When Fu Nanhua stepped out, he found that comely little maidservant on a stool in the courtyard, a handful of maize in hand, feeding hens — an old mother hen leading a brood of fluffy chicks pecking at the grain. He offered a faint smile; she twitched a corner of her mouth in return. Opening the gate, he found Cai Jinjian waiting in the lane, her spirits low. As he shut the door, through the narrowing crack he caught a face tilting up toward him — and suddenly realized this servant girl, whom one would expect to reek of mud, had a pair of quite extraordinary eyes that set her off like a tender green at the start of spring. But he did not dwell on it; women of striking beauty, willowy or full-figured, had grown altogether wearying to the heir of Old Dragon City.
Walking alongside Cai Jinjian, he asked, "No luck? These fated chances ripen slowly; not every stroke lands at a single blow."
Cai Jinjian, all soft alluring curves and, after the marrow-washing and bone-refining of cultivation, as clear as glass beside any mortal woman, wore a face none too fair tonight. "Some high personage got there before me — one of the local big fish of Letter Scroll Lake, the True Lord Who Severs the River, Liu Zhimao. He granted me not a scrap of room to bargain. From the first he trotted out the founding ancestor of my own Cloud Mist Mountain to lean on a mere junior. I scarce spoke three sentences before he shoved me out of Gu Can's courtyard."
Fu Nanhua cautioned her, "No more till we're out of Mud Vase Lane."
"But is not all spellcraft forbidden here?" she asked.
Fu Nanhua smiled. "Every fortune-seeker carries a trump card. By this town's rules the deeper one's cultivation, the harder it suppresses you; but if some enlightened master were willing to burn his own cultivation, could he truly be bested by latecomers like us?"
"The sage is here! Would he dare war on me?"
"We came to seek good fortune, not sow enmity," Fu urged. "Even short of mortal danger, to poison relations with such elders is an ill turn."
Cai Jinjian nodded — she was no one to twist at trifles. "Sound counsel, Brother Fu." Then her face crumpled. "But I cannot swallow it. I have already handed you ten Cloud Root Stones; if it all comes to naught, how am I to answer my forbears?"
Once they left Mud Vase Lane, both felt a surge of renewed vitality at once — and this was no mere brightening of the light. They exchanged a glance and looked away.
Fu Nanhua cooled as he turned the matter over. His compact with Cai Jinjian had betrayed no slip; his bargain with Song Jixin was watertight, a fair deal by every rule. Would that sage, who watches the winds and waters come and go, meddle in his affairs? Then whence this pressure? Could it be that True Lord Who Severs the River, whose name he had never heard? Cai Jinjian's thoughts ran far simpler: she feared Fu was right, that the True Lord had indeed used some art to put her under watch, and trembled that she had spoken only grumbles, no threats.
So they walked, each with a different weight on the heart, and the farther from Mud Vase Lane, the lighter the pressure. Fu Nanhua took it for the heaviness of fated chance; Cai Jinjian, for the weight of family.
Gazing at the memorial arch ahead, Fu Nanhua asked, "The True Lord Who Severs the River, of Letter Scroll Lake? I never heard the name. Even my far-southern Old Dragon City — a True Lord's station is no small thing; I ought to know of it."
Cai Jinjian sneered, lowering her voice. "A 'true lord'? A mere true person well up among the side-path sects, and the most sanctimonious of all. He has no right to the title — it is idle flattery. Think how shrewd the Yuanwu Emperor is. A True Lordship, once granted, may take two centuries to come back. His forbears flung theirs about, so only two titles remain to him — he would hardly waste one on a wild side-path cultivator greedy for empty fame."
"Ah, so that's the way of it."
Every True Lord seated within a dynasty may gather and grow the state's fortune on the sovereign's behalf. A Daoist True Lord stands at the very pinnacle of the temple-hall where the Daoist sects meet the mortal world — with the strategists' great Pillar of the Realm and the Confucians' Grand Scholar on the same height.
As if at random, Cai Jinjian asked, "And this Song Jixin?"
Fu Nanhua answered as idly. "That youth? Ambitious to a fault, sharp by nature, no small backing behind him — only his frame of mind..."
"Narrow?" She smiled.
Fu let out a laugh. "I would not say narrow. Only not wide enough."
Reaching the arch, Fu Nanhua, full of high spirits, murmured, "When fortune comes, heaven and earth act together."
Cai Jinjian raised her eyes to the four characters overhead — "Seek nothing outward" — and felt a strange hollowness, as though the insight she had won in Mud Vase Lane had been handed back to the town entire. It made her fretfully restless.
---
Song Jixin's mansion counted among the great households of Mud Vase Lane, with a main hall and two side chambers besides. The hall's plaque read "Hall of Cherishing the Distant" and bore no signature; Song Jixin always felt the calligraphy was no great master's work.
In the principal chamber, the youth rummaged through chests while his maidservant stood at the door. "Young master, did the deal fall through?"
Song Jixin set down a string of bells, laced his hands behind his head. "That Fu Nanhua of Old Dragon City is no complete fool. He never took me for a greenhorn — but neither is he all that clever. He tried to win me with friendship — what sport! And when I bluffed at random he showed his fox's tail. A show of thunder to hold out stick and carrot and cow the young master — compared to Mr. Qi, whom one can never read, a full fifty thousand leagues off."
"Fifty thousand leagues — that's an exaggeration," said Zhigui.
Song Jixin pulled a face. "Then make it ten Mud Vase Lanes' worth!"
He tossed her a pouch. "These are the coins that secret letter mentioned. That Chen fellow next door got a pouch too, and I had a hunch such sky-fallen fortune wasn't a good thing. Sure enough, it's riled up those two canines. More misery's in store for him, I dare say. And listen, Zhigui — this one called himself the young heir of Old Dragon City; by his bearing, at least he's no silk pillow stuffed with straw. And this pendant — he called it 'Old Dragon Calling the Rain' — must be worth a fortune!" He patted the green jade at his belt, feeling a long stride nearer to such a scholar as Mr. Qi.
Zhigui opened the pouch. "Young master, couldn't you bring back a few more pouches of these copper coins?"
"You like them?" She pinched a golden coin between two fingers, gave it a shake, and laughed with delight. "All shining gold — how lucky it looks."
Song Jixin laughed in spite of himself. "All right, then. Coins of this sort, out in the world, are kept in many ways — the lucky coins on roof-beams, the spring-welcome coins on peach-wood talismans, the offering coins in a Buddha's belly or hand. But the common folk have their customs, and the immortal houses their own names."
She squinted, eyes like crescent moons. "And Chen Ping'an's pouch?"
Song Jixin frowned. "Him?" Catching the odd flicker in his mood, she tucked the coins away. "Nothing," he said, twisting his own neck, as lightly as a passing cloud. "A few blasted memories. No hurry with Chen — no sense dragging trouble onto ourselves. But Zhao Yao the bookworm will likely get a pouch, and he's easy to fool — I'll bring you a whole one back from him."
Zhigui walked out into the courtyard and saw that eyesore of a four-legged lizard, half dead, sunning itself contentedly. Her temper flaring, she planted a foot on its head and ground her toe hard; it squealed piteously. She lifted her foot and it shot away, tearing about and thumping walls. This dun four-legged lizard of hers. The golden carp that, greedy, swam into a fish-basket. The black loach Gu Can kept in a water vat. Of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth — three of five had gone. Watching the little-horned lizard, she grinned with contempt. "Stupid beast!"
---
In the courtyard of the boy Gu Can, the old man and the woman still sat facing each other. He held up his palm, studying its spreading lines, his mind uneasy.
"Madam Gu — women like you, married to outside men, are there many in this town?"
"Not many. Along these parts of Mud Vase Lane and Apricot Blossom Lane, I am the only one."
The old man hesitated, then let slip a sliver of heaven's design. "For a girl, the ages six and twelve; for a boy, nine and eighteen — the two great thresholds. The first you cross by your own strength; the second can be given a shove from outside. Then one more door, where richer and nobler houses hold the advantage. Open the door, step into the hall, enter the chamber — of the first two, only fated chance decides; and as for the very first, whether one succeeds hangs wholly on heaven's pleasure to hand down the rice."
The woman's eyes brimmed with laughter. "For my Gu Can, whom you, Immortal, chose at a single glance — surely he can cross that first step on his own?"
The old man gave a smile that was not quite a smile. "Every child raised inside this town, by that very fact, has nothing special in bone and foundation. Your Gu Can, not yet nine, is no exception."
The woman's face fell.
He stamped the ground and smiled. "Be at ease. Bone and foundation matter, but they are not the first thing in the scale. If heaven looks kindly, even a roadside dog or a blade of grass may yet cultivate the Great Dao and stride to the clouds. This town has broken all precedent to admit outsiders — a last resort. A field, however fine its soil, after thousands of years of clearing and reaping, drained to the pond's mud for its fish, must at last run barren. And so this place has finally reached its last great year. Whenever a man nears death, in that flash of the candle before it gutters, his spirit swells to a mighty pitch — and it is of this your Gu Can reaps the benefit. The fated chance is beyond imagining, leaving far behind the town's gifted."
The woman's lips trembled, her eyes brimming. "But do not grow greedy," he added. "Such a one is not your son alone. Across all vast Baoping, even one worthy to hold it all alone has surely not yet been born."
"Enough," she breathed. "Enough."
Thinking of that junior of Cloud Mist Mountain, the old man mocked, "Bustling after things outside oneself — she traded a watermelon for a sesame seed. And no wonder: those stuffed heads of Cloud Mist Mountain never had wide sight, else they'd not have left me this head start. To hold a nearly inexhaustible treasure-mountain and yet sink to having a mere disciple's junior prop the house — it ought to have rolled in endless riches."
Within, the boy battering the door had climbed onto a stool, sprawled at the window. "Mother, let me out, won't you? I'll be good!" The woman glanced at the Immortal, who nodded; she unbarred the door, took the boy's hand, and led him out. "Can, no mischief! Your mother has never struck you, but disobey this once and she truly will."
Gu Can sat on a stool with his mother and the old man, a three-legged tripod. "Mother, what did you and the storytelling elder talk about?" The old man gave an exclamation, shook his wrist, and the great white bowl reappeared in his palm. He stared into it, his gaze unreadable — upon its water ripples spread, a black line darting, striking the bowl's wall. "Very well," he muttered. "Go where you will."
To take on this disciple he had worked three covert strokes in Mud Vase Lane, at the cost of decades of his cultivation. The first: making that woman step in dog droppings. The last: by a secret art, making her truly believe she had attained enlightenment — impossible outside this town, where even a genuine True Lord would scarce dare, but here Cai Jinjian was no more than a mortal, and the old man, at great cost, had found his opening. The second, most delicate, seemed a stroke of genius even to him: to make the woman believe the straw-sandaled boy's well-meant warning was sly revenge — and so he had slowed the boy's voice just enough for her to catch the detail. A scheme laid thread by thread.
Madam Gu's heart hung suspended, dreading ill news. The old man caught, from the tail of his eye, a child stealing upright and breaking into a run for the gate. She screamed. The old man, the white bowl in hand, rose unhurriedly. "Disciple, let your master show you the breadth of heaven and earth, lest your unwisdom wreck our great enterprise!" Darkness swept her eyes, and she toppled. He lashed his sleeve. In the next instant the child stumbled and fell — then, bewildered, looked up. "Where is this?"
"Within the bowl," the old man said calmly, hands behind his back. Then he bawled, "Stand up!" The child rose, stock-still, and found himself on a cliff's edge, before him a seething sea of clouds. Then his eyes flew wide: from the white a colossal torso broke through, moving slowly — too vast for its true form ever to show. He staggered back; the old man pressed a palm on his head. "One step back, and you will hardly move another on the path for life! Stand your ground!" Tears gushed from Gu Can's eyes; the boy, who had never known fear, dared not even cry aloud. His legs trembled. The clouds began to thin, and more and more blackness showed in the sky — vast, enormous — very much like... the little loach in his water vat at home, grown monstrous? Unbidden, the thought came to him. He lost all composure, stepped forward, and stretched a slender arm to the sky. A head, huge as a mountain, came gliding from the cloud-sea. His eyes shone, utterly unafraid; he even beckoned and shouted, "Hurry! So you've grown this big! No wonder the fish and crabs in the vat were always fewer by morning."
Behind him, the True Lord Who Severs the River of Letter Scroll Lake was a tangle of loss and envy, and of tender pride welling up. Though he could never know such fortune himself, to gain such a disciple was fortune enough — his journey not in vain! He watched the approaching head and murmured, "A marvel of the world."
---
Chen Ping'an told the black-robed girl he must step inside; and at the last, in a corner, back to her, he hid something in his palm. Coming out, he said he would buy her a clay pot for the medicine — the house wanted one. After he hurried off, the girl glanced at the dark corner, where an old worn jar still stood. Her hearing, in truth, was exceedingly fine. In his palm had been a shard of broken porcelain — exceedingly sharp.