The open iron-banded chest sat upon the flagstones, its rows of spirit stones glowing faintly in the autumn dark.
Stepping out from the shed doorway, Barnaby Holt knelt on the damp stones, touched the gleaming crystals, and snapped the three brass locks shut.
“Real stones,” Barnaby whispered, his single hand trembling. “Three hundred of them, not forged promissory slips from Garrick’s desk.”
“Carry it inside,” Kaelen said from his hammock. “Do not leave it where the night draft can chill the stones.”
Sera stepped forward, hooked her calloused fingers under the iron handles, and hoisted the chest with one arm.
Her newly tempered Rank 8 Qi made the three-hundred-stone weight feel like a basket of turnips.
She carried the chest into the back room and lowered it beside the existing store beneath the hearthstones.
Four hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones now sat secured in the deep cellar pit.
Having already pocketed his thirty-stone broker fee from the buyers, Deacon Vane bowed repeatedly toward the hammock and vanished into the shadows of the alley.
Kaelen pulled his rough wool blanket up to his chin.
He closed his eyes and sank into peaceful, dreamless sleep.
The night stars wheeled overhead until the morning sun rose and crested the eastern ridge.
Through the crisp morning and into the early afternoon, Kaelen did not leave his hemp webbing.
He drank cold chrysanthemum tea from a chipped earthenware cup.
He listened to the rhythmic scrape of Barnaby’s broom sweeping dried herb stems in the front room.
Inside his dantian, the Fallow Slate tallied every passing breath with silent precision.
Twenty hours.
Twenty-eight hours.
Thirty-six hours.
[The Fallow Slate]
[36 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 37x READY]
Kaelen took a slow, leisurely sip of tea.
The best part of passive cultivation is that you do not even need to put on boots.
Let the fools climb icy cliffs in search of spirit caves.
I have my pillow, a jug of cold tea, and a thirty-seven-fold rate.
The peace shattered when the alley door rattled with frantic urgency.
Sera moved like a ghost, her iron spear dropping into guard position before the wood could finish shaking.
She drew the iron bolt.
Deacon Vane squeezed through the gap, his eyes wild with terror.
His floppy hat was missing, and his hemp tunic was torn along the sleeve.
“Master Ash!” Vane wheezed, falling to his knees on the porch steps. “Disaster has ridden through the south gate!”
“If it is more bailiffs, tell Mina to freeze their noses,” Kaelen murmured without opening his eyes.
“Not bailiffs,” Vane gasped, clutching his chest. “A high-ranking deacon from the Red-River Nine-Cauldron Guild arrived an hour ago. Deacon Mercer himself.”
Barnaby dropped his straw broom with a sharp clatter.
The old man stumbled onto the porch, his face turning the color of dried tallow.
“Mercer?” Barnaby croaked. “The Chief Inspector of the Red-River branch? What is he doing in Ashford?”
“The black market,” Vane whispered, his voice shaking. “Our eighteen Supreme Pills caused a riot among the merchant elders yesterday. Word reached the provincial highway before midnight. Mercer rode two spirit-steeds to death to get here.”
“A Guild inspector carries authority from Nascent Soul elders,” Barnaby said, clutching his forehead. “If they find unregistered pill refinement, they burn the cauldrons and execute the alchemist. We are ruined.”
“Worse,” Vane added, wiping sweat from his eyebrows. “Magistrate Vane-Locke intercepted Mercer right at the town gate. The magistrate is escorting him to the Red-Horse Tavern right now.”
“What did Vane-Locke tell him?” Sera asked, her knuckles tightening around her spear.
“Vane-Locke claimed the Third Herb Shed is running an illegal counterfeit ring,” Vane said bitterly. “He told Mercer that a rogue apprentice is using forged Nine-Cauldron seals to peddle toxic poison-bombs under the name Master Ash.”
Barnaby let out a hollow groan.
“Vane-Locke is using the Guild as his executioner,” Barnaby muttered. “He could not take Mina through quarantine law, so he is using counterfeit charges.”
Sera set her jaw, her Rank 8 aura flaring with cold edge.
“I can kill Mercer before he leaves the tavern,” she said quietly. “A spear through the throat from the roof tiles.”
“You will not spear an inspector,” Kaelen said, shifting slightly in his hammock. “Killing a Guild deacon brings three enforcement elders on flying swords. That would make a dreadful amount of noise.”
“Then what do we do?” Barnaby pleaded, waving his wooden ladle. “We have twenty Supreme Pills sitting in the lockbox! If Mercer searches this place, he will confiscate everything and hang us from the south gate!”
Get out of my hammock to argue with an alchemist bureaucrat?
I would rather drink muddy pond water.
Bureaucrats do not care about justice. They care about face, personal profit, and an excuse to leave early.
Kaelen reached into his inner sleeve and drew out a small wooden box.
He opened the lid.
Twenty Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills rested on the silk lining, each gleaming with three silver frost rings.
With two fingers, Kaelen lifted two of the pills, leaving eighteen inside the box.
He placed them into an empty white porcelain vial and plugged the cork.
Next, he picked up a scrap of coarse brown wrapping paper from the tea tray.
He dipped a splinter of dry reed into black ink and scribbled five words in careless, crooked strokes:
Master Ash. Keep the change.
He rolled the paper around the vial and tied it with hemp string.
He tossed the bundle toward Barnaby.
Barnaby caught it against his chest with his single hand, fumbling clumsily.
“What is this?” the old man stammered.
“Your mission,” Kaelen said. “Take off that filthy apron. Put on a brown wool cloak. Go to the Red-Horse Tavern.”
“To the tavern?” Barnaby squeaked. “Mercer is inside having lunch with the magistrate!”
“Mercer’s spirit-steed is tied in the back alley behind the kitchen,” Kaelen said, resting his head back against the pillow. “The beast is a spotted Red-River stallion. It has two leather saddlebags with silver clasps. Drop that bundle into the left bag.”
Barnaby stared at the package in his palm.
“Bribe a Nine-Cauldron deacon with two pills?” Barnaby said, his voice trembling. “Boy, Mercer is a Ninth Pulse expert! If he catches me near his horse, he will split my skull!”
“He will not catch you because you will drop it and walk away like a peasant fetching ale,” Kaelen said. “Mercer has been trapped at Mortal Pulse Rank 9 for thirty years. His liver meridian is black with Pill-Poison from testing low-grade Guild trash. Once he smells those two pills, he will guard them with his life.”
Barnaby swallowed hard.
He looked at Sera, then at Mina, and finally down at the small bundle.
“If I hang,” Barnaby grumbled, “I will haunt this hammock until your tea turns sour.”
The old man stripped off his herb-stained apron, threw a faded wool traveling cloak over his shoulders, and hurried out the side gate.
Deacon Vane followed closely behind to act as a lookout in the street.
The courtyard fell quiet once more.
Mina walked over to the hammock, holding a wooden bowl filled with roasted pumpkin seeds.
She climbed onto the wooden crate beside Kaelen and offered him a handful.
“Will Uncle Barnaby be all right?” she asked softly.
“Barnaby survived forty years of clan politics with one arm,” Kaelen said, cracking a seed with his teeth. “He knows how to dodge an old horse.”
Thirty minutes later, the tavern alley was damp with falling mist.
Inside the private upper room of the Red-Horse Tavern, Magistrate Vane-Locke sat across from a broad-shouldered man in purple velvet robes.
Deacon Mercer wore a heavy bronze cauldron medallion over his chest.
His face was lined with bitter wrinkles, and his graying hair was pulled into a severe topknot.
“I assure you, Deacon Mercer,” Vane-Locke said smoothly, pouring fragrant rice wine into a celadon cup. “The rogue in the Third Herb Shed has no lineage. He is a disgraced third son who uses crushed lead and pig fat to simulate high pill sheen. It is a direct insult to the Nine-Cauldron Guild’s monopoly.”
Mercer picked up his wine cup, his brow furrowed.
“Eighteen pills sold on the Ghost Market yesterday,” Mercer muttered, his voice raspy with years of toxic furnace smoke. “The merchants claimed they healed thirty-year meridian blockages without a speck of backlash. If this is a counterfeit scam, why did the buyers experience genuine breakthroughs?”
“A temporary stimulation trick,” Vane-Locke insisted, leaning forward. “The medicine will cause meridian collapse within a month! Come with my bailiffs right now. We will seize their cauldrons, execute the boy, and secure the girl’s Yin-Marrow for official inspection.”
Mercer set his cup down.
He felt a deep, chronic ache in his right ribs—the agonizing legacy of thirty years of consuming Standard-Grade pills to force breakthroughs.
“Very well,” Mercer said coldly. “We will inspect this shed. If they forged our seal, nobody leaves alive.”
Mercer stood, adjusted his purple robes, and walked down the back stairs toward the tavern stable to fetch his mount.
Vane-Locke followed three paces behind, smiling with venomous triumph.
They reached the alley behind the kitchen.
Mercer’s spotted stallion stood tied to an iron hitching post, blowing mist into the cold air.
Mercer reached for the saddlebag to retrieve his official guild seal.
His fingers brushed against a rough parchment cylinder tucked beneath the leather flap.
“What is this?” Mercer muttered, pulling the bundle free.
Vane-Locke stepped closer. “A note from an informant, perhaps?”
Mercer untied the hemp string and unrolled the scrap of coarse paper.
He read the five crooked words:
Master Ash. Keep the change.
Mercer’s eyes narrowed.
He pulled the cork from the small white porcelain vial.
The moment the seal broke, a thread of pure, ethereal frost mist drifted into the alley air.
It carried the crisp fragrance of wild snow and sweet medicinal nectar.
Mercer’s entire body went rigid.
The chronic, gnawing burn beneath his right ribs suddenly eased just from inhaling the ambient vapor.
His heart gave a violent leap.
He tipped the vial into his palm.
Two flawless pills rolled onto his weathered skin.
They were milky white, enveloped in three shimmering, silver-blue frost rings that pulsed with cool spiritual light.
There was not a single speck of gray ash, black soot, or metallic sheen.
Mercer pulled a silver testing needle from his lapel with trembling fingers.
He touched the tip of the needle to the surface of the pill.
The silver remained blindingly bright, without the slightest discoloration.
Zero percent Pill-Poison.
One hundred percent Cloud-Veined Supreme.
“Great Dao above,” Mercer choked out, his knees almost giving way. Swallowing just one of these Supreme Pills would purge his calcified liver meridian and shatter his own thirty-year bottleneck, leaving the second pill as a priceless tribute for Vice-President Linnea’s family.
Vane-Locke reached toward the pill with a smug sneer. “See? A blatant fake! Let me confiscate this toxic—”
Smack.
Mercer swung his heavy arm back, slapping Vane-Locke across the cheek with the back of his bronze cauldron medallion.
The magistrate flew backward, crashing into a stack of empty wine barrels with a loud splintering roar.
Vane-Locke clutched his bleeding jaw, spitting out a tooth. “Deacon Mercer! Why did you strike me?”
“You blind, insolent toad!” Mercer roared, his face purple with fury.
He tucked the porcelain vial deep into his inner robes, pressing his hand over his chest to guard it.
“You dare call this counterfeit?” Mercer snarled, his voice echoing down the alley. “This is Cloud-Veined Supreme grade! Not even the Chief Elders of our provincial branch can produce three frost rings on a pulse-tempering pill!”
“B-but... the boy is a mortal waste,” Vane-Locke stammered from the mud.
“The boy is backed by a hidden Grandmaster!” Mercer spat, stepping toward the trembling magistrate. “You attempted to use the Nine-Cauldron Guild as your personal executioner to settle a petty clan grudge! You wasted my time and insulted a supreme pill master!”
Mercer unhitched his stallion and swung into the saddle with fluid grace.
He drew an official purple magistrate token from his belt and flung it into Vane-Locke’s chest.
“A fine of fifty Low-Grade Spirit Stones for filing fraudulent Guild reports,” Mercer snapped. “If I hear one more word about counterfeit medicine from your yamen, I will have the provincial governor strip your robes.”
With a sharp pull of the reins, Mercer spurred his spirit-steed forward.
The stallion bounded down the north highway, kicking up plumes of mud as Mercer rode toward the provincial capital to report the discovery to Vice-President Linnea’s family.
Vane-Locke sat in the alley mud, clutching his bloody jaw and the fifty-stone penalty token.
His eyes burned with humiliated hatred.
An hour later, Barnaby strolled back into the Third Herb Shed, whistling a cheerful frontier drinking tune.
He tossed his wool cloak onto the chopping block and poured himself a cup of hot tea.
“He slapped him,” Barnaby said, grinning so hard his missing teeth showed. “Mercer slapped Vane-Locke across the face with his medallion and fined him fifty stones. The magistrate was picking his teeth out of the cabbage barrels.”
Sera let out a short, rare chuckle from the gate.
Mina clapped her hands with glee.
In his hammock, Kaelen did not even open his eyes as the afternoon faded into a quiet night.
By the time the late watch bells echoed across the valley, the slate timer had ticked past its second full day.
[The Fallow Slate]
[48 Hours Abstained -> Multiplier: 49x READY]
Two pills saved fifty hours of arguing.
Let Vane-Locke choke on his fifty-stone fine.
A trapped rat always looks for wolves.
Across the town of Ashford, inside the darkened private chambers of the magistrate yamen, Vane-Locke slammed his fist onto his mahogany desk.
The heavy wood split straight down the center.
“The Guild will not help me,” Vane-Locke hissed through broken teeth. “The clan elders are too cowardly to act openly.”
He turned toward the shadowy corner of the room, where a hooded scout in gray wolf furs stood waiting.
“Send the blood-token to the northern ravine,” Vane-Locke ordered in a voice thick with venom.
“Tell the Blood-Wolf gang to assemble three hundred blades.”
“In five nights, we sack the Vance manor and butcher the Third Herb Shed to the ground.”