Chapter 709 — The City Laughs

CHAPTER 709

The City Laughs

“He went to buy a lotus,” the storyteller cried, and slapped his wooden block on the table, “and he came out with a contest!”

The whole teahouse roared.

Shi Feng sat at the corner table with a bowl of noodles and laughed along with them. He laughed loudly enough that the porter beside him turned to stare.

“You think it’s funny?” the porter asked.

“It’s very funny,” Shi Feng said. “I paid five hundred thousand for it. I may as well get my money’s worth.”

The porter decided he was drunk and moved to another bench.

By evening, every district had its own version. At the North Gate he’d cried; by the canal he’d offered pills instead of money. Nobody telling the tale knew his face. Shi Feng listened to enough of it to learn that the real mistake had become a city joke.

When he got back to Willow Ford, Madam Liu Su was sitting in his courtyard with her fan.

Ji Yuanhe had given her the good stool and a cup of tea. He stood by the door with the commission book held against his chest.

“Young Master Shi,” Liu Su said gently. “I came to tell you myself. I’ve put you in my book.”

“At what?” Shi Feng asked.

“Fifty to one,” Liu Su said. “Against you passing the screening.”

“This morning I wasn’t in your book at all,” Shi Feng said.

“This morning you weren’t a candidate,” Liu Su replied, and the fan tapped once on her knee. “Three thousand tallies were issued. Most of them belong to sons of families and sects who’ve trained for this since they could walk. You belong to a clerk’s brush.”

“Who’s taking the fifty?” Shi Feng asked.

“Nobody yet, young master,” Liu Su said.

Shi Feng took ten silver from his sleeve and set it beside her cup.

“Then I’ll take it,” Shi Feng said. “If the whole city’s going to laugh at me, somebody should make money out of it. It may as well be me.”

Liu Su looked at the silver for a moment. Then she put it away and wrote his name in her little book with a smile.

“Ten silver on tally one thousand one hundred and seven,” Liu Su said. “I’ll pay you five hundred if you pass. I don’t expect to.”

“Write it in the book, Master Ji,” Shi Feng said.

Ji Yuanhe wrote and read the wager back. Liu Su paused her fan to listen. She’d seen him struggling with his count before; now he kept the book accurately. She let him finish without making that part of the joke.

She had barely left when Niu Tiezhu came through the gate with a basket on his head. It was twice the usual size.

“Grandma says these are for strength,” Niu Tiezhu announced. “She says anybody who stands in the wrong queue needs extra.”

“Tell her thank you,” Shi Feng said, and took the basket. “Tell her I’ll stand in the right one next time.”

“She said you’d say that,” Niu Tiezhu said, and ran off.

A household runner in Long-family red came down the lane at dusk. He pasted a sheet on the wall beside Auntie Niu’s stall and went on to the next lane without a word. Half of Willow Ford came out to read it.

Ji Yuanhe read it out, slowly, one line at a time.

“The screening. Three thousand tallies. First, the pressure gate. Those who stand go to the platforms,” Ji Yuanhe read. “Any candidate may call one opponent by tally, once, and must stake his own tally on the bout.”

“So anyone can pick a fight with anyone,” a water-seller said.

“Once,” Ji Yuanhe said. “It says once.”

“Once each,” Shi Feng said. “And there are three thousand of them.”

Auntie Niu leaned out over her steamers and looked at him.

“Young Master Shi, you’re the easiest tally in the city,” Auntie Niu said loudly. “Everybody knows your name, and nobody knows your face. Everybody squeezes the soft persimmon first!”

“Two more buns, Auntie,” Shi Feng said, laughing, and held up two fingers. “I’m paying.”

The lane laughed, and Auntie Niu wrapped the buns and charged him exactly the right price.

Shi Feng studied the calling clause after the laughter ended. Each candidate could choose one opponent. Many would choose the supposedly helpless tally everyone had heard about. He needed to learn the rule exactly, not rely on their ignorance lasting.

Their mockery didn’t change why he’d entered. The lotus was still in the household vault. He turned from the sheet on the wall and began considering what a public victory would show them.

That evening, on the other side of the city, in a mansion the Azure Sun Sect had borrowed for the season, Qu Ming was laughing so hard he had to put his wine cup down.

“The wrong queue!” Qu Ming said. “He went to buy a flower!”

“Yes, young lord,” Yao Chen said. “The whole city has the story. A clerk’s mistake. The Pavilion’s newest 4 Mark, standing in the Talent Hall with a tally on his belt.”

Qu Ming was still smiling. Then he stopped.

“They entered him as a 4 Mark?” Qu Ming asked.

“Yes, young lord. 4 Mark,” Yao Chen said.

The room went quiet. Even the maids pouring wine stopped moving.

Azure Sun had come to supply the princess with an alchemy pillar. Qu Ming expected to be the obvious choice. A second candidate with a publicly stamped 4 Mark gave her a furnace outside the sect to compare against his.

“If he passes one round,” Qu Ming said slowly, “she’ll have two furnaces to compare.”

“He won’t pass, young lord,” Yao Chen said. “He’s mid Deity Transformation. Half the tallies are late.”

“Azure Sun didn’t come here to be compared with anyone,” Qu Ming said coldly. “The wind rises from the duckweed’s tip. Find out where they draw his platform.”

Yao Chen bowed and went out.

Qu Ming picked his wine cup up again. It had gone hot in his hand, and the wine inside was boiling.