Chapter 724 — Clouds over Lantern Row

CHAPTER 724

Clouds over Lantern Row

The charcoal caught, and the cauldron began to tick as it warmed.

Ji Yuanhe passed the herbs in their prepared order. Shi Feng fed them into the warming cauldron without speaking, keeping the fire low and the lid open a finger’s width. The wind could reach him here, but he’d left room to work with it.

The first people to stop were children. Then a porter set down his load. Then three men from the back of the Golden Abacus queue drifted over, because the queue wasn’t moving and the fire was warm.

“Is he really making Deity Transformation pills? Out here?”

“He’s a 4 Mark. I saw his name on the Pavilion board.”

“A 4 Mark next to a drain? Don’t talk nonsense.”

Wei Hanlu and Yan Boqing had come out to watch with the crowd. Neither had a customer to keep him behind his own counter.

“He’ll burn the lot,” Wei Hanlu said loudly. “Refining needs a sealed hall. Everyone knows that. The wind will ruin his fire.”

Shi Feng opened the cauldron lid another finger’s width.

He shaped the fire around the incoming draught instead of shutting it out. Shi Feng had refined in worse conditions than Lantern Row. A sealed hall made control easier; it wasn’t what supplied the alchemist’s skill.

On the fourth hour, the first cloud rose out of the cauldron mouth.

It was small and white, and it climbed straight up past the stall’s leaking roof. A second followed it, then a third. The crowd fell quiet. People in the Golden Abacus queue were turning around now, all down the lane.

Four. Five.

The sixth cloud came up thick and bright, and the six of them hung in a row over Lantern Row, high enough to be seen from the next street.

“Six clouds!”

“That’s Major Success! A Major Success pill, made in the street!”

“My grandfather saw a sitting at the Ninefold Tower once. He said the hall had walls!”

“…”

Shi Feng lifted the lid. Six pills lay in the bottom of the cauldron, round and dark, with the faint sheen that only a properly closed core gave. Ji Yuanhe picked them out with bamboo tongs and set them in a row on the counter.

“Six,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Spirit Tempering Pill,” Shi Feng said to the crowd. “Major Success. One thousand stones.”

Nobody moved.

“One thousand?” someone said. “But the Tang sell Minor Success at nine hundred.”

“Mine’s a grade higher,” Shi Feng said. “You saw the clouds. If you want to watch another batch before paying, stay beside the bricks. I’ll keep refining until dusk.”

An old man pushed to the front. He had a scar across his chin and a Gu army badge on his coat, faded almost white.

“My son’s stuck at Deity Transformation,” the old soldier said gruffly. “Two years. He’s been eating whatever’s cheap.” He looked at the clouds, still fading over the roof, and then at Shi Feng. “One. No, two.”

Shi Feng took his two thousand, wrapped the pills in plain paper and handed them over with both hands.

“Tell him not to eat the Tang ones on the same day,” Shi Feng said. “Let this one settle first.”

The old soldier nodded and went off quickly up the lane.

After that, people came. Not in a flood, but steadily.

“Good wine doesn’t fear a deep alley,” the candle woman said from the top of the row, to nobody in particular. By the time the second batch went into the cauldron, there were forty people standing around stall forty-one, and some of them had left the Golden Abacus queue to stand there.

Wei Hanlu looked at his own empty counter. Six clouds still faded above the cauldron he’d expected the wind to ruin. He kept his judgment to himself now, watching the next herbs rather than mocking the fire-ring.

From the Phoenix Tail Pavilion’s third-floor balcony, Princess Long Caili could see the whole West Market. She stood at the balustrade with a ledger open in one hand. She wore violet, with a single gold phoenix pin in her hair and a veil of pale gauze from brow to chin. The Shattering Void guards along the balcony kept their eyes on the market and never on her.

Six white clouds hung over the lowest corner of the market. As she watched, a seventh didn’t come, and the six began to fade.

Beside her stood a woman in the plain blue robe of the Serene Jade Sect. She wore no jewellery at all, only a sword on her back with a white jade tassel. Shen Yaoqing, chief disciple of the Serene Jade, had been watching the clouds since the first one rose. She hadn’t said a word.

“Lantern Row,” Long Caili said, and made a note in her ledger. “Stall forty-one. The one with the drain.”

Shen Yaoqing finally spoke.

“Who is he?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

Long Caili turned a page.

“A clerk’s mistake,” Long Caili said. “It has started earning.”