Chapter 965 — The Elders’ Courtesy

CHAPTER 965

The Elders’ Courtesy

The outer hall was half empty in the morning, and that was on purpose.

Only the elders’ hall sat on the dais. Gate Elder Qiu Moshan stood at the side with the outer hall’s roll open on its stand, a thick book bound in white silk. The petitioners and disciples had been kept outside the doors, and every one of them was listening through the gaps.

Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian’s pressure filled the hall from wall to wall. It had grown again overnight.

“Master Shi,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said. “How is the arm?”

“Red, Grand Elder,” Shi Feng said, and bowed with it. “But it moves.”

“Good,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said. “Then I’ll come to it. The elders’ hall owes you courtesy. I said it before the sect, and the sect heard it. Courtesy that isn’t paid is only talk.” He gestured at the empty seat at the far end of the dais, below the elders and above everyone else. “From today, the outer hall keeps a standing seat for the guest elder of the Sky Pavilion. Whenever you come to the Lotus Gate, it’s yours. No card, no waiting on the steps.”

The listeners at the doors drew in their breath.

“A standing seat? For a guest?”

“In the outer hall? That hasn’t been given in…”

“Since the last 6 Mark. Sixty years!”

Elder Kong Shuhe sat very straight in his seat and didn’t object. Elder Jing Lanting’s seat was empty. She had sent word that she was in closed-door cultivation.

Shi Feng didn’t take the seat at once.

“Grand Elder, I’m grateful,” Shi Feng said. “May I ask for one thing in return?”

The hall went quiet. Elder Kong Shuhe narrowed his eyes and glanced at the roll. Shi Feng knew what they expected. After the pill, the terrace and this seat, he’d finally ask them to reverse the refusal.

“Ask,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said evenly.

“My enquiry is on your roll,” Shi Feng said. “I asked once, and the hall answered once. I’d like it to stay there exactly like that. Asked once. Answered once. Nothing added, nothing taken out.”

Grand Elder Zuo looked at him for a long moment.

“That’s all?” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian asked.

“That’s all,” Shi Feng said.

“Why?” Elder Kong Shuhe asked. It was the first thing he’d said that morning.

Shi Feng turned to him and answered him directly, because it was Elder Kong’s side that most needed to hear it.

“Because people will say the pill was a payment, Elder Kong,” Shi Feng said. “And that the seat is a payment, and that sooner or later the enquiry will be answered differently because of both. I’d like the roll to say that it wasn’t. I asked plainly. I was refused plainly. And I waited. If the record shows I waited, nobody can say I tried to buy anything on this mountain.”

Elder Kong Shuhe didn’t answer at once. He looked at the roll on its stand, and then at Gate Elder Qiu, and then back at the guest.

“That is correct,” Elder Kong Shuhe said stiffly.

A few of the elders looked at him in surprise. Elder Kong had never said a guest was correct in front of the hall before.

“Gate Elder Qiu,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said. “Write it.”

Gate Elder Qiu Moshan dipped his brush and wrote it under the old entry, reading aloud as he went.

“The enquiry of the guest elder of the Sky Pavilion. Asked once. Answered once. By the guest’s own request, to stand as written.” He blotted it. “Entered.”

“Then the seat is yours,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said, and this time he smiled. “And the roll is yours too.”

Shi Feng bowed, walked to the far end of the dais, and sat down in it for exactly as long as courtesy required, and then got up again.

“Thank you for leaving my enquiry as it stands, Grand Elder,” Shi Feng said.

“So I’m learning,” Grand Elder Zuo Chengjian said.

The gifts came up the steps that afternoon.

The first came from the Zhangsun. Six porters in wolf furs carried up bolts of white fox fur, jars of snow wine, and something long and black wrapped in oilcloth that took two of them to lift. They set it all down in Snowpine Court, bowed, and went back down without waiting for a reply, the northern way.

The second came from the Chunyu an hour later. A covered sledge brought up a red chest painted with the Chunyu crane, and the steward who walked beside it said the matriarch had chosen every item herself and would not be thanked for any of them.

The petitioners crowding the Lotus Gate’s steps watched all of it go past.

“The Zhangsun and the Chunyu both? On the same day?”

“Sending gifts up the Serene Jade’s own steps, to a guest!”

“Once one sheep crosses the bridge, the whole flock follows. Every house in the north will be up these steps by spring!”

“Gate Elder Qiu’s going to need a third table.”

“…”

Shi Feng came back to Snowpine Court at dusk and found half the yard full of chests. Qin Wuyan sat on the step among them with his hands on his knees.

“The guest elder has more furs than the gatehouse,” Qin Wuyan said.

“I’ll have the outer disciples read me the lists tomorrow,” Shi Feng said. “Then I’ll know what to thank them for.”

He left the chests closed that night. Shi Feng thought the timing mattered. Both houses had sent their gifts after the sect granted the seat and confirmed his refusal on the roll. Nobody could honestly claim he’d used their gifts to change the hall’s answer.

Far below, on the road from the south, a Pavilion courier was already changing horses at Lianxia with a letter in plain wax.