Ch. 034| Quality

The outer-gate pill-hall took in a batch of medicinal stock from down the mountain once every ten-day span, the handover at that drying-yard in the back court. Bamboo trays and medicine-crates were spread across half the yard; a few menials hauled and carried, while a steward of the Pill Hall held the scales and inspected the goods.

This ten-day span it fell to Lin Que to lend a hand—the herb-lodge's wound-medicine was also parceled from this batch. Ever since Shen Ningshuang's one visit, he'd kept all the more within bounds at the herb-lodge: sweeping, brewing, handing over goods; whatever errand came down, he took it, showing not the least. But that pair of eyes never truly rested a moment.

As he walked into the drying-yard with a bamboo sieve in hand, he ran straight into a quarrel.

The one delivering the goods was a woman of some thirty years, a set of stone-blue silk starched crisp, a plain silver hairpin at her temple, her fingers clicking abacus beads, brows and eyes deft, lips thin, and when she spoke, each word a driven nail. Behind her, a few hands guarded seven or eight medicine-crates, the lids all thrown open, angelica, Solomon's-seal, ophiopogon stacked neat flavor by flavor. Facing her was the steward managing the receiving at the pill-hall, pinching a length of Solomon's-seal, frowning and shaking his head.

"Madam Chang the Seventh, this batch of Solomon's-seal is off in quality." The steward tossed the Solomon's-seal back into the crate. "It's damp-struck, three parts of its medicinal nature gone. By rule, it's to be taken at sixty percent off, or returned."

That woman—Madam Chang the Seventh—paused her abacus beads.

"My Guangyuan Company's goods have crossed south and north twenty years, and no one has ever faulted their quality." Her voice was not loud, but hard. "The steward says damp-struck—have you proof? Sixty percent? Press the price down that far, and this run doesn't even cover my portering costs; I take a loss."

"No proof?" The steward sneered, grabbing a handful and thrusting it toward her face. "Smell it yourself—"

Lin Que set down the bamboo sieve at the side, and the heat beneath his left eye had already swept over those few medicine-crates.

---

The Solomon's-seal was not damp-struck.

That crate of Solomon's-seal was sliced even, the cross-sections raising a fine, dense "chrysanthemum-heart"—full-yeared, well-cured top stock, its medicinal nature full, without the least flaw of lost qi. Lin Que's eyes swept crate by crate—angelica, atractylodes, poria, every flavor true in quality.

It was rather the few bundles pressed in the crate's corner, marked "ophiopogon," that his eyes halted on. Those few bundles were short of root, coarse of grain, dry at the cross-section—mountain-liriope passed off as ophiopogon, its medicinal nature far poorer, mixed into a whole batch of good goods; without slicing it open and looking close, one couldn't tell.

Madam Chang the Seventh's whole batch was genuine, only this one flavor had been swapped by someone. The trick had been done at the purchasing end; she herself might not have noticed.

That receiving steward, of all things, pinched the one length of most-faultless Solomon's-seal to pick at "damp-struck," and opened his mouth to press sixty percent—using a false fault to swindle a true price.

Lin Que's mind turned fast. This was a matter he shouldn't have broken into; a word more was overstepping. But the sixty percent that steward was pressing pressed on Guangyuan; and Guangyuan's connections, crossed south and north twenty years, were the very thing he lacked just now.

He picked up the Solomon's-seal the steward had tossed back into the crate, held it beneath his nose and sniffed, then looked at the cross-section against the light, and slowly opened:

"Steward, this Solomon's-seal's cross-section raises the 'chrysanthemum-heart,' the grain not scattered—it's full-yeared good stock, not damp-struck." He set the Solomon's-seal down and pointed at those few bundles in the crate's corner. "It's rather this one flavor marked ophiopogon that's mountain-liriope passed off—short of root, coarse of grain, not sticky to the teeth when chewed. If you'd pick at quality, this is the one to pick."

The drying-yard went still for an instant.

Madam Chang the Seventh's hand clicking the abacus stopped, and those deft eyes, for the first time, looked square at this menial holding a bamboo sieve.

The steward's face went red, then white: "You, a menial, what do you understand—"

"Solomon's-seal, you look at the chrysanthemum-heart of the cross-section; ophiopogon, you see whether it sticks to the teeth when chewed—good quality or bad, a sweep of the eye, a chew of the tooth, and it comes out." Lin Que kept his eyes lowered, saying it flat and plain.

As he spoke, before them all, he drew a root from that bundle of "ophiopogon," snapped it, and held it out: "Chew it and see, Steward. True ophiopogon is sticky to the teeth, with a sweet aftertaste; this one chews woody and astringent—it's mountain-liriope." Then he picked a slice from the Solomon's-seal crate and held it up to the sun: "Look again at this Solomon's-seal—translucent against the light, no damp-spots. Which flavor's the one to pick at for quality—one hold to the light, one chew, and it's told apart."

That steward could neither take the length of mountain-liriope nor not take it, his face flushed crimson, and in the end he didn't dare truly chew it—chew it, and before Madam Chang's whole cartload of hands, that "damp-struck" line could never be rounded out again.

"…I'll inspect it further." He mumbled a line, and unable to produce proof of the Solomon's-seal being damp-struck, sullenly took that crate of Solomon's-seal at the original price, only picking out that bundle of mountain-liriope to return.

Madam Chang the Seventh was in no hurry to leave. She had the hands load the crates onto the cart, but herself turned and sized Lin Que up anew.

---

"From the herb-lodge?" she asked.

"Odd jobs."

"An odd-jobs hand, and yet you know goods." Madam Chang's lip-corner quirked, and within that deftness a few parts of real interest were added. "That mountain-liriope of mine was mixed in by a new supplier I switched to last month. I went over the accounts three times and couldn't find where the silver was leaking—so it was leaking here." She paused. "Today's move—Guangyuan owes you a favor."

"A trifle of effort."

"A trifle of effort that saves me half a crate of goods and roots out a supplier cheating me—this favor's not small." Madam Chang, a businesswoman, reckoned grudges and debts clear. "Young brother, your surname?"

"Lin."

Madam Chang noted it, and gave him a half-smiling sidelong look: "One who knows goods—how'd you come to be doing odd jobs at the Xuanzhao Sect?"

Lin Que did not take up the words.

"Not taking up the words is an answer too." Madam Chang had done twenty years' business; what sort of person hadn't she seen. "Menials who know goods, I've seen; but one who knows goods, and knows enough to leave me a step down too, and lets not half a word extra slip of himself—those are few. This steadiness of yours, young brother, isn't the lot of an odd-jobs hand."

Nor did she press. A businessperson's rule: see through it, don't say it through.

But Lin Que, following this "see through it, don't say it through" of hers, asked back a line: "Proprietor Chang crosses south and north—surely you take in more than medicinal stock." He dropped his voice a little. "I've a thing in hand I'd like to move, but don't know the market for it. I wonder whether Guangyuan takes it in—stock out of a rift?"

Madam Chang's hand clicking the abacus stopped with a snap.

That trace of a businessperson's courtesy vanished from her face at once; her gaze sank, sweeping swiftly left and right—the hauling menials were far off, and that receiving steward had gone too. Only then did she press her voice down: "That kind of talk isn't to be spoken on the Xuanzhao Sect's ground."

She drew Lin Que a couple of steps behind the medicine-crate cart, away from others, before asking low: "Rift-stock—few hands touch it, and the channels to move it are fewer still. You, a herb-lodge menial, how would you have this?"

"Picked it up." Lin Que kept his eyes lowered. "A blighted place like the pauper's burial ground—no one dares go near it; the bold pick it up and it's theirs. I picked it up and didn't dare keep it either—it scalds the hand."

This was half true, half false. Madam Chang glanced at him, did not expose it, only stared at him for two breaths, as if weighing this menial's measure anew.

"Rift-stock has been uncannily plentiful on the market this half-year." Her voice pressed very low. "In years past, crossing south and north, I'd not see a single rift crystal in a year; from this spring to now, of what my Guangyuan alone has passed through hand, there've been a dozen-odd. On the wild slopes, a rift here, a rift there—blighted ground cropping up more and more, and the bold rogue cultivators pick up the stock and come out to sell. Where so many rifts have cropped up from, no one can say."

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered, and something stirred in his heart, listening.

Back then at the pauper's burial ground, when he'd first seen that man-eating gash, he'd taken it for a thing known to no one under heaven, that he alone could see. Now, hearing Madam Chang say this, he knew how shallow he'd been—old hands of the trade, bold rogue cultivators, had long known of such man-eating blighted grounds, of stock coming out of the rifts; and Han Bosheng, who'd gone into a rift and come back alive, was one who'd known even earlier. Only that this half-year the rifts had abruptly multiplied, and the stock surged with them, so that it turned from a peril no one could account for into a trade that could be set upon Guangyuan's ledger.

But one thing, in the end, had not changed: others knew there were blighted grounds, there was stock, yet could not see that gash. Those picking up stock all groped into a man-eating place with their eyes shut—grope it out and strike it rich, grope empty, and become that batch of "strange deaths," "went in and didn't come back." Those who could truly see that gash clearly, and walk it whole and entire, in all the world, were likely still him alone.

Her fingertip tapped on the abacus.

"More uncanny still are the ones collecting the stock. So much stock, and all of it quietly swallowed in by a single buyer—paying a big price, not asking its provenance, taking it and vanishing. The price is given such that we second-hand peddlers dare not not sell: don't sell to him, and next run your cart meets with accident on the road."

"What sort of backing?" Lin Que asked.

"Don't know, and don't dare know." Madam Chang shook her head cleanly. "The one who fronts is a runner, sparing of words, a mutton-fat jade token hung at his waist. Who that buyer is, and what he wants with so much rift-stock—my Guangyuan only minds earning the pass-through coin; a question more shortens one's life."

A mutton-fat jade token.

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and gave no sign—Du had said that the man from within the gate who'd come last month to threaten him, pressing the ruined cultivator into silence, also wore just such a token at his waist.

Madam Chang, not knowing what turned in his heart, went on of her own with a businessperson's grumble: "This past year my Guangyuan's been squeezed at both ends. At one end, the flawed pills leaking out from Black Wind Hall's side—cheap to the point of uncanny, smashing the price of proper pill-stock to ruin; at the other, rift-stock monopolized in the collecting, and one must sell. The accounts look worse month by month."

She clicked the abacus and cast him another sidelong look: "To know who that buyer is—it's not that there's no channel. The Wind-Hearing Bureau deals precisely in reselling this: who collects rift-stock, and where it's taken, they can probe out. But that price is dear enough to cost half a life; and besides, one who goes to the Wind-Hearing Bureau to buy such news has himself been noted into another's ledger. My Guangyuan earns the steady coin; I don't touch this."

---

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and took these few lines into his heart without a word missed, but on the surface was only a menial who'd heard some idle talk.

That rift crystal in his robe, gouged out from that gash at the pauper's burial ground, carried twenty-odd days—he'd never dared move it. A rift crystal was worth a thousand in gold, yet for a herb-lodge menial to take it to exchange for spirit stones, one question about its provenance and he was exposed. This road of Guangyuan's was ready-made: it took in stock without asking provenance, and gave a fair price besides.

"If Proprietor Chang trusts me," Lin Que said, "I've a piece of stock in hand. Some other day I'll have someone bring it down the mountain—may the Proprietor give it a look and a price."

"Have someone?" Madam Chang raised a brow. "You won't come yourself?"

"Errands up the mountain press; I can't easily get down."

Madam Chang sized him up a while, then suddenly laughed: "So be it. These eyes of yours—knowing herbs, knowing stock—are better than those few hands of mine that run their legs off." She dropped her voice. "That piece of stock of yours, I'll do you a true price. And henceforth—the 'quality' these eyes of yours make out, whether herb-stock or otherwise, the day you want to turn it to coin, Guangyuan takes it."

This was aimed at these eyes of his, not at some menial. Lin Que heard it plainly, and answered cleanly too: "Well said."

Madam Chang had the hands drive the cart, and before boarding, turned to drop a line:

"Guangyuan's cart stands at the end of every ten-day span at the cart-and-horse yard in the back alley of the 'Listening-Rain Tower' down the mountain. Young brother Lin's stock, deliver it there."

The string in Lin Que's heart stirred faintly.

The Listening-Rain Tower.

That Senior Brother Xu smashed to death in the ravine—the place "the one collecting the scroll" went, at the end of every ten-day span, that he'd asked out before his end, was also the Listening-Rain Tower.

【Ch. 034 End · the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate · the back-courtyard herb-drying yard】