Chapter 961 — The Night Before

CHAPTER 961

The Night Before

Snowpine Court shared its back wall with a path that ran along the cliff to the inner disciples’ quarters, and the wall was thinner than the sect thought.

Shi Feng was sitting on the step of the furnace room with a bowl of rice when the voices came along it.

“Ruoshuang,” Shen Yaoqing said on the other side of the wall. “Stop.”

The footsteps stopped.

“Senior Sister,” Bai Ruoshuang said. Her voice was flat and a little tired. “If you’ve come to tell me to go easy on him, don’t. I told him I wouldn’t, and he said he’d be insulted.”

“I haven’t come to tell you that,” Shen Yaoqing said coldly. “I’ve come as chief disciple. Listen carefully, because I’ll only say it once.”

Shi Feng kept eating, but he listened carefully. Going to the gate would interrupt them. He wanted to hear what Shen Yaoqing would tell her junior.

“If you lose tomorrow, the sect loses nothing,” Shen Yaoqing said. “He’s twelfth, you’re tenth, and he’s a 6 Mark who just held a Profound Heaven tribulation with his hands. Nobody on this mountain will think worse of the Serene Jade because its tenth lost to him. But if you cheat, the sect loses its courtesy. The whole north is watching this guest. The Tianji Mansion has a scribe on the terrace. If our disciple wins with a trick, every house from here to Frost Pass will hear the Serene Jade can’t keep a promise to a guest.”

“I’ve never cheated in my life,” Bai Ruoshuang said.

“I know,” Shen Yaoqing said. “That’s why I’m telling you instead of your master.”

The wall was quiet for a while.

“My master’s pride isn’t the sect’s, Senior Sister,” Bai Ruoshuang said at last, more quietly. “I know what tomorrow is. She wants me to measure him for her because the hall refused him and the Grand Elder took his pill, and now her side looks small. She’ll call first blood when it suits her. Not when it happens.”

“Then you’ll fight properly until it’s called,” Shen Yaoqing said. “And when it’s called, you’ll stop. Whoever’s bleeding.”

“And if it’s never called?” Bai Ruoshuang asked.

“Then the exchange is three, and after three you stop,” Shen Yaoqing said. “That’s the rule your master named herself. Hold her to it.” Her footsteps started again, then paused. “Go to sleep, Ruoshuang. You can’t measure anyone tired.”

“Yes, Senior Sister,” Bai Ruoshuang said.

Two sets of footsteps went off along the cliff path in different directions.

Shi Feng finished his rice and set the bowl on the step.

Shi Feng thought Shen Yaoqing was right. She’d warned Bai Ruoshuang to uphold the agreed rules, even against her own master. She was protecting the sect’s reputation and her junior sister’s honour. He respected that. She hadn’t asked anyone to hand him a victory.

Qin Wuyan came out of the gatehouse. He’d heard the whole thing too. He didn’t pretend otherwise.

“The guest elder fights tomorrow,” Qin Wuyan said.

“I do,” Shi Feng said.

“The girl is late Shattering Void,” Qin Wuyan said. “The guest elder is late Shattering Void. That is his fight. This one sits.” He looked at the wall, toward the cliff path where Shen Yaoqing’s footsteps had gone. “If anyone but the girl lifts a hand on that terrace, this one will be standing.”

“Only then,” Shi Feng said. “Senior Qin, I mean it. If she cuts me in half, it’s still my fight.”

“She won’t cut the guest elder in half,” Qin Wuyan said. “She will try.”

“That’s fair,” Shi Feng said.

Qin Wuyan nodded once, and went back into the gatehouse, and that was all he said that night.

Shi Feng went inside and lit the lamp. He took his ledger from the ring and checked his belongings. Tomorrow’s fight mattered. He wanted everything in order before he went to the terrace.

Ten million one hundred and thirty thousand when he’d come through the Lotus Gate. One million six hundred thousand from the Zhangsun patriarch’s frozen meridians. Nine hundred thousand and a manual from the Chunyu matriarch. Three hundred and fifty thousand spent on frost herbs in Lianxia. Four million five hundred thousand from the Grand Elder this morning.

Sixteen million seven hundred and eighty thousand in cash, near enough. About one million eight hundred and fifty thousand in herbs. And another five million one hundred and eighty thousand in a princess’s vault in Tianjing, which he didn’t count as his.

It was more money than the whole Shi clan had seen in its history. None of it would help him on the terrace tomorrow.

He took out his small private book and opened it to the page with the hearing on it. Asked once. Refused once. Under that he’d written nothing for a long time.

The pill and the enquiry were two different things. The Grand Elder had said so in front of the whole hall. The elders’ hall owed him courtesy now, and it still owed him no answer, and that was how it should be. If he ever let the two run together, every pill he made on this mountain would look like a bribe.

He wet the brush and wrote two words under the old lines.

Separate accounts.

He blew on the ink, closed the book, put out the lamp, and went to sleep. He slept well.

In the morning the snow had stopped. When he stepped out of Snowpine Court’s gate, the path to the Lotus Terrace was already black with people.