All through the next morning, Old Barnaby patrolled the yard with the torn romance page folded inside his apron pocket.
Every time Kaelen Vance turned a sheet of Book 3, the one-armed alchemist craned his neck from the path in silent torment.
Bound by his own sacred rule of quiet, Barnaby did not dare ask whether the princess had stabbed or kissed the bandit king.
Kaelen simply sipped his cooled tea beneath the eaves and let the peaceful hours drift past.
By the second afternoon, forty-two hours of unbroken indolence had accumulated on the Fallow Slate.
Five miles away, inside the fortified Ashford yamen, the atmosphere was far from tranquil.
Magistrate Vane-Locke slammed his palm onto the cedar desk as the scout report confirmed the fallout from Briggs’s death.
The ironwood seal cracked, splattering ink across the parchment.
“Wiped out?” Vane-Locke’s voice rattled the lanterns. “His entire quarry stronghold scattered overnight?”
He stood up, radiating the dense metallic pressure of an Iron Bone Early cultivator.
Across the room, Madam Evelyn Vance sat with her teacup trembling against the saucer, her lips pale ever since the tournament finals.
“We both watched the Third Son cave Briggs’s chest in with one blow,” Evelyn said tightly. “Once word reached the quarry, his bandits fled.”
Vane-Locke gripped the edges of the desk, his veins bulging across his temples.
Hound-Lord Briggs had been their private hammer for five years.
Whenever a merchant refused tribute, Briggs’s bandits ambushed their wagons on the northern road.
Whenever a minor clan objected to levies, Briggs burned their grain stores to dirt.
Half of the yamen’s illegal revenue flowed directly from the Iron-Hound Gang’s extortion racket.
Now Briggs was a pulverized corpse, his lieutenants had surrendered, and the entire northern mountain route was wide open.
Worse still, the silver-edged velvet ledger containing every bribe, poison order, and assassination contract was gone.
“The ledger was on Briggs’s body,” Vane-Locke hissed, his jaw clenched tight. “Where is it now?”
“In Kaelen’s pocket,” Evelyn replied, her nails digging into her silk sleeves. “The boy picked it off the sand before the stewards could reach the stage.”
Vane-Locke paced the stone floor, his heavy boots leaving faint scuffs on the cedar planks.
If that ledger reached the provincial imperial inspector, both of them would lose their heads before the winter solstice.
“The boy cannot deliver that ledger to a provincial censor while my yamen patrols block the county roads,” Vane-Locke growled. “We still have time to squeeze him.”
“How?” Evelyn asked sharply. “Derrick is terrified of the boy. Cassian is bedridden with three cracked ribs. The clan council will not move against him after he killed a Rank 9 bandit in broad daylight.”
A cold, venomous sneer spread across Vane-Locke’s face.
“Then we strike where the Vance House cannot defend itself,” Vane-Locke said. “We use the law.”
The magistrate pulled a fresh sheet of official vellum from the drawer and dipped his horsehair brush in vermilion ink.
“As Magistrate of Ashford, I am declaring an emergency Bandit Suppression Pill Tax,” Vane-Locke said, writing with swift strokes. “A thirty percent levy on every apothecary, medicine stall, and private alchemist operating within twenty miles of the town walls.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. “That will crush the local apothecaries.”
“Exactly,” Vane-Locke said coldly. “To ‘stabilize’ the market, my personal yamen refining chambers will dump five hundred jars of Standard-Grade Blood-Staunching Pills and Vitality Pills onto the streets at half price.”
The magistrate’s pills were cheap, containing only sixty percent medicinal purity and twenty-five percent Pill-Poison.
Under normal circumstances, experienced cultivators avoided them like sour wine.
With a thirty percent tax choking every competitor, however, desperate buyers would have no choice.
“What of the Third Herb Shed?” Evelyn asked, leaning forward. “That shed supplies the Ghost Market broker. The mysterious Master Ash is almost certainly operating from their drying rooms.”
“That is your task, Madam,” Vane-Locke replied, stamping the vellum with his official magistrate seal. “Use your authority over the Vance clan treasury. Freeze every copper of the Herb Shed’s allowance. Issue a clan decree forbidding independent merchants from selling raw herbs to Old Barnaby.”
Evelyn smiled for the first time that day, a thin, cruel expression.
“Cut off their dried roots, freeze their silver, and flood the market with our own medicine,” Evelyn murmured. “Without spirit herbs, even a grandmaster cannot refine a single bead.”
“Within three days, their furnaces will go cold,” Vane-Locke said. “And when the Third Son runs out of food and coal, he will come crawling to the yamen to negotiate.”
By the following morning, the magistrate’s decree had been nailed to every gate in Ashford.
Town criers banged bronze gongs through the central market, announcing the emergency pill tax.
Simultaneously, Madam Evelyn’s household stewards visited every herbalist in the western quarter, threatening to burn their shop licenses if they sold so much as a sprig of dried mint to the Third Herb Shed.
At the Third Herb Shed, fifty hours of undisturbed rest had stacked upon the slate.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 50h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 51x]
Kaelen lay peacefully in the hemp hammock, his straw hat resting across his forehead.
A gentle mountain breeze stirred the pine needles overhead, carrying the faint warmth of midday.
Fifty-one times baseline rate, Kaelen thought, feeling the clean, effortless hum of his dantian. If I lie here until next week, the accumulated hours will let me push straight through the late stages of Mortal Pulse without sweating a single drop.
The heavy front gate swung open with a frantic bang.
Deacon Vane came rushing down the gravel path, his black silk robes flapping around his ankles like crow wings.
The appraiser’s forehead was dripping with sweat, his ivory fan fluttering in a frantic blur.
“Young Master!” Deacon Vane gasped, wheezing as he ran. “Disaster! Absolute economic ruin!”
Before the broker could take three steps onto the porch, a blur of rusty iron swept through the air.
Old Barnaby dropped from the drying racks, planting the flat blade of his garden shovel directly against Deacon Vane’s chest.
“Halt, you shrieking rodent!” Barnaby hissed in a furious stage-whisper. “Do you dare bring noise into the sacred comprehension circle?”
Deacon Vane stumbled backward, waving his ivory fan in panic.
“Elder Barnaby, put down the manure shovel!” Deacon Vane whispered back desperately. “This is not about noise! The yamen has declared war on the entire medicine trade!”
Kaelen pushed his straw hat up with one finger.
“Lower the shovel, Old Barnaby,” Kaelen said mildly. “Let the weasel speak.”
Barnaby reluctantly rested the shovel against his knee, glaring at the broker like a guard dog protecting a sleeping pup.
Deacon Vane scurried onto the porch, dropping to his knees beside the hammock.
“Young Master, Magistrate Vane-Locke has joined hands with First Madam,” Deacon Vane reported, his voice trembling with outrage. “They posted an emergency Bandit Suppression Pill Tax at sunrise. A thirty percent surcharge on all medicinal trade!”
“And?” Kaelen asked, not moving an inch.
“And Vane-Locke’s personal refining house just flooded the eastern market with five hundred jars of Standard-Grade pills!” Deacon Vane cried out softly. “Cheap, dirty stock with twenty-five percent Pill-Poison! He is undercutting every honest apothecary in town!”
“A classic monopoly squeeze,” Kaelen said, taking a sip of lukewarm tea. “Predictable and unoriginal.”
“That is not the worst part!” Deacon Vane pressed, wringing his hands. “Madam Evelyn used the Vance seal to freeze the Herb Shed’s quarterly budget! She threatened every herb merchant in the western district with clan retaliation if they deliver raw ingredients to our door! Our supply line is dead!”
Barnaby gasped, his single hand flying to his throat.
“No silver?” Barnaby sputtered, his face turning gray. “No angelica root? No frost-grass? How will we fire the cauldrons? Boy, we are ruined! Master Ash cannot refine without herbs!”
Sera Thorne stepped out of the cellar doorway, wiping a clean cloth along her polished spear shaft.
“We still have one hundred and fifty Low-Grade Spirit Stones and twenty-seven Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills in the personal vault,” Sera said calmly. “We aren’t starving.”
“Spirit stones cannot buy herbs if the merchants are too terrified to sell!” Barnaby wailed in a muted hiss. “Evelyn has Ashford by the throat!”
Kaelen adjusted his pillow, settling deeper into the hammock mesh.
They think an economic embargo will force me out of bed, Kaelen reflected pleasantly. Squeezing the town’s market with poisoned pills just gives me an excuse to sleep another fifty hours.
He turned his head toward Deacon Vane.
“Deacon,” Kaelen said smoothly.
“Yes, Young Master?” the appraiser leaned in eagerly.
“How many cultivators in Ashford are currently suffering from meridian rot due to cheap pills?”
Deacon Vane blinked. “At least four hundred. Every rogue cultivator and clan elder who has practiced for years has blackened veins from standard Pill-Poison.”
“And what did they say when Master Ash’s first batch of Cloud-Veined Supreme Marrow-Warming Pills hit the Ghost Market?”
“They nearly tore down my auction pavilion,” Deacon Vane admitted, his eyes widening. “Bidding went to forty spirit stones a bottle. Men were offering clan deeds just to sniff the vapor.”
Kaelen smiled beneath the brim of his straw hat.
“Then the solution is very simple,” Kaelen said. “Go back to the Ghost Market. Visit your three most gossipy tea-houses.”
“And say what, Young Master?”
“Leak a rumor,” Kaelen said softly. “Tell them Master Ash was deeply offended by the Magistrate’s emergency tax. Announce that Master Ash is currently preparing a massive, thirty-pill batch of zero-poison Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills.”
Barnaby’s mouth fell open. “Thirty supreme pills? That would take an imperial alchemist three months!”
“Let them believe it,” Kaelen said. “And tell them Master Ash has set a single condition for buyers.”
Deacon Vane leaned closer, holding his breath. “What condition?”
“Master Ash will only accept bids from cultivators who can prove they did not buy a single pill from Magistrate Vane-Locke’s emergency stock,” Kaelen said. “Anyone caught carrying the Magistrate’s twenty-five percent poison pills will be permanently banned from Master Ash’s auctions.”
Deacon Vane stood frozen on the porch for two full seconds.
Then a slow, brilliant grin spread across the appraiser’s narrow face.
“Brilliant,” Deacon Vane whispered, smacking his ivory fan against his palm. “Ruthless, elegant, and devastating!”
“Will it work?” Barnaby asked, looking bewildered.
“Will it work?” Deacon Vane chuckled darkly. “Elder Barnaby, a cultivator would rather drink ditch water for three days than poison his own meridians if he knows pure medicine is coming! Nobody with twenty spirit stones to their name will touch Vane-Locke’s cheap garbage!”
“Go spread the word,” Kaelen said, closing his eyes. “And Deacon.”
“Yes, Young Master?”
“Close the gate behind you quietly. Old Barnaby’s shovel is getting restless.”
Deacon Vane bowed deeply, his anxiety completely replaced by commercial glee.
“Right away, Young Master! By sunset, the Magistrate will not sell a single bean!”
The broker sprinted down the gravel path, clicking his fan with triumphant rhythm.
By late afternoon, the rumor had swept through Ashford’s market like a mountain fire.
In every tea-house, tavern, and clan compound, cultivators gathered in hushed circles.
“Did you hear? Master Ash is releasing thirty Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills next week!”
“Thirty? Zero Pill-Poison?”
“Every bottle guaranteed pure! But the master refuses to deal with anyone who supports Vane-Locke’s new tax!”
“Put that yamen pill away! Throw it in the gutter! If Deacon Vane catches you with that poisoned chalk, you will never bid on supreme medicine!”
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
At the yamen’s newly erected medicine stalls in the central square, stacks of wooden pill boxes sat untouched beneath the autumn sun.
The clerks yelled until their throats were hoarse, offering discounts and free samples.
Not a single cultivator approached the counter.
Clan guards and wandering mercenaries walked straight past, keeping their hands firmly clamped over their coin pouches.
By the fourth hour after noon, the yamen stalls had sold exactly three bottles of cheap medicine to confused peasant farmers.
The emergency tax revenue had dried up before the ink on the magistrate’s proclamation was fully dry.
Meanwhile, wealthy merchants and clan elders rushed to the Black-Crow Ghost Market, converting silver taels into Low-Grade Spirit Stones and hoarding their wealth in anticipation of Master Ash’s grand auction.
Inside the Ashford yamen, the atmosphere turned murderous.
Magistrate Vane-Locke stood before the window of his private study, listening to the dismal reports from his tax collectors.
“Zero?” Vane-Locke roared, his Iron Bone Early aura flaring outward.
The sheer spiritual pressure shattered the porcelain vase on the side table into a dozen jagged shards.
The kneeling tax collector trembled violently against the floorboards.
“N-no one is buying, Magistrate!” the collector stammered. “The entire town is whispering that Master Ash will boycott anyone who touches our stock! The merchants are hoarding every spirit stone they own!”
Vane-Locke’s fists clenched so hard that his knuckle bones creaked like bending iron.
He had invested eight hundred silver taels and dozens of clan herbs into producing those five hundred jars of medicine.
If they sat rotting on the shelves, his personal treasury would be crippled before the month was out.
“Master Ash...” Vane-Locke snarled, his teeth grinding together. “A faceless rat hiding behind an errand boy’s shed.”
He turned toward the shadow near the doorway.
Two men stepped forward into the lantern light.
Both wore dark gray magistrate enforcer coats with bronze tiger plates pinned to their collars.
Each carried a heavy iron-banded cudgel across his back.
Their bodies radiated the cold, dense energy of Mortal Pulse Rank 8 cultivators.
They were the yamen’s two chief tax inspectors, Inspector Fang and Inspector Zhao.
“Magistrate,” Inspector Fang said, his voice flat and cruel.
“Have the clerk hall stamp confiscation warrants tonight,” Vane-Locke commanded, his eyes glowing with dark malice. “Tomorrow, take four bailiffs and march up the mountain path to the Third Herb Shed.”
“Under what charge, sir?”
“An unlicensed alchemy audit,” Vane-Locke said, a cold sneer twisting his mouth. “The Third Herb Shed operates on clan land without a municipal refining permit. Confiscate their tournament prize and spirit stones, and if the third son resists, break his knees and drag him to the yamen dungeon.”
The two inspectors bowed in unison, their iron cudgels clinking against their armor.
“It will be done, Magistrate.”
They turned and strode toward the clerk hall through the gathering dusk.
Up on the eastern hillside, twilight shadows stretched across the quiet roof of the Third Herb Shed.
Deep within Kaelen’s mind, the crystal slate chimed softly as another milestone was reached.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 54h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 55x]
Fifty-four hours accumulated.
Fifty-five times baseline power waited in silent readiness.
Kaelen lay motionless in his hammock with his straw hat covering his face, completely unbothered as the evening wind sighed through the mountain pines.