Because he knew that Han Li's foot was injured, Zhang Tie brought the meal to his door himself, intending to keep him company while they ate.
Han Li watched the boy stumble about his cramped quarters, dragging a chair over here, wrestling with the table over there, fiddling for a good long while until everything was finally arranged and they could eat. He could not help feeling a little amused—and, more than that, a little moved.
Once the two were seated across the table, they fell into idle chat about the goings-on within the gate as they shoveled food into their mouths, and from time to time they traded notes on the insights each had gained in his training.
Whenever the talk turned to his "Elephant-Armor Art," Zhang Tie grew so disheartened that he rolled his eyes.
By now the mere mention of the Elephant-Armor Art was enough to make Zhang Tie pale in fright. He had only trained the first layer, and already Doctor Mo had tormented him until he was crying out bitterly. Not only did he have to soak himself at fixed times in foul-smelling medicinal baths, but he was also forever being thumped with Doctor Mo's wooden stick, all under the pretense of tempering his sinews and bones.
These brutal methods of training had, for a stretch of time, robbed him of any hope of sleeping soundly through the night. His whole body stayed swollen and red, and at the barest touch of the wooden bed he would grimace and hiss with pain.
For him, it had been a veritable nightmare.
As for the Nameless Formula that Han Li practiced, Zhang Tie envied it from the bottom of his heart.
To his way of thinking, each day all Han Li had to do was to sit like a monk and chant his sutras in meditation. When Han Li heard this, he could only hold his tongue and have nothing to say.
Still, Han Li could well understand Zhang Tie's dread of the Elephant-Armor Art's later layers. Let anyone know that he would have to undergo suffering several times more terrible than what he had already endured, and he would find himself pacing restlessly day and night, unable to sit still or sleep in peace.
That Zhang Tie had held on to the very end and never once given up already won Han Li's keen admiration.
If it had been him, he would never in a hundred years consent to train in such a self-mortifying martial art—not even if it could make him a first-rate master overnight.
By the time the two of them had talked their way through dinner, the meal was nearly finished. Zhang Tie hurriedly gathered up the bowls and chopsticks, then rose to take his leave. Before he went, he told Han Li to turn in early and to rest quietly so that his injured foot could heal.
Han Li stood at the door, watching the boy walk away, then hurried back inside. He shut the door and the windows tight, leaving only the skylight open for air. Only then did he take the bottle out of the pouch and set to studying it again.
But Han Li was, after all, only a boy of ten or so. He fiddled with it for a while, saw no way forward, and began to grow weary of it. On top of that, his foot still pained him, and he was tired in spirit besides. Before he knew it, the bottle still clasped in his hand, he had slumped against the edge of the bed and drifted into a heavy sleep.
No one could say how long he had lain there, buried in his dreams, when all at once a chill crept over him—a cold sensation that came from one of his hands.
Han Li shuddered violently, quite startled awake. With great effort he forced his leaden eyelids open and looked, half in a daze, down at the hand that was playing tricks on him.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright, his mouth hanging so wide that a thread of drool ran from the corner of it without his noticing. He was utterly awake now, and the sight before him had stunned him into stillness.
Through the only window open in the room—the skylight above—visible threads of white light were streaming down from the heavens, converging upon the bottle cradled in his hand and gathering into tiny points of light no larger than grains of rice. The whole bottle was wrapped round and round in a thin veil of soft white glow.
This white light was very gentle, scarcely dazzling at all—and the chill he had felt was coming from that faint white radiance.
Han Li swallowed hard, the mouthful of saliva gone cold in his throat, and only then jolted fully to his senses. He flung the bottle aside from his hand as if it had burned him, and crawled and scrambled to the far side of the room to get away from it.
He watched it warily for a while, and finding that no danger seemed to threaten, he timidly crept back again.
Caught within its halo of white light, the bottle looked unnaturally beautiful and alluring, touched with a certain air of mystery.
Han Li hesitated a moment, then reached out and poked the bottle a few times with his finger. Seeing that nothing happened, he carefully picked it up once more and set it back upon the table, then flopped down beside it and stared, all excitement, at this strange spectacle he had never seen in his life.
Without blinking, Han Li fixed his gaze on the bottle in its white glow for a full quarter of an hour or more, until at last he spotted part of the secret at the heart of it.
The bottle was ceaselessly drawing in the white points of light that drifted about nearby, passing them through the very surface of its glass. No—it was not drawing them in. It was the points of light that were pressing desperately into the bottle, tumbling over one another as though they were alive.
Curious, Han Li reached out and let the tip of his finger brush gently against one of them.
Cold! And apart from that, nothing out of the ordinary.
Han Li raised his head and looked up.
Thread after thread of white light was still falling without pause through the skylight above, with no sign of stopping.
Han Li glanced at the door and windows, all sealed fast, then looked up again at the open skylight.
A thought struck him. He pushed the door softly open and peered out, craning his neck this way and that.
All was well. It was the dead of night by now, and apart from the soft chirr of a few autumn crickets, the world outside lay hushed and still, not a soul in sight.
Han Li drew his head back in, snatched up the little bottle, stuffed it into the leather pouch, and then sped out of the house.
He ran until he came to a secluded, open, empty stretch of ground, and there at last he stopped.
He swept his eyes over his surroundings, and only when he was quite certain that no one else was about did he carefully take the bottle out again and lay it gently upon the ground.
The points of light that had swarmed about the bottle had vanished without a trace the moment it was shut inside the pouch.
But Han Li was not worried.
Sure enough, after a short while, threads of light far more numerous than any he had seen indoors began converging from every direction. And then, countless white points of light gathered thickly about the little bottle, clustering into a great sphere of light as large as a washbasin.