Chapter 87 — The Last Eleven Stones

CHAPTER 87

The Last Eleven Stones

Two hundred and eight spirit stones.

Shi Feng read the bill a second time. Reading it twice didn’t make a single dish any cheaper.

The prices matched what the attendant promised. The room and ordinary music were included. There was no fake charge for a spoon.

The evening simply cost that much. He thought, A fish with a noble title should at least cost less than a sword!

Beside him, Ling Qingzhu was telling Su Wanning about the replacement well rope. “Half the afternoon,” Ling Qingzhu said. “He measured it twice. I wanted to push him down the well.” Her voice was warm. She told the story with affection now.

Su Wanning laughed.

“He argued over a rope?” Su Wanning gasped, then laughed, patting Ling Qingzhu’s hand. “Oh, he’s so careful, that’s wonderful, a husband who counts is a husband who keeps your money!”

Shi Feng counted out the payment.

At the next table, the plump youth from earlier was gone, but his friend stayed behind, and the attendants stopped to stare.

“Two hundred and eight, in coin!” an attendant whispered.

“The cripple paid that?” a guest muttered, stunned.

“…”

The household fortune now stood at eleven spirit stones.

Shi Feng kept his expression level while the attendant carried away enough money to make his old clay furnace look like a gift from Heaven. Eleven stones, he thought bitterly. Eleven! I survived a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator, and a carp did this to me.

Ling Qingzhu turned toward him, and her expression was full of hope.

“Well? Was it good?” Ling Qingzhu asked. “Be honest. I’ll know if you lie.”

She meant the meal. Or maybe the evening. The hope in her eyes above the veil made either answer worth giving honestly.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

It was true! That was exactly why the bill hurt in such an absurd place.

Outside, Su Wanning’s carriage waited beneath the lanterns. Bao Shun somehow appeared at the carriage door with an offer of a better inn for the lady.

Ling Qingzhu dismissed him with one look. The broker bowed three times and disappeared.

“Qingzhu, you must write to me every day!” Su Wanning said, hugging her friend, and then she whirled to Shi Feng. “And you, take good care of her, Brother Shi, or I’ll come back and ask every day! Oh, and I wrote home about the Hu salt credit — Father will want to know why the Hu house buys on our name and waves jade cups at Qingzhu’s husband. It goes with the morning courier.”

“I’m trying,” Shi Feng said.

Ling Qingzhu glanced at him quickly. He wasn’t smiling the sharp way he did at dishonest merchants. He was just answering.

Su Wanning looked satisfied. She climbed into the carriage, convinced that her friend found an odd but useful husband. Ling Qingzhu waited until the wheels turned the corner, then took Shi Feng’s arm again.

They walked home.

The night was clear. Shops were closing along the road, and the smell of hot oil lingered beside a stall. Ling Qingzhu talked about the music, then the fish, then the ridiculous poem Su Wanning told.

Shi Feng listened.

At a narrow crossing he stepped to the outside of the path so a cart wouldn’t brush her sleeve. She moved closer without thinking and stayed there after the cart passed.

He liked that more than he should.

Beneath a lantern, she stopped to fix a loose clasp in her hair and couldn’t find its edge. Shi Feng raised the lantern higher. She settled it herself with a small, triumphant breath.

“Better,” Ling Qingzhu said.

“Yes,” Shi Feng said.

She looked up and smiled. No audience was waiting to approve. For a few breaths, he nearly told her everything that mattered.

Then she started wondering aloud whether Su Wanning liked the evening, and the moment passed. At the courtyard Shi Feng opened the gate. The pear tree’s shadow lay across their familiar table, and the little house smelled faintly of the herbs he’d dried that afternoon.

Ling Qingzhu paused at the door of their one room.

“I’m glad you came,” Ling Qingzhu said warmly. “Even if you glared at every price tonight.”

Shi Feng looked at her in the lamplight.

“So am I,” Shi Feng said.

She went inside, and the door closed softly behind her. A moment later came the rustle of the folding screen being drawn across.

He stood a moment longer in the courtyard. Then he went into the kitchen and emptied his purse onto the table.

Eleven stones clicked onto the wood. He lined them up.

His All-Devouring Physique had swallowed the spirit of a Profound Heaven alchemy master. His mind held knowledge rich households would fight to buy. His sword was improving. He’d killed a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator and walked home alive.

And right now he was calculating how much rice was left in the kitchen.

Shi Feng began to laugh.

Quietly at first, and then so hard that he had to cover his mouth so he wouldn’t wake her through the wall.

What a magnificent husband! He could survive the killing blow of a man who pushed him to his limit, yet three people eating fish had nearly finished his purse!

When the laughter faded, he drew a clean sheet of paper toward him.

The cure wasn’t hard to name. He needed to earn more and keep some of it. For too long, every useful pill and rare root went straight into cultivation, while his daily expenses waited for the next customer to pay.

That would change.

He listed the buyers who paid promptly. Yan Meizhen came first. Zhu Shan came next, as long as the guard paid the full balance before collection.

Regular orders. Smaller batches he could make reliably. Enough advance payment for ingredients and furnace time. Clear collection dates. Cash set aside before he touched the retained pills.

He’d still take his agreed share for cultivation. His physique could use that medicine without resistance or harm, and his golden bones needed a great deal more of it. But a good commission should leave him able to buy breakfast afterward.

Then he turned to his practice notes. There were pills he knew how to make but couldn’t yet refine with his own qi. He struck them from the offer. Promising impossible goods wouldn’t make him rich. It would only make him a fool with angry customers waiting outside.

The common pills he could handle were enough to begin. Foundation Establishment would lift part of the limit later. Until then, he’d use what he had properly, instead of complaining that it wasn’t everything he remembered.

“I’ll become rich!” Shi Feng said aloud, then clapped a hand over his mouth and listened for the room. No sound came back.

The vow lacked the grandeur of splitting mountains or overturning the heavens. Shi Feng figured the heavens never paid his furnace rent anyway.

He wrote the first offer before sleeping.

In the room, Ling Qingzhu lay awake behind the screen, remembering how naturally he’d served her the fish. Her friend’s approval pleased her. His plain answer at the gate pleased her even more. Across the room, his floor bedding lay empty and flat, and she noticed that she was waiting for him to come lie down on it.

She thought the evening proved how well their arrangement worked.

Out in the kitchen, the table held eleven spirit stones and a new business proposal. Shi Feng paid for an evening he truly wanted. She still didn’t understand which parts of it were never for sale.

In the eastern residence, a grey-robed retainer knelt on the polished floor.

“Your Highness, the cripple dined at Yuelan Terrace tonight,” Ge Fan reported. “The bill was two hundred and eight spirit stones, paid in full and in coin.”

Sima Yu set down his cup.

“From a board of ointment jars?” Sima Yu asked softly.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Ge Fan said.

“Cao Wenshu is dead, and no one has found the man who killed him,” Sima Yu said. “A cripple with no meridians pays two hundred stones for fish, and a hooded refiner nobody has seen sells pills to hunters across the capital.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Do you believe in so many coincidences?”

Ge Fan lowered his head. “This servant doesn’t, Your Highness!” Ge Fan said.

“Then do bring me the refiner’s customers,” Sima Yu said gently. “And, if it’s no trouble, that purse.”

At that very hour, in a courtyard in Qingliu Lane, the whole purse of the man he hunted lay on a kitchen table, and it held eleven stones.

Sima Yu didn’t know it yet, but the hunt had just become expensive for both of them.