He Was Mistaken for the Sword Saint's Heir, So His Strictest Senior Trained the Fake novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Noodle Tally
Six hundred disciples kneel to a kitchen boy because of a noodle tab; he says yes to the sect master, and the strictest senior in the sect shows him a ledger page proving he knows the truth.
Six hundred disciples of the Bluebrook Sect knelt on the courtyard stones, and Song Mian was the only one left standing.
He was holding a soup pot, which made it worse.
It was the morning of Spring Intake, and Mian had been carrying the sect's rice porridge across the yard for the new recruits.
Then a small jade tablet had slid out of his belt pouch and clattered on the stones.
Now a man in the black and gold robes of the Spring Lantern Assembly was kneeling in front of it.
He held both hands up.
The man was the Council's Inspector, and he had arrived that morning to count the sect's disciples.
He had counted one.
"The crane over the sword," the Inspector whispered.
"The personal seal of the Sword Saint, Qiu Wangchuan."
Behind him, the sect's ancestral sword hummed on its stand on the dais.
Nobody had ever heard it hum before.
Mian looked down at the tablet.
"Oh, that," he said. "That's a noodle tally."
The Inspector looked up with wet eyes.
"A what?"
"A noodle tally. An old man at the Heron Pass stall ate three bowls and said he'd pay later."
"Then he gave me that and told me to keep it."
He shifted the pot to his other arm.
"I was going to get it cashed, but I forgot."
A long silence went over the courtyard.
"Three bowls," whispered a girl in the second row. "He calls the Saint's seal a noodle tally."
"So humble," said a boy beside her.
"The Saint told the Council eight years ago," the Inspector said, and his voice cracked.
"He said his seal would find someone who had no idea what to do with it."
Mian considered this.
"Well, I don't," he said honestly.
Six hundred people gasped at the same time.
Sect Master Ruan Bo came across the yard at a run, her robes hitched up in both fists and her lopsided bun coming loose.
She was already crying.
"My boy," she said, and she took Mian by both elbows. "My brilliant, secret boy."
"Master, I'm on kitchen duty," Mian said. "I think there's been a..."
"Inside," said Ruan Bo, and she towed him off by the sleeve, soup pot and all.
The side hall smelled of old tea and damp.
Ruan Bo shut the door, sat him down and poured him a cup with a hand that shook so hard the cup chattered.
"Listen to me very carefully," she said. "Bluebrook holds this mountain on a lease from the Council."
"It is renewed at the Spring Lantern Assembly in ninety days, and only if we place in the top four."
"We've placed last for six years," said Mian.
"Yes."
"Isn't that sort of a no?"
"Not if the Saint's heir is on our team," said Ruan Bo, and she wiped her nose on her cuff.
"The Council won't dare take the mountain from the sect of the Saint's heir."
"We keep our terraces. We keep our tea. We keep our roofs."
"Master, I'm not an heir. I can barely light a candle."
"Of course you're not an heir," she said at once. "You don't need to be one. You only need to be seen."
She patted his hand.
"You'll do nothing. Not a single thing. Senior Brother Yan of the Discipline Hall will see to everything."
It was a very smooth thing to say, and Mian noticed that she said it without taking a breath.
"Everything?" he asked.
"A private pavilion on the north ridge. Meals brought to your door. No kitchen duty, no gate duty, no dawn bell."
Mian thought about the dawn bell.
He thought about Ruan Bo's chattering cup.
The door slid open an inch, and Wei Xiaoman's round face appeared in the gap with an abacus pressed to her chest.
"The odds on the heir are already four to one," she whispered. "I just wanted you to know I'm so proud of you."
She vanished.
"Will it hurt anyone?" Mian said.
"It will save everyone," said Ruan Bo.
So Mian said yes.
The Sword Pavilion stood alone on the north ridge.
It was a small grey building with three rooms, one good door and a roof that dripped in four places.
He was sitting on a real bed for the first time in five years, eating braised pork somebody else had carried up the hill.
The door opened without a knock.
Yan Shouyi stood in it.
Mian knew him, as the whole sect did.
He was the senior of the Discipline Hall, thirty years old and tall as a gatepost.
His black hair was pinned in a topknot so tight it looked painful.
He had never been seen to smile.
He had never missed a bell.
Shouyi shut the door behind him, crossed the room and put a thick book on the table with a flat, final sound.
"Senior Yan," said Mian, around the pork. "I know what you're going to say. I didn't ask for any of..."
"Page nineteen," said Shouyi.
He opened the book.
The top of the page said SONG MIAN in neat black brush, and beneath it ran four hundred and twelve lines.
Mian read the first one.
Third day, third month, year two. Slept in the plum tree beside the Discipline Hall.
The next line said he had first arranged fallen blossoms into a bed for a sparrow.
"You wrote that down?" Mian said.
"Every infraction."
"That's a lot of effort for a sparrow."
Shouyi turned a page, and Mian saw that it was the same on that one, and the next, and the next.
Five years of it.
"You are not the Sword Saint's heir, Song Mian," Shouyi said, like a judge reading out a sentence.
"You cannot hold a sword. You have never opened your second meridian."
He closed the book.
"I am the only person in this sect who knows it, and I am not going to report you."
Mian swallowed his pork.
"You're not?"
"Dawn," said Shouyi. "I begin teaching you to look like one."
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