over the lid, one by one.

“Four! Five! Six!” Tao Xiaoyu cried, her voice cracking.

Somebody in the crowd dropped his chopsticks.

“Seven! Eight! Nine!” Tao Xiaoyu screamed.

Nine clouds meant Perfect. Fan Baoshou’s slate hung forgotten in his hand. Tan Shou had stood up without noticing.

Then a tenth cloud formed, and it wasn’t white.

It came up grey, then black, and the nine white clouds darkened with it. The air over Lamp-Oil Lane went cold. Past nine, the clouds blacken and a pill tribulation falls; a pill that lives through it exceeds its own grade.

Shi Feng looked up at the black sky over his shop and laughed out loud.

Shi Feng had not planned to draw a tribulation. He braced his feet and checked the distance to the crowd. The pills were still intact; he would try to keep them that way.

“Everyone back!” Shi Feng called. “Behind the noodle board! Tao Erniang, your pots too!”

“My pots?” Tao Erniang shrieked.

“Man proposes, heaven disposes!” Fan Baoshou cried, and jumped off the barrel.

Crack!

The first bolt came straight down the lane like a white snake. Shi Feng opened the furnace lid and folded the Thousand Forge fire up over the pills. The lightning hit the fire and spread across it. Two of the six pills turned black and crumbled into ash in an instant.

Crack!

The second bolt struck harder. The four that were left shook in the fire, and Shi Feng pressed his qi into the flame until the soles of his feet sank into the frozen dirt. His sleeves smoked. The crowd behind the noodle board screamed, then went silent.

“He’s holding it with his hands!”

“That’s heaven’s lightning!”

“Is he insane?”

“...”

The third bolt split in the air. Half of it struck the fire and died there. The other half skipped sideways and hit the eaves of Old Tao’s Noodles.

Three roof tiles flew off and smashed in the lane.

Then the black clouds thinned, broke apart, and drifted away over the canal. Pale winter sun came back down onto Lamp-Oil Lane. Nobody spoke.

Tao Erniang stared at the hole in her roof. Her mouth opened and closed twice.

“My tiles,” Tao Erniang said faintly.

“Billed,” Shi Feng said, without looking away from the furnace. “Line three. The steward signed it.”

Tan Shou’s face turned pale.

“Four survived,” Shi Feng murmured, watching for another bolt before he lifted the pills out of the flame. “Let me see what changed.”

They were the deep red of old blood and had no shine at all. Each one was smaller than an ordinary Marrow-Returning Pill. When he set one on his palm, it hummed against his skin, low and steady, at the plain pitch of Soul Formation grade.

But it was heavy. His wrist dipped as if he were holding a pill twice its size, from a grade above its own.