Chapter 670 — Bench Nine

CHAPTER 670

Bench Nine

“One sentence, two hundred and twenty-five,” Xiong Qiyun said. “No refunds. No questions between sentences.”

The news broker sat on an overturned basket at the corner of Tower Street, a thin man with a pockmarked face and an abacus on his knees. Capital people said he heard things a day before they happened.

“Four,” Shi Feng said, and counted out nine hundred.

Xiong Qiyun pocketed it without checking.

“The Pavilion will rope the seam at Hanyan,” Xiong Qiyun said. “It opens on the night of the Mid-Autumn full moon. Every sect in the capital started buying Shattering Void-grade herbs at dawn. By tonight the price will be three times what it was yesterday.” He closed his mouth. “That’s four.”

Four useful facts for nine hundred, Shi Feng thought. Knowing when the herbs would rise in price was worth far more than that.

He spent the middle of the day in the sealed hall with a 4 Mark-grade practice batch.

The pill rose under the lid and hummed low, trying to lift through the bronze. Eight clouds stood over it, white and full, and slowly darkened at their edges. Shi Feng held the lid down with two fingers and grinned. Perfect.

Then he sealed it in wax and put it in the box beside the others he couldn’t sell.

A Perfect Deity Transformation-grade pill from a provincial 3 Mark was a signature on a confession, Shi Feng thought. Six hundred thousand on herbs and hall time, and I’ve made a very beautiful paperweight.

That left 8.3 million.

By evening, Xiong’s fourth sentence had come true. Every herb stall on Alchemists’ Row had chalked new prices over the old ones, and every Shattering Void-grade root had tripled. A Thunder Abyss steward was shouting at a stallholder. Two Cangming disciples were buying everything on a table without asking the price.

Xiong Qiyun fell into step beside Shi Feng at the end of the Row.

“A fifth sentence, free,” Xiong Qiyun said, not looking at him. “Good customers get one a season. There’s a cellar in the dyers’ ward where herbs are won, not bought. The masks don’t ask what you are.”

He turned down an alley and was gone.

The Cistern was an old water cellar under a dye works. Stone stairs went down past vats of indigo and madder, and steam from the vats drifted over a sunken floor ringed with benches and lamps. The old cistern had never quite dried. At the far end of the floor, a hand’s depth of black water lay across the stone. Two hundred masked people sat on the benches. A board on the wall showed the odds in chalk.

A woman in a plain silver mask met him at the bottom step. Her voice was soft and very polite.

“Welcome, honoured guest. I’m Madam Rao Mingshen,” Rao Mingshen said. “A mask, a number and a bench are ten silver a sentence.”

Shi Feng laughed out loud. Somebody in this city had finally billed him with his own rate.

“Then I’ll take all three in one sentence,” Shi Feng said.

“Bench Nine,” Rao Mingshen said, handing him a wooden mask. “Thirty silver, honoured guest.”

“And the rules?” Shi Feng asked.

“The rules are free,” Rao Mingshen said. “No flame that shows. No killing. Whoever leaves the floor or yields has lost.”

The odds-board put “Bench Nine, Soul Formation” against Dun Kuo, Deity Transformation, at fourteen to one. Shi Feng hunched his shoulders, made his hands shake a little on the mask and walked out onto the floor like a frightened boy.

The benches loved it.

“Soul Formation? Is he lost?”

“He came for the herbs and he’ll leave in a basket!”

“Fourteen to one is an insult to Dun Kuo!”

Dun Kuo was a huge man with a shaved head and a bull’s neck. He looked at Shi Feng and laughed until his belly shook.

“Men die for money, and birds die for grain,” Dun Kuo said, still laughing. “You’ve come to die for both, little brother.”

He threw the first punch before the gong had finished ringing.

Bang!

It hit Shi Feng’s shoulder, and the benches cheered. Then they stopped cheering, because he hadn’t moved. The blow landed on golden bone. Dun Kuo’s fist couldn’t make Shi Feng yield, despite the force behind it.

Dun Kuo’s laugh faltered. He hit again, harder, to the ribs, then to the jaw. Shi Feng took them both and stepped back into the steam from the vats.

The air there shimmered with heat. Mo’s Left Fold needed nothing more than that. Dun Kuo’s next fist went through the shimmer where a frightened boy seemed to be standing, a hand’s breadth to the left of where he really stood.

Shi Feng stepped in and put one palm on the big man’s chest.

Boom!

Dun Kuo flew backward across the floor, hit the wall under the odds-board and slid down it. He didn’t get up.

“…”

“What did I just see?”

“He—he only touched him!”

“Fourteen to one! Who had Bench Nine?”

“Nobody. Nobody had Bench Nine.”

Shi Feng bowed to the benches very nervously, as if he’d surprised himself most of all. Behind the mask, he was delighted. The cover had worked, the herbs were within reach, and the benches still didn’t understand his strength.

Madam Rao came down the steps with a piece of chalk and wiped the fourteen off the board with her sleeve.

“The house apologises for its arithmetic, honoured guest,” Rao Mingshen said. “Two more bouts before midnight, if Bench Nine is willing. The house pays the purse at the end of the night, in notes and herbs.”

“Herbs of what grade?” Shi Feng asked.

“Deity Transformation-grade,” Rao Mingshen said. “That sentence would be ten silver. I’ll waive it.”

That was the grade the 4 Mark sitting needed, and Alchemists’ Row had tripled its price by evening. Shi Feng nodded quickly.

She chalked the new lines. Bench Nine against Ma Jiu, mid Deity Transformation, at four to one. Bench Nine against Xie Tieshan, late Deity Transformation, at six to one.

Above them, at the very top of the board, was a line nobody had touched in a long time. Bench One. Forty-one bouts. Unbeaten. There were no odds beside it.

Shi Feng looked up at the highest bench. A man sat there alone in a plain iron mask, with a long spear across his knees. He was the only one who hadn’t stood when Dun Kuo hit the wall.

He was watching Shi Feng’s feet.