Having spoken, the Confucian smiled wryly at himself. What was so precious about being a disciple of Qi Jingchun's, after all? Pack one room with village schoolchildren, collect the offerings of lesson gifts from each, and you earned no more than three hundred copper coins a year — while some poor boy's household, scraping it together, could manage only three strips of dried pork.
Qi Jingchun turned to the youth who held to his resolve. "In your heart you do not wish to kill him. But this man means to kill you no matter what. So is it that you kill him outright, settle the matter cleanly, and let tomorrow lie with tomorrow? Or do you cling to smoothing things over? Am I right?"
The youth, who had so often eavesdropped on the boy scholars reciting next door, answered at once: "Sir, how would you instruct me?"
"Chen Ping'an, why not first try letting go of your right hand, and only then decide whether to walk a stretch of the town with me. There are matters in which I cannot shirk my share of blame — I must give you an accounting."
Chen Ping'an hesitated, then uncurled his hand — and found with a start that Fu Nanhua did not stir at all. His gaze, his hair, his breathing — all frozen. Qi Jingchun had set the great formation in motion; the town had returned to the Deepest End.
"Keep close at my heels," Qi said softly, "and try not to stray more than ten steps."
The middle-aged Confucian walked first toward the lane's end, robes fluttering, body weightless. Chen Ping'an followed close, glancing at his left palm — flesh mangled, white bone showing — yet the visible blood no longer flowed.
"Chen Ping'an," Qi asked, "do you believe there are gods and spirits, imps and demons in this world?"
The boy nodded. "I do. When I was little, my mother told me old tales, and would have me believe good is repaid with good and evil with evil — those were her most frequent words, so I remember them well. Also that water-ghosts in the creek drag children down, that a lord of the underworld holds court by night at the abandoned shrine, that our door-gods come alive come nightfall to guard our houses. These I used to hardly believe. But now… I think they are, more likely than not, true."
"In what she said some was true, some false. As for good repaid with good — that is hard to settle. The common folk, the emperors and ministers, and the immortal cultivators each define good and evil by a different measure, and each draws different conclusions."
As though he had read the boy's thoughts, Qi answered calmly: "This town is the resting place of the last true dragon in all the world. Innumerable dragon-kind hold it the most flourishing of places, fated on some day to 'give birth to a dragon.' In three thousand years that birth has never come — yet the children born here are indeed far above their peers beyond the town. Many famed immortal consorts of the Baoping Continent, had they mated, would produce no better. Of course, not every child is struck with startling talent."
He smiled, and, fearing to wound the child, changed the subject: "In that great slaughter of dragons, almost every cultivator who took part came away wounded. Many settled here to cultivate, to meet death calmly; some Daoist consorts survived by luck, some pairs, fighting shoulder to shoulder, mended into wedlock. Thus, after three thousand years, the town grew to its present size. On the map of the Great Li Dynasty it was first called Large Marsh Township; a sage later renamed it Dragon Abyss; and after that, to avoid a certain emperor's given name, the 'abyss' had to be altered…"
At last the boy could hold his words no longer, and softly broke in, fists clenched: "Sir, the question I truly want to ask is about my father and mother… just what sort of people were they?"
Qi Jingchun sank into thought. "Since that wandering Daoist has already leaked heaven's secrets to you, I too can speak through the breach he opened. In my memory, your father was a gentle, honest, good-hearted man, mediocre in talent, hardly worth being spirited away — and so he became in certain eyes a chicken's rib, counted a losing bargain. Whether from a fit of fury, or because life had grown too straitened, some porcelain buyer beyond the town meddled with his life-binding porcelain; and from that day his fate ran hard, dragging you and your mother down. Later he came by chance to learn porcelain's secret — that once fired and carried beyond the town, a man becomes a marionette on strings for life. And so he secretly smashed yours. If I remember aright, it was a porcelain paperweight."
He spoke gravely. "Every infant born here each year is given a code, stored in the secret archives. Men charged with the task draw out a drop of heart's-blood, poured into the vessel that will be fired — six years for a girl, nine for a boy, kiln fire never once interrupted. A child's talent is like the quality of a fired piece: one must trust to heaven and luck. But the stakes for a 'gambled porcelain' are enormous. Though your aptitude is plain, you may imagine those buyers' fury when your father, with stubborn resolve, smashed that paperweight."
"As for your mother, she was a woman of quiet, gentle temper." He laughed suddenly. "When she married your father, no few townsfolk of her generation were put out. But ask me for your parents' intimate particulars, and you set me a hard task — besides teaching, I had many duties here."
The boy gave a soft sound, turned away, and wiped his face carelessly with his good hand, forgetting the sorry state of his left — his cheek smeared with blood, yet unwilling to use his sleeve.
The two passed the Twelve-Pillar Memorial Arch.
Qi Jingchun, not looking at him, spoke openly: "When the true dragon fell here, four sages appeared in person and drew up a pact: every sixty years, a new person should be stationed here in turn, to watch over the dead dragon's lingering fortune. Even then there was no small dispute over root and branch. But to lay such unspeakable secrets before you would be to harm you. In the main, the three teachings — Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist — with the school of strategists, these four lead; the hundred schools, cavern-heavens, immortal lineages, great clans of the Baoping Continent, each hold a measure of the benefit. It is laughable, but whether within a century one held a place among the permitted 'porcelain buyers' had all but become the mark of a first-rate sect or house."
"Sir, I cannot understand it," Chen Ping'an said, "but I have remembered it all. And to know today that my parents were good people — that leaves me content."
"I do not presume you can grasp it now. These were groundwork; else, were I simply to urge you not to kill Fu Nanhua, you could not take it in. It is not that I, Qi Jingchun, grieve for one of my kind, that the fox mourns the hare — still less do I hope Fu Nanhua and Old Dragon City will feel gratitude and repay me favors. Quite the opposite. We Confucians revere engagement with the world and most resent the recklessness of cultivators; we have wrestled for countless years. Had I been of an age to study at Cliff Academy, then True Lord Liu Zhimao, or Fu Nanhua the heir of Old Dragon City, would not have a breath of life about them — one palm-strike and they would be ground to ash."
The boy found that at such a moment Master Qi, though still mild and gracious, gave quite another impression — a changed man, like Old Man Yao deep in his cups declaring that the porcelain they fired was for His Majesty the Emperor himself. Master Qi's tone differed, but he wore the same look.
Qi Jingchun knit his brows and looked toward Mud Vase Lane, as though listening to someone. He betrayed no distaste, yet displeasure was unconcealed in his eyes. At last he said coldly: "Depart at once!"
The boy looked up, bewildered.
"It is that storyteller — Liu Zhimao by name, True Lord Who Severs the River by style, a Daoist of heterodox paths, middling in cultivation, base in conduct. More than half your enmity with Cai Jinjian and Fu Nanhua is of his stirring. At the last he planted upon your heart a crooked talisman — a four-character spell carving 'a single heart that seeks death' upon your heart's field. A most virulent means."
Chen Ping'an silently memorized the name.
Qi sighed. "Do you not wonder why I myself did not strike?" The boy shook his head. Qi spoke, to himself as much as to the boy: "This stretch of heaven and earth is like an old porcelain vessel weathered three thousand years, on the verge of shattering. You remain an outsider, and the formation shields you; whatever you do, so long as you go not too far, you will not crack the vessel. But I am the one who holds the porcelain. Any movement of mine pulls at its cracks — whatever I do only makes the fissures spread. If only the porcelain shattered, it would be one thing; but the present and future destinies of five thousand six hundred souls lie in my hands. How could I dare take it lightly?"
These words, long pent up, he spoke too softly; Chen Ping'an pricked up his ears and still could not make them out.
They had reached the Iron Lock Well in Apricot Blossom Lane, where a woman bent to draw water. "If a stranger fell into the well, and you knew that to save him you would die — would you save him?"
Chen Ping'an thought, then asked in turn: "I want to know — could I really save him?"
Qi did not answer, but laughed: "Remember this — a gentleman does not rescue."
The boy was startled. "Gentleman?"
Qi hesitated, crouched, righted the boy's lapels, wiped the blood from his face, and said gently: "Meeting misfortune, a man feels first a heart of compassion. But a gentleman is no stodgy pedant. He may go to the well's edge — but he will never cast himself into a place of certain death."
Stirred, the boy asked in earnest: "Sir, can I still live now? And if so, how much longer?"
Qi thought carefully, rose slowly, and said with finality: "If you are not afraid of a rough road, of eating bitter hardship, then you are certain to live."
The boy's smile broke forth, radiant. "I am not afraid of hardship!"
Thinking how calmly the youth had borne all along, Qi was set at ease. "Come. Let me take you somewhere. Though I cannot help you much, since matters have come to this pass, letting you survive this calamity can in no way breach the rules. In truth, a share of fortune's favor was owed you all along."
The two came to the foot of the old locust. All within and without the town was hushed — only the old locust stood as the singular exception, its leaves trembling faintly, swaying with grace.
Standing still, his countenance grave, Qi made a low bow and asked: "May Qi Jingchun beg of you a single locust leaf, so that this youth may leave the town safe and, at the least within three years, be spared the calamities of fortune's surge that would strike back?"
The thousand-year-old locust was silent. Again he asked: "Qi Jingchun has kept his station here for fifty-nine years. If there is no credit, there is at least the pain of toil. Can I not beg even a single ancestral leaf? And the boy is a native of your own town. O worthies of yore, why so miserly?"
Still no reply. The stillness was a silent sneer. You, Qi Jingchun, may be mighty, but you are but one within this heaven and earth, and the pitiful one who minds the formation's pivot. We will not bestow this favor of incense for nothing. What can you do?
Qi's face shifted; in the end he sighed and looked down, ashamed.
The boy grinned and tried to comfort him: "Daoist Lu said that if I go south of town, find a blacksmith surnamed Ruan and become his apprentice, I may live. Master Qi, without this… locust leaf, surely it is no great matter!"
"Your honest words?" Qi asked, smiling.
The boy scratched his head, shy: "No. A lie."
Then — suddenly — a single locust leaf, fresh and dripping with verdure, drifted down from high in the crown, settling of itself into the boy's outstretched palm. Upon it flashed a golden character, gone in an instant.
Startled, Qi said gravely after a moment: "This is the name Yao — Chen Ping'an, are you willing to repay the Yao clan for this kindness, in life and death alike? Let me be plain: even without this leaf you were not without a thread of hope. Think it over with the greatest care!"
"Is it the Yao of Master Yao's name?" the boy asked.
Qi nodded. "Exactly."
The boy pressed his palms together, cradling the leaf, and called out loudly: "So long as I live a single day, so long as it be a Yao bound up with you, Master Qi — even if he should fall into a well, even if to save him means certain death, I, Chen Ping'an, will save him all the same!"
The heavens were silent, a perfect stillness.
"Come, let us go," Qi Jingchun smiled.
As he led the boy away, he quietly turned his head toward the locust's crown, and cold mockery crossed his face. It was not that there were no leaves bearing the surname Chen — far more than one or two. But in the end, knowing this place was on the verge of collapse, they would rather seek another host, even one not surnamed Chen, and still not a single favor of ancestral incense was willing to look kindly upon the straw-sandaled youth of Mud Vase Lane.
Qi turned, rubbed the boy's head, teasing: "Had it been a Song Jixin, a Zhao Yao, a Gu Can — such a grand vow as you just made who knows but it might have stirred heaven and earth to resonance."
The boy's smile was bright as sunshine. "That I cannot govern. I have only to do my own part."
"Were those your honest words this time?"
"Yes!"