Chen Ping'an shouldered his basket onto the bank and made for Qingniu Bei; the stream's water seemed to him a little lower, though it might be illusion. As he neared the green crag he stopped short, for many people stood upon it, every face clear to its last line — not by the stars, but because upon Qingniu Bei stood a snow-white elk, translucent to the core, shedding threads of white light like swaying water-plants. It lowered its head, and a red-coated girl, on tiptoe with great effort, stroked its antlers. Beside it stood a young Daoist pair, man and woman, their skin whiter than snow and cleaving to translucence; if the townsfolk were earthen figures pinched from clay, these two were fine porcelain fired in a kiln. Their robes recalled the fortune-teller Daoist Lu's; most unlike was the crown, Lu's being lotus-shaped, theirs shaped like a fish's tail. The straw-sandaled youth felt them figures stepped from a hanging of the immortals. Two others stood apart: the swordsmith Master Ruan's daughter, the girl in blue, holding a small embroidered kerchief of dainty pastries; and a man of some thirty with a long sword at his back and a strange ornament at his waist.
The instant they saw him, nearly all sensed his sudden appearance. The young priestess, surprised, stooped and patted the red girl's head, pointing toward Chen and whispering; the child strained her eyes, dimly made him out, then rattled off his name and history to the elk's mistress, that immortal sister. Chen too knew the girl, having met her long before in Mud Vase Lane, a paper kite in hand, running like the wind on legs thin as bamboo; later he once caught her at the well-mouth dropping pebbles in, she bolted, recalled the candied hawthorn left on the rim, raced back, fell flat, grabbed the candy, pulled a loose tooth from her mouth, pocketed it, and ran on without a tear — a scene that left Chen in cold sweat. Gu Can had told him this grubby wild girl was of the Li family of Fulu Street, no servant but fond of wandering alone, and, with pride and scorn, dull — she toiled an afternoon for one crab, caught only because its pincer clamped her finger, and yet raised the hand in triumph.
The handsome young Daoist glanced at the elk: "Senior Sister He, I told you not to spoil the thing; it is not yet ten days, and it is but a veil against the eye. Now some common man has caught it in full view — what is to be done?" The ravishing priestess smiled: "Let it take its course." Frowning, the junior studied the straw-sandaled boy and found nothing exceptional. These two were of the finest Daoist lineage on the Baoping Continent, its most honored head, and as recompense for coming out each held a precious quota for a true-inheriting disciple they would each take as their own, so this Daoist, practised at reading faces, would not squander it. He and He Xiaoliang were hailed the continent's Golden Boy and Jade Girl, heaven's favored pair, to whom even mortal sovereigns paid rites no less than to a great state's true sovereign — the two likeliest to climb into the upper five realms. When the priestess led the girl down, the spirit elk following, not only the junior but the military school's leading light, tiger-tally at his belt and sword on his back, let surprise show.
Seeing her come, Chen's head ached, for he knew their simple liking or hatred would decide his life and death, and his luck had never run well; yet he would not flee, and even walked a little forward, that others might call him well-bred. The white elk nuzzled the poor youth, returned to its mistress, and at her stroke became a horse. Calling a stag a horse. The priestess sighed faintly, smiled a sentence; the red girl turned it into town dialect, timid: "Sister He says, 'You cherish the fortune at hand, yet our bond is shallow — we cannot be fellow-practitioners.'" Speechless, the boy stood comic in basket, straw sandals and rolled trouser-legs. She smiled: "So you know the wondrous use of these stones? An idle question, do not be uneasy." The girl relayed it crisply. He hesitated, then nodded: "A Daoist elder advised me to often come pick stones and catch fish." Yet he gave away not even Daoist Lu's surname; it was Ning Yao who had truly named the snake-gall stones costly. "So you know our Little-Uncle Lu?" At his start she explained: "He is not strictly of our lineage, but visited us years ago, kept an equal's friendship with one of our uncles, stayed a while, and we juniors grew fond of calling him 'Little-Uncle.'" Chen grinned, his last guard gone, for he owed Daoist Lu a gratitude he would never forget. He took up an egg-shaped stone, green and glossy as ice, and offered it: "When next you see him, might you give him this?" After hearing the girl she mused, took it, and said: "I chanced upon Little-Uncle as he left for the Nanjian Kingdom, to an important ceremony; when next we meet I cannot say. But whenever I see him, I will surely deliver it." Chen beamed and bowed thanks, trusting his gut of strangers as toward Fu Nanhua and Cai Jinjian, so toward Daoist Lu and Miss Ning. He drew out another snake-gall stone; this priestess, famed among the continent's young as "first in karmic fortune," accepted beaming. The red girl twisted her hem: "I want one too." He turned to the basket; she asked, timid, for a larger one. "If you can carry it, I will give you the largest — though it is no short road home, and I think the large ones are not so good as the small." She set her hands on the rim: "Then I'll take a small, pretty one." He chose her a lotus-root-pink stone, moist and lovely; she closed it in her palm, content, grinned at her teeth and laughed in triumph — showing, he guessed, they had grown in whole again. "Next time we will catch crickets together," he said gladly. Her eyes lit, then dimmed; with a strained smile she nodded, and Chen shouldered his basket, waved, and trotted back to town alone.
Immortal woman though both were, her carriage held a purity no rival to Cai Jinjian of Cloud Mist Mountain, as an immortal's golden essence outranks the world's base gold. As the priestess led girl and elk back, the young Daoist pronounced: "A shallow bond is a meager fortune; such a one is not fit for great use." Daoist sects on the continent were as many as hairs on a beast, and every thirty years a pair of Golden Boy and Jade Girl was chosen, he and He Xiaoliang this term's; a surprising thing — the Jade Girl's karmic fortune was good to offense, a white elk having walked of itself from the wilds at her birth to acknowledge her, and she never once stumbling on the path of cultivation; some said she would meet her first bottleneck only after the upper five realms. To her junior's slight she said neither yes nor no. Then a short lad came up from the deep pool, a single snake-gall stone blazing in the dark like the elk had; stone in hand, he stood on a boulder like an immortal holding a pocket round-moon. Had Chen seen him he would have known Granny Ma's grandson of Apricot Blossom Lane — simple-minded since childhood, spurned by his parents, raised alone by his grandmother, unsociable, climbing roofs to watch clouds, bullied till a man felt his shoe soiled to tread on him; he had, it was said, smiled only at Zhigui, the servant-girl of Mud Vase Lane, and for that Granny Ma bore her an especial grudge.The priestess asked the sword-bearer: "As for Ma Kuxuan, is there truly no room for turning?" Coldly: "If that Little-Uncle of yours truly wanted him as founding disciple, why did he not come himself? His renown is nothing; he has never fought me. If aggrieved, let him come to Zhenwu Mountain; win, and take the child." "It is but an extra trip," the junior smiled. "Why make trouble?" A needle hid in cotton. The man narrowed his eyes: "Oh?" The vexed priestess looked to her junior, who would not clash but looked up: "How fine the moon is tonight." At the gallery bridge a barefoot monk, square-faced and resolute, fixed on the ground where Song Jixin had stuck his incense, pressed palms together: "Amitabha." The short lad stared at the tally-man: "I will not learn any great dao of immortality — can you teach me to kill?!" "We sword-cultivators of the military school are the world's foremost killing-power," the man laughed. The junior answered in kind: "Oh?" The priestess shook her head, guiltily failing her Little-Uncle. The red Li girl hid behind the immortal sister, and the girl in blue, done with her pastries and foul of humor, snapped: "If you have spine, go fight my father!" The man with ties to them smiled at last: "How would we fight?" "Ruan Xiu, that is too much — your father is the next sage to succeed Master Qi," the junior teased. The monk climbed up. The priestess said: "Your Thunder-Sound Tower, our Celestial-Master Seal, the military school's sword-barrow, the Confucians' mountain-and-hill jade token — the four instruments of suppression left by the first sages. Set aside Confucian in-fighting; among us three, each reclaiming his due is legitimate, yet to go without one word to Master Qi is improper." The monk was silent; the junior demurred: "The command above is not lightly crossed. Do not add feet to a snake." The military man sneered: "I did not come to cozy up to anyone."
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Back in town, Chen found Master Qi waiting at Liu Xianyang's gate. He ran up, and before he could ask, Qi Jingchun handed him two private seals, smiling: "Chen Ping'an, these are not given for nothing. I have a favor: should the Cliff Academy ever fall into trouble, I hope you will help so far as your strength allows — though you need not pry into its news." "Good!" the youth answered. Qi nodded, weightily: "Remember the 'gentleman does not save' I spoke — my heart's words, not a testing of men's hearts." "Master, that I cannot promise," the youth grinned. Qi would have spoken, but let it go; he had meant to say that, should the academy come to a great strait and Chen regret it, there was no need for guilt — only treat it as un-seen, un-heard. Yet deep within he nursed a vain hope that puzzled even himself; and thinking it over, this mountain-lord reached one answer — it was only because this youth bore the name Chen Ping'an, unlike anyone else. Entrust him a task however hard, and though you know he cannot in the end compass it, yet be certain that once agreed he will surely do it, and if ten parts of strength fail he will grit his teeth and muster twelve — a thing to set a man's heart at ease, and the very thing Qi Jingchun had craved for years without finding. As Qi turned to go, the youth, still with his basket, hastened with great effort to fold his hands in greeting, and in the lane the Confucian sage, punctilious, returned him a bow.