Chapter 67 — The Neighbouring Medicine House

CHAPTER 67

The Neighbouring Medicine House

“One more jar,” Zhou Mingde’s assistant Peng Jian said. “And how many can your master prepare in a month?”

It was the third day, and it was the same assistant. Shi Feng answered the question about quantity and charged for the jar. The questions about his suppliers and his recipe stayed unanswered.

“The ointment has no other name,” Shi Feng said. “Tell your master to buy it again if he wants to know more.”

The assistant bowed and hurried off. An hour later, the master came himself.

Zhou Mingde was a Bone Refinement cultivator. His medicine house filled three rooms on the next street, and its gilded sign promised everything Wu Tong was forced to scrape off Shi Feng’s. Yet customers now walked past his counter to buy from a cripple under an awning. He had come to end that.

“Hmph! So you’re the peddler,” Zhou Mingde said, his round face already red. “Do you know who runs this street?”

“Say what you came to say,” Shi Feng replied, closing the ointment jar.

Zhou Mingde laid two spirit stones on the board. He didn’t take a jar.

The customer beside them stared very hard at an instruction sheet. He didn’t intend to leave and no intention of looking curious.

“Supply is unreliable in this district!” Zhou Mingde said. “My house arranges ingredients for approved sellers. Sign under me, and no one touches you.”

“At what price?” Shi Feng asked.

Zhou Mingde named it. Shi Feng did the sum in his head. The price would swallow nearly all his profit, and the arrangement also demanded his recipes, the Zhou name printed on every jar, and every large customer sent to the Zhou counter.

Shi Feng thought coldly: this isn’t an offer. This is a leash with a sweet smell.

“What remains mine?” Shi Feng asked.

“Your labour is well paid!” Zhou Mingde barked.

“I already own that,” Shi Feng said.

The customer turned his instruction sheet over. Nothing was written on the back, but his interest in reading it hadn’t faded.

“He refused Zhou Mingde!” someone whispered.

“…”

Zhou Mingde was stunned for a breath, and his expression turned ugly as his face went from red to purple. “You dare? A new stall needs protection! Suppliers know which businesses last!”

“I’ve suppliers,” Shi Feng said.

“Suppliers change their minds!” Zhou Mingde roared. “Think it over, boy! You’ll regret it!”

He left the stones where they lay and stormed off, his threats still ringing down the street.

Shi Feng set one jar beside the stones. The assistant could collect it later. Paying for a conversation didn’t buy the man who answered.

By afternoon, two herb stalls claimed they had sold out. At the first, a delivery boy was carrying the supposedly exhausted stock through the back door. At the second, the owner covered a basket with his sleeve and described how impossible herbs were to find in the entire capital.

“Does a sleeve count as a shortage now?” Shi Feng asked.

The owner muttered about waiting customers and walked away.

At the third counter, delivery suddenly carried a special handling charge. It cost more than walking the same road with the herbs on his own back.

“A handling charge,” Shi Feng repeated. “For carrying a basket three steps.”

The clerk admitted that Zhou Mingde had told every counter to refuse him, then insisted that the handling charge stood.

“Then Zhou Mingde has told me where to shop,” Shi Feng said.

He left without buying. Scoundrels! He could have overturned every counter on the street. But he wanted herbs, and beating these men wouldn’t make their stock any better.

“Fine,” Shi Feng said quietly. “Then I’ll go where your master’s hand can’t reach.”

The longer road passed the grain warehouses, crossed a ditch on two narrow planks, and ended at stalls that served working people, who cared nothing for a medicine house’s dignity. He found one ingredient fresh, one dried, and a third that needed more work before it could be used.

Mo Tianheng’s knowledge supplied a substitute without a flicker of doubt. His purse supplied the irritation.

The cheaper herbs needed more careful washing and a slower extraction. That was within his ordinary heat. The great formula that would have wrung full value from them was still beyond his control.

He chose what his hands could actually use. The seller weighed the herbs and took the stones without a word.

Shi Feng carried his two parcels away, hungry and tired. This is a shorter road to the same place, he thought. Zhou Mingde has only shown me where his reach ends.

He got home late. Ling Qingzhu was standing under the pear tree with a cup in both hands.

“Rivals already?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “Granny Qin says an herb seller spat at you. She was very proud.”

“Every trade has people who prefer collecting to working,” Shi Feng said, sorting the herbs into lots.

Ling Qingzhu leaned against the pear tree and watched him. “Do you ever pick the quiet road? Just once? For my nerves?” Ling Qingzhu asked.

“He may compete if he likes,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t disappear because he dislikes it.”

Her fingers tightened around her cup. The answer carried a force she associated with the man he once was, not with the harmless husband she hired. There was no bitterness in it. He simply refused to arrange his future around another man’s comfort.

This isn’t a cripple’s voice, Ling Qingzhu thought. She asked nothing more about abandoning the stall.

At the basin a stubborn root left a stain on his fingers. Shi Feng washed twice and reached for the sand soap.

Ling Qingzhu lifted the water ladle without being asked. “This business makes more washing than profit,” Ling Qingzhu said. She glanced at his face. He was tired and annoyed, but tomorrow still seemed worth trying to him. She poured the rest of the water in silence.

After supper he prepared the new extraction and compared it against a sample from the earlier lot. The scent was right. The thickness needed more time. He recorded the difference and sealed the jars.

The work would reach the stall tomorrow, but the larger margin he hoped for wouldn’t. He added the extra journey to his accounts anyway. If Zhou Mingde wanted to teach him dependence, his first lesson taught only the limit of the man’s influence.

Across the district, Zhou Mingde broke the seal on the second jar.

“The peddler came back with fresh stock, master,” Peng Jian reported. “Same price.”

Zhou Mingde rubbed a little ointment between his fingers. It spread cleanly. Nothing in it was thinned to make up for cheap herbs.

Zhou Mingde’s face darkened.

A bad medicine could be exposed. A foolish rival could be frightened. But this medicine was better than his own, and its maker had refused to take instruction.

“Impossible!” Zhou Mingde snarled, slamming the jar down. “A crippled nobody, better than my house?”

He wiped his hand on a cloth. Then he sent for a man who understood the less respectable kinds of complaint.

The next morning the assistant came back for the jar his master had paid for. Shi Feng handed it over without a sermon. The assistant checked the seal twice, as though Zhou Mingde might blame him for its quality.

“It is the same preparation,” Shi Feng said. “Keep the lid dry.”

The assistant nodded and left. Shi Feng watched him cross the road, then opened the stall. A rival's bad temper didn't excuse leaving his own customers waiting. He put the clean spoon beside the new jar and began work. Two labourers arrived together. Neither knew about the threats, and both needed medicine before their shift began.