As Liu Xianyang and Chen Ping'an stepped out of Mud Vase Lane, the two companies of strangers stood on either side. On the left, a little girl rode astride the neck of a stalwart, snow-white-haired old man; on the right stood a proud boy in a vivid crimson robe beside a woman of stately bearing. Liu Xianyang walked through the middle of them with a general's poise, which won the white-haired elder's approval. The straw-sandaled youth, with all the wary stiffness he strove to hide, was not worth a second glance.
Lu Zhengchun, having taken leave of the lads, stayed behind and reported with a quaking heart: "Liu Xianyang proposes that you sirs each name a fitting price, whereupon he will, at bitter sacrifice, sell the ancestral heirloom."
The woman asked the white-haired elder: "And what does Elder Ape make of this?"
The old man said gravely: "Three times, and no more. Before then, do as Liu Xianyang suggests — give him a fortune grand enough to drown in. Zhengyang Mountain can grant the boy the standing of a true-hall disciple, and privately I will lend him a magic treasure for a hundred years. As for the Xu clan of your Qingfeng City, settle it as you see fit."
The old man ignored the woman's wonder at also offering a treasure, smiling to his little mistress: "These shops have every kind of provenance. Wander a little, my lady — you might find a bargain." As the girl cried "Giddyap!" he roared with laughter and jogged off, moving like a mountain.
The boy sneered: "Zhengyang Mountain puts on a prodigious air!" His mother explained as they walked that aside from the main path, Zhengyang Mountain had a dedicated "way of the sword," which had opened six roads to its summit — six genuine sword immortals. The boy scoffed at old glories. His mother told him the little girl, his own age, could roam the qi-torn "sword peak" longer than several of the mountain's ancestors. The boy flared: why had she not told him sooner — had he married the girl and joined her in a dao-bond, what advantage for Qingfeng City! His mother laughed. Both were geniuses bound for the "upper five realms," so the thread of their fate was tangled; to force it would only harm. "Do you truly think she simply loathes you?" The boy frowned. "And what else?" She said softly: "Let things take their own course."
The boy turned solemn: "Mother, I dislike the one skulking behind Liu Xianyang — from the first glance, greatly!" "And why?" "He is strange, unlike Lu Zhengchun who understands everything, or Liu Xianyang who understands nothing. And above all — I loathe his eyes!" His mother, taking it for childishness, soothed him: within the town he could not do as he pleased, but let him think of what awaited these folk once this little heaven and earth crumbled, and his heart would soon be easier. The boy nodded, repeating the word he had spoken on first seeing the straw-sandaled youth: "An ant!"
——
Once past the town, the two soon reached the gallery bridge. Liu Xianyang asked idly why Song Jixin's father had built it, and why he had covered over the old stone-arch bridge beneath — "like it's wearing an overcoat; I wonder if it gets hot in summer!" Hung at its end was a four-character gilded plaque: "Wind Rises, Water Runs." As they mounted the steps, Liu Xianyang stamped his feet. "Old Yao told me there's something queer under these steps. When the bridge was new, Song Jixin's father had a pit dug and a man-tall porcelain jar buried in it. Scared?" Chen Ping'an snorted. They passed into the shade, Liu Xianyang wondering whether the deep pool below had drowned men needing exorcism. Chen Ping'an never spoke lightly of ghosts.
This new bridge still smelled of timber and lacquer. Its great beams came from forests sealed away for ages, timber of the fiercest difficulty; the stream ran too low to float such logs, so the work was done in torrential rain, a step from the flood. No one had drowned, and men said the tutor Qi Jingchun himself had come to show them the work — by his blessing all went safe.
At the north steps Liu Xianyang dropped onto a great blue stone, Chen Ping'an squatting beside him. "If not for me," Liu asked, "would you and Song Jixin have become close?" Chen shook his head: "Better, maybe, but not much." Liu pressed; Song Jixin was a book-proud talker but no villain. Chen smiled: "Enough of that. When we reach the iron-smith's, don't slouch. Whether you keep your family's magic armor depends on becoming Master Ruan's door-entering disciple." "I know, I know — this nagging temper of yours should be mended someday, or it'll wear a body to the bone."
Liu lay back, head on the topmost stair, gazing at the sky. "You walked far with old Yao and climbed high. How far can you see from up there?" Chen plucked a licorice root, dusted it, and chewed: "The farthest time, the year before last — old Yao and I went and came back in ten days, skirting a dozen sealed peaks. We came to a mountain so tall it stopped a body mid-stride. Halfway up, all you saw was cloud. We barely gained the summit. And then…" He fell silent. Liu waited, then laughed: "Don't pull your trousers up halfway through your business!" Chen said softly that old Yao thought little of him, never lectured him, never taught him the real kiln craft; but that day, in a good mood, he had spoken a little more — told him to look at the view and say nothing of it after, for a man should bury his head in his work, and one with only a wagging tongue would shame himself even beyond the town. Liu, not praising old Yao, admitted he disliked nobody, only softening toward himself. Chen nodded, grateful in his heart.
Liu erupted: "After all that, you still haven't told me what you saw!" Chen pointed east: "The mountain we climbed was tall, but to the east was another, taller — I couldn't even say how tall." "A tall mountain, that's all? I thought you'd seen an immortal on the clouds!" Chen mused, longing: "Who's to say there isn't a real immortal up there?" Liu: "Do immortals eat and drink and do their business?" Chen rubbed his chin: "If they have to go to the privy, that would be unseemly." Liu slapped his head and ran: "Then an immortal just dropped its load on your head!" Dizzied, Chen muttered about thunder as sleeping immortals' snores and rain as some greater misstep, then caught up with the tall lad.
Roughhousing all the way, they came to the iron-smith's by the stream, where seven or eight mud huts and thatched cottages already stood — to Chen's eyes, armfuls of copper cash. A crowd of village lads was digging wells; most were ex-dragon-kiln apprentices of Liu's age, the imperial porcelain rice-bowl lost, grateful to snag an iron one. As Liu told it, most helpers were day laborers; Master Ruan would take at most a few inner-chamber disciples, the rest mere long-term hands. Liu waved: "Wait here while I greet Master Ruan. If you saw his daughter swing a hammer you'd be scared to death!"
Chen stayed put. Seven well-wombs had been opened, some with men bobbing up with baskets on their heads. Out of habit he crouched and worked a handful of earth between his fingers — damp, yet no water earth but fire earth of the last class: old Yao called it "July fire-flow soil," its temper turning warm and mild, apt for shaping, and when shoring well-walls it rarely collapsed — a good thing. Master Ruan, if no master of well-digging, was no novice either. Only, Chen could not see why so many wells in so small a place.
He turned toward the stream and grinned. To his eyes, that unnamed stream was a treasure-house lying on its back, stuffed with gold, silver, and copper. Tonight, after feeling out the snake-gall stones, he meant to slip into Mud Vase Lane — per Gu Can's parting whisper — and dig beneath the great water jar in Gu Can's courtyard. Gu Can had fled hot-foot, saying only that it was his family's treasure, hidden even from his mother.
At the thought of that runny-nosed scrap, Chen wanted to laugh. Long ago he had been the tag-along at Liu Xianyang's heels, catching fish, trapping snakes, robbing nests; now he himself had a little follower. For a straw-sandaled youth with no one to lean on, one was his elder brother, the other his little brother — one to repay a debt of gratitude, one to care for. And so all these years Chen Ping'an had lived a hard life, yet not a bitter one.