The Rooster Who Would Be Immortal · an original cultivation (xianxia) serial · Chapter 6 · The Rival
Senior Brother Hua knocked Brass off the terrace wall with one flick of his sleeve, in front of two hundred disciples, and did not even look to see where he landed.
He landed in a bucket.
"Someone remove the soup," said Hua, and the inner disciples laughed.
It was the morning of the Bell Trial. The great bronze dawn bell of Cloudpine Sect had come down in the storm, the same night as the storehouse beam, and for weeks it had sat on the Dawn Terrace like a sulking god. It was as tall as a man and as heavy as eight.
Today, whoever hung it back on its beam would win a purse of twenty silver and a seat in the Spring Tournament.
Brass climbed out of the bucket. He had come to watch Ling Yue, because four outer disciples had put their names down as a team, and she was one of them.
"The outer sect has entered," Hua said, loudly enough for the terrace. He was smiling at Ling. "How brave. I hear some of you need the money." His eyes did not leave her. "Debts are such a burden."
Ling Yue went white. The inner sect was not supposed to know about Broker Shen.
Brass did not know how Hua knew. He only saw that a man who sneered at twenty silver had not once taken his eyes off the purse.
"Each team brings its own rope," announced the Deacon of Duties, from her seat by the fallen bell. She had her ledger. She always had her ledger. "By rope and by hand, the bell goes up. Inner sect at noon. Outer sect after. Senior Brother Hua has kindly offered to check every team's rope tonight."
"A pleasure," said Hua.
That night, the four outer disciples sat in the kitchen yard and despaired.
"We tried it at dusk," said a broad boy named Tao. "All four of us on the rope, over the beam. It came up a hand's width. Then it came down."
"The inner disciples have qi in their arms," said Ling Yue. "We have arms in our arms."
Brass paced the top of the well. Over the beam. One rope, over one beam, four people pulling down. All that did was change which way they pulled. The bell still weighed what it weighed.
He stopped.
He was standing next to the well wheel.
A board. A piece of chalk. A drawing of a rope running up over a wheel, down around a second wheel that hung on the load itself, and up again. And beside it, in a hand that had once been his, a number.
If the load hangs from two strands of rope, each strand holds half of it. Hang it from four strands, and each holds a quarter. One person pulling the free end feels only a quarter of the weight. Nothing is free: to lift the bell one arm's length, you must pull four arm's lengths of rope. You trade distance for force.
[SYSTEM] Brass learned: a pulley system trades distance for force — four strands, a quarter of the pull · cost: four times the rope, four times as slow
He could not say it. So he pecked the well wheel until Ling Yue came over, and then he hardened one spur and scratched it into the clay: a beam, two circles above, two circles below, and a line looping between them four times.
[SYSTEM] Iron Spur — one drawing cut into clay · cost: he signed it without meaning to
Ling Yue looked at it for a long time. "Wheels," she said. "The rope goes round wheels. Up, down, up, down." She counted the lines. "Four ropes holding the bell instead of one." She looked up. "Elder Mo. How many wheels does the kitchen have?"
"One on the well," said Mo. "Two on the smokehouse hoist." He glared at the rooster. "And the dormitory well has another, which nobody will miss until morning."
Brass was still awake before dawn. He was always awake before dawn. So he was the only one who saw a figure in very clean blue robes slip into the yard, lift the outer team's coil of rope, and draw a small knife once across it, in the middle, where the weave was thickest.
Not through. Just deep enough.
A rope like that would hold a bucket. It would not hold a bell. With the whole weight on it, it would part, and a bronze bell would come down among whoever stood nearest.
Brass flew at him. Hua did not even turn around. One flick of the sleeve, and the rooster hit the woodpile and saw stars.
When he could stand, the yard was empty, and the rope was coiled exactly as it had been.
He screamed at Ling Yue all through breakfast. He pecked the rope. He dragged it. He stood on it and crowed.
"He is excited," said Tao.
"He is always excited," said Ling Yue, and patted his head, and picked up the rope.
At noon, Hua and three inner disciples took hold of their rope. Qi blazed along their arms. The bell rose, a foot, two feet, to the height of a man's chest, shaking.
"More hands, Senior Brother?" called the Deacon.
"Inner disciples," Hua said through his teeth, "do not need a crowd."
The bell hung there for three long breaths. Then it came down, and the terrace shook, and one of the inner disciples sat on the ground and did not get up for a while.
Then the outer four walked out with a rope, four wooden wheels, and a rooster.
Laughter. Brass ignored it. He was looking at the rope, and at the pale nick in the middle of it, which only he could see.
They lashed two wheels to the beam and two to the bell's crown, and threaded the rope up and down between them. Four strands. Then they pulled.
They pulled a great deal of rope. Arm over arm, yards of it, coiling at their feet. And slowly, without any shaking at all, the bell rose.
It went past the height of a man's chest. Past his head. The nicked place in the rope crept up toward the first wheel, and Brass could not breathe.
It held.
It held, because it was carrying a quarter of a bell.
Tao slid the iron pin through the crown. The four of them let go. And the great bronze bell of Cloudpine Sect hung in its place and rang, once, from the swing of it, a sound like the whole mountain clearing its throat.
"Trickery," said Hua. His face had gone grey. "Wheels. They used wheels."
"By rope and by hand," said the Deacon. "I see rope. I see hands. The purse is theirs."
She stood, and walked to the coil at the outer team's feet, and drew the rope through her fingers until she stopped. She held it up. The cut showed white.
"This was done with a blade," she said, to the whole terrace. "With the whole bell on one line, it would have parted, and the bell would have come down among you." She let that sit. "It held today because the wheels shared the weight between four strands. That was luck as much as wit. A cut rope is a cut rope. It should never have been lifted on at all. I cannot say whose blade. I can say whose duty. One man asked to check every team's rope last night."
Nobody looked at Hua. Everybody thought about him.
"A rope checker who misses a cut that deep," the Deacon went on, "owes the sect the work that rope was meant for. Ten days. The kitchen's water, Senior Brother. Every bucket." She closed her ledger. "I am told kitchens carry things."
Elder Mo, at the back, made a noise like a kettle.
So for ten days, a proud inner disciple hauled water up the kitchen well, hand over hand, on the single wheel the outer team had kindly put back.
On the tenth evening he set down the last bucket and stood by the well, breathing hard. And he looked down.
The clay had dried. The drawing was still there: a beam, four circles, a line looping between them. And beside it, pressed in deep, three thin marks and one behind. A bird's foot.
Hua looked at the drawing. He looked at the woodpile, where a scrawny golden-red rooster was pretending very hard to be asleep.
"It was never the girl," he said softly.
Behind the coop, in Elder Mo's garden, the first beans were coming up.
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