Chapter 951 — Separate Accounts

CHAPTER 951

Separate Accounts

“Bandits on the herb road,” the patrol leader said, writing it in the log. “Three. One dead. Two fled.”

He was a square-faced outer disciple in a white patrol coat, and he wrote very neatly. The log lay open on the table in Snowpine Court, between a pot of cold tea and the bloody cloth the porters had used on Shi Feng’s back.

Shi Feng sat on a stool with his robe down around his waist, while a sect physician stitched the wound with silver thread. The physician had stopped talking an hour ago. He’d seen the bone.

Qin Wuyan stood by the table. He hadn’t sat down since they’d reached the terraces.

He reached into his sleeve and set something on the log.

It was a piece of bone about the size of a walnut, hollow and grey-white, carved on the outside with tiny lines of script. It had cracked straight down the middle. A thin thread of cold still came off it, so faint that only Spirit Sense could feel it.

“There was no one on the ridge,” Qin Wuyan said.

“No one?” Shi Feng asked.

“This,” Qin Wuyan said. “Sealed inside it was a Profound Heaven aura. Someone’s breath, kept in bone. It was set below the ridgeline and opened from a distance. When this one came close, it broke.”

The patrol leader stopped writing. The physician’s needle stopped too.

“So it was a lure,” Shi Feng said. “Bait for you.”

“Yes,” Qin Wuyan said.

He looked at the cracked shell for a long moment, and his jaw set. It was the first time Shi Feng had seen the old man angry.

“This one left you exposed,” Qin Wuyan said, staring at the bone. “Next time this one checks the presence before leaving your side.”

Footsteps crossed the courtyard, quick and even, and the door opened without a knock.

Shen Yaoqing came in with snow on her shoulders. She wore the formal white of the chief disciple and a jade lotus at her belt, and two outer stewards came in behind her and stopped at the door. She looked at the bloody cloth, at the stitches going into Shi Feng’s back and at the shell on the log. Her expression didn’t change.

“Report,” Shen Yaoqing said to the patrol leader.

The patrol leader stood and gave it to her: the herb road, the sledges, three men in white furs, one dead and two gone. She listened without interrupting. Then she took the log from him and read the entry herself.

“The honoured guest was attacked on Serene Jade land,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly, and set the log down. “Inside our boundary stones. Within a day’s walk of the Lotus Gate. That shames the sect, whoever the bandits were.”

“It wasn’t the sect’s fault,” Shi Feng said.

“I didn’t say it was the sect’s fault,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I said it was the sect’s shame. Those aren’t the same thing.” She turned to the stewards at the door. “By the outer hall’s order, a patrol rides Snowpine Court’s road from tonight. Day and night. The honoured guest doesn’t use the herb road again without an escort.”

“Yes, Chief Disciple,” the stewards said together.

“Is that your order or the outer hall’s?” Shi Feng asked.

“The outer hall’s,” Shen Yaoqing said. “I’m the guest’s host. I report. The outer hall decides.” She looked at the shell once more. “And I reported.”

She left the way she’d come, without waiting for an answer. The patrol leader hurried after her with his log.

The physician finished at dusk. Alone, Shi Feng sat cross-legged on the bed and swallowed the last of the frost qi still lodged in his back. It burned as it went. By the time the lamps were lit, the edges of the wound had begun to knit.

Then the whole of Snowpine Court went quiet.

The stewards in the yard had stopped talking, and the patrol had stopped its horses at the gate.

Qin Wuyan opened the door and stood aside.

The old man who came in was broad and heavy, in a plain grey robe, with a short white beard and a kind, heavy face. His pressure sat on him so quietly that Shi Feng only felt it when he looked straight at him. Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian, mid Profound Heaven.

Shi Feng stood and bowed.

“Sit, Master Shi,” Zuo Chengjian said, and sat down across from him without being asked. “Your back. I heard.”

“It’s closing, Grand Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“Good.” Zuo Chengjian folded his hands on his knee. “I’ll say this plainly, because you were plain with us in the Hearing Hall. I’ve been at mid Profound Heaven for forty years. My inner heaven has stopped growing. It doesn’t shrink, but it doesn’t widen either. The setting sun is beautiful, but it’s close to dusk.”

“The sect has its own 6 Mark,” Shi Feng said.

“The sect’s 6 Mark refines for one person only,” Zuo Chengjian said evenly. “He has done so for a long time. No one on this mountain asks him for anything.”

He didn’t say who the one person was. He didn’t need to.

“So I’m asking you,” Zuo Chengjian said. “A Profound Heaven pill, to widen a stalled inner heaven. And I’ll tell you before you answer: the hall’s refusal stands. This changes nothing. If you refine for me, you’ll still not be received on the eighth peak.”

Shi Feng thought it was the most honest thing anyone had said to him on this mountain.

“Separate accounts,” Shi Feng said. “The hall refused my request, and I accepted that. I can still refine for you. The pill won’t change the answer I was given.”

Zuo Chengjian looked at him for a long moment.

“I thought you would bargain,” Zuo Chengjian said slowly. “A pill for a door.”

“I asked once, Grand Elder,” Shi Feng said. “I’m not going to ask again with a pill in my hand.”

“Hm.” Zuo Chengjian’s eyebrows went up a little. “Your fee?”

“Four and a half million,” Shi Feng said. “The sect’s ingredients. And a furnace that can hold a Profound Heaven pill. Mine can’t.”

“The Frost Furnace Hall,” Zuo Chengjian said at once, and stood up. “It sits on a cold vein. Nobody but the sect’s own alchemists has ever lit a fire in it.”

He went to the door and stopped there, with his back to the room.

“Elder Kong,” Zuo Chengjian added, “is going to be very unhappy.”