My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 191: Trial Run

From the tenth of the eighth month to the fifth of the ninth, six market days, and they missed none.

The stall sat in the same spot, against the wall under the third pillar, beneath that stretch of old tile eave. Over the past month the town's questions had changed: in the seventh month they asked whether the mountain was still taking people; in the eighth month they asked whether the sect would pass the evaluation on the Double Ninth.

"We'll pass." Qian Duoduo held the pot lid with one hand and worked a ladle with the other. "Seventh Rank. All five criteria, not one missing."

"And if one is missing?"

"Then it's next year." He pushed the bowl forward. "Two spirit stones."

At the thirtieth-day market, the day ended with two sacks of spirit rice and one sack of coarse grain sold out. Fifty spirit stones. The shop hand tied each sack mouth tight with hemp rope, winding it down in careful circles, and asked whether Qian Duoduo would still be setting up on the tenth. Qian Duoduo said the evaluation was on the ninth, so he'd definitely be there on the tenth. The shop hand laughed and said the day hadn't even come yet, and here he was already counting market days after it.

Back on the mountain, during You hour, he turned over a hundred spirit stones. A Sui crouched by the kitchen door counting on her fingers, going through every date Qian Duoduo had recited from the beginning. When she finished, she looked up and asked, "After Seventh Rank, still two pots per market?"

"Two pots," Qian Duoduo said. "Count your own pots."

"What if it's three pots?"

"Count to ten first, then we'll talk."

On the fifth of the ninth month, the last market day before the evaluation. It was still dark when Qian Duoduo and Du Xiaochuan carried two pots down the mountain. By Dragon hour, Cheng Banshan's furnace had finished its batch, and Qi Qi tucked ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder into his robe and ran down, reaching the stall by Snake hour. By Horse hour everything was sold out—earlier than any market before. People came as if determined to get every last question about the autumn evaluation answered before parting with their money. After the market broke up, they restocked two pots' worth of spirit rice at the grain shop for ten spirit stones.

"The tenth—that's the first market after the evaluation," Qian Duoduo said to Du Xiaochuan, carrying the empty pots up the mountain road.

"It hasn't happened yet."

"Whether it goes through or not, those pots still have to burn."

The eighth of the ninth month, Snake hour.

Two li of mountain road north from the Ancestral Hall, a two-quarter-hour walk to the halfway slope of Back Mountain. Xu Yan walked at the front, Shao Ming half a step behind him, Bai Xiaoman following Shao Ming, and Shi Po bringing up the rear, three water flasks slung over his shoulders and a cloth sack at his waist holding coarse grain cakes.

The grass on the slope had gone yellow and crunched underfoot. The stone platform on the slope sat bare above the grass, its surface washed pale by decades of rain. In the center of the platform rested a formation plate with five slots, five formation stones set according to their places: Metal in the west, Wood in the east, Water in the north, Fire in the south, Earth in the center. The carved lines beside the slots had grown faint; where grass roots had pushed up, the lines broke off short.

A few zhang above the platform rose the cliff face. On it, the seal strip the Branch had pasted across that door seam on the fifth day of the sixth month still held—the paper edges gone fuzzy from mountain wind, the writing faded a shade lighter by the sun.

Xu Yan glanced at it, then pulled his gaze back and crouched down beside the platform.

Shao Ming knelt first. Without a word, he drew a short-handled old grass broom from his waist and swept the dead leaves from around the five slots, one by one, brushing them off the edge of the platform. Only then did he wipe his hand on his pant leg.

"West side." He muttered it to himself and pressed his palm down.

He felt each of the five formation stones in turn. The Metal stone in the west he held longest, laying his whole palm flat against it, all four fingers settled before moving on to the Wood stone in the east. He lifted that one lightly with one hand, testing its weight, then set it level. After pressing the Water stone in the north, he went back and pressed the west stone again, a second time, before straightening up.

"All in position," Shao Ming said.

"Any loosening?" Xu Yan asked.

"No. Back in Year 290 three stones cracked when the formation was raised—that was the stones' doing, not the slots'. The slots are still the slots."

Bai Xiaoman had already stretched out flat beside the formation plate, her face not even a chi from its surface. She reached out a finger and traced the carved line along the edge of a slot, stopped halfway, and drew a small pebble from her sleeve to compare against the slot's width.

"Does it need warming?" Xu Yan asked.

"No warming needed." She put the pebble away. "What you warm is the formation's veins. Spirit energy ran through them once, on the ninth day of the ninth month, Year 300 of the Zongmeng Calendar. Since then the veins have never broken—they've just never been run full. Tomorrow we go up and let it flow, that's all."

"Not even tomorrow morning?"

"Not even tomorrow morning. Warming is for when it's been forty years without a run. And don't burn mid-grade spirit stones on it. One mid-grade trades for a hundred low-grade; burning it would just be throwing it away."

Shao Ming grunted an acknowledgment beside her.

Bai Xiaoman stood, wiped both hands on her robe, and walked to the Earth formation stone in the center of the plate. She was short; even standing she had to look down at the platform.

"Sect Master," she said, "I'll raise it just to full formation first. Whether it holds or not, we test tomorrow morning on the mountain."

Xu Yan nodded.

She pressed her palm down.

The slope went still for a moment. The mountain wind stopped; the grass blades didn't stir; even her sleeve hung motionless. Then the five slots on the formation plate lit up one by one—west to east, north to south—and finally the center stone burned brightest of all. The shallow channels of the carved lines seemed filled from beneath, flowing line by line toward the middle.

Light rose from the halfway slope.

It lit the yellowed grass around the platform first, then spread downhill: across the roof ridge of the Ancestral Hall, tile overlapping tile, the light running down the grooves between; across the front courtyard, where every blade of grass growing through the brick cracks stood out sharp and clear; lower, over the Mountain Gate, over the lime line below the gate long since washed away by rain, all the way to the first bend of the mountain path.

Looking down from the slope, the whole mountain seemed lifted, as if cupped from underneath.

Xu Yan straightened up.

In the front courtyard stood Jiang Wan, sword in hand, head raised toward Back Mountain. Around the kitchen doorway, Qian Duoduo leaned half out, both hands still wet and dripping. Beneath the Mountain Gate, Nie Bo's broom kept pushing—sweep, sweep, steady—his whole body bathed in that light.

"Retract," Shao Ming said.

Bai Xiaoman immediately lifted her hand from the formation stone and stepped back. The light pulled back up from the gate—back over the front courtyard, back over the Ancestral Hall's roof ridge, gathering into a single glow on the slope, and finally returning to the five slots, dimming line by line. Only plain daylight remained on the stone platform.

The color drained from her face at once. Her lips went pale, and both hands hung limp at her sides.

Shi Po took a step toward her, hand half extended.

"I'll walk myself," Bai Xiaoman said.

She stood at the edge of the platform for a moment while her breath steadied, then turned. Shi Po withdrew his hand, unstoppered a water flask, and held it out. She took two sips, coughed once, sipped again, and pressed the stopper back in.

"I know the way down," she said.

Shao Ming glanced at Xu Yan. Xu Yan tipped his chin toward the mountain below.

The four of them started down. Bai Xiaoman walked in the middle, Shi Po half a step behind her, the flask in his hand. She moved slowly, planting each foot before shifting weight, and at the first bend she paused and looked back at the slope.

"The grass roots in the two places by the slot edges should be cut out," she said. "Tomorrow morning, don't let the roots push the lines apart."

"I'll cut them first thing when I get there," Shao Ming said.

"Not you. Your depth's wrong—the line only shows half a fen above the soil."

Shi Po, listening beside them, spoke up suddenly. "I'll cut them."

Bai Xiaoman looked at him but didn't object.

At the front courtyard, Qian Duoduo came out of the kitchen with a hot bowl of ginger broth, a cloth folded under it. Bai Xiaoman took it and sat on the stone steps beneath the west veranda to drink. Cheng Banshan came over from the Medicine Hall and stood in front of her, lifting her eyelids with his thumb to study her face.

"Walked that path once today—now you've got it down," he said. "Tomorrow morning, it'll go smooth."

"And if I have to hold it for a full shichen?"

"Holding a full shichen is your own affair," Cheng Banshan said. "But when it's over, no pushing yourself past your limits. Whoever's there is the one who gets you down."

"I'll carry her," Shi Po said.

Bai Xiaoman held the bowl and didn't answer. She drained it to the bottom, handed the bowl back to Qian Duoduo, and only then said, "Up there, you can't even touch the formation plate."

"Then I'll wait below."

At Horse hour, Xu Yan called Qi Qi to the door of the Accounts Room.

"Go down the mountain," he said. "To Luoxia. Wait around the inn. When the Rank Evaluator arrives, come back and report. Don't spend the night in town."

"And if it's dark and they still haven't come?"

"Then sit outside the inn until the lamps are lit, and come back and tell it straight."

"Straight to what level of detail? If she brings book clerks, do I report the count too?"

"Report everything."

Qi Qi tightened the cloth pouch at his waist and turned to head down the mountain.

At You hour, just as the sun pressed down on the western ridge, Qi Qi came panting up the stone steps outside the Mountain Gate. He waved a hand as soon as he got in, and only spoke once his breathing evened out.

"Arrived. Shen hour."

"How many?"

"Three. The Rank Evaluator, two book clerks—one carrying a wooden box, one with a record book on his back." Qi Qi braced one hand on his knee. "The carriage stopped in front of the inn, and the shopkeeper came out to greet them. It's the Branch's carriage—same driver as last time."

"Which room?"

"The innermost one. Three rooms in a row; the innermost went to the Rank Evaluator, the two clerks took the ones beside it." He caught his breath. "Room paid in advance. The shopkeeper counted the stones and put them in the coin box one by one. I sat under the tree across the way and waited until they'd all gone inside before coming back."

"The wooden box?"

"The clerk carrying it took it in. The seal strip was on it—I watched, it wasn't touched." Qi Qi paused. "They didn't sit in the front hall; went straight upstairs. A waiter brought a pot of water up. Nothing else."

Xu Yan made a sound of acknowledgment and told Du Xiaochuan to save Qi Qi a meal in the kitchen.

Before the lamps were lit, Xu Yan went into the Ancestral Hall alone. Both oil lamps on the offering table burned, and the ancestral tablets stood in their rows, Ning Gui's, the founding patriarch's, at the very top. He crouched down and moved the wooden box under the offering table half an inch outward, so that tomorrow morning both hands could reach it in one motion. Then he gave it a push to check it wouldn't shift.

Xu hour, the Accounts Room.

The lamp wick had been trimmed once, and the room was brighter than before. Xu Yan lifted the cash box from under the ledger rack onto the table and opened it. The spirit stones inside were stacked in piles of ten, old cloth laid at the bottom.

He counted out twelve stacks, one by one, and set them separately on the table.

Ten stones per stack, twelve stacks in a row. He touched each stack from the first, counting through to twelve, then went back and counted a second pass. When he finished, he pressed his palm flat on the table's edge.

A year's rank silver for Eighth Rank: a hundred twenty spirit stones. This year, they paid exactly that.

From the drawer under the table he drew out an old cloth sack and lifted the stacks in one by one, slowly, careful not to chip the corners. He bound the sack mouth twice with hemp rope, pulled it tight, and tied a slipknot.

The ledger book lay open under the lamp. He dipped the brush and wrote a line: Ninth month, eighth day—rank silver, one hundred twenty stones, counted twice, bagged.

He set the brush down, waited for the ink to dry, and closed the ledger.

The cash box was covered and slid back under the rack. The cloth sack sat on top of it, mouth turned inward.

The sounds outside settled one by one. The kitchen finished washing its pots, water splashing onto the brick floor. The sword practice in the east courtyard had stopped. Beneath the veranda, Huo Qing's thrust still struck the wooden target—tap, tap, unhurried.

Xu Yan rolled his sleeves up and sat down at the desk. He drew the thin ledger from his robes and looked at it for a moment, but he didn't turn to the last page. He put it back.