A Confucian scholar with frost at his temples led a young man in a blue robe away from the village schoolhouse, and together they came to the foot of the memorial archway. This tutor, the most learned scholar in all the small town, wore a somewhat haggard look upon his face. He raised a hand and pointed to the plaque hanging overhead. "To yield the lead to none — what does the phrase mean?"
Zhao Yao, the youth — both a pupil of the school and the scholar's personal book-boy — lifted his gaze to follow the direction of the gesture, and answered without the slightest hesitation: "We Confucians found our teaching upon benevolence. The four characters upon the plaque are drawn from 'in the matter of benevolence, yield not even to your teacher,' and they mean that we men of letters should honor our masters and revere the Way; yet before benevolence and righteousness, we need not be modest."
Master Qi asked: "Need not be modest? What if it were changed to 'must not'?"
The young man's features were clear-cut and handsome, and measured against Song Jixin's aggressive, blade-sharp edges, his temperament was the more gentle and inward-drawn — like a lotus flower that had just begun to bloom, natural and endearing. When the master posed this question, freighted with its hidden trap, the youth dared not take it lightly. He weighed his answer with care, convinced the master was testing his learning — how could he answer carelessly? The middle-aged scholar watched his pupil, that posture of facing a great foe, and smiled to himself. He clapped the youth on the shoulder. "It was only a casual question. No need for nerves. It seems I have been too constraining of your nature, all along — carving and polishing overmuch, until you live like a statue set out in the Wenchang Pavilion, face and manner forever prim, rules in everything, reason in everything. Tiring, is it not... Still, as it stands now, that turns out to be no bad thing."
The youth was puzzled, but the master had already led him around to the other side, still gazing up at the four-character plaque. The scholar's expression was relaxed now, and for reasons unseen, this tutor who never dropped his solemn air began to relate a stream of amusing anecdotes and famous cases, unfolding them for his pupil at leisure: "The man who wrote those four characters of 'yield the lead to none' was once the finest calligrapher of his age. It provoked a great many disputes — over structure and spirit, the battle of sinew and bone; over 'ancient substance' and 'modern grace,' the quarrel of praise and blame — and to this day no final verdict has been reached. Of rhyme, method, meaning, and mien — the four principles of calligraphy — this man carried off first place in two of them across a thousand years. He simply gave the masters of his own generation no road to live. As for this 'speak little, let nature take its course' we have now — it is rather amusing. If you study it closely, you will find that although the four characters are alike in stroke, structure, and spirit, in truth they were written separately by four great true men of the ancestral courts of Taoism. At the time, two of those old immortals even exchanged letters, bickering over it — both wanted to write the abstruse character for 'speak little,' and neither was willing to pen the vulgar character for 'speak.'"
Then the scholar led the youth around again to stand beneath the plaque reading "seek nothing from without." He cast his gaze about, dark and distant. "The village schoolhouse where you read your lessons — soon enough, for want of a tutor, it will be closed by the great clans, or razed outright and made into a small Taoist shrine, or a statue of a Buddha set up to draw incense from the faithful, with some priest or monk in charge, year after year, until the span of a cycle of sixty years runs out. In the interval, the keeper may well be 'replaced' two or three times, so that the townsfolk will not grow suspicious — though in truth it is but a shabby conjurer's trick. Yet a trifling art like a sesame seed, perfected here, if set beyond these walls would carry the majesty of a celestial god striking a great drum, of spring thunder shaking heaven and earth..."
By the end, the master's voice had sunk to a whisper thin as a mosquito's drone, and even Zhao Yao, straining his ears, could not make it out.
Master Qi sighed, in a tone of helpless weariness: "Many things were once the celestial secret that must not be spoken — and only now, at this late hour, do they seem to matter less and less. But we are men of letters, after all, and still we owe something to face and honor. And should I, Qi Jingchun, be the one to break the rule, it would amount to the keeper robbing his own store — the manners of it would be too ugly by far."
Suddenly Zhao Yao summoned his courage and said: "Master, your student knows that you are no common man, and that this town is no common place."
The scholar asked, his curiosity piqued: "Oh? Tell me, then."
Zhao Yao pointed to the twelve-pillared memorial archway, towering and awe-inspiring. "This place, together with the Dragon-Well-That-Is-Bound in Apricot Blossom Lane — the iron-locked well that one — and the covered bridge of which it is said two iron swords hang beneath its planks, the old locust tree, the peach trees of Peach Leaf Lane, and the Festival Tablets of Grain Rain and of Double Ninth pasted up each year on Fortune Street, where my own Zhao family dwells — all of these are strange."
The scholar cut him off. "Strange? Strange how? You were born here and have grown up here, and have never once set foot beyond these walls. Have you ever laid eyes on the sights that lie outside the town? Without comparison, from what source does such a claim spring?"
Zhao Yao lowered his voice. "Master, those books of yours I have memorized to the bone. The peach blossoms of Peach Leaf Lane differ greatly from the descriptions in the verses of those books. Again — you teach only the three primers of rudimentary learning, and set the weight upon knowing characters. After the rudiments, what ought we to read? And for what end do we read? What are 'official careers,' as the books call them? Why is it said: 'At dawn a plowboy in the fields, by dusk set upon the Son of Heaven's hall?' What is meant by 'the Son of Heaven holds the hero in regard, and essays may teach the young?' Two successive supervisor-officials of the kilns — though they never speak to anyone of the court, the capital, or the affairs of the world, still..."
The scholar smiled, gratified. "Enough. More words would serve no purpose."
Zhao Yao fell silent at once.
The scholar who called himself Qi Jingchun murmured: "Zhao Yao, from now on you must weigh your words and watch your conduct. Remember that calamity proceeds from the mouth, which is why the worthies of Confucianism keep their lips sealed. The gentlemen above the worthies practice the art of vigilance in solitude, guarding their own person as one guards a jewel, dreading the hidden flaw. As for the sages — the mountain masters of those seventy-two academies, for example — these men are able, like the great true men of Taoism and the golden-bodied arhats of the Buddhist faith, to make their very words come to pass, to command that which is spoken be decreed. This host of figures, and the masters of the Hundred Schools besides, when they attain this realm, are in the rough called the Land Immortals — men with one foot already over the threshold. And yet every one of these persons is a dragon in his own right. Some hold themselves aloof, high as the god-statues in temple and shrine, beyond all reaching; others show their heads and hide their tails, and the common man cannot find them though he search."
Zhao Yao listened in a fog, as though wrapped in cloud and mist.
At last he could not hold back and asked: "Master, why do you speak of these things today?"
The scholar's face opened in magnanimous patience, and he smiled. "You have a master, and so, too, have I a master. As for mine... it is best left unspoken. In short, I had thought I might eke out a few decades more of life in this place, and only now do I discover that certain men behind the curtain cannot so much as wait for that. So this time I cannot lead you beyond the town's walls; you must go out on your own. There are truths, harmless in themselves, that I might as well reveal to you — count it as no more than a story you have heard. Only let this one principle lodge in your heart: beyond the sky there is still sky, above man there is still man. No matter how heaven-favored, how blessed with every stroke of fortune, you must never grow complacent in your triumphs, nor lax in your will."
The receding of the well-water, the locust leaf leaving its branch — these were all portents.
The scholar named Qi Jingchun cautioned him: "Zhao Yao, do you remember the locust leaf I told you to keep safe?"
The young student nodded vigorously. "I have stored it away, together with the seal you gave me."
"Is there a leaf in this world that leaves its branch so lush and tender, so fresh and verdant that it seems ready to drip? Of the several thousand souls in this town, those blessed with such 'shade and shelter' number but a handful. That locust leaf — you may take it out and play with it whenever you wish. In days to come it may yet hold a fated chance."
The scholar's gaze was deep. "Beyond that, all these years I have set you to good deeds and good karma about the town, to treat all men with courtesy and win them with sincerity. In time you will come to understand the secret of it — for those seeming trifling deeds, drop by drop wearing through the stone, will yield you profits in the end that may well match the holding of a full county gazetteer."
The youth noticed that a yellow bird had alighted upon the stone beam, hopping from time to time, chattering and chirping.
Both hands behind his back, the scholar raised his head and studied the yellow bird, his expression grave.
The youth could discern nothing amiss.
All at once the scholar Qi Jingchun turned his gaze toward Clay Bottle Alley, and the furrow between his brows deepened.
He sighed softly. "The dormant insects are beginning to hear the spring and burst up from the ground. Yet to play the guest, and under the very eyes of the host go skulking about in such rat-and-whelp villainy — is that not a little too much presumption? Do you truly believe that with half a bowl of water fetched on your own head, you can do as you please in this place?"
Zhao Yao asked, anxious: "Master?"
The scholar waved a hand, making clear the matter had nothing to do with the youth, and only then led him on to stand beneath the final plaque.
The young scholar Zhao Yao stopped dead, as if he, too, were a dormant insect that had heard a sudden clap of spring thunder, his eyes gone rigid and staring.
Not far away, beneath the veil-pendant, there stood a young maiden in black robes with a curtain-veiled hat, a gauze screen hiding her countenance. Her figure was well-proportioned — neither slender nor full. At her waist hung a long sword in a snow-white scabbard on one side, and a narrow blade in a green scabbard on the other. She stood beneath the plaque reading "spirit surging past the Dipper and the Ox," her arms crossed over her chest, head tilted up.
The scholar found it amusing and cleared his throat softly.
The young student remained utterly dumbstruck, having entirely failed to heed his master's reminder that "what is not proper should not be looked upon."
The scholar smiled knowingly and, rather than scold, thought better of breaking the mood with another cough, and let the youth at his side stand staring foolishly at the maiden.
The maiden seemed not to have registered the youth's gaze at all.
She appeared to take especial delight in those four great characters of "spirit surging past the Dipper and the Ox." Where the other three plaques were written in the solemn, reverent regular script, this one alone was dashed off in running hand, and the verve of it bordered on sheer willfulness.
She liked it!
The youth started back to wakefulness — his master had clapped him on the shoulder and laughed: "Zhao Yao, you had best go back to the schoolhouse and gather up your things for home."
The youth flushed to the ears, and with head bowed followed his master back to the schoolhouse.
Only then did the maiden slowly unclench the five fingers she had wrapped about the hilt of her blade.
From the distance, the scholar teased: "Zhao Yao, oh Zhao Yao — I have just saved your life."
The youth stammered in alarm: "Master?"
The scholar hesitated, then said with gravity: "From now on, when you see her, you must by all means go around her and keep your distance."
The gentle scholar in the blue robe was both startled and a little downcast. "Master, why is that?"
Qi Jingchun thought a moment, then delivered a verdict to close the matter: "She is sharp beyond all measure — a sword with no sheath, she is fated to be."
The youth opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
The middle-aged scholar laughed. "Of course, if it is merely a matter of secretly taking a fancy to someone, neither the Taoist patriarch nor the Buddha himself could hold you back. Even we men of letters, with all our rules upon rules, have only the bidding of our most sacred teacher — 'what is not proper, do not speak, do not look, do not listen, do not move' — and nowhere has he said, do not think."
At that moment the youth seemed possessed by a demon. He blurted out: "She smells lovely!"
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the youth was struck dumb.
The scholar was rather put out — not angry, exactly, but the situation had grown awkward. He ordered in a low tone: "Zhao Yao, turn around!"
On instinct, the youth turned, presenting his back to his master.
Beneath the memorial archway, the maiden turned her head, killing intent blazing.
She let both hands fall to her sides, and the thumbs of each came to rest upon the pommel of her sword and the hilt of her blade. Then she broke into a short trot of a few steps, and with some four or five strides of full drive, set hands and feet suddenly to force — the three-foot sword in its snow-white scabbard and the slender blade in its green scabbard sprang free first, slanting forward and upward, even as her body sprang up from the ground and both hands seized sword and blade, and without another word she brought them down upon his head!
Between the maiden in black and the master-and-pupil pair there burst and stretched, across two arms that were by no means heavy, two arcs of blinding radiance.
This was no divine art, no sorcery.
It was pure speed!
The scholar wore an unhurried air, making no move to dodge, and simply stamped one foot lightly.
A ripple pulsed outward.
The next moment, the maiden's body tensed, and her murderous will deepened.
Striking forward like the wind, that single slash of sword and blade had missed entirely — and more, she found herself standing upon the very spot where she had drawn them.
The scholar smiled. "Not bad — even the lion striking at a hare puts forth its full strength. All the same, it must be said, my pupil did indeed offend you, young lady. But does he deserve to die?"
Deliberately deepening her voice to a dull, weary register, the maiden slid the sword slowly back into its sheath and took up the blade in a single-hand hold, pointing its tip straight at the scholar. "How you 'think' is your own affair. I do not care."
She took one step forward. "How I act is mine. Of course, you may... try to stop me!"
She surged forward with savage speed.
The ground beneath her front foot and her back foot caved in, leaving two small pits.
One hand behind his back, the scholar held the other loosely fisted before his belly, and laughed: "In the martial way of the soldiers' school, only swiftness is unstoppable. A pity this world, though it be on the verge of splitting apart, so long as it holds together — even if ten Land Immortals joined hands to break its formation, they would be but a praying mantis shaking a great tree. And you are one against how many?
The maiden, in the next instant, had again appeared — for no discernible reason — some dozen paces to the scholar's left.
She deliberated a moment, then shut her eyes.
The scholar shook his head with a smile. "It is not the sleight-of-hand you suppose. This world is akin to what the Buddhists call a small chiliocosm, and in here, I am simply..."
"Eh?"
He gave a sudden cry of surprise, cut off his words, and in an instant was at the maiden's side to look into the matter — two fingers closing gently about the point of the blade.
He asked: "Who taught you your blade-work and your swordsmanship?"
The maiden did not open her eyes. With her left hand she seized the hilt of the sword she had just returned to its sheath, and a gleam of cold light swept across the scholar's waist, seeking to cut him clean in two.
His two fingers still pinching the sword-point, the scholar barked: "Withdraw!"
A clattering and scraping sounded over the ground, and dust flew up in clouds. A moment later, the figure of the curtain-veiled maiden came into view, feet braced one before the other. Beneath her boots, running to the scholar's front, there stretched a furrow, as though plowed up from the earth.
Both the maiden's hands were a blur of blood and torn flesh.
The blade had come out of its scabbard, and the sword too — and yet she had fallen to the pass of having a weapon wrenched from her bare-handed.
And she knew full well that, save for the "architecture" of this world, her enemy had all along kept his cultivation pressed down to the same realm as her own.
This was a case of being outskilled.
Not a case of insufficient cultivation.
She seemed to hover at the very brink of frenzy.
And, likely, the maiden herself did not realize it — but centered upon her, the very light about her had begun to warp and twist.
This schoolmaster was, after all, the most reasonable of men; understanding her state, he coaxed: "For the time being you had best not be comparing yourself with me. It may well obstruct your martial heart. To reign supreme in the martial way, you must proceed step by step — that is of the highest importance."
He cut a somewhat grotesque figure just then — one hand holding the point of the blade, the other laid crosswise along its flat.
He broke into a laugh, mimicking the maiden's manner of speech, "world-weary and timeworn": "Whether you listen is your freedom. Whether I speak is my affair."
The maiden was silent for a space, then answered in a low voice: "You have taught me!"
The scholar nodded with a smile. It was a good thing, he thought, that she was not one of those arrogant, overbearing women. Gently he tossed the blade back to her. "The blade I return to you first."
He looked down at the long sword in his other hand, which trembled with a faint, resonant hum.
The young phoenix sings clearer than the old.
The scholar said with regret: "The temper of this sword is far from common, yet it still falls short of the very peak, so that it can bear, at most, the weight of but two characters — and even that is a strain. Otherwise, given your innate aptitude and bone, to take but three of the four would invariably be within your reach..."
As he sighed, he idly raised a hand and barked: "Decree!"
Two blazes of blinding light shot out from the plaque of "spirit surging past the Dipper and the Ox," and with two sweeps of his sleeve the scholar batted them into the long sword.
Upon the plaque, the characters "spirit" and "Ox" yet kept their vigor.
The characters "surging" and "Dipper" seemed like a man of years laid low upon a sickbed, who, after one last flare of light upon the verge of death, at last gave up wholly the last of spirit and vital force.
Carelessly the scholar flicked his wrist, and the long sword was, in the blink of an eye, back in its owner's scabbard. And because it had been sheathed away, no one yet knew that along its blade there now coursed two breaths, swimming and writhing like a pair of flood dragons.
What happened next astounded even the world-worn Qi Jingchun.
Slowly the maiden drew the sword from its scabbard, and with a flick of her wrist flung it away; it struck into the yellow earth at a slant and fixed there. Beyond the veil-pendant's hanging gauze, her eyes were unyielding as iron. "This is not the sword-way I seek."
The scholar cast a glance at the sword the maiden had cast off, and felt in the depths of his heart a long-familiar heaviness. He felt it necessary to ask the question that carried some weight: "Do you know who I am?"
The maiden nodded, then shook her head. "I have heard that with every cycle of sixty years, this place changes to a new sage among the three teachings to come preside over the workings of a great formation, and that this has gone on for several thousand years. From time to time, someone who has gone out from here either carries away a rare treasure or finds his cultivation abruptly leaping forward, and so I wished to come and see. The moment I set eyes on you, I knew your identity — else I would not have struck so bluntly at the outset."
Qi Jingchun asked again: "Then do you know what it was, this moment past, that you cast aside?"
The maiden said not a word.
Upon the ground, within that abandoned scabbard, the long sword trembled unceasing — like a beauty of a nation's ruin sobbing and wailing, pleading with all her might for a lover to relent and turn back.
The young scholar had long since slanted his head about, gazing at the distant maiden with careful, stolen glances.
The scholar's learning could not be gainsaid, and yet he remained at a loss to account for it; it would not do to force that sword, heavy with a vast fortune and vital force, upon the maiden after all. At last, he could only offer a word of caution: "Miss, best to take up that sword again. In the days ahead, this town will be very... restless. One more weapon about one's person, in the end, is no bad thing."
The maiden said nothing and turned to go.
Still she would not take the sword up.
Somewhat helpless, Qi Jingchun gave a flick of his sleeve and nailed that sword high into a stone pillar of the archway. Should anyone try to wrench it free by force, it would necessarily disturb him who sat at the formation's heart — just as, before, the "storyteller," in his double strikes, one open and one hidden, had not escaped this schoolmaster's watchful gaze from afar.
Having himself seen Zhao Yao all the way from the schoolhouse to the great Zhao residence on Fortune Street, the middle-aged scholar walked slowly on; and with every step he took, in certain hidden corners of those deep courtyard mansions that lined the avenue, there flickered and vanished, in an instant, streams of a gloss that was hard to perceive.
Qi Jingchun murmured to himself: "A curious thing — where has this little girl come from? Could she be the scion of an immortal family beyond this prefecture?"
Returned to the schoolhouse, he sat down behind his writing desk. There lay an ivory tablet of jade, about one foot two inches in length, carved at its four corners with images of the four guardian mountains, signifying peace in every quarter, and its face was inscribed, close-packed, with seal-script graven marks of no fewer than a hundred characters.
By the rites of the Confucian order, could only the Son of Heaven of a single realm hold the sovereign jade tablet.
Enough to show how weighty was this little town.
He turned it over. Upon the reverse of the jade tablet, only two characters had been cut, sparse and few.
Their strokes were of the strictest discipline, and yet carried a spirit entirely their own.
Their sinew and bone been strengthened to the utmost, their meaning and spirit drawn out to the longest.
On the writing desk, too, lay a sealed letter, delivered hardly a moment ago.
The scholar, frost at his temples, blinked back a faint redness at the rims of his eyes. "My master, your student is a man of no ability, who can only watch, helpless, as you suffer so..."
The scholar turned his gaze to the window, with no great grief or joy in his face, only a certain loneliness in his expression. "Qi Jingchun is ashamed before his kindly teacher. Having eked out a hundred years of life, I owe but one thing yet — death."
---
When Song Jixin took something out from the inner room and set it upon the table, Fu Nanhua, try as he might to hide it, could not keep the wild joy from his face.
A small, unremarkable pot, its base bearing the maker's mark "Mountain Sprite."
Song Jixin folded both hands upon the tabletop, leaned his body forward, and asked with a smile: "How much is this pot worth?"
The young heir of Old Dragon City was only with difficulty able to drag his eyes away from the little pot, and looked up, candid: "Sold in the mortal kingdoms, it would not fetch a single tael of silver. But if it were given over to me to sell, it could buy back a city."
Song Jixin asked: "City of a few tens of thousands?"
Fu Nanhua held up three fingers.
Song Jixin gave an "oh," and pursed his lips. "So, three hundred thousand, is it."
Fu Nanhua blinked, then laughed aloud.
He had expected Song Jixin to say thirty thousand.
---
Over in Apricot Blossom Lane, a dull, wooden-faced man crouched beside the iron-locked well, staring at the iron chain bound fast to the axle-bed of a windlass cart.
He seemed locked in a struggle over how best to carry it away.
---
The maiden — in the black robes and curtain-veiled hat, with her cold, aloof bearing — wandered at large about the town, without purpose or direction, wearing now only the narrow blade in its green scabbard, her two hands bound up in hasty strips of cloth.
The moment she stepped into an unnamed lane, there came a *shk* — something shot through the air, then came to obedient rest behind her, humming and buzzing.
The maiden frowned. Without turning her head, she hissed one word through her teeth: "Scram!"
There came another *shk*.
That "flying sword," which had leaped from its sheath and flown all this way, took fright in earnest and darted back into its scabbard.
The proud maiden.
The obedient flying sword.