Chapter 751 — The Sealed Box

CHAPTER 751

The Sealed Box

“A friendly test, Master Shi,” Cui Zhaoyu said. “Between two alchemists. Nothing more.”

The candidates’ hall at the Phoenix Tail Pavilion was full that morning. Eleven candidates were waiting for the round’s scores, and nobody had anything to do but watch. Cui Zhaoyu stood at the centre table with his fan in one hand. The sealed box sat on the table in front of him, black lacquer, the size of a fist, with an Azure Sun wax seal across the lid.

Shi Feng had brought it back himself. He hadn’t opened it.

“Name the pill inside,” Cui Zhaoyu said smoothly. “Without breaking the seal. I hear the Pavilion’s 4 Marks can do such things. A 3 Mark of the Pill Court would like to learn.”

“And if I get it wrong?” Shi Feng asked.

“Then I’ll know the banquet was luck,” Cui Zhaoyu said with a smile. “And so will everyone here.”

“On one condition,” Shi Feng said. He took a plain lacquered box from his sleeve, sealed in plain wax, and set it beside the Azure Sun box. “Two boxes. You name mine, I name yours. Neither seal broken. Situ Jinghong holds both and calls the score.”

Situ Jinghong set his tea down and came to the table. He took a box in each hand and held them apart at eye height, where the hall could see them. Then he set the Azure Sun box in front of Shi Feng and kept the other in his hand.

Cui Zhaoyu looked at Shi Feng’s box. “Mine is the harder test,” he said. He didn’t look away from the plain wax.

Qu Ming sat at the window with his boots up on a chair. He laughed.

“Go on, stamp boy,” Qu Ming said. “Smell it. That’s all you’re good for, isn’t it? Your nose?”

Around the hall, the other candidates moved closer. Cheng Mobai leaned on a pillar, arms folded. Situ Jinghong stood at the table with a box in his hand, smiling. Gu Yanxing, for once, had opened his eyes.

Shi Feng picked Cui Zhaoyu’s box up.

He didn’t break the seal. He held it under his nose and breathed in slowly, once.

Lacquer. Wax. Pill wax, the soft yellow kind the Azure Sun used to coat its pills. Under the wax, very faint, a smell like wet chalk. Under the chalk, something sour.

He set the box back down on the table.

“It isn’t a pill,” Shi Feng said.

Cui Zhaoyu’s fan paused.

“It’s a ball of powder rolled in pill wax, so it looks like a pill,” Shi Feng went on. “The powder is bone-rot. Shattering Void grade. Ground on a water mill, with stone grit in it.” He looked up. “The same grind as the cup at the banquet. If you opened the box, we’d find the grains are all one size.”

The hall went silent.

Shi Feng smiled at Cui Zhaoyu politely.

“Where did you buy it, Master Cui?” Shi Feng asked.

Cui Zhaoyu’s face went white.

“I… it’s a sample,” Cui Zhaoyu said. “From the Pill Court’s collection. For study.”

“The Pill Court keeps Shattering Void-grade bone-rot for study?” Shi Feng asked. “Then the Pill Court will know which mill ground it. Shall I ask Chief Steward Ke to send them a letter?”

Cui Zhaoyu opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“He knew it through the lid?”

“Bone-rot? The same as the banquet?”

“Then where did a 3 Mark get it?”

“…”

Qu Ming had taken his boots off the chair. He was looking at Cui Zhaoyu now, not at Shi Feng, and he wasn’t laughing any more.

“You said it was a common test pill,” Qu Ming said slowly.

Cui Zhaoyu didn’t answer him. He snatched his box off the table, put it in his sleeve, bowed stiffly to nobody and walked out of the hall. His fan was still closed.

The hall stayed quiet until his footsteps had gone. Situ Jinghong set Shi Feng’s box down on the table, still sealed. “One box named, one box abandoned,” Situ Jinghong said. “The score is Master Shi’s, and the hall heard it.”

“He sent that to your house?” Cheng Mobai asked, pushing himself off the pillar. “With people still there after the fire?”

He came over, lowering his voice.

“What was that, really?” Cheng Mobai asked. “A man doesn’t send a poison to the one alchemist in the city who can name it. Not unless he’s a fool. And that one isn’t a fool.”

“Whoever arranged this wanted to test how much I can smell,” Shi Feng said quietly. “I talked about a mill at the banquet. If I couldn’t identify this powder, they’d know I might have guessed. Now they can’t dismiss what I said.”

“And now?” Cheng Mobai asked.

“Now everyone here has heard about the same poison twice,” Shi Feng said. “They can make Cui Zhaoyu leave, but they can’t make us all forget the box.”

Cheng Mobai whistled softly.

“When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman wins,” Cheng Mobai said.

Shi Feng didn’t answer. He was looking at the door Cui Zhaoyu had gone through.

Cui Zhaoyu’s panic bothered him. The man might not have known what the box held. Someone could have given him a supposed test pill and let his resentment do the rest. Shi Feng couldn’t be sure yet. He knew only that a 3 Mark of the Azure Sun had brought the banquet’s poison into this hall.

At dawn the next day, Ke Lianshu came to Willow Ford himself and bowed in the gateway.

“This humble steward apologises for the hour,” Ke Lianshu said. “Candidate Cui Zhaoyu left the pavilion in the night. His room is empty. He took nothing but his furnace.”

Behind him, in the lane, Sergeant Chai was coming at a fast walk.

“Young Master Shi,” Sergeant Chai said. “We’ve pulled a man out of the East Canal. The princess’s steward will want to see him.”