Chapter 968 — The Tenth Issue

CHAPTER 968

The Tenth Issue

The Old Pine Teahouse was the biggest teahouse in Lianxia, and by mid-morning there wasn’t an empty bench in it.

Shi Feng had come down the mountain at dawn to hand Kang Yi the receipt for the summons and a copy of it for the princess. Then he’d come here for noodles. Everyone else in town had come for the Tianji issue. Qin Wuyan sat across from him with his own bowl and his own coins stacked beside it.

At the front of the room, a scholar in a patched blue robe stood on a stool with the new issue held up in both hands.

“Quiet! Quiet! I’m starting from the top!” the scholar shouted. “First, Her Highness the Fourth Princess, Long Caili. Same as always. Second…”

Nobody cared about second. The whole room was waiting for one name.

In the corner by the stove, a big young man with a wolf-fur collar was drinking alone with three empty jars in front of him. It was Zhangsun Lie, the Zhangsun heir, seventeenth on the list. He’d come to town for the issue too, and he’d spent half an hour loudly telling the next table about the spear-rack.

The scholar read his way down the list, one name at a time, until he reached the ninth. “Tenth…” the scholar read.

He stopped and squinted at the paper. Then he looked across the room at the table by the window.

“Tenth, Shi Feng,” the scholar said. “Eleventh, Bai Ruoshuang of the Serene Jade Sect.”

The teahouse exploded.

“Tenth! He’s above the Serene Jade’s own girl!”

“Of course he is! Didn’t you hear what happened on the Lotus Terrace? He beat her in front of the whole sect!”

“He came up the north road at mid Shattering Void this winter. This winter! Now he’s late Shattering Void and tenth!”

“The waves behind push the waves in front. The young ones these days don’t give the rest of us time to breathe.”

“…Is that him by the window? Eating noodles?”

It was him by the window, eating noodles. Shi Feng finished his mouthful and put his chopsticks down.

Tenth. After Grey Goose Pass he’d been thirteenth, then twelfth at the Helian Hold. Shi Feng felt pleased despite himself. The court in Tianjing would hear this ranking too. It would be harder for them to dismiss Long Caili’s guest now.

In the corner, Zhangsun Lie slammed his jar on the table so hard the other two fell over.

“I told you so!” Zhangsun Lie roared, and stood up. “Didn’t I tell you so? I said at my father’s gate that the man who beat my Wolf-Howl Spear would pass the Serene Jade girl inside a month! Who bet against me? Old Zhou! Pay up!”

“Young Master Zhangsun, you’re still seventeenth,” someone pointed out.

“Seventeenth and right!” Zhangsun Lie shouted, pointing at the man. “Seventeenth and right is better than tenth and wrong! A real dragon doesn’t stay in a pond! I said that too!”

He waved his jar at Shi Feng across the room. Shi Feng raised his teacup back. The whole teahouse saw it, and the noise doubled.

The scholar on the stool had to shout three times to be heard again.

“There’s more! There’s a note at the bottom!” the scholar yelled. “From the Mansion. Listen! ‘Eighth, His Highness the Fifth Prince, has left Thunder Abyss Valley for the north road, seeking a sparring partner.’”

This time the room went quiet.

Everybody in the north knew the Fifth Prince. He was eighteen, a disciple of the Thunder Abyss Valley, and people said he started a lot of fights.

“Seeking a sparring partner,” Zhangsun Lie repeated slowly. Then he laughed so loudly the stove rattled. “Ha! On the north road! Who else is on the north road worth a prince’s trip?”

Every head in the teahouse turned toward the window.

Shi Feng picked up his chopsticks again.

“The commission gets to see me first,” Shi Feng said calmly. He picked up his noodles while the tables around him burst into excited whispers.

They walked back along the main street at noon. A small crowd was standing in front of the Caili pavilion, and when Shi Feng got closer, he saw why.

The empty lot behind the branch, which had been frozen mud the last time he’d walked over it, now had a building on it. It was grey stone with a slate roof, a chimney already drawing, and a heavy door with the pavilion’s mark burnt into it. Kang Yi stood in front of the door with a hammer, nailing up a board.

“Furnace room and herb store, open from today,” Kang Yi announced to the crowd, and stepped back to straighten the board. “House rates as posted.”

The townspeople read the board aloud to one another.

“Furnace room, by the day, two thousand…”

“‘Masters of the Sixth Mark: by arrangement with the house.’ By arrangement? How many 6 Marks have ever come through Lianxia?”

“One.”

“…”

“Then why build a whole furnace room? Nobody in Lianxia buys pills except the sect, and the sect has its own furnaces!”

“Her Highness must know something we don’t,” an old herb seller said, nodding wisely.

Kang Yi saw Shi Feng at the back of the crowd and bowed to him at once.

“Guest Elder,” Kang Yi said. “The furnace room was finished this morning. Would you like to see it?”

“Who do I make the arrangement with?” Shi Feng asked, looking at the last line of the board.

“With Her Highness, Guest Elder,” Kang Yi said, without blinking. “Her Highness was very clear about that line. It’s to be settled with her and nobody else.”

Shi Feng looked at the board for a moment longer.

The princess had bought this lot the week after she gave him the black jade token. Then she’d built a furnace room on it in a town where nobody bought pills, and put up a price for a kind of master who had only ever come through it once. Neither her letters nor Kang Yi had ever said who it was for.

“Then I’ll take a room upstairs from the day after tomorrow,” Shi Feng said. “At the house rate. I’ll arrange the rest with Her Highness.”

“The house rate it is, Guest Elder,” Kang Yi said, and wrote it down.

Shi Feng glanced back at the warm chimney. Long Caili had prepared a place for him to work before he’d asked for one. Kang Yi still wore the serious expression of a manager discussing ordinary house rates.