Chapter 215: After the Lamps Were Lit

The charcoal under the back wall of the Medicine Hall dwindled. The load from the twelfth, stacked to windowsill height, had sunk to knee level by the fifteenth. On the morning of the seventeenth, Du Xiaochuan scooped the last of it into a wooden basin with one hand. He set the basin by the furnace, went back to count what was left under the wall, and reported: "Enough for a day and a half."

"Enough," Cheng Banshan said.

The door to the Medicine Hall hadn't shut tight in seven days. Cheng Banshan slept on the plank bed in the outer room, furnace door at one end and the entrance at the other. The moment the fire sank a fraction, his eyes opened. He felt the furnace door first, then reached into the basin for charcoal. Du Xiaochuan stood watch until the Dog hour; before heading back to the West Wing, he'd break the next day's charcoal into equal pieces and stack them by the basin—every piece the same size. Cheng Banshan had said big chunks smothered the fire, small ones fed it faster. Each noon, Shao Ming moved a basin's worth of charcoal out from under the back wall and set it behind the door, so no one had to go hauling it in.

The first two days, Cheng Banshan still offered pointers: the fire was too high, the fire had gone dull. From the third day on, he spoke less. Most of the time he sat watching that one strip of red through the furnace door seam, the wooden hand resting on his knee, its five wooden fingers glowing. When the glow dimmed, he sent a thread of qi into it, and it brightened again. Every night Bai Xiaoman came in to check the stone in its palm, then returned to the West Wing without a word more than necessary.

The fifteenth was market day, and the fair ran as usual. Qian Duoduo hauled his pots down the mountain before dawn, Qi Qi followed with ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder on him, and Bai Xiaoman kept the market books all morning. She closed the market gate at the end of the Horse hour and was back on the mountain by the Sheep hour. That market brought in sixty-five spirit stones; Xu Yan added a line to the register. When Bai Xiaoman returned, she stopped at the Medicine Hall door and offered to keep watch through the night. Cheng Banshan didn't even lift his head. "Keep watch over your market. This furnace knows its people."

On the sixteenth she asked one question: how many days did the fire need before it counted as done. Cheng Banshan said, "Seven days. Half a day short, the pill comes out raw. Half a day long, the qi in it dissipates." She noted this in the margin of the formation hand diagram—the page was already full, so she squeezed it into whatever blank space she could find.

On the night of the sixteenth, the fire sank badly, collapsing to a single point at the bottom. Cheng Banshan got up and fed it charcoal three times; by dawn his sleeve cuffs were gray with ash. Du Xiaochuan saw him at the door and asked, "Elder Cheng, did you sleep at all?" He said he'd caught two naps. On the evening of the seventeenth, Jiang Wan stood outside the Medicine Hall for a while. She looked at the line of red through the furnace door seam, asked if there was enough charcoal, and Cheng Banshan said there was. She left without entering.

On the eighteenth, at the Snake hour, the fire in the furnace drew inward.

Cheng Banshan pulled the low stool up before the furnace and sat. He tested the heat against the furnace door with his hand, then rested the wooden hand on the lid's rim. "Xiaoman, stand beside me. When I say pull, you pull."

Bai Xiaoman held the iron hook crosswise in her hands. "How much do I pull?"

"One pull, all the way through. Don't stop. If you stop, the lid falls back, the heat escapes, and the pill goes stiff."

A crowd gathered at the Medicine Hall door: Shao Ming in front, Huo Qing just behind his shoulder, Shi Po leaning against the doorframe, Qi Qi peeking under Shi Po's arm. Qian Duoduo held A Sui; A He clutched the hem of Qian Duoduo's coat, and both children stared through the gaps between grown-up legs. Jiang Wan stood just inside the door, not moving forward, empty-handed—her sword still in the East Courtyard.

"Everyone back two steps. Don't let the doorway wind blow in," Cheng Banshan said.

Qian Duoduo retreated. A Sui squirmed in his arms and whispered, "Is it done yet?" A He clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Pull," Cheng Banshan said.

Bai Xiaoman pulled the hook. The lid's rim lifted a crack. Hot air rushed up first, then the wooden hand rose with it, shifting the lid onto the furnace rim. Cheng Banshan's own hand stayed pressed to the furnace door, holding down that line of fire. He didn't let go. The wooden hand flipped over, cradled the shallow wooden tray, and slid it under the furnace mouth.

Pills dropped into the tray one by one. They landed on wood with a soft sound—tap, tap.

Du Xiaochuan craned his neck, counting. "One, two, three—" By seven his voice had changed; at ten he stopped. "Ten pills."

"Don't rush to count," Cheng Banshan said.

He carried the tray to the worktable, where a clean cloth had been spread. The ten pills rolled apart. He nudged them one by one, examining each face, then turned them to check the other side. One rolled toward the tray's edge; he blocked it with the wooden palm, then pinched it back with his own hand. He picked one out and held it close to his eye. A thread of fine red moved through the pill's depths. He studied it for a while, then set it back on the cloth. No one in the room made a sound. Only Qi Qi drew in a breath—and stopped himself halfway through, holding it.

"Not a single crack," Cheng Banshan said. "Thirty years. First successful furnace."

The doorway came alive. Qi Qi laughed first, but Shi Po's arm blocked him, and the laugh cut off halfway. Shao Ming said, "Ten pills," and Cheng Banshan, still not looking up, said: "Ten pills per furnace is just how many the furnace holds. What matters is whether they crack."

Qian Duoduo pressed forward, A Sui still in his arms. "Elder Cheng, these are the pills?"

"Qi-Gathering Pills."

"So from now on, in the market—"

"What comes later, we'll discuss later."

The crowd at the door slowly dispersed. Shi Po carried the two water buckets that had been sitting by the doorway outside with him as he left. Shao Ming followed and looked back to say, "Elder Cheng, that furnace fuel money was well spent." Cheng Banshan grunted without answering. Qian Duoduo carried A Sui back to the kitchen, A He trailing behind and asking whether those ten pills were as sweet as Qi-Gathering Powder. Qian Duoduo said pills weren't the kind of thing you just popped into your mouth.

Cheng Banshan pulled a bamboo splint from under the worktable and bent to scrape the furnace bottom. Seven days of firing had left a thin powder crusted there. The splint pressed along the bottom, curling the powder into strips that fell onto paper. Xu Yan smoothed out the medicine paper, folded its four corners tight, and wrote "the eighteenth day of the Second Month" on the packet. He set it at the end of the row of retained samples on the shelf. That row was all one-packet-per-furnace leftovers from Qi-Gathering Powder, each packet dated. Today's packet was the first ever marked "Qi-Gathering Pill."

Ten small porcelain vials stood lined up at the edge of the table, one pill per vial, medicine paper stuffed into each mouth. Cheng Banshan placed the pills inside one by one. On the last vial, he paused, then pushed it toward Xu Yan: "You keep all of them. We sell, you record."

Turning, he saw Jiang Wan just inside the door. "Come at lamp-lighting. I'll take your pulse once."

Jiang Wan hesitated. "I'm fine."

"Once."

In the afternoon he slept—behind the inner room's curtain, deep, so deep that Du Xiaochuan came to the door twice to listen. The wind in the front courtyard turned cool. The kitchen stirred with smoke and fire, bowls knocking against bowls. Xu Yan worked in the Accounts Room until just before lamp-lighting, then brought ink and paper to the Medicine Hall.

At lamp-lighting time, two lamps were lit in the Medicine Hall: one at the worktable, one hanging from the door nail at the entrance. Du Xiaochuan trimmed the wick higher. The room brightened, and the wooden hand on the table looked paler than it had by daylight.

Xu Yan sat at the table on the west side. He opened the furnace log first and added a line, then began writing labels on ten small slips of paper: "Qingya" at the top, "the eighteenth day of the Second Month" underneath. He wrote slowly. Each finished slip he laid out on the table to dry, its corner weighed down with a strip of wood.

Bai Xiaoman crouched by the low stool, cradling the wooden hand's palm in both hands, peering inside. The stone still glowed, fainter than the night of the seventh this month, the qi turning slowly within it. "It hasn't dimmed all these days?" she asked.

"While I feed it, it stays lit," Cheng Banshan said. "You don't feed it, it doesn't move on its own."

"Once you're back at the market, done for the day, you'll still keep feeding it?"

"Wherever I go, it goes with me." He flipped the hand over to show her the stone in its palm. "More loyal than a person."

Bai Xiaoman rolled up her sleeve and followed the leather cord along the arm sleeve with her fingers. "What happens to this hand after long use?"

"Wood swells in damp. If it swells, the cover plate seals itself shut—that's in your notes at the bottom." He said, "Use it long enough, the sockets loosen. Then you tighten it once. If it won't tighten, you shave a section off."

"Then I'll shave a spare section now, to have it ready."

"Ready's fine. There's still wood. The diagram's still here."

She used her sleeve to wipe a bit of dust from the wooden knuckles, one joint at a time. "You haven't taken it off in seven days?"

"Take it off, and I don't sleep sound." He said, "Wearing it—it's like having someone nearby."

Du Xiaochuan was by the furnace, brushing out the firebox. He swept the ash into a pile, worked the brush around the interior in a full circle, and scraped the black soot into the broken dustpan in the corner. At the ring of charred black around the furnace mouth, he stopped and asked, "Elder Cheng, tomorrow the furnace just sits empty?"

"Empty. On the twentieth, market day, we sell. The day after, I buy more pill materials. The twenty-first, we fire it up."

Cheng Banshan's three fingers rested on Jiang Wan's wrist. After a moment, he withdrew his hand. "Steady."

Jiang Wan let her hand return to her knee. "What's steady."

"Your qi is steady. The peak-stage foundation has settled." He glanced at the lamp by the door. "That night in the First Month—it wasn't for nothing."

Jiang Wan made a small sound of assent. She didn't rise, didn't ask more.

Cheng Banshan turned the wooden hand over, palm up, then back again, folding the fingers in one joint at a time. The lamp wick sputtered.

"Little Xu," he said. "Put down your labels for a moment."

Xu Yan set the brush on the brush rest.

"Back then, I refined pills in Lihuo Hall." Cheng Banshan said. "In the pill chamber, there was a box of powder."

Du Xiaochuan's brush froze midair.

"That powder was mixed into other people's pills." He paused—long enough for the lamp's wick by the door to sputter again. "It was children's spirit roots. Ground into powder."

Jiang Wan sat motionless. Bai Xiaoman let go, and the wooden hand dropped back onto Cheng Banshan's knee.

"I spoke up about it," Cheng Banshan said. "Not long after, this hand was gone."

Bai Xiaoman's mouth opened. Cheng Banshan didn't wait for her to speak: "I only say what I saw. Where it came from, I don't know. Who, I won't name. How much, I never counted."

No one in the room asked. Du Xiaochuan laid the brush back in the dustpan, stood up, and didn't know what to do with himself. He wiped his hands on his trousers twice.

Jiang Wan was the first to rise. She pushed her stool back under the table. "Elder Cheng, rest early." She walked to the door, paused on the threshold, and went out.

Cheng Banshan set the wooden hand on his knee, straightening it. He looked at no one. "Du Xiaochuan, close the door."

Du Xiaochuan answered and went to shut it. The door stood half open. From the kitchen came A Sui's laughter, carrying across the front courtyard all the way to the doorway. The door closed, and the laughter shrank to almost nothing.

"Don't speak of this to the children," Cheng Banshan said.

"Understood." Du Xiaochuan stood with his back to the door for a moment, then slid the wooden bolt home.

Bai Xiaoman gathered up her old wooden tray, rolled the formation hand diagram into a scroll, and hugged it to her chest. At the door she paused too, looked back once more at the hand, then left.

The last faint red glow remained in the firebox. "In the furnace log, only write the date and the count," Cheng Banshan said.

"That's all?"

"That's all." He lifted his eyes to Xu Yan. "Not one other detail. Not a word."

He sat without moving, the hand on his knee, its five fingers glowing. He reached out and trimmed the lamp lower.

Xu Yan bowed his head and finished writing the remaining labels, spreading them one by one on the table. Ten slips lay open, each reading "Qingya" at the top, "the eighteenth day of the Second Month" underneath. The ten small porcelain vials at the table's edge stood in a neat row, their paper stoppers already in place, waiting for the labels to dry, ready to be pasted on in the morning.