Chapter 682 — Ticket 3041

CHAPTER 682

Ticket 3041

Shi Feng reached for the teacup and closed his fingers on the air a finger’s width to the left of it.

“Again,” Ji Yuanhe said, and pushed the cup back to the same spot.

It was the seventh morning since the Orchard. Three hundred years of sour fruit had gone into his deity, and the sourness had gone into his left hand. The hand still landed a finger off true. Yesterday he’d signed Auntie Niu’s bun bill an inch below the line and handed a bun to the wall.

“Senior Brother would say the hand is sulking,” Shi Feng said, catching the cup on the second try. “I ate its share of the fruit, so now it won’t work.”

“The hand is late,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Late is not wrong. Late is only late.”

The courtyard table was covered in oiled paper, and on it lay the Orchard haul: forty kinds of Shattering Void-grade herb in forty neat rows. At Tianjing prices it came to about three million spirit stones.

He hadn’t paid a single copper for any of it.

“Forty,” Ji Yuanhe said, counting the rows with one finger. “None bought.”

“That’s the most beautiful number in the capital,” Shi Feng said happily.

“Uncle Thin, what are those weeds?” Niu Tiezhu shouted from the top of the wall, a bun in each hand.

“Three million stones of weeds,” Shi Feng said. “Drop one crumb on them and I’ll bill your grandmother.”

The boy pulled his feet back at once.

Shi Feng sold none of the herbs. He labelled each kind in his best hand and put it away in the ring. Then he took out the spoons.

There were nine of them, cheap soup spoons from the night market at a copper each. He set them along the table’s edge with a drop of water in each bowl and lit a candle stub under the first.

“If I can guide it across these, I can guide it in a furnace,” Shi Feng said, checking the spaces between the spoons.

Mo’s Steam Fold was the old man’s furnace trick. It took the steam rising off a lit furnace and folded it a few feet, no more, so the heat landed where the alchemist wanted on the beat he chose. It never touched space. It only bent steam.

A wisp curled up from the first spoon. Shi Feng tapped the table with his right knuckle, one, two, three, four, and on the four he folded the wisp across to the second spoon.

It went. The second drop shivered and began to steam.

“Good,” Shi Feng told the second spoon warmly. “You are the finest cauldron I own and you cost a copper.”

The third fold went wide. His left hand guided it a finger to the left, and the steam hit the table and was gone.

“Wide again,” Shi Feng muttered at the third spoon. “The first two worked. Why can’t you?”

“It is the hand,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Don’t defend him, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “He’s spoiled.”

By noon he’d lost the steam nineteen times. By evening he’d lost it six. He stopped chasing it with his eye and fixed the hand against the beat instead, because a beat didn’t care which finger was late.

Ji Yuanhe sat across from him the whole day and counted the folds under his breath.

“Slow work makes fine goods,” Ji Yuanhe said once, to nobody in particular.

On the fourth evening Shi Feng reached for the teacup without looking and caught it.

“On time,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Good,” Shi Feng said, and stood. “Then tomorrow we ask the Hall.”

The Records Hall filled the fourth floor of the Ninefold Tower. Six desks stood under six lacquer boards, one for each Mark. The 1 Mark desk had a queue out to the stairs. The 6 Mark desk had an old clerk dozing behind it and nobody in front. A gold notice by the door gave the rule: asks were heard by Mark, higher before lower, and no fee could buy a place.

Junior Keeper Si Jiahe at the 3 Mark desk was young and round-faced, with ink on his wrist and a very straight back. He read the form twice.

“Two asks, honoured guest?” Si Jiahe asked. “A family record of the Empire, and the record of a person of the Serene Jade Sect.”

“My mother,” Shi Feng said. “And the lady who saved my life. Nangong Xiuyi.”

Si Jiahe’s brush stopped for one breath, then moved on.

Shi Feng set a pouch on the desk.

“A speed fee,” Shi Feng said. “One hundred thousand, for your trouble.”

Si Jiahe stood, bowed and pushed the pouch back with both hands.

“The Hall regrets, honoured guest,” Si Jiahe said politely. “The Hall doesn’t sell its order.”

“Two hundred thousand?” Shi Feng asked.

“Not to you, and not to anyone,” Si Jiahe said, and slid a bamboo ticket across the desk. “Ticket three thousand and forty-one. Please have some tea while you wait.”

The board above the 3 Mark desk read NOW CALLING: 2,912.

A fat merchant behind Shi Feng groaned out loud. “A hundred and thirty tickets! I’ve been coming for a month!”

“He’s smiling,” somebody muttered. “Why is he smiling?”

“…”

Shi Feng was genuinely delighted. If the Hall refused his money, it would refuse everyone else’s too. He could trust this ticket to hold his place instead of wondering who would pay to pass him. Senior Brother would have had it framed.

“A thousand-li journey begins beneath one’s feet, honoured guest,” Si Jiahe said kindly.

Shi Feng bowed, tucked ticket 3041 into his sleeve beside the spoons and went down the stairs whistling.

At the bottom of the tower steps a thin man in a scholar’s cap a size too big fell into step beside him.

“Young master,” the man murmured, “a hundred and thirty tickets is a month in that Hall. This humble scholar can show you the Serene Jade’s sealed index today.”