Chapter 935 — The Lotus Gate

CHAPTER 935

The Lotus Gate

The last thousand steps were cut through the snow line, and the bell rang twice more while they climbed them.

Near the top, the stair widened into a long landing. A few dozen people sat along its wall on straw mats, wrapped in quilts, with snow on their shoulders and small bundles at their feet. Some had braziers. Some had nothing. A boy coughed into his sleeve. An old man had a sealed letter tucked into the front of his coat and kept one hand over it.

They had been waiting there a long time. Their eyes followed Shi Feng as he passed, and none of them spoke.

“Petitioners,” Shu Wan said quietly, without slowing down. “Some have been here since autumn. The gate reads them in its own time.”

“How many does it read?” Shi Feng asked.

“All of them, in the end,” Shu Wan said. “Water dripping wears through stone.”

Shi Feng looked back once at the old man with the letter. Then he climbed the last steps.

The Lotus Gate stood open at the top of the stair.

It was carved from white jade, two leaves more than twenty feet tall, and every inch of both leaves was cut with lotus flowers, open and closed, in a hundred layers. Snow lay along the lintel and on the petals of the topmost flowers. Beyond the gate a wide court of white flagstones ran back toward long white halls, and behind the halls the peaks went up into the sky.

Qin Wuyan stopped below the gate and bowed to it, a short, exact bow. It was the first time Shi Feng had seen him bow to a gate.

“An old gate,” Qin Wuyan said. “It deserves it.”

Shen Yaoqing was waiting just inside.

She stood alone on the white flagstones in formal white, with a jade lotus at her belt and her hands folded in her sleeves. Her face was as cold and correct as it had been in Tianjing.

Shu Wan stopped at once and bowed low.

“Chief Disciple,” Shu Wan said.

Shen Yaoqing nodded to her once. Then she looked at Qin Wuyan and gave him a formal disciple’s bow.

“Senior Guardian,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The Serene Jade welcomes the Pavilion.”

“This one is the guest’s shadow,” Qin Wuyan said, returning the bow. “The chief disciple need not count me.”

Shen Yaoqing turned her eyes to Shi Feng, and looked at him for a moment without any expression at all.

“You’re late,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“No one gave me an hour,” Shi Feng said. “I came as soon as I finished in town.”

Shen Yaoqing didn’t accept the excuse.

“The steward told the outer hall you’d come up this morning,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “The outer hall expected you at first light. It’s past noon. A man in a hurry would have come at first light.”

“I had a receipt to write,” Shi Feng said. “And seven houses to send home.”

“So I heard,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Lianxia is a small town, and the mountain hears everything it says.”

She turned to Shu Wan.

“Take the horse to the guest stable,” Shen Yaoqing said. “Then report to the outer hall that the guest has arrived.”

“Yes, Chief Disciple,” Shu Wan said, and led the horse away along the wall. At the corner of the court she looked back once at Shi Feng, and then she was gone.

Shen Yaoqing faced him again.

“My master sent me to receive you,” Shen Yaoqing said. “The sect owes you for the Void-Mending Pill. My master says that while you’re on this mountain, I’m your host, and a host keeps the rules to the letter. So I’ll keep them to the letter.”

“Then tell me the rules clearly,” Shi Feng said. “I won’t make your task harder.”

“You won’t get the chance,” Shen Yaoqing said.

“How is Elder Ye?” Shi Feng asked.

“On her feet,” Shen Yaoqing said. “She’ll tell you herself. The Gate Elder will read your plate first. Follow me, and don’t wander.”

She turned without waiting for an answer and walked into the court. Her steps made no sound on the flagstones.

Shi Feng followed her in. Qin Wuyan followed him, three steps behind, the same as on the stair. Behind them the snow went on falling across the open gate and the petitioners’ landing, and none of the petitioners came in.

That night, in a cold guest room in Snowpine Court with a brazier just lit, Shi Feng took out his small private book and opened it on his knee.

He turned past the tally from the ridge above Hanli, past Frost Pass and the pine country and the lake, to the last line he’d written. Lotus Gate.

He’d reached it. He’d been let in by courtesy, lodged by courtesy, and hosted by a woman who had made it clear she would host him by the rules and nothing else. All of that was what he had been promised. None of it answered the question that had brought him north. Shi Feng felt impatient, but he wouldn’t mistake a proper welcome for a promise about Nangong Xiuyi.

He wet the brush and wrote one line under the old one.

[Mark: 6 | Note: asked nothing yet.]