Chapter 658 — The Last Queue

CHAPTER 658

The Last Queue

“Eleven!” Fan Baoshou announced, slapping a stack of contracts onto the counter. “Eleven last-chance commissions at three hundred thousand each, and this Fan turned away thirty more at the door!”

“Who said last chance?” Shi Feng asked.

“The whole city, Brother Feng!” Fan Baoshou said, beaming. “Word is you’re going north. When the alchemist leaves, the price goes up. This Fan only listens to the wind.”

Shi Feng hadn’t told anyone a date. But the lane had seen Cen Rong’s paper in his robe, and the lane talked.

He read the eleven contracts one by one. Every one carried the furnace clause, signed without a second look. Three sets each. Thirty-three sets in all.

“Seven days,” Shi Feng said. “Tell the thirty at the door they’re welcome next year, in another city, at double.”

“Double!” Fan Baoshou said happily, and ran off to tell them.

He refined one-handed for the first three days, and the queue complained that a cripple was charging full price. On the fourth morning the splint came off, and the queue complained that the cripple was now charging full price with both hands.

Tao Xiaoyu sat at the front window with the Commission Book and counted clouds for the street. At the back furnace, Ji Yuanhe counted his own fire, and Tao Xiaoyu counted for him between batches without missing a beat on either.

“Seven. Eight,” Tao Xiaoyu called. “Set nineteen, Perfect. Next!”

The client sets were delivered. The surplus went into the jars on the shelf. And the few batches that failed went into Shi Feng, scorched and still warm.

On the sixth night, between set twenty-nine and set thirty, he sat down on the back step with a mouthful of slag and felt the last gap close.

[Devoured: four waste sets, all eleven contracts | Gain: peak Soul Formation | Note: between batches. Nobody noticed.]

Shi Feng checked his qi and smiled. The failed sets had supplied exactly what he needed, and each contract paid three hundred thousand on top.

He finished set thirty before the lamp burned down.

Grandmaster Zhuo Tingsong came on the seventh morning, alone, and sat on the stool at the noodle board without ordering anything. Shi Feng grew worried.

“So it’s true,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “You’re going.”

“Grandmaster Zhuo,” Shi Feng said, sitting beside him. “Who told you?”

“My grandson,” Zhuo Tingsong said. “He came home with ash on my third poker and said, ‘He’s leaving, Grandfather.’ Then he went to his room and wouldn’t eat.”

Shi Feng said nothing.

“There’s no banquet under heaven that doesn’t end,” Zhuo Tingsong said heavily. He took two letters out of his sleeve, both already sealed. “I wrote these last night. Don’t argue.”

“I wasn’t going to argue,” Shi Feng said. “I was going to ask who they’re for.”

“Eldest Examiner Song Wuya,” Zhuo Tingsong said, tapping the first. “He sits the Glass Hall sittings in Tianjing. We argued over one furnace for forty years. He’ll hate you on sight, and then he’ll be fair to you.” He tapped the second. “Madam Liu Su. A broker. She’ll rob you, but she’ll rob you honestly, and she knows every courtyard in the capital.”

“What’s the fee, Grandmaster?” Shi Feng asked.

“Don’t insult me, young friend,” Zhuo Tingsong snapped.

“Then I’ll owe you,” Shi Feng said.

“Then send me a pill from Tianjing that I can’t make,” Zhuo Tingsong said, and stood up. His beard was shaking. “That’s the fee. Don’t you dare die before you pay it.”

He walked off down the lane without looking back. Shi Feng put the letters inside his robe beside Cen Rong’s paper. In nine days he’d collected three pieces of paper he couldn’t pay for. The old master had asked him to send a pill. Shi Feng would remember that request.

That afternoon Shi Feng sat down beside Ji Yuanhe at the back furnace.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said lightly. “Wanhe is warm. Tianjing is cold, and nobody knows what’s there. Xiaoyu counts better than I do. You could stay here, and I’d send a pill every month.”

Ji Yuanhe didn’t look up from the fire.

“Three hundred and eighty-one,” Ji Yuanhe said, louder. “Three hundred and eighty-two!”

“Master Ji…” Shi Feng said.

“THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-THREE!” Ji Yuanhe shouted.

At the front window, Tao Xiaoyu didn’t even turn around.

“He says no,” Tao Xiaoyu said.

Shi Feng laughed and gave up. He’d said it in the Pit: I’m carrying you. That promise still held. He’d only wanted to give the old man the choice, and hear him refuse.

Tao Xiaoyu wrote the week’s total on the wall in big black characters: 12,000,000.

The lane gathered to read it aloud.

On the last day of the queue, a servant in plain grey joined the line for a Feng Shi pill.

He was thin and polite. He waited his turn, paid the stock price for two Soul Formation-grade sets from the shelf, and quietly announced that his master would wait, speaking to nobody in particular.

Shi Feng was at the back furnace. He kept his head down and his hands busy, and let Tao Xiaoyu wrap the box.

When the servant left, Shi Feng looked once down the length of the lane. Far away, past the bridge, a folding chair stood against a wall in the shade. Something small caught the sun beside it, a thin glint, like a hairpin turned in a hand.

He didn’t look again. He finished the batch, and by the time he came out to the street the chair was gone.

Shi Feng never found out who had been sitting in it.

That night he lay awake on his bedding in the back room. Ji Yuanhe sat by the cold furnace, counting softly, the way he did when the lamp was out.

“…three hundred and ninety-eight. Three hundred and ninety-nine,” Ji Yuanhe murmured. “Four hundred…”

Then the counting stopped.

“I’m coming,” Ji Yuanhe said.