"Shaking Mountains?"
The black-robed girl frowned and reached out to take the ancient book. But to her surprise, Chen Ping'an drew it back, out of her reach.
In that instant, the girl stiffened, a blaze of fury rising within her, as though she had never in her life been so insulted. Ning Yao — daughter of two great sword immortals of the ranks above the twelfth floor, from the very day she was born hailed as the loftiest sword-blank the world had ever seen, and these many years away from home she had lost only to men in sword duels and the turning of arts — how should she ever be forced to stoop to low and underhanded methods to crack open, spy upon, or seize a shabby old book?
Ning Yao's hand closed on the hilt of her blade, and her eyes, that pair of long narrow brows so startling to behold, narrowed to slits.
Slender eyes, vermilion lips. No doubt that was the very description written for this young lady.
Studied closely, Ning Yao's face was in truth extraordinarily beautiful; only that the air of sharp-edged heroism about her utterly overmastered the softness of rouge and powder.
But the straw-sandaled youth's next words had a potency of turning rotten growth into miracle, and very nearly drove the girl to choke on an inner wound.
"Miss Ning, this book came from Gu Can's home. I don't count it as stolen, but sooner or later I must give it back to Gu Can. Only — we are friends now, so whatever is written in this book, I hope you'll have seen it, and that you alone will know."
The girl drew a long breath, slapped the table, and glared: "Look at it yourself? Look at what? I don't care a whit for it!"
Chen Ping'an's next words were enough to make the girl laugh and cry at once: "Miss Ning, I cannot read a single character. Won't you teach me?"
The black-robed girl turned the matter over in her heart, then sneered: "And you're not afraid I'll take great advantage of you? Think on it — Gu Can is plainly a boy who's inherited a mountain of blessings from his ancestors, more than even a natural sword-blank like Liu Xianyang; in a thousand years of this town few could rival him. So the ancestral heirloom he guards so carefully — can its worth be small? Aren't you afraid that at the sight of such wealth I'll be moved to covetousness, and make away with this priceless manual all to myself?"
By the trembling flame of the little oil lamp, in the dim yellow light, the straw-sandaled youth smiled faintly and explained nothing at all.
The girl gave a cold snort, shifted her seat, and gestured for the straw-sandaled youth to come sit beside her. Only the fellow across from her never once lifted his haunches. The girl laughed in vexation: "I, Ning Yao, can beat a hundred of you with one hand alone…"
At that she broke off, laughing to herself: "What, are you afraid I'll take advantage of you?"
Seating himself beside the girl, Chen Ping'an was at once uneasy and on edge.
Ning Yao, still sunk in the meaning of everything she'd just said, drowned deeper and deeper in it, muttering to herself: "Beat a hundred Chen Ping'ans with one hand — yes, now there's a phrase with a wide reach. Meet so-and-so, duel, and if he loses to me, I'll fling down the line, 'With the strength of only three thousand Chen Ping'ans, you dare stand against me?' That feels fine, very fine. Come across some primeval beast, some venomous flood-dragon of the great marshes, and I'll tell myself, 'This accursed beast is worth thirty thousand Chen Ping'ans — run!' Ha, ha, not bad, not bad…"
Chen Ping'an could only wonder at it — the black-robed girl shoulder to shoulder with him had suddenly broken into a vacant, foolish laugh.
The girl's laugh made the poverty-stricken youth, whose home stood bare as an empty room, feel for a moment that he had suddenly become a wealthy man.
Neither youth nor girl, at that moment, could possibly realize the weight and the strength that this jest — "beat a hundred Chen Ping'ans with one hand" — would come to carry over the long years ahead. Especially once the straw-sandaled youth was no longer a youth. The further on, the more so.
At last Ning Yao came to herself, coughed, straightened her back, and took up the old book, flipping quickly through several pages. Then she closed it, tapped twice upon the cover with a single finger, turned to Chen Ping'an, and said calmly: "This is a boxing manual. The boxing form is called Shaking Mountains, and if you follow the custom of the jianghu, you may call it the Hàn Shān Manual."
Chen Ping'an, face ripe with expectation: "And then?"
The black-robed girl held back the urge to roll her eyes, forced herself to make a solemn show of opening the book, and with that slender finger, tender as a fresh green scallion, pointed to the preface on the flyleaf. As she traced downward she recited: "In my homeland there is a tiny insect called the pifú; through all its life, unlike its kind elsewhere, it labors only to carry stones into the water."
"My boxing distinguishes life from death, not victory from defeat; it prizes spirit and intent over form and movement. When this art's six forms are tempered to their fullest, its killing power is vast, and a single blow wounds the very viscera and lungs…"
"Though the Hàn Shān Manual has never yet been ranked among the pure and lofty manuals of this age, still I hold it firmly that, laid against all the martial arts under heaven, this boxing must claim a place of its own. It is my hope that one blessed by fate will carry it forth and spread its renown…"
Enduring her impatience, Ning Yao read the preface to Chen Ping'an sentence by sentence.
The little book was thin enough, and all its boxing forms totaled but six stances, yet the preface alone filled no small space.
Once she had finished, Ning Yao pushed the manual over to Chen Ping'an, patted his shoulder, and said with studied carelessness: "Put it away carefully now. Don't let any thief lay hands on it."
Chen Ping'an nodded, and stretched out both hands to steady the ancient boxing manual with great care.
It kept Ning Yao wanting to laugh the whole while. Did the fellow think a book set down on a table could sprout legs and walk off on its own — or was he afraid it would trip and fall?
Chen Ping'an scrubbed his right hand hard against the fold of his garment, and only then opened the pages, reading the preface character by character, and what followed was a wealth of pictures and text that left the straw-sandaled youth utterly lost in the clouds.
Ning Yao sat sideways, elbow braced on the table, gazing at the youth's profile, and teased: "Feeling like you've struck it rich, are we? Soon you'll be chopping firewood with a golden axe and eating from a golden rice-bowl?"
The youth did not raise his head, absorbed in studying those pictures and the heaven-scrawl of the words, and said without the least flattery: "Truth be told, from the look in your eyes before, I already knew this manual wouldn't be very good. But no matter — for me, it's already good enough."
Ning Yao arched a brow, and came straight to the point: "The things I've seen and heard of — those are genuinely good things. But beyond that, I can only separate good from bad. How good a good thing is, how bad a bad thing is — that's much harder to say."
Chen Ping'an raised his head: "So this Hàn Shān Manual belongs to the ranks of 'good, yet not too good,' is that it?"
Ning Yao said crossly: "What I mean is I can't even begin to describe how dreadful this shabby little manual is!"
The straw-sandaled youth blinked, and the corners of his mouth crept into a smile.
He had clearly known it all along, and was only teasing the girl.
Ning Yao pushed her knife from its sheath by the breadth of a finger and threatened: "Looking to get yourself cut?"
Chen Ping'an lowered his eyes to the long knife at her waist with its green scabbard, and said in genuine admiration: "It's very beautiful."
Ning Yao accepted the praise as her due: "Blades I, Ning Yao, chose with my own hand could hardly be poor!"
Chen Ping'an looked at her, envying and admiring a confidence such as hers — that though she was of an age with him and stood in a strange land among strangers, whatever her lot and whatever her situation, she rose like the morning sun, unstoppable. This much, the keen-hearted Chen Ping'an could sense from the very wariness with which Daoist Priest Lu dealt with her.
Chen Ping'an found himself saying: "If only sunlight could be exchanged for copper coins!"
Ning Yao did not follow his meaning, and said in surprise: "Chen Ping'an, have you gone mad for money?"
Chen Ping'an scrambled to change the subject, turning to the first illustrated plate. "Miss Ning, would you read the words on this picture aloud for me?"
Ning Yao gave it some thought, would not refuse, but asked instead: "Do you know why, at a single glance, I judged this manual worthless?"
Chen Ping'an shook his head: "I've wondered at that myself."
The girl smiled, then simply turned on the bench to face the youth, sat cross-legged, and pointed at the open manual, explaining with patience: "The secret manuals of martial artists, and the qi-cultivation methods of those who cultivate — there are generally three ways of recording them. The first is like this Hàn Shān Manual: written on pages of ordinary material. How many years it can survive is a matter of luck — to say nothing of the devastation of war, the damp of long ages, the gnawing of ants and the like will gradually destroy it. Isn't that so?"
Chen Ping'an, suddenly enlightened, nodded.
The girl went on: "And so, among these ways of bearing words on some physical thing, there has grown an unwritten rule: to prize the rarity of the material — that is, the thing that carries the words should match in worth the value of the words themselves. It's like how you would never set a national seal of state into a box whittled from elm."
Chen Ping'an nodded as though deep in thought.
After a brief hesitation, Ning Yao still spoke plainly to the youth: "The next way is to commit nothing to writing, relying instead on oral teaching and the example of the body. These are most often the trump cards that a sect or gang holds snug up its sleeve, always kept secret, or bound by such cumbersome rules as 'passed to sons, not to daughters.' And even many so-called direct hallowed heirs, disciples of the inner chamber, may not receive the complete true transmission. This is where the true transmission lies."
Ning Yao sighed. "As for the last way, it can only be grasped by intent, never spoken aloud — it cannot even be said; there is no way to say it. For one example: of the two forces that came into this town, there is Chai Jinjian's Cloud Mist Mountain. On Cloud Mist Mountain there is a matter called 'gazing upon the sea of clouds' — the billowing sea of clouds, its mists and sunset glows especially singular, brimming with vital spirit, hailed by the qi-refiners of your Baoping Continent as 'a thing of beauty from the heavens.' Some can of themselves take on the forms of the sect's generations of founding patriarchs, and one blessed with the right affinity may meet and converse with them. And atop Zhengyang Mountain, the dense sword-qi — it is said that by some twist of fate and happy confluence, the sword-spirits of Zhengyang's various peaks' founding ancestors may also appear to evolve the way of the sword. Whether one can see them depends only on the measure of one's fortune, not on eminence of station, nor on depth of cultivation."
Ning Yao finished: "Of course, there is no absolute rank among the three ways either. If the first way were to have its words carved on jade tablets, or — in the Bamboo Sea Blessed Land, one of the seventy-two blessed lands — on a wondrous 'word-washing bamboo' that is produced only there, then it would be another matter entirely. Besides these, there are countless strange and curious objects; so long as you walk far enough, you will always come upon delights. The great world is without end and without bound; in days to come, you had best go out and walk a while. Not to dream of leaving the Baoping Continent, not to leave this world we stand in — but at the very least, strive to reach the border of the Great Li realm."
Chen Ping'an hummed and nodded, plainly his whole heart still entangled with that boxing manual; pointing to a single character, he asked: "Miss Ning, what does this one read?"
The girl's temper flared: "Scram!"