Chapter 667 — The Weighing Club

CHAPTER 667

The Weighing Club

“Snow lotus, hundred-year! Cheaper than the Pavilion!”

“Bone-mending moss, fresh this morning!”

The herb-criers on Alchemists’ Row shouted over each other from dawn to dusk. Behind them, the Azure Sun Sect’s branch hall had a whole wall of glass, so the street could watch its masters work under gold sun-rays painted on the beams. Further on, the Imperial Physicians’ tower rose nine floors high, and nobody without a pass got past its first step.

Shi Feng walked the whole Row stopping at every window and making no effort to hide his interest. Ji Yuanhe walked beside him and counted the shops.

Shi Feng was delighted. He could inspect the furnaces from the street without paying for an introduction.

At the Pavilion’s alchemy desk the queue ran out of the door and down the steps. He joined it for the fun of it and reached the front an hour later.

“Token, honoured guest,” the clerk said, bowing. He read it, stamped it and bowed again. “Provincial. No priority. Thank you for your patience.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Shi Feng said, and meant it.

Master Leng Daoming’s salon sat at the quiet end of the Row, above a tea shop. It was a long room with one scale in the middle, an old bronze thing with an array ring on its base.

The game was simple. Every guest put the same Soul Formation-grade pill into a plain cup, the cups were shuffled, and the scale weighed each pill’s qi without anyone knowing whose it was. The room argued over the numbers, then the names were read out.

“Feng Shi, 3 Mark, Wanhe,” the doorman announced.

A dozen capital alchemists turned around at once.

“Wanhe? Did the river wash him up?”

“A provincial 3 Mark at Leng’s scale. What’s next, a fishmonger?”

“Look at that coat. It’s older than he is.”

“You’re all quite right,” Shi Feng said warmly, bowing to each of them. “I came to learn. I’ve never seen a room this full of masters.”

A young man in Azure Sun gold looked up from his tea.

“Feng Shi,” the Azure Sun junior master said slowly. “The one from the Wanhe Spring Contest? The Tribulation Pill story?” He snorted and went back to his cup. “Rumour. The southern ports print rumours on rice paper.”

Shi Feng nodded humbly. Good, he thought. File me under rumour. They wouldn’t watch his hands closely if they dismissed the story.

Master Leng Daoming came over himself. He was a tall man of about sixty, with very clean hands and a voice that never rose.

“Every guest pays the same fee and weighs on the same scale,” Leng Daoming said to the room. Then he turned to Shi Feng with a small bow. “You’re welcome here, Master Feng.”

The cups went on the scale one by one. Most of the numbers were close, and the room argued over every one. Then the scale weighed two cups and stopped on the same mark twice.

The room went quiet.

“A tie,” somebody said. “With whose?”

The doorman read the slips.

“Master Leng Daoming,” the doorman said. “And Feng Shi, of Wanhe.”

“Impossible!”

“The scale’s drunk!”

“He copied the master’s fire. He must have!”

“…”

Leng Daoming said nothing until the guests had gone down to the tea shop. Then he stood beside Shi Feng at the window.

“You could have gone half a cloud past mine,” Leng Daoming said quietly. “You folded it under and stopped level. On purpose.”

“I want to come back, Master Leng,” Shi Feng said with a smile. “If I embarrass you in front of the room, who’ll invite me next month?”

Leng Daoming looked at him for a long moment. Then he laughed softly.

“I’ll leave the tie standing,” Leng Daoming said. “Come on the first of each month. The room needs someone it cannot decide about.”

When Shi Feng got back to Willow Ford, Liu Su was sitting in his courtyard with a stiff man in dark blue. The man held a seal box in both hands.

“Steward Guan Haojie, of the Situ town house,” Guan Haojie said, bowing low. “Master Feng. Your jade slip reached us. Last year, in Wanhe, you saved Lord Situ Hongzhang’s son. The branch owes the bearer one request. Name it.”

Liu Su raised an eyebrow. A Situ favour could buy a post, a licence or a quiet word with a minister.

Shi Feng didn’t even sit down.

“A seat at the Jiang house’s autumn banquet,” Shi Feng said.

“That’s all, Master Feng?” Guan Haojie asked, blinking.

“That’s all,” Shi Feng said.

The Jiang kin sat at the higher desks of the Records Hall, Shi Feng thought, and the Jiang table would be where the seam at Hanyan got argued first-hand. A post was something people could take back. A seat at the right table was worth more than gold.

“It will be done,” Guan Haojie said. “A word once spoken, four horses cannot chase it back.” He hesitated, then took out a second paper. “There is also a commission. The branch house needs twelve Marrow-Returning Pills. One hundred and sixty thousand each.”

“Ingredients for twelve?” Shi Feng asked.

“For twelve, as is proper. Half will succeed, as is usual,” Guan Haojie said. “The furnace clause stands as written.”

The clause was printed in bold at the bottom of the page. Sets beyond the delivered half, and all waste, belong to the furnace.

“There’s never any surplus,” Guan Haojie added, as if apologising for the custom.

“Of course not,” Shi Feng said gravely, and signed.

Guan Haojie bowed and left with the seal box. The moment the gate closed, Shi Feng rubbed his hands together and grinned at the sky.

“Lesson thirty-nine,” Shi Feng announced with relish. “Let them write the first price. The last price is yours.”

“Your master’s teaching?” Liu Su asked.

“My senior brother’s,” Shi Feng said. “He’d have said it, if he’d thought of it first.”

Liu Su looked at the contract again, no longer amused. She opened her ledger and underlined a line beneath the Situ name twice. She’d understood why he accepted so quickly.

Six delivered. Six unpaid for.