Chapter 648 — Spoils in Writing

CHAPTER 648

Spoils in Writing

At first light the gate road was empty, except for the boar.

Shi Feng walked back over the stone bridge with his trousers frozen stiff to the knees and one hand pressed against his ribs. Old Farmer Mao came behind him with his hoe on his shoulder. Zhuo Heng and his four apprentices came behind the farmer, saying nothing at all.

The north gate still hung open a foot. Two hundred guardsmen lined the wall above it, and none of them was shouting now.

The young guardsman from the low corner would tell this part for the rest of his life. He’d always thought a hero would walk like one, with his chin up and his sword shining. The alchemist walked like a man who’d been up all night and wanted his breakfast. He stopped at the boar, looked at it the way Tao Erniang looked at a pig at market, and drew a short knife.

Shi Feng cut the core out of the boar’s skull himself. It was the size of a fist, dark red, and still warm. He climbed to the parapet and sat down right next to the charcoal line.

Then he bit into it.

The whole guard stared at him.

“He’s… eating it?” the young guardsman said faintly.

“That’s a Soul Formation beast core!” the sergeant said. “You’re supposed to sell those! Or refine them!”

“I’m an alchemist,” Shi Feng said with his mouth full. “I know what it is. Leave it to me.”

Gao Rukui came down the parapet with his bandaged hand hanging at his side. He looked at the half-eaten core, and his face went through several expressions at once.

“You could’ve sold that for a hundred thousand,” Gao Rukui said. “And you split the other one in the river.”

“I could have sold this one,” Shi Feng agreed, chewing. “But I wanted the core more than the stones.” He tapped the charcoal line beside him. “You gave me the right to keep my kills. I won’t ask you to pay for it as well.”

“…”

The heat of the core spread through his meridians, thick and wild. The Physique took all of it, the way it took everything. The two cracked ribs knit while he chewed, and his mid Soul Formation sat a little heavier and steadier than before.

Gao Rukui rubbed his face with his good hand.

“To think that I’d be lectured on contracts on my own wall,” Gao Rukui muttered. Then he laughed, short and tired. “Fine. It’s yours. Eat it.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Shi Feng said, and did.

Officer Ding Huai stood a few paces off with his small book open.

“The City Lord will ask for your name,” Officer Ding Huai said.

“Feng Shi, Lamp-Oil Lane,” Shi Feng said. “He already has it. It’s on a red-lacquer box in his steward’s office.”

Officer Ding Huai wrote that down too.

The tide had broken with the dawn. With the Old Man of Grey Ridge dead, the beasts scattered back into the hills, and the sect halls’ men came running from the south gate just in time to see a quiet wall. The Azure Sun branch’s men stopped at the river corner, where farmers were dragging a twelve-foot ape out of the Lesser Wan with ox ropes. They looked at the split skull for a long time and didn’t say a word.

The fees arrived by noon. The herb farm owners sent one purse, because their fields had lost a corner instead of everything. The City Guard sent a second, with Captain Gao’s seal and a short note: Fee schedule, as requested. The Sky Pavilion sent a third, politely worded, for the protection of the winter allotment.

Tao Xiaoyu wrote all three in the Commission Book and added up the column twice.

“Three million, four hundred thousand,” Tao Xiaoyu said. “You made money from a pig.”

“And a monkey,” Shi Feng said. “And kept our herbs.” He handed Tao Erniang her ladle, wiped clean. “I told you I’d bring this back. Is there any hot broth left?”

Tao Erniang took the ladle and looked at the dent in its bowl.

“What did you hit with my ladle?” Tao Erniang demanded.

“A hare, Auntie,” Shi Feng said. “It started it.”

By evening the tea houses along the canals had one story, and they told it north and south. The noodle-lane alchemist had held the north gate alone and killed the Iron-Back Boar. Then he’d walked across the Lesser Wan and split the skull of the Old Man of Grey Ridge. By the second telling, the river had been in flood. By the fifth, the ape had been forty feet tall.

On the north wall, the guardsmen had already started calling him Ladle Feng. Nobody laughed when they said it.

And for the first time, people in Wanhe said it out loud.

“Soul Formation. The Lamp-Oil Lane alchemist is Soul Formation.”

In the Zhuo Old House, Zhuo Tingsong sat at his desk with the farm tally from the north slope spread in front of him. He read the line about the gate twice, and the line about the river three times. Then he set the paper down very carefully.

“Grandfather?” Zhuo Heng asked from the doorway. He still smelled of smoke.

“You were on the roof,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “Was it true?”

Zhuo Heng was silent for a long moment.

“It was true,” Zhuo Heng said.

“Now he can be a proxy,” Zhuo Tingsong said.