"How old do you reckon I am?" he asked stiffly, the muscles of his cheeks twitching, as though the question bore no relation to what had gone before.
"To judge by your outward appearance," answered Han Li, "I should set your age at some sixty and more. Yet since you ask in such wise, your years must needs not match your countenance. Are you, then, far older—or far younger?" Some wonder rose in him, but his tone stayed level.
"Tch, tch!" Doctor Mo could not stay his marveling. "It is no small thing for one trained in the Art of Eternal Youth to grow from a sniveling farm-brat into so keen and clever a lad!" And he fixed on Han Li a gaze grown warm and eager.
"You have guessed aright. I am no more than seven and thirty." A number beyond all belief had passed from the other's lips.
"Impossible!" For the first time, Han Li, who had held his composure throughout, felt a shock of astonishment.
"Impossible! Indeed, impossible! Let any man lay eyes on me, and not only should he take me for threescore and more, but were I to give out I had passed my seventieth, no one would suspect the lie." His voice of a sudden soared high and piercing, and to Han Li's ears it fell grating and sore, as though it had touched on the deepest wound in his own breast.
"I, Mo Juren, in my early days made no small name in the martial world of Lanzhou in the Kingdom of Yue, carving out with bare hands a domain of my own. Heh! Those days, who in Lanzhou knew not the renown of 'Ghost Hand'? White path or black, those who obeyed me lived; those who crossed me—" He recovered his wonted pitch, and in a low, sinking voice slowly unfolded his tale, his eyes shooting the keen light of sword and edge, as though carried back to those bygone days of high pride and unshaken grasp on power.
Hearing all this, Han Li wondered secretly, for even his master only in name should own so great a past.
"Alas, that fair fortunes endure but briefly! When I had but newly entered the prime of life, I fell victim to the treachery of petty men, and was struck down by a foul blow at the hands of one of my most trusted lieutenants. Though, thanks to my surpassing skill in physic, I stayed the injury's spread, I could not cure myself, and my martial prowess was greatly diminished, so that I could no longer hold my own in the northern lands. For fear of my enemies, I cast aside estate and family and vanished from the world, roaming the other provinces of Yue in search of some physic, hoping to recover my former puissance." The man was wholly carried away; his hands clenched hard, his nails driven deep into his palms, running blood, though he seemed unaware, his face overspread by a look of gnashing ferocity enough to make any man's blood run cold, so plain was how deeply he hated the wretch that had struck him down.
Catching the length of that hatred, Han Li could not help his own hair standing up, and a chill crept into his heart.
"Heaven has eyes! At last, in some mysterious place, I chanced on a strange and wondrous book. A work so obscure that I strained with all my might to grasp but a tenth of it, yet from its pages I found a shortcut to my former puissance. I followed its methods, and the result was—" Doctor Mo paused, loath to go on, yet the vexation in his face was plain, and a measure of regret and remorse with it.
"And the result was that you became what you are now—this half-human, half-ghastly shell," said Han Li coldly, finishing the sentence the other could not bring himself to utter.
"True. I had not foreseen that, following that book's methods, my puissance should indeed return, yet my body should wither into a premature age, turning me into the aged-before-his-time, man-and-apparition wretch you see before you." Doctor Mo nodded gloomily, unmoved by Han Li's taunt.
"You must have found the root of the matter by now."
"I was struck by an influx of sinister qi, having performed the technique amiss. One day of my living now drains the vital energy of an ordinary man's ten; hourly do I squander my years prodigally, slowed of late only by my skill in the arts of nurture, and by a secret drug compounded after the book."
"Of what bearing is the formula I cultivate to the undoing of your troubles?" Han Li went straight to the heart of it, holding nothing back.
"Soon after I had come to this pass I studied out from the book my deliverance—even that very Art of Eternal Youth you cultivate. Let me find but one who has attained its fourth level, to work his true qi in me and stir certain hidden acupoints with its energy, and I may cast off this strait and regain the essential yuan I have lost."
"Why must you seek me of all men? Can you find no other to cultivate this formula?" Han Li mused a while, then flung back the question that had lain buried in his heart these years.
"Do you fancy any Tom, Dick, or Harry can learn the Art of Eternal Youth? The formula demands that a man take it up from his very youth from its very first step; and he who cultivates it must possess a 'spiritual root' constitution. Though I know not what a spiritual root may be, yet before you I had hunted through several score of lads, and not one could make head or tail of the art." And his face wore a thoroughly aggrieved look.
"Can such a thing be so?" Han Li was taken aback, never having imagined the formula so exacting.
"In the years that remained, thinking I could no longer find any man able to cultivate it, I gave myself over to despair, disguised myself as some wandering quack, and began to drift. Little did I think that, on a chance meeting with Grand Sect Leader Wang Lu of the Sect of Seven Mysteries, himself struck down by treachery, I should in fellow-feeling reach out and save his life. Then, at his invitation, I slipped into the sect as a patron, meaning to hide my name and pass my last days upon the mountain. Heh! Yet the miracle was yet to come. Fearing lest all my arts of physic and martial skill die with me, I summoned the pair of you into the valley, truly minded to take you as my disciples. But heaven knows how, in that moment, I was so possessed as to set you to testing the Art of Eternal Youth. Perhaps I yet harbored some faint hope. Even had you failed at the formula, I should still have kept you and passed on a tenth of all my learning. But what I could never have looked for was that you, of all men, should prove receptive to the art. Ha, ha! Heaven never cuts off a man's last road!"
In one breath Doctor Mo laid bare all these mysteries, his face overspread with a sickly flush, well pleased was he with his own good fortune.
"I have not yet attained the fourth level. Why, then, must you subdue me now and strip all this bare?" Han Li at last put the question nearest his present care.
"That you must blame upon yourself. I have spent such toil and heart on you, yet you cannot content me, ever turning your tricks against me. There remains but this last step, yet you have tarried and refused to push on. Time was, I could have waited two years more; but when I went down the mountain this time, a certain enemy of mine recognized me. After a bitter battle, though I slew the wretch, he drained the little strength left me, and my span was shortened mightily. Even at my utmost, I can at most eke out another twelve months. How, I ask you, can I wait?" His complacency vanished, his face suddenly all cruelties, until at last he roared these words full in Han Li's face.
Han Li, hearing all, kept his countenance as ever, with no sign of being touched in the least; yet within his breast the waves ran high and wild, and he was nowhere near so composed as his outward mien would have led one to believe.
For though he had long foreseen that Doctor Mo nursed some deep design against him, he had never fancied it to reach so vast a compass. The man's origins, his history, the formula he cultivated—none fell within the bounds Han Li had ever imagined.