Chapter 79 — The Prince Who Waited

CHAPTER 79

The Prince Who Waited

“Your stall board is eleven inches too long!” Mei Qian announced, flapping the permit form at the whole market.

Shi Feng looked at the board. Then he looked at the measuring cord, which the clerk stretched from the far end of the handle.

“The handle isn’t part of the board,” Shi Feng said.

“A stall includes everything attached to it!” Mei Qian said, his face turning red.

“Then write that down and sign it,” Shi Feng said, offering the brush. “Today’s date, your name, your reason.”

Mei Qian’s expression froze. His mouth opened, then shut. The neighbouring stallkeepers leaned closer.

“He wants the clerk to sign it!” someone whispered, stunned.

“Nobody signs anything here…”

“…”

“Inspection takes the whole morning!” Mei Qian said stiffly.

“Then inspect,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t waste the morning telling me you might.”

He waited beside his closed stall while the other shops opened. By the time the clerk finally stamped the form, two regular customers had walked away and bought elsewhere. The fee was legal. The delay was on purpose. Shi Feng wrote both facts in his account book, on separate lines.

At the furnace yard, another clerk demanded an irrelevant household guarantee. Shi Feng checked the old rule, found it concerned stored fuel, and refused to lend the delay a respectable excuse.

He moved the long booking to another yard and kept only one short session, already paid. None of these men drew a blade, Shi Feng thought. Killing a stupid clerk wouldn’t bring back a lost morning. It would only give the men behind him something better than an irregular form.

An inconvenience wasn’t an assassination. He knew the difference.

But Sima Yu is testing me, Shi Feng thought, and he’s patient. First the clerks, then the knife. A prince can afford to buy both!

The thought didn’t trouble him much. It only made him watch his steps more carefully on his walk home.

That afternoon his first firing failed at the joining stage. Irritation made his qi follow the wrong rhythm before he caught it, so he scraped out the residue and sat by the furnace until he stopped thinking about Mei Qian. The next attempt gave two small pills.

Mo Tianheng’s whole art was complete in his memory, but his current qi needed slow, steady handling at this scale. He didn’t need a clerk sharing control of the flame.

“Master Shen, the room’s yours for the hour,” Gao Yuan called through the door, yawning. “The other tenants say clerks were asking about you. Not my business, eh?”

“Then the other tenants should mind their own fires,” Shi Feng said, wiping his hands.

Gao Yuan yawned and shuffled off. Even a lazy landlord could tell when a customer was in trouble.

Across the capital, He Zhong left the eastern residence holding a small purse and nursing a wrist that still ached.

He had told Sima Yu about the mountain pass. He had claimed a hard fight, but under questions the useful facts became smaller: Shi Feng had caught a spear shaft, broken a qi shield with physical force and left him alive. He Zhong knew nothing about a restored meridian network or a concealed refiner. The prince paid for the limited account anyway.

After the hunter left, Sima Yu received another visitor in a room emptied of servants.

The old man wore a plain grey robe and carried no fancy weapon. When he sat, the prince waited for the cup to reach his hand before he spoke. Cao Wenshu had served the royal house for forty years.

He stood at mid Foundation Establishment. Decades of palace service had sharpened his killing methods, and he didn’t need an expensive robe to make lesser cultivators nervous.

“Guo Zhen has vanished,” Sima Yu said softly. “And a certain medicine peddler still goes into Hengyun. It’s a pity, with the mountains so dangerous these days.”

Cao Wenshu lifted the lid of his cup. “A medicine peddler?” Cao Wenshu said. “You summoned this old man for a peddler?”

“Someone searched Hengyun,” Sima Yu said gently. “They found nothing worth bringing me.”

Cao Wenshu looked faintly amused. Finding nothing could mean many things, especially to a prince who disliked every explanation on offer. Sima Yu laid a thin sheet on the table: gathering routes, late returns, a private refiner, and a link to the stall that nobody could explain.

“I’m told accidents are common in the mountains,” Sima Yu said.

“Hmph. So they are,” Cao Wenshu said.

“I would only ask that the palace’s name stay out of it,” Sima Yu said.

Cao Wenshu set the cup down. His fee went up when discretion was required, and went up again if the body had to stay outside the city. He named the total without apologising for either part.

“Agreed,” Sima Yu said.

A few stones lost to inspections hadn’t scared the cripple off, he thought coldly. The fool mistook a shopkeeper’s troubles for real pressure. Cao Wenshu would teach him a plainer lesson.

The old man folded the sheet and slid it into his robe.

At Qingliu Lane, Ling Qingzhu sat on the edge of the bed and watched Shi Feng pack, since in a house with only one room there was nowhere else to look. Knife, food packet, binding cord and root cloth went into his bag from his corner, in their usual order. He’d rolled up his floor bedding and tucked it against the wall.

“Have prices gone up again?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “Say yes. I’ll buy the whole lane. Nobody raises anything.”

“They never apologise and come back down,” Shi Feng said.

“Don’t. Ruining a lane is a hobby, not a plan,” Ling Qingzhu admitted. “I’ll buy vegetables if you’re back before the market closes.”

“Don’t pay extra for freshness just because a fish looked at you,” Shi Feng said.

“Also,” Shi Feng added at the gate, “if the fishmonger calls you a master of fish again, walk away.”

“He didn’t say master of fish!” Ling Qingzhu protested. “He said I had a good eye. I do have a good eye!”

“He said master’s eye,” Shi Feng said. “It’s the same fish.”

She picked up the nearest folded cloth and threw it at his head.

He caught it, tucked it into the bag, and went out smiling. Ling Qingzhu stared at the empty gate and her cheeks warmed. “Shameless!” Ling Qingzhu muttered. She didn’t know why he was smiling. Neither did he, really.

All those difficult bookings made gathering his own herbs worthwhile. Hengyun’s inner ground still held the roots he needed, and a clean lot would lower the cost of Yan Meizhen’s next order. Shi Feng worked through the afternoon, rejecting damaged stems and taking only what he could use or sell.

Before heading back he sat under a rock shelf and took out the sealed storage ring.

It was still sealed. Foundation Establishment was the threshold, he thought. All of Mo Tianheng’s knowledge couldn’t convince the ring that its owner had crossed it.

Shi Feng put the ring away and started down. Near the abandoned signal fort, the birds stopped singing.

He set down the root bundle and looked up. A man stood on the broken parapet. There was no scrape of footsteps, and no effort to balance on the narrow stone. A breath later the pressure reached the path, so thick that the air under the man’s feet felt strangely still.

Shi Feng’s heart tightened. His pupils shrank. Mid Foundation Establishment. This was a stage beyond the opponents he could dominate.

He drew his ordinary sword slowly. The path behind him offered distance, not safety, and against an opponent like this, turning his back would only choose the place where he’d be struck.

“Sima Yu sent you?” Shi Feng asked.

Cao Wenshu looked down at him.

“A mere ant, and this old man must climb a mountain for you,” Cao Wenshu said. “Be glad it will be quick, boy.”

Shi Feng shifted his feet and let the bag slide where he could drop it.

“Then he should’ve saved his stones,” Shi Feng said calmly.

He had no intention of dying politely just because a prince had bought a powerful hand.