Chapter 932 — The Elder Who Bought a Pill

CHAPTER 932

The Elder Who Bought a Pill

By the next morning, nobody in Lianxia called him the man who’d asked after the Nangong girl anymore.

“The 6 Mark at the Caili pavilion,” the bun seller told a carter at the bottom of the street. “Eight clouds. My cousin saw the sect’s elders come down to look.”

“Three people say there’s a tiger in the market, and suddenly there’s a tiger,” the carter said. “Eight? I heard it was nine.”

“It was eight! I counted them myself!” the bun seller said.

By noon, seven northern houses had sent stewards to the branch. They stood in a polite line from the counter to the door, each with a red petition and a box of herbs, and Kang Yi went down the line writing their names in his ledger with his face shining.

“Seven, Elder Shi!” Kang Yi said, and came back to the counter almost at a run. “Seven houses! The Ouyang want a marrow pill, the Tuoba want two foundation pills for their grandsons, the Murong…”

“Write them all down,” Shi Feng said. “Thank them. Tell them I won’t take any commission until I’ve stood at the Lotus Gate.”

Kang Yi’s face fell.

“Not even one, Elder?” Kang Yi asked. “The Ouyang are offering two million.”

“Not even one,” Shi Feng said. “If I’m in the middle of a refining when the gate sends for me, I’ll have to keep the gate waiting or break my word to the Ouyang. I won’t do either.”

Kang Yi went back down the line and told them. The stewards looked disappointed and didn’t argue. A 6 Mark who’d refuse two million to keep his word to a gate was a 6 Mark whose word was worth waiting for. Every one of them left their name.

In the middle of the afternoon the line was gone, and a woman in plain white came in from the street alone.

She was perhaps fifty, with grey in her hair and a face that didn’t give anything away. Her robe had no embroidery. Only the small jade lotus at her belt said what she was, and it was a better jade than the outer disciples wore. Kang Yi saw it and went pale.

“An elder of the sect,” Kang Yi whispered.

The woman looked at the tray of pills on the counter. Shi Feng had set out a few that morning, Common-grade qi pills he’d refined on the road from his own leftover herbs, so the branch would have something on its shelves besides roots.

“How much for one of these?” the visiting elder asked.

“Three thousand,” Kang Yi said, and his voice cracked.

The woman took three thousand in silver out of her sleeve and laid it on the counter. She didn’t haggle. She picked up one pill, looked at it in the light, and put it in a small jade bottle.

Then she turned to Shi Feng.

“Rui Qinghe,” Rui Qinghe said, and bowed exactly as far as courtesy required. “Of the Serene Jade. Elder Shi’s pill yesterday was very fine. Eight clouds over Lianxia. The sect hasn’t seen that from a guest in a long time.”

“Thank you, Elder Rui,” Shi Feng said, and returned the bow.

“I’d like to ask one thing, if Elder Shi will allow it,” Rui Qinghe said. She held the jade bottle in both hands. “A 6 Mark from the frontier has every great house in the north at his counter. He could name any price. What does an alchemist like that want with the Nangong house?”

The branch had gone very quiet. Kang Yi stopped breathing.

Shi Feng thought of Jiang Xu’s tea room at the top of the Ninefold Tower. Ask. Plainly. Once. Then wait for the answer.

“I’ll ask at the gate, Elder Rui,” Shi Feng said. “Plainly, and once. It wouldn’t be right to ask it here first.”

Rui Qinghe looked at him for a moment.

“Then the gate will answer you plainly,” Rui Qinghe said.

Her voice was gentle, but Shi Feng felt the warning. Rui Qinghe already knew how the gate intended to answer him. Then she bowed again, the same exact bow, and walked out into the street with her pill.

Kang Yi let out his breath.

“Elder,” Kang Yi said weakly. “She paid full price.”

“I noticed,” Shi Feng said.

A sect elder who paid full price for a three-thousand pill owed the man who sold it nothing. She hadn’t come to buy a pill. She’d come to look at him, and she’d made sure she left owing him nothing at all.

Qin Wuyan had stood by the door the whole time. When she had gone, he walked to the back of the counting room and sat down at the low table by the window, which he had never done before. Shi Feng brought the kettle and sat across from him.

They drank one cup without speaking. Outside the window, the clouds had come down over the stair again.

“Two hundred and eleven years,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng waited.

“This one has served the Pavilion for two hundred and eleven years,” Qin Wuyan said slowly. He turned his cup on the table once. “Once, this one guarded Old Tower Master Dai’s furnace. Forty days, outside his door. He was refining for the Lotus Gate.” He drank. “The gate sent for the pill on the forty-first day. It had been ready on the ninth.”

“They kept him waiting a month,” Shi Feng said.

“The Lotus Gate has never hurried for anyone,” Qin Wuyan said.

Shi Feng was surprised by the long warning. Qin Wuyan wanted him prepared for the sect’s deliberate delay. He finished his tea, stood, and went back to his place by the door, and he didn’t say anything else that day.

Shi Feng sat on alone with the cold pot. Outside, the white stair went up into the cloud, and nobody came down it.