My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 273: Most of a Bowl

On the sixteenth and the seventeenth, nothing happened on the mountain except for that charcoal furnace.

The alchemy materials were the batch bought in the Market on the tenth. The fire was lit at the Mao hour on the eleventh, and by the Chen hour on the eighteenth it had burned a full seven days. Those seven nights Du Xiaochuan slept on the plank bed in the outer room of the Medicine Hall, waking in the middle of the night when the fire ran low to add a piece of charcoal, not daring to stretch his feet past the edge of the bed for fear of knocking over the charcoal basket. By day Cheng Banshan sat by the furnace, keeping the flame as low as it would go. Xiao Ling portioned herbs at the worktable—hand scale, drawers, drying, a full cycle every day, and her hands no longer slipped.

At noon on the seventeenth, Cheng Banshan shifted away from the furnace and called her over to squat down and look at the color of the fire through the furnace door's gap. "Green with yellow in it is just right. When it turns all yellow, it's gone too far." He tapped the furnace door with the hook. "When I say it's gone too far, I pinch it. Watch. See when my hand moves." An hour later, the fire turned yellow, and his hand moved. She squatted beside him and watched, asking nothing. He said only one thing: "The hand doesn't teach. The eye teaches."

At lamp-lighting on the seventeenth, Xu Yan sat in the Accounts Room and trimmed ten paper labels to equal size, writing "Qingya" on each, and below it, "Eighteenth of the Eleventh Month." When he finished, he carried them to the Medicine Hall and set them under the ten empty bottles on the worktable, straightening each bottle one by one so every label corner pointed the same way. Cheng Banshan came out from the inner room for a look and said, "There it is." Neither of them said another word.

On the eighteenth, before dawn, Huo Qing was under the veranda practicing that one thrust at the wooden target. When the sky lightened and the sun cleared the Back Mountain, the Medicine Hall door stood open.

At the Chen hour, the furnace was unloaded. Cheng Banshan held the alchemy flame in check and pressed down the furnace chamber while the formation hand lifted the lid and tray, a rush of heat pouring out. Du Xiaochuan pressed against the furnace mouth and counted. At ten, the breath caught in his throat finally released: "Ten pills." Xiao Ling lined up the ten empty bottles on the worktable one by one, in a single row, none touching another.

Cheng Banshan used the bamboo slip to scrape the pills one by one onto the worktable and bottled them while still warm. Du Xiaochuan pulled the labels from beneath the bottles, peeling one and sticking it on, and at the eighth his fingers trembled and he pressed the label on crooked. He tore it off himself and stuck it again. Cheng Banshan swept his eyes over it and said nothing. Once all ten bottles were filled, he scraped the layer of pill powder from the furnace bottom onto prescription paper and pushed it to Xu Yan's hand. Xu Yan folded it into a small triangle, wrote "Eighteenth of the Eleventh Month" on the fold with a brush, and placed it at the very end of the stack of retained samples on the shelf, fold facing out.

Xiao Ling waited until the last bottle was settled before wiping the worktable with a rag. She swept the pill powder into one place and asked, "This packet—should it stay here until someone comes asking?"

"Until someone comes asking." Cheng Banshan said. "If any batch is off, we compare against these."

At the Si hour, Qi Qi came back down from the North Slope beyond the Old Herb Garden. He stood at the Accounts Room door, lower pant legs crusted with hard soil, a crack across the shoe upper. "Nothing beyond the Pass. The earth on the North Slope is frozen solid—it cracks underfoot." Xu Yan nodded and told him to take his time going down the mountain. Qi Qi acknowledged and headed for the Kitchen.

In the late afternoon, the Front Courtyard was windless, sunlight falling on the window paper of the two Main Hall rooms. A He came back from the western slope with a bundle of firewood in his arms, A Sui trailing behind picking up fallen twigs, the two of them bickering the whole way about who'd carried more.

At the Shen hour, footsteps sounded below the Mountain Gate—more than one or two.

Nie Bo's broom was still sweeping. A small pile of yellow leaves sat by the threshold; he raked them toward the base of the wall without looking up. Beyond the threshold stood ten people, all carrying bundles. Two men in front, an old man half-squatting on the stone steps, four women, and the rest children—the smallest one held in someone's arms, face buried in the crook of a shoulder. The bundles were of all sizes, one tied with straw rope worn fuzzy at the edges. One child had no shoes, feet wrapped in cloth, mud seeping through in hard clumps.

The lead man took half a step forward—the young rogue cultivator with no sect, the one who'd asked at the Market gate on Lantern Night, "Do you take people in here?" The one Xu Yan recognized by his shoes, soles patched two or three times, the stitching dense.

"Sect Master Xu." He spoke first, voice hoarse. "The inns in town are full, and the grain shop's back courtyard is full too. These people have asked all the way from one end of Market Street to the other. No one can take them."

"They asked you?"

"I told them about the family on the mountain." He swallowed. "Back in the Eighth Month, I asked at the Market gate. They said if I went, they'd follow. So they followed me up."

Xu Yan stepped out past the threshold and stood at the top of the stone steps, looking over the group. None of the ten made a sound. The woman holding the child tugged the child's cap down lower. The old man stood up, his knee cracking.

"Where are you from?" Xu Yan asked.

"North of the Pass, on the east side. A village." The old man's throat was full of gravel. "Crossed the Pass and came down the main road. Three, four days of walking."

"Anyone stop you on the road?"

"No. The road was empty." The old man thought, then added, "The sky to the north has been red for over a month. Our people could see it at night—red as if it were burning—but no rain fell. Rogue cultivators coming from the north said the Beast Tide was moving south, so everyone in the village left."

"Half left." He added, "Those who couldn't walk stayed in the village. My eldest stayed behind to watch the house."

Jiang Wan asked, "Did anyone fall behind on the road?"

"At the entrance to Luoxia Town we lost one." The old man said. "An old woman, couldn't walk any farther. A family in town took her in, said she could stay for now."

Xu Yan looked down at the child in the woman's arms. The child wasn't crying, just staring back at him with open eyes.

"The one coughing—who is it?" he asked.

The old man turned and pointed at a thin one among the children. "Him. Coughs on the road. Coughs by day, coughs at night too."

"Take him up to the Medicine Hall for a look." Xu Yan stepped back inside the threshold. "Jiang Wan, Qian Duoduo."

Jiang Wan came over from the veranda, still clutching the sword tassel in her hand. Qian Duoduo followed behind her, apron still on. Xu Yan said, "The east room of the Main Hall, and the Firewood Shed. Get them set out. The empty baskets and two rolls of old matting in the east room—they can move those themselves." Then he said, "Sit first, don't stand. Water's in the vat by the Kitchen door. Help yourselves."

He didn't ask for names.

Jiang Wan led the four women, the children, and the old man toward the Main Hall. Qian Duoduo led the two men toward the Firewood Shed. As they crossed the middle of the Front Courtyard, the child at the very back suddenly stopped and stared at A Sui. A Sui stood still too, two thin twigs in her hand. Neither of them spoke. A Sui held out one twig. The child took it and ran back to his mother.

The rogue cultivator didn't come in. He stood outside the threshold, gripping his bundle strap.

"Sect Master Xu said last time that you'd need rooms and rations." He said. "Right now there's nothing to spare."

"Right now there still isn't." Xu Yan said. "We'll squeeze."

The rogue cultivator nodded, shifting the bundle higher on his shoulder. "Then I'll head down. There's always work in town for someone who can carry. I'll stay in town."

"Good."

He walked a few steps down, then turned back and asked one more thing. "How long will you keep them on the mountain?"

"Until they can go back."

The rogue cultivator didn't ask again. He turned and went down the stone steps. The frost on the blue stone had long since melted. His footsteps paused once at the bend, then faded away.

At lamp-lighting, a big pot was set up at the Kitchen door.

The people of Qingya sat at the Main Hall table. The ten who'd come up the mountain lined up at the Kitchen door to receive their portions. Qian Duoduo lifted the pot lid, and the steam surged up, making the wall by the Kitchen door glow white. His ladle dipped in, then fell into each bowl, the back of the ladle pressing against the bowl's rim to scrape the excess back into the pot.

Xu Yan stood at the Kitchen door, watching one bowl, then the next.

"Starting today, most of a bowl per person." He said. "Qingya people the same."

Qian Duoduo's hand stopped. "The Sect Master too?"

"Me too."

Qian Duoduo set the ladle back in the pot, stirred the bottom layer even, and went back to scooping one bowl after another. As he scooped, he counted bowls with A He: thirteen in the Main Hall, eight in the east room, two in the Firewood Shed. When he finished counting, he looked up. "One pot isn't enough."

"Then make two." Xu Yan said. "Still most of a bowl each."

Water was added for the second pot and the fire stoked. Those waiting squatted by the Kitchen door. No one rushed. A He and A Sui helped carry. A Sui first carried a bowl to the low hut by the Mountain Gate and set it on the threshold, then came back for her own. She sat down at the table and looked at the half bowl before her. She said nothing, eating spoonful by spoonful, slower than usual.

Xu Yan's bowl was most of a bowl too. He sat down and ate, as fast as ever.

Shi Po finished his bowl and sat without moving, hands pressed on his knees. Qian Duoduo circled the space near his bowl but didn't dare add more. Xu Yan didn't either.

Cheng Banshan set the Wine Gourd by his hand and poured half a bowl of wine, saying only, "The eighteenth—a good fire." Then nothing more. Jiang Wan gave Xiao Ling a bit of her vegetables and asked if the people in the east room had enough covers for the night. Xiao Ling said both rolls of old matting had been laid out, the children squeezed together inside, warm enough.

The thin new child coughed a few times, the sound hollow. The old man sitting by the threshold reached over and patted his back.

After lamp-lighting, Xu Yan carried his lamp to the Medicine Hall.

Only a layer of white ash remained in the furnace chamber. The furnace mouth stood open, heat long gone. Du Xiaochuan had already wiped down the outer room; the worktable was clean. Cheng Banshan was in the inner room flipping through the stack of retained samples, checking the date on each. Xu Yan spread the furnace log on the worktable, dipped the brush in ink, and added a line at the bottom: "Eighteenth of the Eleventh Month. Qi-Gathering Pill. Ten pills." He set the brush down, and his eyes met the folded edge of the last packet on the shelf—Eighteenth of the Eleventh Month, facing out.

Du Xiaochuan rolled up the bedding on the plank bed, lashed it in two places, and held it in his arms.

"Sect Master, when we light the furnace on the twenty-first, I'll move back over."

"Mm." Xu Yan said. "Don't fall asleep when you're adding charcoal."

"I won't."

He carried his bedding out of the Medicine Hall toward the West Wing. The door curtain dropped. The hall fell so quiet you could hear the sound of papers turning in the inner room.

From the Front Courtyard came the sound of a child crying. Across two courtyards, the sound arrived thin: one cry, a long pause, then another—not urgent, not fussy, just crying, one sound at a time. Eventually it sank low, became a broken, piecemeal gasping—a stretch of gasping, a stretch of quiet, then more.

Xu Yan sat at the worktable without moving and closed the furnace log.

The sound of paper-turning in the inner room paused. "New place," Cheng Banshan said. "He misses home."

The crying rose again for a moment, shorter this time. Then it was gone.

Xu Yan sat at the worktable a while longer, until he heard the door panel of the east room shift and someone murmur something low and soothing, then nothing but the wind passing through the Front Courtyard. Only then did he pick up his lamp and leave, pulling the door shut behind him, careful not to let the pivot creak.