Chapter 894 — The Master Stands

CHAPTER 894

The Master Stands

“My master sends her thanks,” Shen Yaoqing said.

She stood in the middle of the Phoenix Tail Pavilion’s upper hall in the formal white of the Serene Jade Sect, with a jade lotus at her belt. She didn’t sit, though Long Caili had a chair placed for her. She held a thin case of white wood in both hands.

Shi Feng had been eating breakfast at the far end of the counter. He put his chopsticks down and stood up.

“Please thank Elder Ye for me,” Shi Feng said. “How is she?”

“The physicians said the void rot would try to return at the new moon,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The new moon was three nights ago. It didn’t return.”

She paused.

“This morning she walked the whole length of the courtyard without a cane,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The first time since the wound.”

“Then the pill held,” Shi Feng said.

“The pill held,” Shen Yaoqing said.

She set the case on the counter and opened it. Inside lay a single sheet of jade-white paper, written in an old woman’s careful hand and stamped with a lotus seal.

“A letter of thanks from Elder Ye Wanqiu of the Serene Jade Sect,” Shen Yaoqing said formally. “It names you as the maker of her pill. Shown at any Serene Jade gate, it will be honoured.”

Long Caili looked up sharply from her own tea, and her veil stirred.

Shi Feng read the letter once, carefully. Then he closed the case.

“That’s worth more than the fee,” Shi Feng said.

“My master doesn’t think so,” Shen Yaoqing said.

Shi Feng put the case inside his robe without arguing.

Shen Yaoqing nodded once. That should’ve been the end of it. She’d delivered the thanks, said the formal words and been answered. By every rule of courtesy she could leave now.

She didn’t.

Shi Feng waited. Some people needed a moment before they said a thing they’d come to say.

She stood by the counter and looked at the window. Her hands were folded in her sleeves.

“I watched the clouds,” Shen Yaoqing said, without looking at him. “In the Glass Hall. Seven, eight, nine. Then the sky cleared, and Old Tower Master Dai said they’d gone into the furnace.”

“They did,” Shi Feng said.

“I’m Shattering Void,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I’ve folded space since I was nineteen. I watched every breath of those three days.” Her voice was still cold, but it had become very precise. “And I still don’t know how it was done.”

The hall was quiet. Long Caili put her cup down without a sound.

Shi Feng opened his mouth.

“That’s all,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Good day, Highness.”

She bowed to Long Caili, turned and walked out, and her white sleeves were gone down the stairs before he could say a single word.

Long Caili watched the stairs a moment longer than she needed to.

Shi Feng looked at the empty doorway for a while. Then he sat back down in front of his breakfast.

“She wasn’t going to let me answer, was she?” Shi Feng said.

“No,” Long Caili said. “She wasn’t.”

“Then why tell me at all?” Shi Feng asked.

Long Caili was silent for a moment. She turned her cup a quarter turn on the counter, the way she did when she was deciding how much something was worth.

“Yaoqing has never in her life said she didn’t know something,” Long Caili said. “Not to her master, not to me. When we were twelve, she failed a sword form and practised it in the snow for three days rather than admit it. A thousand taels of gold are easy to get. A friend who truly knows you is hard to find.”

“So she came here to admit it,” Shi Feng said.

“She came here to deliver a letter,” Long Caili said coldly. “The rest she couldn’t help.” She picked her cup back up. “Don’t mention it to her. She’ll never forgive either of us.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Shi Feng said.

“You’d dare anything,” Long Caili said. “But don’t dare that.”

Shi Feng smiled and went back to his noodles. He thought about asking whether a princess who knew her friend that well had also noticed that friend watching him. Then he decided he’d rather not know the answer before breakfast.

They ate in silence for a while. It wasn’t an unpleasant silence.

“You’ll go to the Records Hall,” Long Caili said at last. It wasn’t a question.

Shi Feng stopped eating.

“Yaoqing’s sect sealed an entry there,” Long Caili said, looking out of the window. “I don’t know whose. I’ve never asked her, and she’s never said. But she’s been watching you since the first day of my contest as if you were a lock she couldn’t open. And a year ago you asked the Records Hall a question it wouldn’t answer, and you’ve kept the ticket ever since.”

“You know about the ticket?” Shi Feng asked.

“I know about everything that happens in this city with a number on it,” Long Caili said. “That’s my business.”

Shi Feng was silent.

“I don’t need to know whose name it is,” Long Caili said. “I only need to know whether my guest will still be my guest after he reads it.”

“I’ll be your guest,” Shi Feng said. “My word is good. You’ve read the contract.”

“I have,” Long Caili said. “Twice.”

A Pavilion runner knocked at the open door and bowed, very low, holding a card in the grey of the Ninefold Tower.

“Honoured guest,” the runner said. “The Records Hall asks if you’d call this afternoon. It concerns ticket three thousand and forty-one.”