Chapter 706 — The Scar on the Gate

CHAPTER 706

The Scar on the Gate

“Forty coppers a basket,” the charcoal seller said. “Take it or leave it, Master Shi.”

“It was twenty last week,” Shi Feng said.

“Last week the city didn’t have three thousand young masters in it,” the charcoal seller said, unashamed. “Every one of them has a brazier, and every brazier eats charcoal. You want twenty, go to Wanhe.”

Shi Feng paid forty, irritated but unsurprised. Five days after the Azure Sun notice, even fuel cost twice as much. The princess’s candidates had filled every courtyard with braziers. He couldn’t refuse charcoal simply because somebody else was profiting from the crowd.

He bought six baskets, hired a boy with a barrow, and set off back to Willow Ford.

At Willow Ford, while he was gone, Auntie Niu saw the young man in violet before anyone else did.

He came up the lane alone, without a carriage or attendants. He was about twenty-five, broad and hard as a beam, and he walked with his hands loose at his sides. The air around him smelled sharp, the way it did before a storm. As he passed the cloth seller’s door, the brass handle on it crackled, and a small blue spark jumped to his sleeve.

He stopped at the Willow Ford gate and looked at it. Then he turned to Auntie Niu’s stall.

“The furnace,” the young man said. “The one who broke Dong Kai’s chain. Is he in?”

Auntie Niu gripped her bun tongs.

“Out,” Auntie Niu said. “Buying charcoal. And he’s not a furnace, he’s a master! You young people have no manners!”

The stranger took the rebuke without reacting. Auntie Niu couldn’t tell whether he’d listened at all. His attention stayed on Shi Feng’s closed gate.

“Dong Kai carried my sword when I was eight years old,” the young man said. “He came home to the Valley with his arm burned and his chain in pieces. Somebody owes him his face back.”

He walked to the gate and laid his right palm flat against the wood.

The air went white.

There was a sound like a whip cracking right beside her ear, and Auntie Niu shrieked and dropped her tongs. When she could see again, the young man had stepped back, and there was smoke curling off the gate.

“Tell him this,” the young man said. “The princess’s contest first. After I pass, him.”

He turned and walked back down the lane, with blue sparks crawling over the stones where he stepped.

Niu Tiezhu came out from under the bun table, where he had dived at the crack.

“Grandma! Grandma, who was that?” Niu Tiezhu said.

“How should I know?” Auntie Niu said, picking up her tongs with shaking hands.

“Huangfu Lie,” the water carrier said hoarsely, from behind his barrels. “That was Huangfu Lie of Thunder Abyss Valley. He’s on the Tianxing. Ninety-fourth.”

“Late Deity Transformation, they say!”

“I heard he killed a thunder ape with his bare hand when he was sixteen!”

“And he burned the gate…”

Shi Feng came round the corner with the barrow boy and found half the lane standing around his gate.

“Young Master Shi!” Auntie Niu shouted, waving her tongs. “A violet one came! He burned your gate! I told him he had no manners!”

“Thank you, Auntie,” Shi Feng said. “Did he have any?”

“None at all!” Auntie Niu said. “He called you a furnace!”

“Then he’ll get along well with the Azure Sun young lord,” Shi Feng said.

He went to look at the gate.

A black spiral cut a finger deep into the oak. The scorch was a single clean coil, a palm’s width across. Fine cracks spread through the surrounding wood. Shi Feng inspected them before touching the centre, careful not to assume the remaining thunder was harmless.

At the very centre of the spiral, there was a small round patch of wood the size of a copper coin.

That patch wasn’t burned at all.

Shi Feng put his finger on it. The wood there was cool, and the grain was clean. Everything around it was charred. Only the centre had been left alone.

Ji Yuanhe came out of the gate and stood beside him.

“Auntie Niu says it was a man named Huangfu Lie,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Ninety-fourth on the list.”

“I heard,” Shi Feng said. “Thunder Abyss Valley. Dong Kai’s young master.” He traced the spiral with his fingertip, round and inward. “Master Ji, look at this. It’s one coil.”

Ji Yuanhe looked.

“One,” Ji Yuanhe agreed.

“Nine-Coil Thunder Palm,” Shi Feng said. “Each strike stacks a new coil over the last. The next blow carries the thunder already laid down.” He removed his finger. “This is only one. I want to understand the centre before he tries the other eight.”

“What does the ninth do?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“I imagine it takes the gate off,” Shi Feng said. “And the wall behind it.”

Somebody at the back whispered it to somebody else, and it went down the lane from mouth to mouth.

“He said he’ll come after the princess’s contest,” Ji Yuanhe said. “After he passes.”

“Then he’ll come,” Shi Feng said. “Men like him always pass the first round.”

He looked at the untouched patch in the middle of the spiral once more. A coil of thunder that burned everything except its own centre. That was strange, and he filed it away.

He didn’t sand the scorch off the gate. He left it where it was.

“Isn’t it ugly?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“It teaches me something,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll inspect it each time I pass. Huangfu Lie expects me to worry about what comes next. I’d rather know how the first strike works.”

That evening Guan Haojie came for the Situ order and stopped dead in front of the gate.

“Master Shi,” Guan Haojie said slowly. “Is that the Nine-Coil Thunder Palm?”

“Only one coil of it,” Shi Feng said, and handed him the box with six pills in it. “Six Blood-Settling Pills, Steward Guan. Perfect grade.”

Guan Haojie opened the box. He looked at the six pills for a long moment, then at Shi Feng, and he didn’t ask any of the questions in his eyes.

“The Situ house thanks you,” Guan Haojie said.

When he had gone, Shi Feng took Liu Su’s slip from his sleeve and checked the stamp once more.

Phoenix Tail Pavilion. Buying Hall. The first of the month.

Tomorrow.