"Oh, one thing," Zhang Linchuan said, just before they left, looking at Tang Dun. "You are called Tang Dun?"
"I am called that, yes."
Zhang Linchuan smiled. "Dun — it means honest, sincere. A fine name."
Tang Dun scratched his head. "Our village teacher gave it to me, when I was small."
"Oh?" Zhang Linchuan asked.
"Tangshe Town is poor; we could never afford tuition, and hunter families care little whether a boy can read. It was a teacher, wandering here in his studies, who stayed and taught us three years, then shouldered his satchel and left. He liked me best of all, said I was some sort of jade."
And so it all made sense.
The custom of shouldering one's satchel to wander and study was admired in this age; disciples of every school took it up. The Confucian school held that one should read ten thousand books and walk ten thousand miles, and many of its disciples roamed the states — some to broaden their learning, some to peddle themselves from place to place. The Mohist school sent its disciples across the world, to learn each thing by their own hands; had they met Tang Dun, they would likely have taught him martial arts, even some crude artifice-craft, rather than letters. Though Zhuang took the Daoist sect as its state religion, it did not much shut out other schools. Tang Dun's story was, then, perfectly in order.
Jiang Wang said, "Since you have studied, to remain a lowly constable here is a kind of waste. Once Niu'er's rites are done, if you have no ties to bind you, you might try for the Outer Court of the city's Dao Academy."
It was that he saw the man's plain honesty and felt a stir of regard for his worth — but in the end, the choice was Tang Dun's alone.
…
Out of Tangshe Town, south along the official road, lay the way back to Fenglin City. Because of the formation patterns etched into it, no beast came near the road. The horses' hooves were unhurried, and Zhang Linchuan's voice from the saddle was unhurried too. "Do you know what it costs the court each year to maintain every official road across Zhuang?"
Jiang Wang shook his head; of such matters he truly knew nothing.
"It is an astronomical sum," Zhang Linchuan said. "These patterns only drive off low-level ferocious beasts; the mighty ones must be cleared by cultivators. The court pours enormous resources into keeping the routes open, and spares no cost in the Dao Academies — and all we can do is grow quickly enough to bear the responsibility that is ours."
"I am instructed."
"Then let me ask you this — the great cities are shielded by grand formations. Why does the court not simply gather all its people inside the great cities to live?"
"There would be two reasons, I think," Jiang Wang considered. "First, the great cities too have their limits; they cannot meet the needs of all who live. Second, each city's reach is finite, and the court needs these roads to stretch out in all directions, with towns and villages as its nodes — for that is what actual dominion is. And land is resource."
"You see it clearly. The formations of the villages can never be as safe as those of the great cities, yet the villages have their irreplaceable part. Like Tangshe — so long as it stands, Fenglin may endlessly harvest the resources of the Qichang Mountain Range. The day Tangshe ceases to be, Qichang will have nothing more to do with our Zhuang."
"The men of Tangshe dare to hunt the Qichang; they too have their experts. That heretic lay in wait when the Office of Inquiry came, and stirred not again when we had not yet arrived — yet he struck the very moment we reached him…"
Here Zhang Linchuan turned his head, looking at Jiang Wang with an ambiguous, half-formed smile. "Junior Brother Jiang — do you, perchance, carry something about you that draws them?"
Jiang Wang could not answer.
Of course he carried secrets, but only the Void Key he had inherited from Zuo Guanglie. Every change in him had happened within the Great Void Illusion; in the real world it should not yet have been discovered. And yet — setting that aside — his very first brush with a heretic's attack had also come after he entered the Great Void Illusion.
He was weighing how to gloss over the question when Zhang Linchuan suddenly raised a hand — middle and ring fingers curled, the other three extended — and pointed straight at him. An arc leapt from the three upright fingertips, gathered into a single bolt of thunder, and shot toward Jiang Wang!
Jiang Wang had no time even to react. The thunder grazed past his ear and struck a venom-arrow, dyed dark green, that had been streaking in — and destroyed it, sending it plummeting.
Only then did his ear catch the arrow's sudden-accelerating shriek, and his nose the scent of singed hair where the thunder had passed.
"Waited long for you!" Zhang Linchuan leapt from his horse; his free right hand rose in a most peculiar finger-gesture, and a whip of lightning condensed from nothing. "Come and die by my hand!"
He rode the thunder-whip like an eagle on its prey, charging the assailant hidden in the woods to the left. He had been prepared all along, dividing his mind to ready two Dao arts in advance, that he might answer the attack the first instant it came.
Jiang Wang was still far from the measure of a senior so long tested in battle.
Then a voice rang out from the woods on the right. "Tough mark — split up and withdraw!"
Jiang Wang, who had been about to chase Zhang Linchuan, whipped his head around!
How could he not know that voice? In the little girl's room at Tangshe, those few short exchanges had been enough to carve it into his bones!
A Dao essence within his Heaven-Access Palace burst soundlessly, and Jiang Wang, like a maddened beast, hurled himself with absolute resolve toward the voice.
In Zhuang, the first thing almost every commoner was made to remember before stepping beyond his door was: never leave the official road. For beyond the reach of the towns and villages lay only the wilds — the domain of beasts, ferocious beasts, even monsters.
Zhang Linchuan was strong enough that he did not care.
Jiang Wang meant to kill, and so he did not care either.
Never, never in his life had he been so angry. Fang Pengju's betrayal, hateful as it was, had at least left a trail to follow. But that little girl — she had been so small, so utterly innocent. Jiang Wang's sword trembled in its scabbard, as if it too knew it was about to burst forth in the most radiant light of its whole life.
Ten years I grind a sword, its frosty edge yet untried; Today I show it to you, sir — who has a wrong unredressed?
*Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang.* The moment the long sword leapt free, it struck its scabbard five times over before it could clear it at last!
Sword like a falling star, man like a flood-dragon.
A great tree cried out and toppled; the left-handed heretic hidden among its branches flung himself backward in desperate retreat. In the haste nothing of his face could be seen — only the deathly pallor of it, beneath a tangle of unkempt hair.
Within the Heaven-Access Palace, Dao essence after Dao essence burst open. Jiang Wang had never spent so wildly; he felt power flood his whole body. Before one forms the Dao Spiral, the squandering of each Dao essence is a step backward in cultivation. Long life, a future to look forward to — he cast it all aside. He would cut down this heretic; only then would the pent-up fury find its outlet, only then could his mind know peace.
The Purple Qi from the East Sword Art — the second of its killing forms — trailed a sweep of frost-light. The white-faced heretic, retreating, had no time to form a gesture; his right arm swelled, muscle bulging out, veins standing proud, and he drove a straight punch crashing into the frost-light. Sword and that demonic arm met and clashed a dozen times over in an instant.
Only then did Jiang Wang truly understand — he had misjudged! This opponent was strong! Far stronger than he, by no small measure! He was no mere man relying on arrangements. Had the white-faced heretic unleashed his full strength back at Tangshe, Jiang Wang could not have been sure he would have survived.
But Jiang Wang did not retreat. His long sword rang again, and a sharp whistle rose.
The Purple Qi from the East Sword Art — the third killing form!
That demonic right arm was severed entire, and flung spinning away!
"Damn it!!"
The white-faced heretic roared. He had not expected that, a moment's lapse, and this boy fighting for his life would drive him to the very brink. His trailing foot stamped hard upon a great tree mid-fall; he knew he could not retreat further — to retreat was to die. Life is born of battle.
From the point where his foot touched, the whole tree withered in an instant. Then from his roaring mouth a gray mist poured forth, of an intensely rotting stench, acrid and foul. The power to command life and death — this was a Dao art of the Netherworld!
The sword-light swelled.
Dao essence drove the sword-light; the sword-light cleft the gray mist; and Jiang Wang, leaping, burst out from within it!
The Purple Qi from the East Sword Art — the fourth killing form!
At Tangshe the heretic had escaped him, caught unprepared and helpless. But at least now, at this moment, he would give that little girl named Niu'er an answer! This was a cultivator's duty to the common folk. This was an adult's duty to a child!
Jiang Wang's leaping figure broke through the gray mist and appeared in the white-faced heretic's eyes. And in those eyes, widening, filled with nothing but horror, a brilliant sword-light descended, from above to below.
It was the last light he ever saw, before eternal darkness.