Kaelen eased Sera onto the low wicker cot in the back room while Mina hastened to close the shutters against the evening draft.
The bitter scent of dried camphor and crushed angelica hung thick in the cramped infirmary.
Old Barnaby dropped an armful of willow splints and cloth bandages onto the wooden table, his face pale with panic.
“Her collarbone is cracked, and the shoulder socket is wrenched sideways!” Barnaby stammered, his single hand trembling as he reached for a jar of numbing paste. “That vicious madman drove frenzied Qi straight into the joint! It’ll take three months of bone-setting broth to clear the damage!”
“Move aside, Old Barnaby,” Kaelen said mildly.
He reached into his inner pocket and produced two small jade bottles.
He unstoppered both, tapping two pale, ivory-colored pills into his palm.
Fine spirals of white mist drifted from their surfaces, smelling faintly of mountain pine and morning frost.
Each pill had three faint cloud veins swirling across its surface.
Cloud-Veined Supreme Marrow-Warming Pills.
Zero Pill-Poison.
“Swallow these,” Kaelen said, pressing the two pills between Sera’s pale lips.
Sera did not hesitate.
She swallowed them dry, her throat bobbing.
Within two breaths, a soft white radiance bloomed under her skin.
The dark, corrupted purple bruising across her shoulder dissolved like soot under hot spring water.
Crack.
The sound of snapping bone echoed in the quiet room as the dislocated joint pulled itself smoothly back into its socket.
The hairline fracture across her collarbone sealed shut in five heartbeats.
Sera sucked in a sharp, startled breath, her eyes widening as she rotated her left arm in a clean, effortless circle.
The pain was completely gone.
Her meridians felt clearer and warmer than they had in three years.
“My shoulder...” Sera murmured, staring at her unblemished skin in disbelief. “It healed instantly. Those were Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills.”
“Twenty Low-Grade Spirit Stones each on the open market,” Kaelen said, adjusting his collar. “Consider it an advance on your bodyguard duties. I still have twenty-nine Supreme Pills in my personal reserve: thirteen Pulse-Opening, eight Marrow-Warming, and eight Frost-Cleaving. Mina’s two emergency pills are separate.”
“Twenty?” Barnaby choked, clutching his heart with his single hand. “You gave away forty stones of supreme medicine just like that? Do you know what the clan elders would pay for a single pill?”
“I know they’d lecture me for three hours before paying a copper bit,” Kaelen said. “My ears are worth far more than forty stones.”
Kaelen turned toward his wooden bed-cot in the corner, kicked off his cloth shoes, and lay back on the mattress.
He pulled a thick linen quilt up to his chin and shut his eyes for the seventh day’s rest.
“What’re you doing?” Barnaby cried out, waving his oak ladle. “After the seventh-day rest, the tournament finals open! Your brother Cassian is out in the manor courtyard right now, swinging his broadsword and boasting he’ll cripple you in the final!”
“Let him swing,” Kaelen murmured, his voice muffled by the quilt. “Swinging is exhausting.”
Besides, my slate has twenty-four hours left before it hits a hundred and eighty hours, Kaelen thought.
He peered into his sea of consciousness, watching the white slate pulse with rhythmic light.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 156h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 157x READY!] [Stage 1 Vessel Cap: 240h 00m]
One hundred and fifty-six hours.
By tomorrow morning, seven and a half days of absolute stillness would complete.
Cassian spent eighteen hours a day practicing the same broadsword chop until his elbows creaked like rusty hinges, Kaelen thought with dry amusement. If hard work alone made an immortal, every water ox in the southern rice paddies would have ascended to the upper realms.
Word of Cassian’s frenzy spread through Ashford by midday.
From the manor courtyard, the sound of splintering wooden dummies echoed across the valley.
Cassian had gathered fifty inner disciples, boasting loudly over jars of spiced wine that he would snap Kaelen’s limbs one by one before Derrick Vance’s eyes.
Inside the Third Herb Shed, panic reached a boiling point.
All through the seventh day, Old Barnaby paced a tight circle around Kaelen’s bed-cot, his leather soles scuffing the floorboards.
“Get up, boy!” Barnaby pleaded, leaning over the quilt. “Tomorrow’s the final! Just run through the basic stances of the Vance Clan Fist Art once! Ten minutes! If you practice ten minutes, your muscle memory will awaken!”
“No,” Kaelen muttered, pulling the blanket over his nose.
“Why not?” Barnaby yelled.
“Pre-duel practice depletes lucky yang-qi,” Kaelen said. “It disturbs my liver meridians and upsets my digestion. If my spleen gets agitated, my focus wanders. It’s basic medical science, Old Barnaby.”
“That is complete horse manure and you know it!” Barnaby roared, his face turning purple.
Mina stepped into the room carrying a bowl of hot lotus tea.
Her small face was furrowed with worry as she set the bowl on the nightstand.
“Brother,” Mina whispered softly, tugging at the edge of the blanket. “First Brother took a forbidden elixir. Uncle Barnaby says Cassian’s strike force is nearly at Mortal Pulse Rank 9. If you do not circulate your Qi, how will you defend yourself?”
“By letting him miss, Mina,” Kaelen replied smoothly. “Missing requires zero strike force. Go have some dried plums.”
Before Mina could answer, the wooden screen door slid open with a soft clatter.
Deacon Vane stepped inside, his plum-colored silk robes rustling against the doorframe.
The Ghost Market appraiser looked distinctly unkempt.
His hair was windblown, and sweat dampened his silk collar.
“Young Master Kaelen!” Deacon Vane gasped, dropping all his usual theatrical poise. “The betting parlors in the central plaza have gone completely mad! Odds against you are eighty to one! Even the Timber Guild took bets that you will not survive the first ten breaths!”
“Did you place a bet?” Kaelen asked without opening his eyes.
“Of course I placed a bet!” Deacon Vane snapped. “I put twenty Low-Grade Spirit Stones on your head at eighty to one! If you die, I lose half my seasonal earnings! Please, Young Master, stand up and punch the air just once! Give me some peace of mind!”
Old Barnaby and Deacon Vane have been pacing around this bed so many times they have worn a circular groove into the pine planks, Kaelen thought. If I step out from under this quilt now, I lose twenty-four hours of multiplier just to humor their blood pressure.
“Deacon Vane,” Kaelen said in a slow drawl. “Did you deliver the two consignment pills to Guild Master Vond?”
“Yes, yes, from the Ghost Market reserve jar, logged to the house account!” Vane stammered. “But that doesn’t matter right now! Cassian is a walking corpse filled with beast poison! He won’t accept a bribe!”
“Then he’ll receive a fist,” Kaelen said. “Tomorrow. At the proper hour.”
Across the room, Sera sat at the low cedar table, her Overtime Grudge Ledger resting before her.
She dipped a horsehair brush into black ink and turned to a fresh parchment page titled Cassian Vance.
“Broken ash-wood spear,” Sera murmured as she wrote, her brush strokes sharp and decisive. “Ten silver pieces. One torn silk tunic, five silver pieces. Wrenched and bruised shoulder, twenty silver pieces.”
She paused, looking toward the bed-cot.
“Young Master,” Sera called out. “How much should I charge him for the mental anguish of listening to Old Barnaby shout all afternoon?”
Kaelen poked his nose out from the quilt.
“Add a thirty Low-Grade Spirit Stone medical surcharge,” Kaelen said. “And charge him five copper bits for wasting our firewood.”
Sera nodded grimly, her brush scratching across the paper.
“Thirty stones and five copper bits added to the Grudge Ledger,” Sera said. “I will collect it from his corpse tomorrow.”
Barnaby stared at them both, his eyes bulging in utter disbelief.
“You two are out of your minds!” Barnaby shouted, clutching his ladle against his chest. “One is sleeping until noon, and the other is writing bills for a ghost! We are all going to end up buried behind the pig pens!”
Kaelen ignored the shouting, rolling onto his side.
Outside the shed, the autumn sun sank below the western ridges, casting long, purple shadows across the valley.
The seventh day passed in absolute peace.
Hour after hour, the silent tally inside Kaelen’s dantian climbed steadily upward.
One hundred and sixty hours.
One hundred and seventy-nine hours.
With every passing minute, the condensed Qi within his dantian grew heavier, richer, and more obedient, waiting for the dam to break.
Dawn of the eighth day arrived with a blast of chilly autumn mist.
The heavy bronze bells of the Ashford Watchtower tolled three times, echoing through the mountain pass.
It was the morning of the Barony Tournament Finals.
Inside the arena, thousands of spectators filled the stone amphitheater, their voices merging into an overwhelming hum that rattled the valley.
In the Third Herb Shed, the sun crept across the cedar floor.
Kaelen had not moved an inch.
Barnaby paced near the door, his teeth chattering with raw anxiety.
“The morning gong just finished!” Barnaby yelled, practically pulling out his grey beard. “The referee will call the final match in fifteen minutes! Boy, if you do not wake up, you will be disqualified for cowardice!”
Kaelen pulled the pillow over his head.
“Five minutes,” Kaelen mumbled. “The morning air is damp. Damp air ruins the joints.”
Sera looked at Barnaby, then looked at the wooden cot where Kaelen lay bundled like a cocoon.
“We are not letting him forfeit,” Sera said firmly.
She walked over to the front posts of the cot and gripped the heavy oak timber with both hands.
Barnaby blinked. “What are you doing?”
“Grab the rear posts,” Sera commanded, her dark eyes flashing. “He wants to sleep? Fine. We carry the bed.”
Barnaby gasped, then let out a desperate, wheezing laugh.
“Heaven forgive me,” the old alchemist muttered, tucking his ladle into his belt and grabbing the rear legs of the cot.
With a joint heave, Sera and Barnaby hoisted the cot off the floorboards.
Mina hurried ahead, throwing open the wooden double doors and carrying Kaelen’s spare cloth slippers in her arms.
Down the stone streets of Ashford, townspeople stopped in their tracks, staring in utter shock.
A one-armed old alchemist and a tall spearwoman walked down the main avenue at a brisk trot, carrying a wooden cot with a sleeping young man wrapped in a blue quilt.
Carrying a sleeping cot through the streets is not the most dignified way to enter a tournament final, Kaelen thought, feeling the rhythmic sway of the timbers beneath him. On the other hand, it saves twelve hundred steps of walking. That is at least twenty calories saved.
They carried him straight through the arena gates, slipping past the bewildered guards and into the private preparation tent behind the central ring.
Outside the heavy canvas flap, the roar of the arena was deafening.
Dozens of noble dignitaries sat in the high boxes.
Magistrate Vane-Locke leaned forward in his velvet seat, his narrow eyes fixed on the empty stage.
Beside him, Baron Derrick Vance tapped his fingers nervously against his iron broadsword, his expression grim.
Inside the waiting tent, Sera and Barnaby set the cot down on the sawdust floor with a thud.
Barnaby collapsed onto a wooden stool, panting for breath.
“There!” Barnaby wheezed, pointing a trembling finger at the canvas flap. “You are in the tent! Cassian is already climbing the stage! Your five minutes of beauty sleep are up, you cursed boy!”
Kaelen did not open his eyes.
Behind his closed lids, the glowing tally marked the final stretch before his milestone.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 179h 55m] [Active Multiplier: 180x] [Five Minutes Remaining to Golden Threshold...]
Five minutes, Kaelen thought calmly. Thank the ancestors for long-winded arena heralds.
Outside in the sunlight, the tournament herald spent five full minutes reading the ancestral roll of the barony before the referee finally raised his iron hammer and struck the great bronze gong.
BONG.
The resonant blast shook the canvas walls, cutting through the roaring crowd.
“Final championship match of the Barony Tournament!” the referee’s voice echoed through the amphitheater like thunder. “First Brother Cassian Vance versus Third Brother Kaelen Vance! Contestants, take the ring!”
At that exact heartbeat, a clear chime echoed through every meridian in Kaelen’s body.
[The Fallow Slate] [180 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 181x READY!]