Chapter 730 — The Post

CHAPTER 730

The Post

Stall forty-one had one wooden post holding up the left side of its roof. It was the post that leaked.

Shi Feng pasted the first slip on it at eye level. Beside it he pasted the gold paper label from the Tang box, smoothed flat, with its fine characters facing the lane. Minor Success.

Below them he pasted the other two slips. Then he went back behind the counter, lifted the cauldron lid and added a root.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t call out to the queue. He just went on working.

The first reader was a woman carrying a basket. Her eyes moved from the Tang label to the appraisal, then back again. She rummaged among her purchases and brought out a gold box. Its label matched the one on the post.

“Three clouds,” the woman said slowly. “Common? But it says Minor Success on the paper.”

The man behind her leaned in to read.

“That’s the pavilion’s appraisal seal. The red one.”

“The pavilion’s at war with the Tang! Of course they’d say that!”

“Read the next one, idiot. It says the pavilion’s own pills are only Minor Success. And the one under it says the stall boy’s are better than the pavilion’s!”

“…Why would the princess’s appraiser say her own pills were worse?”

“Because she’s honest. Unlike some!”

More people came. Then more. People at the back of the Golden Abacus queue turned around to see what the crowd at the drain was reading, and somebody read it aloud for them, slowly and loudly.

“Golden Abacus Hall. Three clouds. Common!”

“I paid nine hundred for that!”

“Nine hundred is about what Common is worth,” a grey-haired cultivator in a merchant’s coat said, holding his gold box up to the light. “They didn’t cheat you on the price. They cheated you on the label.”

“Same thing!”

“True gold doesn’t fear the fire,” an old woman said, looking at the six clouds still fading over stall forty-one.

Shi Feng took the next batch out of the cauldron. Six clouds had risen over the roof while the crowd argued. He set the pills on the counter.

“You can check this without trusting the princess’s appraiser,” Shi Feng said to the lane. “Sky Pavilion has a counter on Bell Street. An appraisal costs a hundred stones. Take your Tang pill there, and bring the result back where everyone can see it.”

The grey-haired cultivator looked at his gold box. Then he turned and walked quickly up the lane toward Bell Street. Two others followed him.

“If he’s lying,” someone said, “he’ll be finished in an hour.”

“If he’s lying, why would he send people to check?”

“…”

The hour passed. Shi Feng made another batch. The crowd at the post didn’t leave.

The grey-haired cultivator came back down Lantern Row with a Sky Pavilion slip in his hand. He didn’t say a word. He just pasted it on the post, right under the princess’s three.

Spirit Tempering Pill. Three clouds. Common.

Golden Abacus Hall’s queue began to shrink at the back. Customers stepped out to read and stayed by the post. A whole family followed, arguing over their gold boxes. At last the men who’d waited near the front since dawn turned around. Nobody stood behind them anymore. Embarrassed, they left too.

A Tang clerk ran out with a brush and painted over the words Minor Success on the board. It made things worse. Everyone in the lane saw him do it.

“Look, he’s changing it now!”

“Now they’re a rat crossing the street! Everyone wants to hit it!”

“And they had a two-hundred-year name in this market!”

Shi Feng’s counter was empty by late afternoon. He hadn’t raised his price by a single stone.

Wei Hanlu stood at the low wall between their stalls and stared at the post. He’d mocked the street furnace on the first day, and it was obvious from his face that he remembered.

“You never shouted once,” Wei Hanlu said finally.

“They had the pills and the labels in their own hands,” Shi Feng said. “I gave them somewhere to check. Shouting would only have given the Tang a chance to shout back.”

Across the lane, Tang Mingyu came out of the door of Golden Abacus Hall.

Tang Mingyu surveyed the empty lane outside his shop. Across from it, customers crowded beneath the leaking roof to read the five slips. His fingers closed around the gold beads on his wrist, holding them still.

He wasn’t laughing.

“Alchemist,” Tang Mingyu said across the lane. His voice was quite pleasant. “You think this is a market?”

“That’s where I’ve been selling pills all week,” Shi Feng said. “If there’s something wrong with the appraisals, you can bring your own.”

“The next round won’t be,” Tang Mingyu said. “Remember that.”

He went inside. The gold abacus over his door swung a little in the wind, and none of its beads clicked.