Chapter 960 — Terms of the Exchange

CHAPTER 960

Terms of the Exchange

The outer hall was full before noon.

Every seat of the elders’ hall was taken. Petitioners crowded the doors. Inner disciples stood along the walls in rows, and the ones who couldn’t get in stood on the steps outside and passed word back over their shoulders.

Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian sat in the centre seat. Shi Feng felt his pressure as soon as he stepped through the doors. Three days ago it had sat around the Grand Elder close and still. Now it reached the back wall of the hall without trying, and it was still moving, slowly growing outward.

The pill was working.

“Master Shi,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said, rising. Every elder rose with him. “You’re on your feet.”

“I’m a quick healer, Grand Elder,” Shi Feng said, bowing.

A steward carried a tray to him. On it lay a stack of stone notes with the sect’s lotus seal.

“Four million five hundred thousand,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said. “As agreed. Count it.”

Shi Feng counted it, carefully, in front of everyone. Somebody near the door laughed nervously and was shushed. Then he put it in his ring.

“Correct,” Shi Feng said.

Grand Elder Zuo nodded. He didn’t sit back down. He looked around the hall, at the elders, the disciples and the petitioners, and when he spoke, his voice was plain and carried to the steps.

“Let nobody here misunderstand,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said. “This hall refused the guest’s enquiry. The refusal stands. The Serene Jade hasn’t sold anything for a pill, and the guest didn’t ask it to.”

“He didn’t,” Ye Wanqiu said dryly from the end of the row. “I was watching for it.”

“But a guest refined for this sect what no one else would refine for it,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian went on. “He held our cauldron together with his own hands. So from today the elders’ hall owes the guest courtesy. Whoever sits in these seats will remember it.”

The hall murmured. Several elders bowed their heads. Elder Kong Shuhe bowed his last, but he bowed.

“I understand,” Shi Feng said. “Thank you for saying it before the whole hall, Grand Elder.”

Grand Elder Zuo smiled for the first time and sat down.

Then Elder Jing Lanting stood up.

She was a tall woman in silver-white with a narrow face and a jade pin in her hair, early Profound Heaven, and her voice was cool and very polite.

“Grand Elder, the hall owes the guest courtesy,” Elder Jing Lanting said. “Then let this elder offer some. Master Shi is twelfth on the Tianxing. My disciple is tenth. The young people of our sect would gain a great deal from watching the two of them exchange pointers.” She turned to Shi Feng and inclined her head. “Three courteous exchanges on the Lotus Terrace. Real swords, to first blood. It would honour the guest.”

The hall went quiet.

Everyone knew what it was. A guest who’d just made the sect’s most important pill was being asked to stand on its terrace and be measured by the elder whose faction had refused him.

“Three exchanges, real swords, to first blood,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian repeated slowly. “Master Shi has only just left seclusion, Junior Sister Jing.”

“Of course, the guest may decline,” Elder Jing Lanting said gently. “No one would think less of him.”

The disciples looked toward Shi Feng, waiting. Declining would let Jing Lanting’s faction call him afraid of Bai Ruoshuang. Her polite offer left him under open pressure.

“When?” Shi Feng asked.

“Two days from now,” Elder Jing Lanting said. “At the hour of the snake. If the guest is well.”

“I’ll be ready,” Shi Feng said. “I accept the three exchanges, to first blood.”

The murmuring broke out again, louder.

“He accepted! Just like that!”

“A newborn calf doesn’t fear the tiger!”

“Senior Sister Bai is tenth. She’s never lost on the terrace.”

“He just held off a Profound Heaven tribulation with his bare arms. Do you think he’s scared of a sword?”

“He’s twelfth. Twelfth doesn’t beat tenth. That’s why they’re numbered.”

“…”

Gate Elder Qiu Moshan came in from the doors and bowed to the centre seat.

“Grand Elder,” Gate Elder Qiu Moshan said. “A scribe of the Tianji Mansion is on the steps, asking to be admitted. He has been staying in Lianxia since the guest’s hearing.”

“Since the hearing?” Elder Kong Shuhe said, frowning. “That was weeks ago.”

“The Mansion likes to be early, Elder Kong,” Gate Elder Qiu Moshan said.

The scribe came in a moment later, a thin middle-aged man in plain grey with an ink box on a strap over his shoulder. He bowed to the elders, then to Shi Feng, and said only that the Mansion would be grateful to record the exchange of pointers, if the sect allowed it. Grand Elder Zuo allowed it. The scribe found himself a place against the wall and opened his ink box at once.

Ye Wanqiu walked out with Shi Feng afterwards. She was on her own feet and walked faster than he did. At the bottom of the steps she stopped where nobody could hear.

“You know what that was,” Ye Wanqiu said.

“A measurement,” Shi Feng said.

“A measurement with Lanting’s face riding on it,” Ye Wanqiu said. “The girl is honest. Her master’s pride isn’t. Whatever is said about courtesy, if Ruoshuang starts to lose, don’t expect Jing Lanting to call first blood quickly.”

“How quickly would she call it?” Shi Feng asked.

“When it’s hers,” Ye Wanqiu said. “Not before.”