Chapter 833 — Herb Street

CHAPTER 833

Herb Street

“Lightning pine bark, thirty bundles. Thunder-scarred moss, twelve jars. Storm-root, all of it,” Shi Feng said, and set the list on the counter. “And whatever’s under the counter.”

The herb seller looked at him, then at the list, then at Ji Yuanhe, who nodded gravely.

“Young master,” the herb seller said weakly, “that’s my whole season.”

“Then your season ends early,” Shi Feng said. “At full price. I’ll take the crates too.”

Herb Street ran a full li along the canal below the Pavilion district, and in the early morning it smelled of wet earth and ginseng. Lightning-ground herbs were sold at the north end, where the soil had been struck and the plants had learned to drink thunder. Set in a ring, they’d take part of a tribulation’s force into themselves instead of into him.

By the time the sun cleared the roofs, he’d bought out four stalls. Ji Yuanhe had gone with the porters to the carts and was counting every crate onto them.

Four hundred and twenty thousand, all told. It was a lot of money for dried bark, and very little for living through the next ten days.

[Cash: about 11.08M | Spent: 420,000 on tribulation stock]

He was paying the fifth stall when a man stepped in front of it.

The man was broad and middle-aged, in a red robe with one small gold flame on the breast. He looked at the storm-root, not at Shi Feng.

“How much for all of it?” the man asked the stall keeper.

“Elder, this young master has already paid for it,” the stall keeper said nervously.

“Has he?” The man finally turned. “I didn’t see.”

Then he let his realm go.

The pressure came down on the stall like a millstone. The stall keeper sat down hard behind his counter. People grabbed at awnings. A basket of dates went over and rolled across the stones.

Early Shattering Void. Not a genius, not a chosen one. A solid, well-fed elder with a whole realm on him, and he knew it.

“Outer Elder Zhai Chengyang, of the Azure Sun,” the man said. “And you are the princess’s cook. Step aside. You’re blocking my stall.”

“It’s my stall,” Shi Feng said. “I just bought it. Including the awning.”

A crowd gathered at a safe distance.

“That’s Elder Zhai of the Azure Sun!”

“Shattering Void! You can feel it from here!”

“Who’s the young one? He’s still standing.”

Zhai Chengyang’s eyes narrowed. A man at Deity Transformation should have been on his knees, and this one was still waiting for his change.

Shi Feng thought: so Qu Ming’s people really were waiting. The young lord had been generous with his warning.

“Then let me help you aside,” Zhai Chengyang said.

He struck with his right palm. It went red to the wrist before it moved, then bright orange, and the air rippled with heat. The Red Ember Palm. It was a Shattering Void-grade art that left burns under the skin, and it crossed the four feet between them faster than most men could follow.

Shi Feng raised his left sleeve.

The palm hit cloth. The Quiet Sleeve Art had been at Major Success since the Hunt. It hid qi and intent from other men’s senses, and now it hid what entered the sleeve too. The heat went in and vanished. Zhai Chengyang felt his palm land on nothing, as if he’d slapped a curtain in an empty room.

He was a veteran. He didn’t stand there wondering. He jumped back to make room for his left hand, and his feet left a burned print on the stones.

Jumping back was the mistake. A Shattering Void cultivator could fold the distance, but only if he had a heartbeat to do it. Shi Feng didn’t give him one.

The date juice lay spilled across the stones between them. Shi Feng stepped onto it. Riverless Step was at Perfection. It didn’t need a river anymore. Anything wet and moving under his heel would carry him, and it carried him three paces in one slide, into the space Zhai Chengyang had just made.

Too close for the left palm now.

Shi Feng didn’t draw the grey Sword. Killing an Azure Sun elder on Herb Street would bring the whole sect down on the princess’s pavilion before breakfast. He swung it as it was, still in its sheath.

Sunset-Splitting Sword, at Perfection, didn’t need an edge. The stroke came across from the right like the last red line of the sun going under the hills, and the scabbard hit Zhai Chengyang below the ribs.

Bang!

The outer elder left the ground. He flew backward across the street, over the dates and a porter’s head, and came down flat on a spice cart. The cart collapsed. A cloud of red pepper and ground ginger went up into the morning air.

“He…he hit an elder with a sheath!”

“That was Shattering Void! The other one’s only Deity Transformation! That’s a whole realm!”

“He didn’t even draw!”

“…Is Elder Zhai alive?”

Elder Zhai was alive. He sat up in the ruins of the cart with pepper in his beard and his eyes streaming.

Shi Feng walked to the spice seller, who had both hands on his head.

“How much was the cart?” Shi Feng asked.

“S-six hundred, young master. With the spices, eight.”

Shi Feng counted out a thousand and put it in his hand.

“The rest is for your trouble,” Shi Feng said. “If the Azure Sun asks, tell them their elder bought it. He was the one who sat on it.”

Ji Yuanhe came running back from the carts and stared at the elder in the pepper.

“I left you alone for one stall,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“I was shopping,” Shi Feng said. “He wanted the storm-root.”

He crouched in front of Zhai Chengyang. The outer elder was a realm above him and picking ginger out of his beard.

“Elder Zhai,” Shi Feng said quietly. “Tell the young lord the herbs were very fresh. Tell him I bought them carefully, as he asked.”

Zhai Chengyang said nothing. He couldn’t, because his mouth was full of pepper.

By evening the story was on every teahouse table between the canal and the Pavilion district. Shi Feng didn’t hear it. He was in the pavilion stores, counting storm-root, when a red-robed disciple came to the door and bowed.

“Grandmaster Qu lights his furnace tomorrow at noon,” the disciple said stiffly. “The hall gallery is open. He says the princess’s alchemist should come and watch, and learn.”