Chapter 929 — A New Signboard

CHAPTER 929

A New Signboard

The new pavilion stood halfway up the main street, two floors of fresh timber between a tea house and a cloth shop. Its signboard was black lacquer with gold characters, and in the corner was a small mark Shi Feng had seen on every door of the princess’s pavilions from Wanhe to Tianjing.

Shi Feng touched the board. Tacky lacquer stuck to his finger. The paint wasn’t dry.

The door opened before he could knock. A thin man of about forty in a neat blue robe came out, saw the black jade token at Shi Feng’s belt, and dropped into a bow so deep his sleeves brushed the step.

“Elder Shi! This humble one is Kang Yi, manager of Her Highness’s Lianxia branch,” Kang Yi said, and stayed bent. “Welcome, welcome. Her Highness’s letter said you’d come this way. The upper rooms are made up. The furnace room isn’t built yet, but the yard is swept, and there’s tea.”

“When did the branch open?” Shi Feng asked, and stepped inside.

“Nine days ago, Elder,” Kang Yi said, following him in. “The building was bought by letter last month. Her Highness wanted a northern branch for the snow-lotus trade. The best snow lotus on the continent grows above Lianxia, and until now every stalk of it went south through other people’s hands.”

Shi Feng looked around. The counter was new. The shelves were new and half empty, with a few jars of northern herbs labelled in a neat clerk’s hand. On the wall behind the counter hung the deed of purchase in a plain frame, as every one of her branches displayed its deed.

He read the date on it.

It was the week after she’d given him the token. For my business in the north, she’d said, and slid it across the counter, and everyone in the room had known she had no business north of Tianjing at all.

Shi Feng said nothing about it.

“She moved quickly,” Shi Feng said to Kang Yi. “You’ve made the place welcoming.”

“Thank you, Elder! I arranged it myself,” Kang Yi said proudly.

Upstairs, in a clean room with a window over the street, Shi Feng took out his private book and opened it to the page from the north ridge. Under Lotus Gate he wrote one line.

She has business in the north now.

He looked at it for a moment, closed the book, and went down for the tea.

The Zhongli came that afternoon.

They came in a black carriage drawn by two grey horses, and the street made way for it before it was halfway up the hill. A steward in brown got down first and set out a footstool. Then a young man of about twenty-five stepped down, broad in the shoulders and thin in the face, in a plain dark robe with a wide white sash. He walked with a slight stiffness in his right leg.

“The Zhongli,” Kang Yi whispered beside the counter, very fast. “Old northern house, Elder. Oldest in the valley after the sect itself. That’s the grandson, Zhongli Jue. He used to fight. He doesn’t anymore.”

The young man came in, bowed formally to Shi Feng and then to Qin Wuyan, and laid a red petition on the counter with both hands.

“Elder Shi,” Zhongli Jue said. “The Zhongli house brings a petition to the 6 Mark at Her Highness’s branch.”

“Read it to me, please,” Shi Feng said.

Zhongli Jue didn’t unfold it. He seemed to know it by heart.

“My grandfather is Zhongli Cangsong,” Zhongli Jue said. “He’s at peak Shattering Void. He’s been at peak Shattering Void for a hundred and forty years. His years are nearly finished. Before they end, he wants one attempt at Profound Heaven.” His hands stayed flat on the counter. “There’s a pill for it. The Inner Sky Pill. Our family’s books say it can only be made by a 6 Mark.”

“Your books are right,” Shi Feng said.

“We’ve gathered the herbs for forty years,” Zhongli Jue said. “All of them. The house offers one million five hundred thousand for the refining.”

Kang Yi made a small sound behind the counter and pretended he hadn’t.

Shi Feng thought it over. At the end of his years, the peak Shattering Void elder wanted one last attempt. A bad pill would kill him. Even a good one couldn’t guarantee success. The fee was fair, and Shi Feng respected the request.

“Is there anything else?” Shi Feng asked.

Zhongli Jue straightened.

“By northern custom,” Zhongli Jue said, “a family that puts an elder’s life in another man’s hands has the right to see those hands first.” His jaw set. “I know who you are, Elder Shi. I know your Mark. But hearing a hundred times isn’t as good as seeing once. My grandfather’s life is the only one he has. I’m asking to see the hand that will hold it.”

The tea house next door had gone quiet. People were leaning in at the open door to listen.

Qin Wuyan stood behind Shi Feng’s chair and didn’t move. A 6 Mark of the Sky Pavilion could have taken a request like that as an insult. Everyone in the shop knew it.

Shi Feng held out his right hand, palm up, on the counter between them. It was an alchemist’s hand, with old burn ridges across the heel and new ones on top of them.

“You can see more than that,” Shi Feng said. “I’ll refine it in the yard behind this branch, in the open. You can stand beside the furnace and watch it work, every pass, from the first herb to the last.”

Zhongli Jue looked at the hand for a long moment. Then he bowed, lower than before.

“The Zhongli accept,” Zhongli Jue said. “The herbs will come the day after tomorrow.”

Kang Yi was already writing in the branch’s first ledger.