Chapter 855 — A Thief of Betrothals

CHAPTER 855

A Thief of Betrothals

Qu Ming was very loud indeed.

The front gate of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion stood open for the Buying Hall’s morning queue, and the queue was long, forty or fifty buyers with order slips in their hands. Beside the gate, a round stone fountain splashed into a basin of red carp. Qu Ming stood between the queue and the fountain in a gold-trimmed Azure Sun robe, and every person in the queue had turned around to look at him.

“There he is,” Qu Ming said, as Shi Feng came out through the gate. “The thief.”

Shi Feng stopped on the top step.

“Good morning, Young Lord Qu,” Shi Feng said, looking past him at the startled buyers. “Tell us what you think I stole.”

A few people in the queue laughed. Qu Ming smiled. It was the same smile he’d worn since the contest, but it had gone thin at the corners.

“Other men’s betrothals,” Qu Ming said, raising his voice so the far end of the queue could hear. “Everyone listen. This is the princess’s hired cook, who creeps into the Serene Jade’s quarters at night. My grandfather’s terms were honest and public. This man went in through the back and stole what he couldn’t win.”

“Is it true? About the night visit?”

“The teahouses were saying it last week…”

“The Serene Jade elder’s walking again. I heard it from a porter.”

“The Serene Jade said it at their own gate this morning,” a buyer said. “Terms public. Voiding public. Any claim at their gate.”

Shi Feng came down the steps one at a time.

“First, I went in through the front,” Shi Feng said. “The princess walked me there herself, and her guards wrote it in the gate book. Second, your grandfather’s terms were a pill for a woman. Nobody stole anything, Young Lord Qu. Your family put a price on her, and the price stopped being worth anything. Third—”

“Shut up!” Qu Ming shouted.

He raised his right hand, and the air in front of the gate turned gold.

The Scorching Sun Flame came out of his palm in a column as thick as a man’s waist. It was the art that had burned three opponents off the stage during the contest, and Qu Ming had always been proud of it. The heat rushed over the waiting buyers, and the people nearest the gate threw themselves flat on the stones.

Shi Feng read the aim at once. Qu Ming knew he was facing Shattering Void; he wanted to force the stronger man to swerve or retreat before the buyers, not kill him.

Shi Feng didn’t move his feet.

He lifted his right hand and folded the space a foot in front of him, the same small fold he’d used on a teacup and on Mo’s cauldron. The column of flame went into one side of it and came out of the other side a foot to the left.

A foot to the left was the fountain.

The flame went into the basin with a roar. A cloud of steam exploded up over the gate, hot and white. The carp scattered under the lily pads. When the steam thinned, the fountain was still splashing, a little warmer than before.

Qu Ming stared at it with his hand still out.

Shi Feng had already stepped in. The Quiet Sleeve Art swept once across Qu Ming’s chest, an ordinary sleeve with nothing in it that anyone could feel, and Qu Ming’s feet left the ground. He landed on his back on the wet stones beside the basin. The breath went out of him in one hard gasp.

The queue was silent for a moment. Then everyone started talking at once.

“He bent the Scorching Sun into the fountain!”

“Qu Ming’s peak Deity Transformation! That one’s Shattering Void now. Of course it’s one sleeve!”

“Attacking a Shattering Void cultivator at the princess’s gate? That’s heaven seen through a tube!”

“The carp are fine. Look, the carp are fine.”

“…”

Qu Ming got up on one elbow. His gold-trimmed robe was soaked down one side, and there was fountain water in his hair. Qu Ming was furious enough to raise his hand again, but stopped himself. Then he looked at the gate guards, who were Shattering Void cultivators of the Long family and had not moved, and at the queue, who were all watching him.

He stood up slowly. His voice shook, but it carried.

“Listen well, everyone here,” Qu Ming said. “You can fold all the fire you like. While a single elder of the Azure Sun still breathes, no desk in the Sky Pavilion will ever stamp you a 5 Mark. I swear it in front of every person at this gate.”

He turned and walked away through the queue. Buyers stepped back to let him pass, and nobody laughed until he was well out of earshot.

Shi Feng watched him go.

“I heard you, Young Lord Qu,” Shi Feng called after him. “So did every buyer at this gate. They’ll remember whose name you used.”

Qu Ming didn’t turn around.

Ji Yuanhe had come out onto the top step while the steam was still rising. He looked at the fountain, then at the wet stones, then at Shi Feng.

“Will he do it?” Ji Yuanhe asked quietly. “Block the desk?”

“He’ll try. His grandfather will be the one who actually does it,” Shi Feng said. “Qu Ming just told us the plan before they’d finished making it.”

At the gate, the Phoenix Tail clerk Tong Ruyu bowed to the queue and called the next number as if nothing had happened.

Behind them, Ke Lianshu cleared his throat.

“Master Shi,” Ke Lianshu said. “Her Highness asks you to come to the tea room. The Jiang family has sent an elder. She says to tell you that she’s already decided what you’ll be doing next.”