Night lay heavy, and in the kiln-bureau superintendent's compound Song Changjing returned alone. The lad Song Jixin had already gone off to Mud Vase Lane, that place like a dog's kennel; the man made no point of it — that nephew of his, left to fend for himself, had not quite lived as an azure-blooded noble ought. Song Changjing felt he owed the child nothing; to have come back alive to the capital of Great Li at all was no small achievement.
The aged steward waited at the gate with a lantern. "No need to show the way," Song Changjing said, and the old steward nodded and slipped away. This compound on the Fuliu Street was no lavish affair, far smaller than the Lu and Li houses; but Song Changjing was the younger brother, by the same mother, of Great Li's sovereign, a martial grandmaster among the foremost of the Baoping Continent. His coming was like a river-dragon breaking into a small lake: everyone brought out full deference.
Passing a courtyard, he saw someone still reading by lamplight, seated upright even in solitude. A true gentleman, no doubt. Song Changjing walked on, a sardonic smile on his lips. In former years a youth had studied at the Guan Lake Academy; his calligraphy so unrivalled that the sovereign of Southern Wei summoned him, and in deep winter, when the brush froze, bade some ten consorts blow warmth upon it. The tale swept the continent — only, with the inner court so strictly guarded, how had the common folk come to know of it? Song Changjing broke into a clear, ringing laugh.
Song Jixin, in a plain spotless robe, returned to Mud Vase Lane. The gate was unlocked; he found the maid Zhigui dozing in a chair, her head lolling and jerking upright each time it had tilted toward a fall. He shook her shoulder: "Zhigui, wake — go sleep in your own room." She rubbed her sleepy eyes: "Young master, why so late?" "Went to the gallery bridge." Noticing his unfamiliar ceremonial robes she asked in surprise; he waved it off, asking whether she would like him to teach her the county gazetteer. "No need," she said. In his own dark room, groping onto the bed, he murmured: "Wang Zhu, Wang Zhu — I see, so that's how it is." Back in her room Zhigui put out the lamp, curled in the quilt, made a soft busy chewing noise — and let out a small belch.
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Out at the sword-furnace shop, Liu Xianyang had not yet formally become Master Ruan's disciple, yet anyone could see the master valued him — else he would not teach him, hand on hand, to hammer out a sword-blank. During the noon rest a young kiln-worker ran up grinning to say someone had come: a lady more beautiful than the matrons of the Fuliu Street. Liu Xianyang went off acting the fool, yet his heart sank. Sure enough, by a well stood a tall, graceful woman, and around her, strapping well-diggers working with unusual vigor. As the little scholar Song Jixin disdained, Liu Xianyang was a bumpkin through and through — yet a woman's beauty has nothing to do with reading books. She had come alone, without airs, and Liu Xianyang breathed easier. Still, however comely, the girl in his heart had been the little serving-maid of Mud Vase Lane, was now, and ever would be. "Madam, if it's our heirloom you've come to buy, I beg you not to raise the matter," he said firmly. She smiled: "Let me lay out the good and the harm, then decide." He kept his face casual, but his heart plunged to the bottom.
Far off, a girl crouched on a forging-room threshold, a mound of rice piled above the bowl's rim, and wolfed it down; when she had eaten the "mountaintop" she found the braised pork hidden beneath. Turning to the man at the other end of the threshold, she asked: "Father, won't you do something about that outland woman?" "No," he said gruffly. "He'll be your founding disciple — aren't you afraid he'll go astray?" "Then the lad lacks fortune." "Aren't you sorry?" "Is the pork good?" he parried. "Good, good!" she nodded, then froze — her father had decreed she might have but one meat dish a day, so she had hidden the pork in plain rice. Flustered, she raised the bowl: "There's only one piece! I didn't break the rules!" "Then the piece at the bottom, which you can't reach — wouldn't that distress you?" She looked struck by lightning. "Had you not meddled in Liu Xianyang's affairs, your father might have turned a blind eye."
When he finished, glancing toward the stream, he said: "Till the boy steps into the Middle Five Realms, your father won't care whether he lives or dies; once he enters them I may step in a time or two, never more. Blessing and woe have no door; men beckon them themselves." She pouted: "Why not care?!" "A scholar takes a student, a martial artist a disciple — neither gathers thugs to shout one another down. Master and disciple are fellows of one way — and Liu Xianyang isn't my disciple yet anyway. Silly girl, in this Great Li do you know how many folk there are? Over twenty million households! Can you see to all their worries? In the sixty years to come I'll take this town over from Qi Jingchun; so stop roving, or when trouble comes, am I to manage it or not?" "Then don't manage me," she cut him off — a sentence so stifling he almost did himself an internal injury.
She suddenly put on a look of "astonishment": "Eh? A second piece of pork? My share's spent — shall I give it to you, father?" Without turning: "Forget it, you eat it; I'll count it as one. Just don't slack at the iron this afternoon." This time her gratitude was unfeigned: "Father, you're wonderful!" "It's the pork that's wonderful," he laughed. She bent and whispered: "Father is wonderful too." Then a voice rang from a distance: "Father, could I have another piece tonight? Two and three are near enough, right? Say nothing and I'll take it as agreed, yes?" — the girl had fled before finishing. He rubbed his cheek: "My Xiuxiu treats food as her heaven."
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Chen Ping'an delivered his letters, bought breakfast for Miss Ning, and fell with practiced ease to decocting her medicine. Ning Yao wore a fresh dark-green robe today, the long knife at her waist — nobler even than the scions of the Fuliu Street and the Peach Leaf Lane.
She hesitated: "For now, if you truly mean to study that Han Shan Manual, before the fist postures you must do three things: stand the stance, walk the stance, sleep the stance. The last is delicate, resting on acupoint-settling and the breath, so leave it for now. The first two take no great talent — hold to the postures the manual pictures and they'll serve." Chen Ping'an asked whether he might practice the walking stance in the stream. "Of course — to the knee, then the waist, then the neck." "Then in the end I'd be breast-deep?" "What — will you train to hold your breath underwater and become a turtle of ten thousand years?" he was mocked, and fell silent. "Come, I'll show you," she said, and had him move the table. She stepped forward six paces — three small, three large — and on the last, one foot stamping down, the earthen floor gave out a dull tremor, in a single unbroken breath. It looked light, negligent, yet flowed like water — a waterfall freighted with power, and again a leaf turned once in a stream. All was right; yet Chen Ping'an knew only the how, never the why.
At his blank look she demonstrated again, then bade him try. He wobbled like a drunkard. "Again!" she growled, black-faced. After three rounds he improved a little, but her face had clouded to the point of downpour: she could not imagine such a blockhead. There was no help for it — Ning Yao had stood from childhood at the very height of the sword's way and could not understand how the folk at the mountain's foot, ten thousand miles below her, climbed step by step. Fearing she would draw her blade, she clapped his shoulder: "Read a thing a hundred times and its meaning comes; martial practice is the same. Practice tens of thousands of times and no flavor comes, then a hundred thousand, a million! The clumsy bird flies first. Practice here again and again." Chen Ping'an reflected this was the truth of it, and the sounder: practice a million. He ran off intoning three small, three large, telling himself after a million repetitions his boxing would come to a modest success.
Ning Yao sat alone on the threshold and muttered: "Why do I feel I've dug a mountain of a pit? Will that fellow ever climb out of it?"