Chapter 697 — The Guest Furnace

CHAPTER 697

The Guest Furnace

The man in violet didn’t join the queue. He walked up the side of it, and the queue pressed itself against the wall to let him pass.

He was about fifty, broad in the shoulders, with a short grey beard trimmed square. Thunderbolts were stitched in silver thread along both his sleeves. He kept his aura folded away, but the porters nearest him went pale anyway and didn’t know why.

Behind him walked a tall man in a violet coat with a captain’s plaque on his belt. A coil of blue-black chain hung at his hip.

The man in violet stopped in front of the little table.

“Lei Zhenhai, deacon of Thunder Abyss Valley,” Lei Zhenhai said. “You’re the new 4 Mark.”

“I am, Deacon Lei,” Shi Feng said. “There’s a queue.”

“This deacon doesn’t queue,” Lei Zhenhai said.

“So I see,” Shi Feng said. “The people behind you have been standing here since before dawn. If you want to talk, please talk while I take their orders. Master Ji, next.”

The man who was next looked at the deacon, looked at Shi Feng, and very slowly held out his paper.

A murmur ran up the line.

“He told a Thunder Abyss deacon to wait?”

“Is he mad?”

“He’s a 4 Mark. Maybe 4 Marks are allowed to be mad.”

Lei Zhenhai frowned, then forced a smile. Shi Feng saw the effort. The deacon hadn’t expected to negotiate for attention in front of a lane full of ordinary customers.

“Fine,” Lei Zhenhai said. “Then this deacon will be brief. Thunder Abyss Valley offers you a guest furnace seat.”

He took a scroll from his sleeve and laid it on the table, on top of Ji Yuanhe’s account book. It was heavy silk, sealed in violet wax.

“A hall of your own on the Valley’s third peak,” Lei Zhenhai said. “Herbs from our gardens. Disciples to sweep your floors. And the Valley’s walls around you.” He glanced at the lane. “No bandits climb the Valley’s walls.”

So the Valley had heard about the Terrace lane. Shi Feng noted that and said nothing about it.

“That’s very generous,” Shi Feng said. “May I read it?”

“Of course,” Lei Zhenhai said.

Shi Feng broke the wax and unrolled the scroll. Then he read it aloud, clearly, so that the whole queue could hear.

“The guest furnace shall serve the Valley for a term of ten years,” Shi Feng read. “The guest furnace shall not leave the Valley’s grounds without the Valley Master’s seal. Every pill from the guest furnace shall carry the Valley’s seal and no other name. The guest furnace shall refine for the Valley first, and for other houses only with the Valley’s leave.”

“Deacon Lei,” Shi Feng said, “this calls me a guest, but it gives you control of my work and movements. That’s not the seat you described.”

Somebody in the queue snorted and quickly turned it into a cough.

“First, I’d need permission to leave your grounds,” Shi Feng said. “Second, my pills would carry your name instead of mine. And you want both conditions for ten years.” He rolled the scroll and pushed it back. “I won’t accept those terms.”

“Then the answer is no,” Lei Zhenhai said.

“The answer is no,” Shi Feng said. “But thank you for coming all this way. Please give the Valley Master my respects.”

The queue had stopped breathing. A Cangming deacon near the front quietly took two steps back.

“Those who come aren’t friendly, and the friendly don’t come,” an old water carrier muttered to nobody.

Lei Zhenhai picked up the scroll and put it back into his sleeve. He didn’t hurry.

“Young man,” Lei Zhenhai said. “Thunder Abyss Valley has never sent the same invitation twice.”

“Then it won’t have to start now,” Shi Feng said.

“You misunderstand,” Lei Zhenhai said, almost gently. “A furnace with no sect is a furnace that anyone can carry home. Today it was the Valley that came. Tomorrow it may be someone with less courtesy. A wise man picks his owner before his owner picks him.”

“I’ve read it, Deacon Lei,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t sign. You can take the scroll back.”

For a moment, the two of them simply looked at each other.

Shi Feng stopped feeling amused. Lei Zhenhai’s patience wasn’t courtesy; he was waiting for the refusal so that he could act on it. A sect that sent a deacon into a crowded lane had expected obedience. Shi Feng glanced toward Ji Yuanhe and decided the old man needed to be inside.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said, without turning his head. “Take the book inside, please. And the inkstone.”

Ji Yuanhe looked up at him.

“Now?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“Now,” Shi Feng said. “I’d hate for anyone to spill ink on it.”

Ji Yuanhe gathered the account book against his chest, picked up the inkstone, and went into the courtyard. Shi Feng heard the kitchen door close behind him.

Lei Zhenhai watched the old man go. Then he lifted two fingers, without looking back.

“Captain Dong,” Lei Zhenhai said. “Our honoured guest is shy. Help him to the carriage. Politely.”

“Yes, Deacon,” Dong Kai said.

The captain stepped out from behind his master. He was a head taller than Shi Feng, and he walked as if the lane belonged to him. Late Deity Transformation. His aura opened as he came forward, cold and crackling, and the porters at the front of the queue scrambled backward over each other’s feet.

“Run! He’s releasing it!”

“Get away from the gate!”

“My goose! Somebody grab my goose!”

Dong Kai unhooked the chain from his hip and let it fall. It didn’t hit the frost. It hung in the air, link after link, humming, and blue sparks crawled along it from his hand to its tip.

“Alchemist Shi,” Dong Kai said. “The carriage is this way.”

“I know where the carriage is,” Shi Feng said. “I’m just not getting in it.”

The chain came off the ground with a crack like spring thunder.