Chapter 848 — Bandits, Again

CHAPTER 848

Bandits, Again

“Five dead bandits,” the guard captain said. “One fled, wounded. No losses on our side, Your Highness.”

Long Caili sat behind the low table in her pavilion study, veiled, with a cup of tea she hadn’t touched. Lamps burned along the walls. Outside the window, the city of Tianjing was going to bed as if nothing had happened.

Shi Feng sat on a cushion by the door with his left arm bound to the elbow in white cloth. It was still black underneath. Three of his ribs were strapped. His robe was new, because his old one had burned on the ridge.

He was at early Shattering Void. He had been for half a day, and his whole body still hurt.

The third man in the room was an officer of the capital watch. He was middle-aged and careful, and he hesitated with his brush above the report. He clearly wanted her to decide what he could safely write.

“Your Highness,” the watch officer said. “Six men came out of a rift. They were all Shattering Void. One of them used a void art I’ve never seen in any registry. The crowd on the ridge saw it.”

“The crowd on the ridge saw bandits,” Long Caili said.

The watch officer looked at her.

“Bandits, Your Highness?” the watch officer asked, making sure he’d heard her correctly.

“Bandits,” Long Caili said. “They came for my alchemist’s tribulation stock. Thunder-Gazing Ridge is Long family land. Bandits who trespass on it die. Five of them did. That’s what happened.”

The watch officer looked down at his page for a long moment. Then he wet his brush and wrote.

“Bandits,” the watch officer said, writing. “Five dead. One fled. On Long family land.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Long Caili said. “Trouble comes out of the mouth. You’ve always been a careful man.”

The watch officer bowed very low and left without another word.

When the door closed, the guard captain let his shoulders drop.

“He knows they weren’t bandits,” the guard captain said.

“Everyone knows they weren’t bandits,” Long Caili said. “That’s why it has to be written that way. If it isn’t bandits, it’s something the capital watch can’t touch, and then somebody has to ask questions nobody can answer.” She finally picked up her tea. “Go and have your arm seen to.”

The guard captain bowed and went.

Long Caili turned her eyes on Shi Feng.

“You brought the bandits into your own tribulation,” Long Caili said. “The whole city is saying so.”

“They brought themselves,” Shi Feng said. “I only asked them to stand closer.”

“You burned the robe my household tailored for you,” Long Caili said, looking at the bandages beneath the new sleeve.

“It was a good robe,” Shi Feng said. “It lasted through more than I’d expected.”

Long Caili looked at his black arm, then at his strapped ribs. Her veil didn’t so much as stir.

“You came to inspect the investment,” Shi Feng said, smiling. “So how is it?”

“Damaged,” Long Caili said. “I’ll deduct it from your fee.”

She set down her cup and walked out. Two breaths later her chief maid came in with a physician and a tray of Shattering Void-grade wound salve, and said Her Highness had not sent them.

The fever came that night.

Shi Feng lay on the floor bedding in the room off the pavilion’s furnace court, sweating through two blankets. His new realm was still settling. Space felt wrong around him. The walls seemed to lean in one moment and pull away the next. His meridians burned as if the sky’s lightning were still running through them.

Beside him sat a cloth bundle. Inside were the twelve herb rods from the ridge, burned down to black stubs.

Ji Yuanhe sat cross-legged beside the bedding with a lamp. He watched Shi Feng break the end off one stub and put it in his mouth.

“You shouldn’t eat that,” Ji Yuanhe said. “It’s ash.”

“It’s the herbs’ ash,” Shi Feng said, chewing. “Scorched residue still holds its ingredients’ qi. I paid for every one of these, and everything I paid for is still in them.”

“It smells terrible,” Ji Yuanhe said, watching him pick up another stub.

“It tastes worse,” Shi Feng said, and broke off another piece.

The All-Devouring Physique took the qi out of each stub the moment it touched his tongue. The ash itself went down like grit. One stub at a time, the burning in his meridians eased. By the second watch, he had eaten six. By the fourth watch, he had eaten all twelve, and the fever broke in a cold sweat.

Ji Yuanhe hadn’t moved all night.

“The sky falls, and the tall men hold it up,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly, near dawn. “That’s what the Pit guards used to say, when a furnace boy lived through a burst.”

Shi Feng was touched. He let the old man finish instead of turning the praise into a joke.

“They didn’t mean it,” Ji Yuanhe said. “But I do.”

At dawn Shi Feng sat at the small table in the furnace court with a pot of tea and two cups.

Ji Yuanhe poured. Shi Feng looked at his own cup for a long time.

He thought about the third sky, about the crease in the air and the grain of space that heaven had folded six times over. Then he reached out with his new realm, not with heat and not with steam, and took hold of the space under his cup.

He folded it.

The teacup didn’t slide. It didn’t move through the air. It was in one place, and then it was in another place, a hand’s width to the left, with the tea inside still swaying from the pour. Nothing had crossed the space between.

Ji Yuanhe dropped his own cup.

It hit the table and rolled, and tea ran across the wood and dripped onto the stones. The old man didn’t notice.

“That was real,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“That was real,” Shi Feng said. “A hand’s width. It’s a small fold, but it’s a real one.”

He looked at the cup a moment longer. For the first time, he hadn’t had to trick anyone’s eye to move something. It felt better than the breakthrough.

Footsteps crossed the court. A Serene Jade maid in pale green stopped three paces from the table and bowed stiffly.

“Master Shi. The chief disciple sends word,” the maid said. “Elder Ye has three days.”

Shi Feng stood up.

“Tell your chief disciple the pill will be made tonight,” Shi Feng said. “In the princess’s sealed vault room.”