Chapter 851 — Exactly the Purse

CHAPTER 851

Exactly the Purse

Ye Wanqiu’s breathing was the only sound in the room.

Ye Wanqiu’s sickroom in the east wing of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion was plain: a bed, a brazier, a jade lotus on the wall. The elder lay under a thin quilt, a small woman with grey hair pinned flat. Down the left side of her neck, the black crease lay quiet in the air. Looking at it too long made a man dizzy.

Shi Feng stood at the foot of the bed with his left arm bound in linen to the elbow. Above his right palm, a small fold of space held the pill, touching nothing.

“It’s quieter than last night,” Shen Yaoqing said, watching it.

“Quieter, not tame. It survived two tribulations, and now it thinks it’s special,” Shi Feng said. “Hold her jaw, please. Out of the fold, it has about three breaths before it starts tearing at the air again.”

Shen Yaoqing sat on the bed’s edge and put two steady fingers under her master’s chin.

“Master,” Shen Yaoqing said quietly. “Open your mouth.”

“I heard him. Three breaths,” Ye Wanqiu said, her voice weak but still sharp. “I’m sick, Yaoqing, not deaf.”

Shi Feng opened the fold.

The pill dropped. Shen Yaoqing caught it between two fingers, and a thin black line appeared in the air beside her wrist. She put the pill on her master’s tongue before the line could open.

One breath. Two.

Ye Wanqiu swallowed.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the crease at her neck began to close from both ends inward, slowly and evenly until no black line remained. What was left was ordinary skin, pale and a little puckered.

Colour came into Ye Wanqiu’s lips for the first time in months.

Shen Yaoqing didn’t move. She kept her two fingers under her master’s chin as if she’d forgotten them there.

“Yaoqing,” Ye Wanqiu said. “You can let go of my face now.”

Shen Yaoqing took her hand back and folded it into her sleeve.

“The Azure Sun’s pill turned to ash in my mouth,” Ye Wanqiu said, touching her neck. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at the young man with the bandaged arm. “Who made this one?”

“A person,” Shen Yaoqing said.

She didn’t look at Shi Feng when she said it.

Ye Wanqiu looked at her disciple, then at the young man, then at her disciple again, and said nothing.

“I’m glad it worked,” Shi Feng said. “Your disciple hasn’t sat down all night. She can stop worrying for a while.”

Shen Yaoqing stood up. She untied a small purse of pale green silk from her belt, with a jade lotus stitched on it, and upended it over the table.

Stone notes slid out, folded small, and a few spirit stones after them. Last came seven copper coins, which rang on the wood and lay still.

“Everything in my purse,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “As I told you. Not one coin more.”

Shi Feng sat down at the table and counted it.

He laid the notes out in rows of ten, counted the stones, and picked up each of the seven coppers and put it down again. Then he swept everything together and counted it all a second time. Shen Yaoqing watched him, visibly irritated by the second count. She kept her hands in her sleeves instead of reaching to stop him.

“One million, two hundred and eighty-four thousand, six hundred,” Shi Feng said. “And seven copper.”

“Do you doubt me?” Shen Yaoqing asked.

“Not at all,” Shi Feng said. “If I count it twice now, nobody can say later that the Serene Jade chief disciple underpaid, or that the princess’s alchemist overcharged.”

He put the money into his ring. Then he smoothed the empty green purse flat and held it out to her.

Shen Yaoqing didn’t take it.

“The purse wasn’t in the deal,” Shi Feng said. “You said what was in your purse. You never said the purse.”

Shen Yaoqing looked at it for a long moment. Then she took it from his hand very quickly and tied it back onto her belt.

“Master needs rest,” Shen Yaoqing said.

She walked out. She didn’t thank him. She closed the door quietly despite her anger. Her master was finally resting, and she wouldn’t disturb her.

Ye Wanqiu laughed weakly on the bed.

“She’s carried that purse since she was fourteen. Her first month’s allowance went into it, and she’s never once emptied it,” Ye Wanqiu said, and closed her eyes. “I owe you, young man. I don’t say that often.”

Shi Feng bowed to her.

“Then please rest, Elder Ye,” Shi Feng said. “Don’t get up for three days. That skin is new, and I’ve already burned the herbs I’d need to make you another pill.”

[Cash: about 11.08M → about 12.36M | Herbs: about 1.75M | Note: one purse, returned empty.]

Before the first bell the next morning, someone knocked on the gate of the east guest courtyard.

A Serene Jade servant girl in pale green stood on the step with a three-tiered lacquer box in both hands.

“For Master Shi,” the servant girl said, and bowed.

“Master Shi didn’t order anything,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“Nobody ordered it, Master Ji,” the servant girl replied. She put the box in his hands, bowed again, and left before he could ask anything else.

Ji Yuanhe opened it on the table. Lotus-seed congee, still steaming. Six steamed buns. And in the bottom tier, a small jar of burn salve with no label.

Shi Feng looked at the salve for a while. Then he ate the congee.

“She paid you exactly what was in her purse,” Ji Yuanhe said, sitting down opposite him. “Not one coin more.”

“That’s right,” Shi Feng said.

“This box wasn’t in the purse,” Ji Yuanhe pointed out.

“That’s right,” Shi Feng said again, and took a bun.

A pavilion page ran into the courtyard and bowed, out of breath.

“Master Shi! There’s a northern man with an axe sitting in the middle of the training field,” the page said. “He says to tell you it’s been three days.”

Shi Feng looked at the bound arm on the table beside his bowl. Then he picked up the jar of salve and put it in his sleeve.

“Tell him I’m finishing breakfast,” Shi Feng said. “It was a gift. It would be rude to waste it.”