Chapter 710 — The Pressure Gate

CHAPTER 710

The Pressure Gate

“Tallies up! Walk through and stand on the far side! Anyone who kneels has finished!”

The household officer’s voice carried across the whole yard of the Talent Hall. Three thousand candidates stood packed between the Phoenix Tail Pavilion’s red walls, and in front of them stood the pressure gate.

It was only a lacquered arch, a little wider than a cart. Gold array lines ran up both posts and across the top. When the first man walked under it, the lines lit, and he slowed down as if he had walked into deep water.

Attendants weren’t allowed through the gate. Ji Yuanhe had been sent round by the side gallery with the other servants and grooms, and he stood at its rail with the commission book under his arm, watching.

“It holds at the weight a Deity Transformation cultivator can bear,” the officer added. “Soul Formation candidates are welcome to try.”

A great many Soul Formation candidates tried.

The first ten went in proudly. Seven of them dropped to their knees before the middle of the arch. The other three came out on the far side white as paper, and one of them threw up on the stones.

Dozens failed, then hundreds. Servants pulled the kneeling candidates clear and helped them against the wall. The waiting men stopped boasting as they watched so many preparations end in a few steps.

“That’s the son of the Fang house!”

“Fifteen years of preparation, and he didn’t make four steps!”

“Great waves wash away the sand. Whatever’s left standing is gold.”

Shi Feng’s turn came in the middle of the morning.

The man in front of him was broad and red-faced, early Deity Transformation, and he was sweating before he even reached the arch. He looked back at Shi Feng nervously.

“Brother, you go first,” the man said.

“You were here first,” Shi Feng said. “We’ll go together.”

They stepped under the arch side by side.

The pressure came down like a hand on top of the skull. It pushed at the knees and at the spine, and it pushed hardest at the deity sitting inside. The red-faced man gasped, and his legs shook.

Shi Feng’s deity barely reacted to the weight. He bent his shoulders to show the effort expected of a mid Deity Transformation cultivator, then glanced at the struggling man beside him. A distraction might get him to the far side without exposing how easy the gate was for Shi Feng.

“Do you eat buns in the morning?” Shi Feng asked.

“What?” the red-faced man said through his teeth.

“Buns,” Shi Feng said. “At Willow Ford they’re four coppers this month. Near the North Gate I hear they’re five. Is that true?”

“Five,” the red-faced man gasped. “Six at the new year.”

“Six coppers for a bun,” Shi Feng said. “That’s robbery. Keep walking.”

“How can you talk in here?” the man asked hoarsely.

“If I talk, I don’t think about the weight,” Shi Feng said. “If you think about the weight, you’ll kneel. So tell me, are the North Gate buns any good?”

“They’re terrible!” the red-faced man burst out. “The meat’s all fat!”

“Then you’ve been robbed twice,” Shi Feng said. “Three more steps.”

Anger about the buns distracted the man long enough to keep his legs moving. They cleared the arch together. He bent over his knees on the far side, astonished to be standing there rather than waiting for servants to drag him away.

“I passed,” the red-faced man said, stunned. “I actually passed.”

“You did,” Shi Feng said. “Buy your buns at Willow Ford.”

Along the gallery rail, several servants were staring.

“Did you see that? He was chatting!”

“What realm is he?”

“Mid Deity Transformation. I felt it at the arch.”

“Mid Deity Transformation, and he walked it like a teahouse corridor?”

Ji Yuanhe didn’t say anything. He made a small mark in the margin of the commission book.

About a thousand stood beyond the gate. Near the tally boards, a jade-crowned young man named Zhong Tianci led a circle of silk-robed friends. His bored expression changed when he spotted Shi Feng approaching the draw.

“Look, it’s him,” Zhong Tianci said loudly to his circle. “The tally from the wrong queue. The pill-boy.”

His friends laughed.

“Young Master Zhong, are you sure?” one of them asked.

“Belt, tally, mid Deity Transformation, cheap robe,” Zhong Tianci said. “Who else would it be? My father says the 4 Mark fellow is a frontier furnace with no sect. A pill-boy who wandered into the Talent Hall because he couldn’t read the signs.”

“He walked the gate well,” a thin friend said.

“Anyone can walk a gate,” Zhong Tianci sneered. “A gate doesn’t hit back.”

The friend beside him was a big man with heavy shoulders and a hook at his hip. He laughed louder than any of them.

Shi Feng heard every word. He walked past the circle on his way to the draw and nodded to them pleasantly.

“Young Master,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you for remembering my name. Most people only remember the joke.”

Zhong Tianci hesitated. Shi Feng’s thanks sounded polite, which made it harder to answer with another insult. His companions watched him while Shi Feng continued toward the urn.

The draw was a jade urn on a table at the head of the yard. Each candidate who had passed the gate put in his hand and took out one bamboo slip. Ke Lianshu, the princess’s chief steward, a round man in a plain grey robe, stood beside it, writing every slip into a long register with a fine brush. He bowed to each candidate in turn, and his eyes missed nothing.

Shi Feng put his hand in and drew.

“Platform sixty-three,” the officer read aloud. “Second bout of the afternoon.”

A few places behind him, Zhong Tianci drew next.

“Platform sixty-three,” the officer read. “Second bout of the afternoon.”

There was a breath of silence in the circle. Then Zhong Tianci burst out laughing.

“Heaven has eyes!” Zhong Tianci said, holding his slip up so everyone could see it. “The pill-boy is mine!”

Shi Feng tucked his own slip into his belt beside the tally.

“See you after lunch, Young Master,” Shi Feng said.