The Heretical Path of Occult Immortal novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Dead Moth
Pei Ruo was in the north room of the Insect House before the first bell, with the grey ledger in her lap.
She had not slept, and the shutters were still closed.
She looked at the jar in his arms, and the moth walking its glass, and she did not ask.
"You went to Willow Ford," she said.
"She stopped taking them at the thirty-seventh. She could smell me in the pill."
Pei Ruo shut her eyes for a moment.
"Then she is stronger than either of us," she said.
"The Elder gave me a dead Lung Moth, and I ate it."
"You ate it?" She was on her feet. "Where did it come from? What did it look like?"
"I couldn't smell it, Pei Ruo. You weren't there."
That landed, and he saw it land, and he let it.
"I am not done with you," he said, more quietly. "I need your nose and I need your count. Bring the book. We are going to the Abbot."
The Abbot's terrace was cold and clear, and the Gate Seat was there before them.
He stood by the sword rack with his arms folded, a lean man with a scar that pulled the left side of his jaw tight.
Su Jingzhi did not stand.
"Put it on the floor," he said. "Both of you."
Cen Yu set the jar down on the boards.
Pei Ruo opened the ledger at the red ribbon, and read.
She read the family tier and the second tier, and the fifty-one weights.
She read the Elder's own column last, in a voice that was nearly steady.
When she finished the wind moved the shutters, and nobody spoke.
The Abbot took the book from her and read the page himself, slowly, with his finger under each line.
"That is the Elder's gourd," he said.
"It is also in anybody's hand who can draw a gourd," said the Gate Seat. He did not unfold his arms. "I have eaten this pill for sixty years. You will forgive me if I want more than a book."
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