My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 7: The Space Beneath the Line

The cash box was iron, with a broken latch, wrapped twice in hemp rope and tied with a hard knot. Xu Yan untied it and lifted the lid. Twenty-three low-grade spirit stones rolled across the surface of the table with a few dull clunks.

He counted them one by one. At ten, he moved them to the left; counted to ten again, moved those to the right; three were left over.

One had a chip on its edge. He flipped it over—the chip wasn't deep. A stone like that got you lowballed if you tried to pay with it. He set it aside on the table's corner. That one had to be spent first.

The rest had rounded, worn edges—not freshly mined stone. The old Sect Master used to give one of those to A He and A Sui at New Year's, each about this worn. Two stones given away, and the rest back in the box.

Silver: twelve taels total. Qian Duoduo had taken eight on September 2, and the ledger recorded it: coffin, seven taels; burial clothes, eight qian; paper money and incense candles, two qian. Four taels remained at the bottom of the box, wrapped in an old cloth with a grease stain in one corner that no washing would lift.

He wrapped the silver again, placed it back at the bottom, closed the lid, wound the hemp rope twice, and retied the hard knot exactly as it had been. Those four taels were all the ready cash left on the mountain. Touching them again would mean knowing precisely what would replace them.

Beneath the old ledgers pressed a thin sheet of paper, its four corners curling up. The letterhead bore the seal of the Sect Alliance Dongzhou Branch, and the voucher stated in plain language: Qingya Sect, on the pledge of its Mountain Gate Deed, has settled its Rank Silver. Signed and dated, Year 280 of the Alliance Calendar.

He had seen this paper dozens of times. Every time, he moved it aside to look at the year's accounts beneath. The pledge slip was in his hand; the deed was not. The deed sat at the Dongzhou Branch, where it had been for twenty years.

Below that lay thirty years of ledgers. One line per year, and every year the same words: "Owed to the Sect Alliance, Rank Silver, 70 blocks." The writing loosened as the years went on. The final stroke of "blocks" in the last line dragged out long.

Thirty years, thirty lines.

He laid out the numbers on the table: seventy blocks a year, thirty years, two thousand one hundred blocks. The twenty-three on the table didn't even make one year's payment. Add two more boxes like this one and that only came to sixty-nine—still one block short of a single year's Rank Silver.

He converted the debt into silver to give his mind some weight: one low-grade spirit stone exchanged for ten taels in Luoxia Town, so two thousand one hundred blocks came to twenty-one thousand taels. The grain shop in town didn't move that much silver in a year. Converting to silver didn't matter anyway—on the day of the Autumn Evaluation, they'd accept only spirit stones. Silver didn't count.

He tapped his brush twice against the edge of the inkstone. The tip had stiffened into a stub of hemp rope, and the ink in the stone had dried to a crust.

The table had three drawers. The left one had been the old Sect Master's. Ten years Xu Yan had kept the books, and never once opened that drawer. It had no lock—just a strip of cloth wrapped around the pull, its original color long faded beyond recognition.

He tugged. The wood had swollen with age. He pulled harder; the drawer screeched open half an inch, then yielded.

Inside was clean. A stack of white paper, corners even. Three old brushes, tips all hardened. Half a stick of ink, its grinding surface uneven. Beneath the paper, the corner of a folded sheet peeked out—folded in fourths.

He drew it out and unfolded it. The paper had stiffened, and the creases had gone fuzzy at the folds.

He did not need to read it word by word. Ge Song had read it aloud before the spirit tablet on September 2, and Xu Yan had memorized the words. This copy matched the one in Ge Song's hand exactly—down to the date of the signature.

March 12.

He held it to the light from the window, looked it over, then laid it flat again.

In June, Ge Song had taken the document back and said, "Three months. Not one block less." Back then Xu Yan had assumed the debt was contracted in March, that the document had been drawn up in March.

March 12. This paper had reached Qingya that day.

He sat on the stool and laid out the sequence of events.

May 20, his master sent Jiang Wan down the mountain to petition the Dongzhou Branch for an extension.

Petition for what extension? On March 12, the mountain had already known there would be none.

She had gone down for twelve days and waited ten at the Branch, only to hear: "It was transferred out back in March." That sentence was written on this paper. He'd been standing beside her when she said it, and had taken it for the Branch brushing them off.

He did not know why his master had done it this way. All he knew was that from March 12 to the first of the month, no one else on the mountain had known this paper existed. For three months, Qian Duoduo kept cooking porridge, A He and A Sui kept bickering at the well platform, and every ten days he cleared the accounts, copying out "Owed to the Sect Alliance, Rank Silver, 70 blocks" until his hand knew it by heart—copying an old debt from thirty years ago.

From the East Courtyard came the sound of a sword sheath tapping stone. Unhurried. Once, then again. He sat without moving.

He folded the notice back up. At the second fold, the paper corner went soft and wouldn't stand—it keeled to one side. Folded into thirds, it came out shorter than before.

He opened this year's old ledger and tucked the folded notice into its first page. The old Sect Master's rule: one paper per year, clipped into the front of the ledger.

He flipped quickly to the Year 290 page—thirty years, thirty pages. That page had two added notes. One, recorded at the start of the year, noted roof-tile repairs. The other was squeezed beneath the line for the Double Ninth. Small writing, heavier ink than the surrounding text:

Year 290, September 9, Re-evaluation. Formation activated; one corner raised. Formation stones cracked. No funds to repair.

That was the year he first entered the Accounts Room. That day he had been crouched under the back eaves, threading the old ledgers, when he heard voices from the Front Courtyard—not loud, but sentence after sentence. He ran out to look. The Front Courtyard was packed with people; outside the ring stood several outsiders in clean clothes. A light flickered to life over the Back Mountain—pale gray-green, shining down from the slope.

He was small then, and from between the crowd's legs he could only wedge in half his head. All he saw was a blue brick on the ground and a pair of shoes polished to near-white.

What he did later that day, he couldn't remember. He only recalled that come dusk, the old Sect Master had come down from the Back Mountain, the front of his robe soaked through. He said little, and ate nothing.

Today, for the first time, he read that line word by word. Back then, the Accounts Room copied the ledgers day after day, and the entries showed exactly how poor the mountain was. When he copied "No funds to repair," he'd thought it meant mending roofs and patching walls.

At the Monkey hour, Cheng Banshan came in.

His one-armed sleeve hung empty at his side. In his remaining hand he carried his wine gourd. He glanced at the surface of the table as he entered.

"Counting up the assets."

"Counted."

"How much."

"Twenty-three blocks. Four taels of silver."

Cheng Banshan set his gourd on the corner of the table—gently, without a sound. He sat down across from Xu Yan. "Thirty years. Seventy blocks a year. Two thousand one hundred. I've had that number memorized for ten years—better than you."

"Memorized doesn't help."

"Memorized means I don't panic." Cheng Banshan tilted his head back and took a long drink, his throat working. "Do you panic?"

"Do the math, and the panic's gone." Xu Yan pushed the ledger half an inch toward him. "The Medicine Hall's furnace—can you still fire it up?"

"I can. I'll gather the herbs from the Back Mountain and tend the fire myself. One batch, off to the market. Sell it a block or two at a time."

"Humiliating."

"So you know it's humiliating." Cheng Banshan raised an eyelid. "Qingya's Medicine Hall used to compound medicines for the Eighth and Ninth Rank sects. They'd send carts to haul it away. Now we set it out at the market and wait for people to ask the price—and when they've asked, we haggle."

He paused, the gourd's mouth resting against his lips but not drinking. "Humiliation is still income."

Xu Yan turned the ledger back to Year 290 and pushed it in front of him, finger pointing at that line.

Cheng Banshan's eyes settled on the line. He still held the gourd, made no move to touch the page. He stared for a long while, lips moving, no sound coming out.

"Activating the Formation," Xu Yan said. "How's it done?"

"What are you asking for?"

"I'll need it later."

Cheng Banshan set the gourd down, a little harder than before. "The old Sect Master did it with his cultivation." He said, "The formation rose at one corner—just that one corner—and it was enough to make the last Rank Evaluator nod. After he finished, he came down the Back Mountain, walked to the Medicine Hall's door, and sat down on the threshold. Couldn't stand."

"How much does one activation consume?"

"He never said. I took his pulse. Pressed down, and underneath there was nothing—empty. I couldn't find a thing." Cheng Banshan stared at the twenty-three blocks on the table. "He lay in the Medicine Hall three days before he could get out of bed. He told me not to tell anyone. The crack, he did mention—said he'd repair it before the next evaluation. Ten years he said that. Never did."

There was movement at the door. Qian Duoduo clutched the door frame, half his body still outside, one hand twisting the corner of his apron until it creased.

"Sect Master."

"Come in."

"I won't—there's fire going in the kitchen." He said what he'd rehearsed on the way over. "The Spirit Meals from the kitchen—do they count as income?"

"Who's eaten one?"

"The grain shop's delivery hand. That time he hauled the grain up in winter. It was cold, so I ladled him a bowl of hot soup in the kitchen. When he finished, he said the cold left his body, and his cracked hands healed." Qian Duoduo shifted half a step into the room. "He told people when he got back. Later, some folks in town asked me if the mountain had any more of that food."

Cheng Banshan asked, "What's a bowl of rice worth?"

"The Spirit Rice has to be bought." Qian Duoduo's voice dropped. "There's still some in the vat, but we'll have to buy more when it's gone. A He and A Sui eat two bowls each per meal. If we don't sell meals, we can't even keep those two fed."

"How much is left?"

"Enough for a few batches."

Cheng Banshan grunted. Qian Duoduo immediately pulled his head back halfway, but his eyes stayed on Xu Yan.

Xu Yan took a sheet of white paper from the drawer, smoothed it on the table, dripped two drops of water into the inkstone, and worked up a bit of ink.

He wrote two lines. First line: "Elixirs"—then, after a pause, added "Medicine Hall." Second line: "Meals"—then added "Kitchen."

Cheng Banshan watched in silence. Only after Xu Yan set the brush down did he speak. "I'll go fire up the furnace this afternoon. If I burn it out, I'll answer for it." At the door he turned back. "Little Xu."

"Yeah."

"If you need something, tell me."

"I need spirit stones."

"That, I don't have." Cheng Banshan went out with his gourd. From the courtyard he added, "I heated your medicine in the pot. Remember to drink it. Don't go giving it to someone else again."

Qian Duoduo left too, wiping his hands on his apron at the door. "I'll keep your porridge warm."

In the Front Courtyard, A Sui ran past the well platform, the soles of her shoes scraping against the blue stone in a sandy rustle, shouting for A He to give her things back. Smoke from the kitchen chimney climbed from the west flue, thicker than in the morning. At the Mountain Gate, Nie Bo's broom swept on, slow and steady.

Xu Yan smoothed the paper flat. Two lines of income, ink still wet. After both lines, he had written no numbers: how many vials per batch, how many bowls per pot, who would buy—he knew none of it, and a number you don't know, written down, is just a lie.

Below, he started a new line and wrote: 2,100.

Then another new line: 23.

Between the two numbers, about a finger's width of empty space. He touched the brush tip to that gap, measured, then set it down and drew a line. The line came out straight—one end pressing up under the larger number, the other end pressing down on the smaller.

He set down the brush.

Beneath the line, it was empty.