Chapter 739 — The Issue

CHAPTER 739

The Issue

The Tianji Mansion’s new issue came wrapped around a bun.

Auntie Niu had bought one at dawn, read the first page, and used the rest to wrap the morning’s first tray, as she did every month. Niu Tiezhu passed the tray over the wall. Ji Yuanhe unwrapped the buns at the courtyard table, smoothed the greasy paper flat and turned it over.

Then he pointed.

Shi Feng was sitting with his back very straight, because sitting any other way hurt. He’d bound his ribs with a strip of linen soaked in his own salve, and every breath still told him exactly where the cracks were.

He looked where Ji Yuanhe’s finger was.

Ninetieth. Shi Feng.

Ninety-first. Tang Mingyu.

Ji Yuanhe looked up at him and waited.

“Ninetieth,” Shi Feng said, taking a bun. “Three places higher, and the ribs will heal. I just hope the people reading this don’t all come to our gate.”

“Nobody will,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“No?” Shi Feng asked.

Ji Yuanhe pointed at the paper again, at the grease stain that ran right across the eighties and nineties.

“Nobody reads the bottom,” Ji Yuanhe said. “Auntie Niu wraps buns in it.”

Over the wall, Auntie Niu’s voice came loudly.

“Tiezhu! Read me the top ten again!” Auntie Niu shouted. “Who’s the princess fighting this year?”

“Grandma, the princess doesn’t fight anybody. She’s first!” Niu Tiezhu shouted back.

“Then read me who’s second!” Auntie Niu said.

Nobody in the lane asked who was ninetieth. Shi Feng ate his bun and found he liked it that way.

That afternoon, the twelve were called to the practice ground to hear the board read. Shi Feng went with his ribs bound, and stood at the rail beside Cheng Mobai while Ke Lianshu read the names from the ring steps and bowed after every one.

“Bout one, Young Lord Qu Ming,” Ke Lianshu read. “Bout two, Young Master Situ Jinghong.”

“Two seals,” Cheng Mobai said under his breath. “That’s all he needed. He wrote one in the air and the man ran into it like a wall. He wrote the second and the man couldn’t lift his arms.”

“The Brush-and-Seal Art,” Shi Feng said. He’d watched it from this rail on the first afternoon. The Prime Minister’s grandson, seventy-seventh, slim and pleasant in pale grey, had bowed politely while his opponent was carried off. “How many can he write at once?”

“Nobody’s ever made him write more than three,” Cheng Mobai said. “And he smiles at everyone. A needle hidden in cotton.”

“Bout three, Young Master Wen Tieshan,” Ke Lianshu read on. “Bout four, Young Master Rong Tianye. Bout five, Young Master Peng Zhenyue.”

Rong Tianye, eighty-third, had stood under a dome of black qi shaped like a tortoise shell for a hundred breaths while his opponent wore himself out against it. That was the Black Tortoise Shield. Peng Zhenyue, eighty-first, had pressed one palm to the stone and cracked the ring in a straight line, and his opponent’s legs had sunk into it to the ankles. The Earth-Sealing Palm.

“Bout six, Master Cui Zhaoyu,” Ke Lianshu read.

“I still don’t know how he won,” Cheng Mobai said.

“Smoke,” Shi Feng said. Qu Ming’s alchemist was a 3 Mark from the Azure Sun, late Deity Transformation and unranked, and his opponent had coughed twice and sat down. “He burned something in his sleeve before the bout.”

“Is that allowed?” Cheng Mobai asked.

“There wasn’t a rule against it,” Shi Feng said. “Watch his sleeves if you draw him. He prepared the smoke before anyone was paying attention.”

“Bout seven, Master Shi Feng,” Ke Lianshu read, with a deeper bow. “Bout eight, Young Master Qiao Wending.”

“His family’s a Situ client house,” Cheng Mobai said. “He bowed to Situ Jinghong’s seat before he bowed to his opponent. Everybody saw.”

“Bout nine, Master Cheng Mobai,” Ke Lianshu read. “Bout ten, Young Master Gu Yanxing. Bout eleven, Young Master Hao Lingyun. Bout twelve, Young Master Pan Qiubai.”

Twenty-four had come to the ring, and twelve had gone home, in carts or on foot. Tang Mingyu had gone without collecting his beads.

“The fourth round is Her Highness’s banquet,” Ke Lianshu added. “The details will be given on the day. This humble steward apologises in advance.”

“For what?” somebody at the rail asked.

Ke Lianshu bowed and didn’t say.

Qu Ming passed the rail on his way out. His eyes dropped to the binding that showed at Shi Feng’s collar and stayed there a moment.

“Ribs heal slowly in winter, alchemist,” Qu Ming said. “Mind the ice on your way home.”

He walked on before Shi Feng could answer.

The lane behind Willow Ford was narrow, with four lamps in it, one at each courtyard gate. At dusk that evening, only three of them were lit.

A man was standing under the unlit one.

Shi Feng stopped at the corner, short of their reach, with Ji Yuanhe beside him. There were four men in the lane, in quilted brown coats. They weren’t young, and they weren’t geniuses. They looked bored and stood well apart, leaving no clear path through.

Then all four released their cultivation pressure. The lane fell silent, and someone hurriedly shut a window overhead.

Shattering Void. All four of them.

“Alchemist Shi,” the biggest one said, cracking his knuckles. “Somebody’s bought a debt in your name. We’ve come to collect.”