Chapter 956 — The Escort

CHAPTER 956

The Escort

The Frost Furnace Hall sat at the bottom of a deep cut in the mountain, and the cold came up through its floor.

The black-stone court had a round white-tiled roof and central smoke hole. Terraces ringed the cut. Despite six braziers, frost covered the walls. A man-high, three-legged bronze cauldron stood in the centre, green with age and cast with lotus petals.

Elder Kong Shuhe was already at the long table by the door when Shi Feng came down the steps. Two outer disciples stood behind him with herb boxes, and a scribe sat at the end of the table with his brush wet.

“Master Shi,” Elder Kong Shuhe said, bowing exactly as deep as courtesy asked and not a hair deeper. “By the sect’s rule, treasury herbs are counted out to whoever uses them. In front of him. Aloud.”

“For everyone?” Shi Feng asked.

“For everyone,” Elder Kong Shuhe said coldly. “The rule doesn’t know your name.”

“Then count,” Shi Feng said, sitting opposite him. “We’ll both know exactly what was handed over.”

Elder Kong’s eyebrows moved slightly. He picked up the list.

“Sky-Widening Pill. Profound Heaven-grade. For an inner heaven that has stopped growing,” Elder Kong Shuhe read. “Heaven-Root Ginseng, three thousand one hundred years. One root. Treasury value, nine hundred thousand.”

A disciple opened the first box. The root inside was as long as a forearm and the colour of old ivory.

“One,” Shi Feng said.

“Nine-Sky Lotus Seed. Three seeds. One million two hundred thousand,” Elder Kong Shuhe read.

“Two,” Shi Feng said.

It went on like that for most of an hour. Void Spar Moss, scraped from the inside of a rift that had closed four hundred years ago. Star-Frost Grass from the sect’s highest terrace. A vial of Silver Thunder Sap. Seven more boxes, and a price for every one. Elder Kong read each name in the same flat voice, and Shi Feng counted each one back, and the scribe wrote both down.

At the end Elder Kong set the list on the table.

“Eleven million four hundred thousand,” Elder Kong Shuhe said. “That is what the Serene Jade has set aside over forty years for the Grand Elder’s realm. Some of it can’t be bought again in this generation at any price.”

“I know,” Shi Feng said. “I wrote the list.”

“Then you know why it’s counted,” Elder Kong Shuhe said. “A thousand-li dike can fall to one ant hole. If any of it leaves this hall in the wrong ring, it’ll be known.”

“If any of it leaves in my ring, it’ll leave as residue,” Shi Feng said. “And the rule gives the residue to the alchemist. You’ll count that out too, Elder Kong.”

“I’ll count that out too,” Elder Kong Shuhe said, and for the first time he looked at Shi Feng properly, instead of at his list.

Shi Feng got up and walked the hall.

He laid his palm on the cauldron’s side. The bronze was cold enough to sting, and under the cold there was something old, a deep layer of fire soaked into the metal from long before his time. Somebody had worked this cauldron for a very long time. He knelt and put his other palm flat on the floor stones. The cold vein ran right under the cauldron’s three legs, slow and strong.

“The hall was cut onto the vein three hundred years ago,” Elder Kong Shuhe said behind him, unwillingly. “Frost herbs keep their nature here. No outsider has ever lit that cauldron. The last fire in it was…” He stopped, and didn’t say the name.

Nobody else in the hall said it either.

Footsteps came down the cut.

Bai Ruoshuang walked in wearing an inner disciple’s white with a long sword at her hip. She was tall and straight-backed, with frost-pale eyes, and she didn’t look at the herbs or the cauldron. She bowed to Elder Kong, then took up her post beside the door, one hand resting on her hilt.

“Bai Ruoshuang, by my master’s order,” Bai Ruoshuang said. “Escort at the furnace door until the pill is out.”

“Escorting whom from what?” Shi Feng asked, amused.

“Escorting the sect’s herbs from the sect’s guest,” Bai Ruoshuang said flatly. “That’s what Elder Jing said in the hall. I’m telling you because I don’t like pretending.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Shi Feng said.

She looked at him for a moment. Then she said it straight out, the way she’d asked about Linghu Yan on the terrace.

“After the pill, my master will arrange a courteous exchange of pointers between us,” Bai Ruoshuang said. “She’ll call it an honour for the guest. It’s a measurement. She wants to know how far the Tianxing’s twelfth really reaches, and she wants to use my sword to find out.”

“You don’t sound happy about it,” Shi Feng said.

“I don’t like being sent to test someone,” Bai Ruoshuang said, tightening her grip. “But I’ll fight you properly. I won’t hold back because you’re a guest, or because you made the Grand Elder’s pill.”

“I’d be insulted if you did,” Shi Feng said.

Bai Ruoshuang’s frost-pale eyes stayed on him for a breath. Then she nodded once, satisfied, and turned to face the steps.

Elder Kong Shuhe cleared his throat.

“One more matter, Master Shi,” Elder Kong Shuhe said. “If the cauldron cracks, the guest pays for it.”

“How much?” Shi Feng asked.

“It’s never been priced,” Elder Kong Shuhe said. “It’s older than the sect hall.”

“Then I’d better not crack it,” Shi Feng said.

He went back up to Snowpine Court that evening and slept early. When he came down the cut at dawn, the terraces above the Frost Furnace Hall were already full, ring above ring, and more people were still climbing down the paths to find a place.