Clang!
Clang!
On the quiet afternoon, within the dome of the Du Xian Sect's smooth, glossy protective mountain array, a rhythmic ringing echoed across Xiaoqiong Peak—that short peak squatting well below the rest.
A little over ten li north of the trio of thatched cottages beside the small lake, a towering old tree trembled in time to those blows. Beneath its boughs, a girl in a practice robe embroidered with orchids and fragrant grasses, a light-purple silk moiré headband binding her hair, kept swinging a great axe—and there was something unspeakably graceful about the motion.
All the while the girl gnashed her teeth over a most affectionate string of curses:
"If they don't let me use my qi, what do I do when my legs and arms swell up with those knotty muscles! I'm a female qi cultivator, you know! And honestly—he said he'd watch over my chopping, but where is he? He's slipped back off to meditate again, hasn't he! Heh heh, you rotten senior brother, I'll chop you root and branch, fell and uproot, root out and destroy, leaving not a blade of grass! Take that—break!"
Crack—
The ancient tree tilted and toppled in a slow, reluctant sort of way, startling flocks of birds up from the woods.
All at once a call came from behind her:
"You are... little Ling'e?"
Blue Ling'e was instantly on guard. Axe in hand she leapt forward, landing already turned about, and raised her head to study the figure drifting in midair. The woman looked somehow familiar.
A zhang-long great gourd; a female immortal seated cross-legged upon it; a hemp robe that was rather the worse for wear... Ugh, its short sleeves looked about to split at the seams...
Ah, it was Aunt Jiu Jiu.
Blue Ling'e hurriedly set the big axe down and made a formal Daoist bow, thinking over the greeting scripts her senior brother had drilled into her and picking the one that fit best, then said softly:
"Disciple Ling'e greets Aunt Jiu. Your disciple is shallow in cultivation and failed to welcome you in time; I beg Aunt's pardon."
"It's fine, it's fine, no need for such ceremony," Jiu Jiu said, looking with real fondness at this clever little junior niece, so proper in etiquette and sweet of speech.
Jiu Jiu put away the great gourd and hopped down from the air.
"Is your senior brother around? I've a matter to see him about."
"He should be in meditation," Blue Ling'e replied, eyes demurely lowered and voice still soft. "Pray Aunt wait a moment in front; I'll go call the master out of seclusion to welcome you. Our humble home can hardly entertain you properly, but I beg your indulgence."
"Eh, no need for all that trouble; I came all this way specifically for your senior brother. As for your master—immortality is nearly upon him, so let him stay shut up in seclusion; don't disturb him."
Jiu Jiu waved a hand and swept her gaze around. "Little Ling'e, what are you chopping wood for?"
"It counts as a form of cultivation; pray don't laugh at me, Aunt."
Blue Ling'e's answer was still watertight, but a little doubt had begun to stir in her heart.
Why would this aunt want to see her senior brother?
After attaining immortality, a qi cultivator's years are long, and within the sect there were many Dao-partners across the generations. As for this particular aunt—her face was pretty, her figure all curves, and though she was a bit careless with her dress, she was naturally beautiful, and, more to the point, exceedingly well endowed...
The key thing was, this Aunt Jiu Jiu had once gone out on forays with her senior brother...
Something was up.
Blue Ling'e grew wary in an instant, and her mind turned lightly—she meant to sound out Jiu Jiu's true purpose. But before she could open her mouth, the ground a short way off rippled, and Li Changshou's figure slowly surfaced. He saluted Jiu Jiu with a clasped fist...
Soon after, in Li Changshou's cottage, the two sat cross-legged on either side of a low table.
Jiu Jiu had come to deliver the rewards from that tempest-practice tournament, and to pass along a thanks-gift entrusted to her by Ge Jingshan. She set two storage treasures upon the table.
Li Changshou didn't stand on ceremony and simply accepted them.
On peering into the storage ring from Ge Jingshan—several magical treasures, a small mountain of spirit materials, and spirit stones—he felt a little comforted. Just now, sounding the earth's veins of Xiaoqiong Peak, he'd been vexing over the spirit materials needed to build all manner of great arrays; this gift resolved the greater part of his problem at a stroke.
Li Changshou asked, "How was it Aunt didn't head to the Southern Continent with the rest?"
"Ah," Jiu Jiu sighed a long sigh, lying limp and boneless across the table, the light fading from her eyes. "I'd meant to go along and have a lark, but when I came back they kept me in for a reckoning and I've been answering for it ever since—I've just come out of the Hall of Rewards and Punishments. Now I'm in a proper bind. The elders actually sentenced me to three years without liquor. Ah—better they'd strapped me to the lightning pillar and blasted me for three years..."
Li Changshou couldn't help a smile, and only then noticed that Jiu Jiu's little gourd treasure was gone, presumably confiscated by the elders of the sect.
Just then Ling'e came in bearing tea, and seeing the scene, bit her lip.
So casual a pose, and she gets along with her own senior brother this well...
This aunt was definitely up to something.
Blue Ling'e set down the tea, moved her cushion up beside her senior brother, and knelt there with a look of perfect obedience, even pressing her arm against him on purpose.
Jiu Jiu stared wide-eyed. "Eh? Changshou, your ailment?"
"Touching my junior sister is harmless—it must be because we keep company day in and day out," Li Changshou explained coolly. "With any woman other than my junior sister, I can't help twitching and cramping."
"Cough! Cough, cough!"
Blue Ling'e covered her mouth in a fit of coughing; from the pained look on her face, it was clearly all she could do not to laugh out loud.
"Oh, I see."
Jiu Jiu had no suspicion at all. She lay there and heaved a faint sigh, the light fading from her eyes once more, and murmured in a voice of utter desolation:
"Three years—how am I to endure three years... Without wine how am I to sequester myself, how to cultivate? I can't even sleep, and I've not the strength for aught else... That idiot Yuan Qing, why'd he have to stir up such trouble? Dragging himself in was bad enough—now he's made this aunt suffer three years for it."
Li Changshou pondered, stroking his chin and humming to himself. From the corner of her eye, Blue Ling'e saw that expression come over her senior brother's face, and instinctively hitched herself aside, sat up straight, fixed her gaze dead ahead, and dared not speak.
She stole another glance at the slight downward tilt at the corner of Li Changshou's brow and confirmed it: this was the look that heralded her senior brother scheming against someone!
Whenever he wore that expression, either she or the master was about to be drafted into something!
"Aunt Jiu, suppose we strike a bargain."
"Hm? What bargain?" Jiu Jiu answered, listless.
"You can't touch wine for these three years, so if you can't cultivate, why not come help your disciple build a few arrays," Li Changshou said gravely. "As recompense, your disciple will brew for you three kinds of fine wine long lost to the world, and they'll be just ready for you to enjoy once the three years are up. And there's even a drink among them that can stand in for wine."
"Fine wine lost to the world? A drink that stands in for wine?"
Jiu Jiu perked up at once and sat bolt upright. "What? Surely you're not trying to con me into working for nothing? Mind you, I know nothing whatsoever about arrays."
"Aunt need only lend your immortal power to steady the foundations of the arrays and press down the turbulence of the qi," Li Changshou said with an easy smile, and asked in turn, "Does Aunt love drinking wine or savoring it? Is it the taste of the wine you love, or the feeling of being drunk?"
"Hm..." Jiu Jiu mused for a moment. "Both, I suppose. I entered the mountain at three years old, and the fifth senior brother who happened to look after me loved brewing wine. Once he flung me by mistake into a wine vat to wash, and after that I could never do without the stuff. If I must say, the taste of the wine matters greatly, and so does that light, floaty, tipsy feeling when you drink to contentment."
"Pray Aunt look."
Li Changshou pointed at the teacup before him. From within his sleeve he took a tiny jade pot, pulled the stopper, and let a single drop of pale-green liquid fall into the cup.
At once a wisp of fragrance drifted abroad, and the tea in the cup turned pale green.
Li Changshou smiled. "Aunt, taste it and see if it gives that tipsy feeling."
"Oh?" Jiu Jiu blinked, took the cup, and tentatively sniffed at it—she smelled only a faint fragrance. Lowering her head she sipped a little, and at once her eyes brightened.
She raised the cup and drained it in one go.
A faint blush crept over Jiu Jiu's pretty face, her eyes began to glaze, and she broke into a loose, silly grin.
"Good stuff... strong enough..."
With a clatter the cup fell to the table. Jiu Jiu sank down slowly, and lay there rolling to and fro on the floor, letting out little bursts of heh-heh laughter and mumbling endlessly:
"Seventh eldest, you shameless thing, clinging to Sixth Senior Sister day and night—cultivating as Dao-partners all these years and still you can't produce a single little one..."
"Everyone's paired off, and I'm the ninth so it's my lot to be alone, is it... Hmph, when I've cultivated up to Heavenly Immortal, I'll snatch me a few handsome fellows and have them pour my wine and scrub my back every blessed day..."
"Little Changshou... I do hope, hope, hope you never look down on your own master... that master of yours was something else in his day..."
By degrees, light snores rose. Clutching a cushion, Jiu Jiu lay on the floor and slept through it all.
Blue Ling'e asked curiously, "Senior Brother, what is this?"
"Immortal Drunkenness," Li Changshou answered in a voice transmuted straight to her ear. "It's a soporific, but it also counts as a fine wine, only it carries no smell of liquor. Besides making one have a good drunk, it has no other effect—it was a thing I'd actually eliminated. According to the ancient records, in the age of antiquity many immortals fond of their cup would try this brew of the immortals, but they drank it straight down purely out of their wine-addiction. It's refined in much the same way as wine, except that brewing uses celestial fruits and grains, while the ingredients of Immortal Drunkenness are thirty-two medicinal herbs."
Blue Ling'e asked, a little worried, "Will it be enough to make three kinds?"
Li Changshou smiled and nodded, watching Jiu Jiu already fast asleep, thinking of the pill-cauldron pavilion he was about to complete, and transmitted back: "Never mind three—I could manage thirteen. With a True Immortal to help, a great many ideas I could never have carried out before now stand a real chance. And once the pill pavilion is done, the safety margin will be all the sturdier."
"Hm, fine then," Blue Ling'e puffed out her cheeks, and looking at this aunt of hers, who was oddly endearing now that she slept, felt a small... sense of menace.
And so, two years passed. ...
Bang!
The wooden door of Li Changshou's cottage was kicked open, and in rushed Jiu Jiu, hemp-robed and frantic.
"Hurry! This month's Immortal Drunkenness and Beauty's Charm... Not here? Alas, off refining pills again, are you! I'll strap you to the cauldron next time!"
Jiu Jiu stamped her foot, muttered two curses, and turned to jump into the air, darting at once toward the dense woods behind the cottage.
But her figure pulled up short. Head cocked, she stared at the thick, deep forest ahead, felt the qi slowly flowing within, and her forehead filled instantly with black lines.
Rising in her heart were those dozen or more humiliating ordeals she'd suffered trapped within over the last six months...
Were it not that she already knew what lay ahead, she'd never have seen that there were twenty-eight visible arrays and seventy-six hidden arrays here, all interlocking trapping arrays and maze arrays...
"Where was the life-gate again? Was this really something I helped set up? This way? Doesn't seem right. This way, then? Ugh! Arrays and all that, they drive a person mad! Li Changshou, get out here now, or I'll tear down your hillside!"
A breeze passed through the woods; the trees swayed gently, and the qi flowing within them grew swifter and easier.
Li Changshou's voice drifted to her on the wind: "The array's already been dissolved. Your disciple is tending the pill cauldron and can't come out to welcome you."
Jiu Jiu blinked, crept forward a wary dozen-odd zhang, and only after confirming she was safe did she fly in a huff straight into the heart of the woods.
There, a handsome little pavilion stood tranquil, wisps of clear air curling up from it, and the whole grove was steeped in the fresh fragrance of herbs.