Chapter 893 — For the Road

CHAPTER 893

For the Road

It was the cheapest kind of box. Plain brown paper, folded at the corners, with a medicine stall’s stamp on the lid.

Shi Feng opened it. Inside lay one small grey pill, the size of a pea.

The front rows of the crowd craned their necks. A few people near the gate recognised it, and their faces went strange.

“Isn’t that a Calm Heart Pill?”

“The three-copper kind? My grandmother takes those!”

“What’s he doing with that?”

Shi Feng held the box out across the five paces, at the height of Qu Ming’s shaking hands.

“For the road,” Shi Feng said.

For a moment nobody understood. Then somebody at the back of the crowd laughed out loud, and the laughter went through the street like wind through dry grass. Buyers in the queue bent over. A stall keeper slapped his own knee. Even one of the princess’s gate guards turned his face to the wall.

Qu Ming didn’t laugh. He stared at the little grey pill as if it were a snake.

“You,” Qu Ming said hoarsely. “You dare—”

“It’s the right pill,” Shi Feng said.

He didn’t raise his voice, and the laughter died down to hear him.

“Your hand’s shaking because your heart-fire turned back on you,” Shi Feng said. “A flame art feeds on its user’s will. When the will breaks first, the fire won’t come, and the meridians in the arm start to cramp. If you keep calling the flame like this, the cramp will move up your arm and into your chest by tonight.”

The sect sons behind Qu Ming went pale. One of them looked at his own hands without meaning to.

“This pill costs three coppers at any stall in the city,” Shi Feng went on. “It’s the right pill for what you have. Take it before your carriage reaches the city gate, and the shaking will stop by the first post station. Rest a month and don’t touch fire. Then you’ll be able to call it again.”

He held the box a little closer.

“I don’t sell the wrong pills, Young Lord,” Shi Feng said. “Not even to you.”

The street was very quiet now.

Qu Ming would have taken mockery. Mockery he could have answered. This was a prescription, and everyone watching knew it. The 6 Mark of the Glass Hall had looked at the young lord of the Azure Sun, made a diagnosis in two breaths, and prescribed him the cheapest pill in Tianjing.

Qu Ming raised his right hand toward the box.

It shook so badly that his fingers couldn’t close. He tried to raise it as a fist instead, to strike the box away, and it shook even harder. It wouldn’t strike and it wouldn’t take. It just hung in the air between them, trembling, in front of the whole street.

His eyes filled with tears. He didn’t seem to notice them.

“Young Lord,” one of the Azure Sun sect sons said nervously, stepping forward. “Young Lord, the carriage…”

Qu Ming’s knees gave way.

Two of the sect sons caught him under the arms before he hit the stones. The rest didn’t move to help. The Tang cousins had already disappeared into the crowd, and the two Cangming sons were walking quickly toward the far end of the street.

Shi Feng stepped forward and tucked the paper box into the front of Qu Ming’s robe, where it would stay.

“Three coppers,” Shi Feng told the two who held him. “Don’t let him forget to take it.”

The two sect sons looked at him. Then they lowered their heads, half carried and half dragged their young lord down the street, and lifted him into the Azure Sun carriage. The driver didn’t wait for orders. He cracked his whip, and the carriage rolled away toward the Azure Sun residence with its curtains drawn.

The crowd watched it go.

“He’s finished, isn’t he?”

“He threw his own flame away. Twice!”

“His grandfather bowed in the Glass Hall, and today he can’t even light a fire!”

“I saw it with my own eyes. Nobody’s going to believe me.”

“…”

Shi Feng turned and walked back through the gate. Ji Yuanhe stood aside to let him pass. The old man’s face was solemn, but the corners of his mouth wouldn’t stay still.

“Three coppers,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly. “Did you really buy that at a stall?”

“This morning,” Shi Feng said. “On the way here. I thought he might need it.”

“You knew his hand would shake?” Ji Yuanhe asked.

“I saw it in the Glass Hall when he threw heat at the glass,” Shi Feng said. “It was already starting then. Anyone who looked could’ve seen it. Nobody in that box was looking at him.”

Ji Yuanhe was silent for a moment.

“That’s a sad thing,” Ji Yuanhe said.

“It is,” Shi Feng said.

On the balcony above, Long Caili had already gone inside. Shen Yaoqing was still standing at the rail, looking down at the place where the paper box had been.

By evening the whole capital knew.

The young lord of the Azure Sun was finished. He’d thrown his family’s flame at the princess’s gate, and the 6 Mark had put it in his sleeve and handed him a three-copper pill. Xiong Qiyun tried to sell the story at one silver a sentence that afternoon. Nobody bought a single sentence, because everyone had already heard it free.

The next morning, a carriage with a jade lotus on its door stopped at the Phoenix Tail Pavilion’s gate.