Chapter 887 — Eight Clouds Bows

CHAPTER 887

Eight Clouds Bows

Song Wuya read the petition aloud, every word of it.

“A one-year 4 Mark at Shattering Void, sitting a Profound Heaven Mark, insults the register. A 6 Mark must stand at Profound Heaven. The undersigned ask the Tower Master to strike this candidate’s declaration.” Song Wuya ran his thumb down the margin. “Twelve names. Master Jia Lianshou first.”

He didn’t need to read what was written under it. The whole hall had just heard it read twice.

In the third ring, twelve capital alchemists sat in a row of fine robes. Not one of them had left. Leaving now would have been worse.

Jia Lianshou rose first.

He was a tall, heavy man with a jade belt and a beard he’d clearly spent the morning combing. For thirty years he’d been one of the capital’s most respected 5 Marks. He came down the stairs slowly, and his eleven co-signers came down behind him, one by one, like men walking to their own sentencing. Jia Lianshou wasn’t afraid of Shi Feng. He was afraid of the book.

He stopped before the register desk. His face was grey.

“This Jia wrote that the register would be insulted,” Jia Lianshou said stiffly. “The register says otherwise. This Jia was wrong.”

He bowed deeply. The eleven bowed behind him, each one waiting for the man in front to rise before bending.

The upper rings watched in total silence. A dozen capital 5 Marks bowing to a frontier boy in a borrowed robe. Most of them would tell their grandchildren about it.

Shi Feng returned the bow, exactly as low.

“Master Jia, your petition did me a favour,” Shi Feng said. “Nobody would’ve come to watch a 5 Mark sitting. You filled the gallery for me.”

Jia Lianshou’s beard trembled. He didn’t seem to know whether he’d been thanked or slapped.

“Next time you doubt a furnace, come for the first six hours,” Shi Feng added. “Everyone leaves during those. That’s when the pill is actually made.”

Jia Lianshou said nothing.

He bowed once more, shorter, and the twelve went up the stairs and out of the hall without looking at anyone.

Then the Azure Sun box opened.

Qu Hanshan came down alone at first. He wore red and gold, as he had every day of the sitting, and his white beard was neatly combed. Eight clouds. For forty years the Azure Sun had told the Empire that number. It was the highest registered cloud count of any living 5 Mark, and it had made him a half-step 6 Mark. This morning it was only the third-highest number in the room.

He’d never be anything but half-step now. Everyone in the hall knew it, and so did he.

Behind him came Baili Xuan, with his right arm bound in a sling and his red robe changed for a plain one. Qu Ming’s seat in the box was already empty.

Qu Hanshan stopped before the desk. He looked at the register, then at the record pill on Si Jiahe’s tray, where nine small clouds turned slowly.

He bowed. It was stiff and brief, and it was still a bow.

“A frontier hand,” Qu Hanshan said.

“From the frontier, Elder Qu,” Shi Feng said, bowing back. “Herbs are scarce there. It teaches you not to waste a single cloud.”

Qu Hanshan’s hand tightened in his sleeve. Then he turned and walked out.

Baili Xuan paused before following. He looked at Shi Feng’s bandaged forearms, the burns his own lotus had left there.

“Your rib,” Baili Xuan said.

“Cracked again last night,” Shi Feng said. “Not your fault this time.”

Baili Xuan nodded once, as one fighter to another, and went after his master.

The hall broke into noise the moment the doors closed.

“Did you hear that? Qu Hanshan bowed!”

“Eight clouds bowed to nine!”

“Keep your voice down. The Azure Sun has long ears!”

“…”

Song Wuya ignored all of it. He gathered his notes into a neat stack and tied them with string.

A thin man in a plain grey robe with the Tianji Mansion seal on his sleeve was already waiting beside the bench. Shi Feng knew him. He’d stood in the crowd on the Pavilion steps with a brush, writing while Baili Xuan knelt.

“The examiner’s notes for the sitting,” the Mansion scribe said politely. “The Mansion would like to buy a copy.”

“Ten silver a page,” Song Wuya said. “There are forty pages.”

The scribe paid without haggling, which told Shi Feng how much the Mansion wanted them. He tucked the notes under his arm, glanced once at Shi Feng, and wrote something short on a separate slip. Then he bowed and left.

Shi Feng didn’t ask what he’d written. Whatever the Mansion printed, it would print without asking him.

“Master Shi.” Ji Yuanhe touched his sleeve. “The princess’s box.”

Shi Feng looked up.

Long Caili still sat in her box, veiled, with Shen Yaoqing beside her. She hadn’t moved through any of the bowing. And beside the Imperial seat, Xuanyuan Gui had risen and was walking along the front of the gallery, straight toward her.

Every official in the Imperial rows stopped talking at once. Shi Feng had no idea what the Emperor’s sworn brother wanted with the princess. Neither did anyone else in the hall.