The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: What the Tally Knows
On the fourth night in the cellar, Elder Fu Huaiyi came down the mountain on foot.
He was two hundred and twelve years old.
He had walked three thousand and nine steps in the dark with a stick.
He arrived at the press door at the second watch with his hands shaking and his hair full of dust.
Liang let him in without a word.
He stood in the cellar, under the low arch, and looked at the twelve boxes along the wall.
"Sit, Elder," Shen offered.
"I will stand." Fu leaned on the stick. "I have not come for comfort."
Mo had risen from the crate.
He stood a pace behind Shen's left shoulder, which Shen had not asked him to do and did not mind.
Fu reached into his sleeve and took out a black-green jade, the length of a thumb, with no thread of white in it.
"The new tally. Uncut. I have been ordered to cut the clause on the morning of the Assembly."
He held it up.
"I will cut it exactly as the Master dictates. I keep the oaths."
"I know."
"Do you know what the clause will take?" The old man's voice shook. "Not the pen. The pen is nothing. It will take the intention."
He looked at Shen.
"A man who has sworn it may not even think of a sentence about the seat without the jade warming."
"You will not write again, Sword Saint. You will not be able to read your own sheets without the throat closing."
"I understand." Shen did not blink.
"You do not. I have cut nine oaths to this seat in twelve years, and I know exactly what they are."
Fu's hand with the jade had begun to move in small circles.
"Nine disciples were told they were chosen for refinement."
"Each was brought to me afterward, in the Oath Hall, and I cut them a silence on the Master's order."
He did not look at Mo.
"The first was a young alchemist. He was dead before I cut it. His brother was told lung fever."
Nobody moved.
"The others were sent to a farm on the north slope. They are alive. They are mortals."
"I have their names in the tally book, and I have never asked what was done."
"Elder," Mo said, low.
"Do not forgive me. I have read every sheet standing at the Oath Stone. I knew by the third."
The jade stopped moving.
"I did not say, because the oath does not allow an Oath Warden to say."
"And because I am a coward in the particular way of a man who has kept rules all his life."
The cellar was silent.
"Article Nine," Fu went on at last. "Three tokens."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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