Chapter 829 — Five Mark-Grade, Behind a Closed Door

CHAPTER 829

Five Mark-Grade, Behind a Closed Door

“No witness,” Long Caili said at the top of the stairs. “No clerk, no Pavilion seal, no record. You understand what that means.”

“It means nobody can say I sat a Mark,” Shi Feng said. “And nobody can say the pill exists.”

“It means if it fails, nobody will know you failed,” Long Caili said. “That’s the part you should care about.”

She opened the iron door to the sealed room under the east hall and stepped aside. The draught from below stirred her veil.

The room was small and square, stone on every side, with one shuttered vent for smoke. A furnace stood in the middle of it, the best in her pavilion. Someone had laid out clean cloths, a water jar and a stool. A physician had stitched his side that afternoon, and the stitches pulled when he sat.

“Your Highness,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you for the room.”

“It’s in the contract,” Long Caili said.

She closed the door on him herself.

He heard the bar drop on the outside.

Shi Feng set out what he had. The Quiet Soul Lotus from the recruits’ vault, seven petals, two short of a cure. The Nine-Petal Quiet Soul Lotus from the Old Crater, white and faintly blue at the root. And from his ring, eleven kinds of Orchard herbs, laid out in a row on the cloth, about six hundred thousand worth.

The Soul-Mending Pill was a 5 Mark-grade pill, a pill for Shattering Void. It mended a soul that had been torn. Ji Yuanhe’s soul had been held to a furnace by grey threads for years, and it had been torn in more places than anyone could count.

The smaller lotus would be the base. The Orchard herbs would carry it. The nine petals would close what was left open.

He lit the furnace.

The work took hours. By the second hour the stitches pulled every time he reached for the vent, so he braced his left hand on the bench and worked one-handed. Steam ran down the walls.

Upstairs, in the east hall, the tea had gone cold twice.

Shen Yaoqing sat by the window with her hands folded in her lap. Long Caili sat across from her with her steward’s accounts of the Hunt, turning a page every so often. The princess’s teacup stood untouched on the table.

“You’ve read that page three times,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“It’s a long page,” Long Caili said.

“It’s six lines,” Shen Yaoqing said.

Long Caili turned it over. Her eyes went to the window and came back at once.

Outside, over the east hall’s roof, the first cloud rose.

Shen Yaoqing saw it through the window, a soft grey shape low above the tiles. Then a second. Then a third, close behind it.

“That’s a pill tribulation,” Shen Yaoqing said. “In your pavilion. Without a Pavilion witness.”

“I don’t see anything,” Long Caili said, not looking up.

“Four,” Shen Yaoqing said quietly. “Five.”

The fifth cloud should have climbed. It didn’t. It spread out flat above the eaves, as if something held it down. The sixth came and spread under it. Then the seventh. All seven lay pressed low along the roof of the east hall, close and grey. From the street, anyone looking up would see only smoke from a kitchen chimney.

“He’s holding them down,” Shen Yaoqing said. “With his own qi. After seven days in the Hunt, and with a cut in his side.”

“Then he’s paying for it himself,” Long Caili said. “As usual.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at the clouds for a long time.

“Seven,” Shen Yaoqing said. “What grade of pill gives seven clouds under a roof like that?”

“A good one,” Long Caili said, and turned another page. Her hand stayed flat on it after she’d turned it.

The bar lifted near midnight.

Shi Feng came up the stairs slowly with a small jade bottle. His sleeves were scorched, and his face was grey with tiredness, but he was smiling a little.

The pill inside the bottle was pale, almost white. Seven clouds. Major Success. A 5 Mark-grade pill, made by a 4 Mark in a room with no window, and nobody in Tianjing would ever write it down.

[Herbs: about 2.4M | Note: about 600,000 of Orchard herbs into the Soul-Mending Pill]

Long Caili closed her accounts book.

“Well?” Long Caili asked.

“It passed,” Shi Feng said.

“You held seven clouds under my roof for half an hour,” Long Caili said. “If the eaves are cracked, I’ll bill you.”

“Bill me,” Shi Feng said. “I’m rich today.”

Shen Yaoqing stood up from the window. She didn’t come closer. She looked at the jade bottle in his hand, and then at his face.

“I saw what you carried out of the Crater on the seventh Mirror,” Shen Yaoqing said. “A nine-petal lotus. My master’s illness needs a soul herb of that grade.” She paused. “Was that lotus for my master’s pill?”

The hall went quiet. Even Long Caili looked up.

“No,” Shi Feng said. “It was for a man who counts.”

Shen Yaoqing’s expression didn’t change, but her jaw tightened. When she spoke again, her voice was cooler than before.

“Then I hope he’s worth it,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“He’s worth it,” Shi Feng said. “Five men came for us on the Terrace lane, and he stood behind me and counted every one of them. I owed him this before I ever met you.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at him for another moment. Then she gave a small nod and sat back down by the window.

She asked nothing more. Shi Feng noticed she didn’t look away from him, either.

He bowed and went out across the moonlit courtyard toward the west wing, where a lamp still burned behind one paper window.

He knocked.

“Master Ji,” Shi Feng said. “Wake up. You can stop counting now.”