The Cross-Bazaar of Cloudford Town smelled of wet horse dung, very thirsty millet flour, and the bitter sulfur stench of coal slack drifting from the riverside smelting kilns.
A steady drizzle turned the unpaved streets into grey, adhesive mud that clung to boots like damp mortar. Handcart pullers in straw rain capes leaned their shoulders into heavy wooden spokes. They shouted curses at pack mules as wheels sank to the axle hubs.
Pei Jing walked along the stone gutters on the north side of the street. There, the footing was firmer.
He wore his coarse charcoal-grey linen robe, tied at the waist with his oiled sharkskin belt. The bamboo tube housing the cleaver blueprints was tucked securely against his ribs. Beneath his right sleeve, the twelve hardened steel needles rested in their forearm wrist guard, cold against his skin.
He turned into the narrow lane known as Apothecary Row.
Here, the stench of horse dung gave way to the sharp, layered scents of dried mountain herbs. The peppery tang of wild ginger, the earthy musk of angelica root, and the astringent bite of alum.
At the end of the lane stood the Vast Treasure Herb Pavilion.
Unlike the ramshackle stalls around it, the pavilion had a proper grey-tiled roof, heavy with heavy cedar pillars. A high threshold designed to keep street mud from washing into the shop floor. Above the top door beam hung a dark cedar signboard carved with four characters: Ten Thousand Herbs, One Scale.
Pei Jing stepped over the threshold.
Inside, the air was warm and dry, scented with aged sandalwood and drying cedar shavings. Behind a long counter crafted from heavy bitter pine-resin wood stood Su Mei’er.
She was twenty-four, with sharp, fox-like almond eyes, high cheekbones, and dark hair pinned back with a carved sandalwood chopstick. She wore a tailored plum-colored silk jacket with rolled linen cuffs, practical and clean. Suspended from a small brass gallows on the counter before her hung a pair of polished brass balance scales, their shallow pans polished until they gleamed like autumn coin.
She didn’t look up when the wooden door swung shut. Her slender fingers were deftly sorting dried roots into small paper pouches.
“Three liang of bitter sophora is forty-five coppers,” she said, her voice melodic and dry, like dry river pebbles rolling under clear water. “If you want mountain aconite, bring a yamen seal. I don’t sell poison to boys looking to settle gambling debts.”
“I’m not looking for aconite,” Pei Jing said, his voice flat and quiet.
Su Mei’er paused. Her gaze lifted from the scale pans, taking in Pei Jing’s dark shape.
Her eyes rested first on his stance—the grounded, low-center stance that displaced no weight onto his toes. Then her eyes flicked to his sleeves, lingering for a split second on the heavy bulge beneath his right forearm.
A thin, knowing smile touched the corner of her lips.
“Young Master Pei,” she murmured, setting down her ivory tweezers. “I heard the night watch outside the south wall was noisy last midnight. The dogs in West Lane barked until sunrise. People say the lime pits outside the gate smell unusually fresh this morning.”
“The rain washed the lime clean,” Pei Jing replied.
He walked to the counter, taking out a small pigskin pouch from his inner pocket. He placed four heavy silver metal bars on the bitter pine-resin wood with a solid, muted click. Each metal bar was stamped with the official royal seal of the Azure Province treasury.
“Four silver coins,” Su Mei’er noted, her eyebrows arching slightly. “The Second Branch must have had a profitable month at the charcoal pits. What does the young master need that costs four coins of country silver?”
“Cured mountain bear animal fat,” Pei Jing said. “From a mature black bear taken before winter hibernation, rendered with salt and preserved in sealed stone jars. Three jars, each containing two jin.”
Su Mei’er tilted her head, her brass scales swinging gently. “Bear animal fat is hard medicine. The mountain hunters from Mist Peak take three months to trap a bear. The winter grease is prized by bone-setters in the country capital. What else?”
“Two roots of wild mountain ginseng,” Pei Jing added. “Ten years of age or older. Not the cultivated garden roots grown in the southern valleys with river manure. I need wild roots dug from high limestone crevices. Firm skin, intact hair-roots, zero rot.”
Su Mei’er let out a soft, dry laugh. She leaned forward, resting both forearms on the bitter pine-resin counter.
“Ten-year wild ginseng and six jin of bear animal fat. That’s not medicine for a cough, Young Master Pei. That’s fuel for Tendon Stretching. And not ordinary tendon drills, either. That’s the diet of someone whose joint sockets are tearing themselves open to grow thicker.”
Pei Jing met her gaze without blinking. “Do you have the inventory?”
“I’m Su Mei’er,” she said simply. “If the hunters bring it down from the Mist Peak crags, it passes through this counter first.”
She turned toward the rear wall of the shop, where a hundred small drawers lined the cedar cabinets. She unlocked a heavy iron-banded chest beneath the third row. She pulled out three heavy, tube-shaped heavy clay jars sealed with red beeswax.
Beside them, she laid a long wooden presentation box lined with faded yellow silk. Inside rested two dried ginseng roots, each the length of an adult finger. Their skin crinkled and was pale ochre, their fine taproots spread like delicate embroidery.
Pei Jing didn’t touch the jars right away.
He pulled a small bronze measuring probe from his sleeve. He scraped a tiny fleck of the red wax from the first heavy clay jar. That brought it to his nose. The scent was dense, earthy, and clean—fatty rich fat with zero rancid acid drift.
Then he lifted the first ginseng root, holding it to the grey window light. He inspected the neck rings: thirteen distinct transverse wrinkles near the crown. It was an eleven-year wild root, harvested in late autumn after the seed had dropped. The rhizome was solid, with zero spongy fungal degradation.
“Good stock,” Pei Jing said.
“Naturally,” Su Mei’er said, tapping the brass pan of her scale. “The bear animal fat is two silver coins for the three jars. The ginseng is two silver coins per root. Total is six silver coins. You’re short two coins on the counter.”
Pei Jing didn’t reach for his purse. He stood motionless, his dark eyes fixed on her face.
“Two silver coins per root is the retail rate for Cangzhou City,” Pei Jing said calmly. “In Cangzhou, transport taxes add twenty percent. The country apothecary guild takes another ten percent for office registration. Here in Cloudford Town, at the foot of the mountain, your acquisition cost from hunter Wei San was no more than eight hundred copper coins per root.”
Su Mei’er’s smile hardened slightly.
“Also,” Pei Jing continued, “the second root has a hairline fracture across the lateral rootlet, which means it dried unevenly during smoke-curing. Moisture loss reduced its active healing resin by about eight percent.”
He reached into his robe, produced two more silver metal bars, and laid them beside the first four.
“Six silver coins in full,” Pei Jing said. “On one condition.”
Su Mei’er looked at the six heavy silver bars, then back at his face. “What condition?”
“Information on the river wharves,” Pei Jing said. “Careful accounting. Not town gossip.”
Su Mei’er picked up an iron scraper, drew the silver bars toward her side of the counter. Then she dropped them into an iron lockbox.
“You’re a strange boy, Pei Jing,” she murmured, closing the box. “Six months ago, you couldn’t lift a bag of grain without coughing blood. Now you stand here bargaining like a country tax clerk while carrying enough steel beneath your sleeve to drop three men.”
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried beyond the counter.
“Hu Biao is in an uproar,” she said. “The Black Tiger Gang lost eight men outside your warehouse. Four of them were core guards who handled the extortion collections on the western wharves. Hu Biao believes your father hired mercenary rangers from the northern border.”
“What’s his reaction?” Pei Jing asked.
“He doubled the river transit surcharge this morning,” Su Mei’er said. “Forty percent on all raw pig iron and smelted bars passing through the Cloudford docks. Any barge that refuses to pay has its mooring lines cut and its cargo dumped into the river.”
“And the Zhao Clan?”
“Patriarch Zhao Cangshan had tea with Judge Chen’s senior court guard two hours ago,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “The Zhao Clan is offering to ‘mediate’ the dispute. They proposed to buy all the Pei Clan’s South Hill pig iron at the warehouse gate. For thirty copper coins on the hundred. If your father agrees, Hu Biao lifts the blockade. If your father refuses, the Pei family’s iron will rust on the riverbanks until the winter freeze.”
Pei Jing nodded once. “A standard squeeze. Create the hazard with proxies, then offer forced payout as salvation.”
“It works,” Su Mei’er said softly. “It has worked in Azure Province for two hundred years. If your clan can’t ship iron downstream before the river freezes in forty days, you’ll have no cash to pay the royal hearth-tax. When the tax is unpaid, the yamen auctions your mining deeds to Zhao Cangshan.”
“The river won’t freeze before the account is settled,” Pei Jing said.
He gathered the three heavy clay jars of bear animal fat into his rucksack, carefully wrapped the wooden box containing the wild ginseng in dry linen. Then he swung the pack over his shoulder.
“Be careful walking past the fish wharves, young master,” Su Mei’er warned as he turned toward the door. “Hu Biao’s scouts are everywhere. They’re watching for anyone buying healing herbs.”
“Let them watch,” Pei Jing said.
He stepped out of the Vast Treasure Pavilion back into the cold rain.
Across the muddy street, twenty paces down an alleyway between a butcher’s stall and a dried fish warehouse, a man in a greased leather vest stood beneath the dripping roof edges of a shuttered noodle shop.
The man had grease-blackened hair, rotting teeth, and yellowed riverman eyes. In his right hand, half-hidden beneath his sleeve, he twirled a small carved bone whistle shaped like a carp skull.
The scout’s eyes were locked on Pei Jing’s rucksack.
Pei Jing didn’t quicken his pace. He didn’t look directly at the scout. His low-center, heel-to-toe gait remained steady, slicing cleanly through the mud. He turned north toward the Pei Clan compound.
Behind him, the scout slipped into the shadows of the alley, moving parallel through the back lanes.
Pei Jing walked through the side gate of the compound, entered the East Wing courtyard. Then he bolted the heavy cedar door behind him.
He carried the bear animal fat and ginseng into his room.
He pried open the seal of the first heavy clay jar. Inside lay dense, amber-white bear fat, smelling strongly of wild game and pine needles. He carved out two large scoops, melting them into a bowl of boiling well water alongside thin shavings from the crown of the eleven-year mountain ginseng.
He drank the broth down in three long swallows.
The scalding rich fat coated his throat, dropping into his stomach like a molten lead weight. Almost right away, a surge of deep, raw body-energy heat radiated through his belly. It traveled along the muscle-sheath sheaths toward his shoulders, hips, and knees.
Pei Jing walked to the center of the room.
He dropped his left foot backward, rotated his pelvis. Then he sank into the second day of the Python Tendon-Stretching Stance.
His spine twisted. His arms reached along the unnatural slanted plane.
The strain on his joint sockets was fierce. But this time, the dense bear animal fat provided immediate lubricating substrate to the rebuilding connective tissue. The dry friction of yesterday was replaced by a heavy, high-pressure tension.
Two hours passed in unbroken, focused agony.
As the second hour completed, his eye field flared with the chiseled stone-slate display:
Pei Jing exhaled a long breath, releasing the stance.
He walked to the window, peering through a small slit in the oiled paper lattice.
On the roof of the grain warehouse three hundred yards away, through the falling drizzle, a faint shadow moved across the wet tiles.
The scout had followed him home.
Pei Jing touched the steel needles on his forearm, his thumb skimming the Black Mountain Whetstone on the doorstep where its dark stone rested.
The balance sheet was pooling. Tomorrow, he would begin subtracting.