Some days later, on a certain afternoon, Han Li slipped out of the Spirit Hands Valley once again, and went to meet Li Feiyu.
Strictly speaking, though, it was hardly a slipping-out at all. Doctor Mo had long since become thoroughly versed in Han Li's habit of quitting the valley, and yet he never once hindered him in it, but suffered him to come and go with perfect freedom.
This policy of neither asking after him nor seeking to stop him had, at the very first, put a creeping dread into Han Li's heart. What engine, he wondered, was the good doctor secretly turning in his head? Yet after he had come and gone safely several times over, and found that in truth no man was sent to shadow his steps, his heart was greatly relieved, and he grew bold enough to attend to his own affairs without further misgiving.
Later, after long and careful turning of the matter, Han Li came by degrees to some glimmering of the reason for the other's laxness. For Doctor Mo, in thus tolerating his freedoms, had his own sore straits to consider. It was true he had crushed Han Li flat beneath the two great locks of the Corpse Worm Pill and the lives of his own family, so that the lad dared not kick against the pricks. Yet the good doctor knew also that to rule a man by such brutal means was to fill his breast with rancour, and a resentful servant practises no art with a willing heart. Were he, on top of all, to shackle the boy's very comings and goings, he would but drive him to greater fury and work the very opposite of his aim. For Doctor Mo's true desire was but this: that Han Li should apply himself of his own free will and zeal to the Art of Eternal Youth. He could not bind the lad hand and foot and force the cultivation upon him; that were to court ruin.
And so it came about that the more clearly Han Li perceived the whole matter in its cause and consequence, the bolder his heart grew. Whereas before he had thought it needful to keep somewhat out of Doctor Mo's sight, stealing cautiously out of the valley by some hidden way, now he threw all such care to the winds. Without so much as a word of leave, he would sweep boldly past the very face of the good doctor, and be gone.
Yet for all that Han Li wore so careless a look upon the surface, in his heart he still kept watch with all his wonted care. The moment he was out of the valley, he called upon the Art of Eternal Youth, heightening his ears and eyes and every sense to an inconceivable pitch, until every moving thing within several dozen yards had been gathered in under his watch.
Han Li was confident that even were Doctor Mo himself to come and dog his trail in person, he could not escape the net of his senses. In a fair and open fight he might well be the other's inferior; but when it came to the mastery and handling of the five senses, Han Li had not the least doubt in his own powers.
All along the way, then, he made his careful way past the mountain-patrolling disciples, and entering by that same hidden tunnel that ran through the ancient locust tree, crawled in by the side of the little pool where they had met before.
No sooner was he within than he saw Li Feiyu sitting barefoot at the very edge of the pool. The lad sat with his head bowed low, his two bare feet dipped into the icy cold of the spring water, and "splish, splash, splash!" he beat the water with all his might, sending fountains of many-coloured droplets leaping and scattering into the air, and taking no small delight in the sport.
Hearing Han Li come in, Li Feiyu did not so much as lift his head, but straightway set up a complaint:
"Junior Brother Han, thou comest later and later with every passing day! Each time thou makest me wait a good half-day and more. Couldst thou not, for once, come early?"
"Forgive me, I—" Han Li brushed the clinging dirt from his garments with his hand, and was just framing some manner of excuse—
"Catch!"
Li Feiyu did not even wait for Han Li to finish speaking, but flung the great parcel that had been hidden behind his back directly at him.
"What is this? Something good to eat?" Han Li could not make head nor tail of it; but then he felt the parcel hard and stiff to the touch, and marvelously heavy besides, by no means like a thing that could be eaten.
"Thou thinkest only of thy belly! Was it not thou who bade me bring out the manual of the Blink Sword Style?" Li Feiyu shot him a glare, and then added, with a sudden show of great seriousness, "There, then. Is it not what thou askedst for?"
"This—this is the manual? Thou canst not be in earnest! Surely thou hast not gone and mistaken the whetstone of thy courtyard for a book, and packed it in!" Han Li stared at the monstrous thing hanging from his wrists, with an utter look of disbelief upon his face.
"So heavy!" Heaving with all the strength of both his arms, he gave it an awkward toss to gauge its weight—and all but toppled over backwards, staggering under the load.
"Ha, ha, ha!" Li Feiyu could hold in no longer; splitting open his great mouth, he burst into a wild peal of laughter that he could not contain, until at last he rolled about on the ground beating it, besmirching himself all over with grass-blades and clumps of soil, helpless with mirth.
Han Li eyed the strange doings of his companion with suspicion, and then cast a glance at that enormously wrapped parcel.
"Thump!"
He nudged the bundle lightly with his foot. Why, it truly did feel as though it held books within.
No longer paying any heed to his friend, who was by now almost writhing with glee at the side, Han Li stroked his chin in thought, and then, hunkering down with a duck of his backside, squatted himself down beside the parcel.
For him, to go on guessing the nature of a thing he could instantly discover by merely opening it, was but a witless waste of his mind's labour.
A pair of clean and fair-skinned palms came to rest upon the parcel's stubborn knot, and then the ten fingers began, one after another, to dance and spring with the faintest of movements; a blur of fingertips flickered across the wrapping, and the great knot that was tied so hard and fast loosened, as if by a miracle.
"Clap, clap!"
A burst of crisp, ringing applause sounded in the air.
Han Li did not at once lay hands to fling open the parcel. Instead he turned his head about, and looked back upon the fellow who had just been laughing so hard.
At some unknown moment, Li Feiyu had ceased his laughter altogether, and had even drawn on his shoes. There now stood he, clapping his two hands together with all his might, cheering him on for all he was worth, with never a care, it seemed, for the palms that had been clapped until they were red.
"Tut, tut! Every time I watch thee wield the Coiling Silk Hands to such marvellous perfection, I find it passing strange. That art seemeth to have been made for thee and thee alone, as though it were born to fit thy very fingers—for it is but two short months since first I taught it thee!" So said Li Feiyu as he went on clapping, "tut, tut"-ing his praise without end between his words.
"Thou hadst not, surely, bundled up a single book into so great a parcel merely so that I might put on a show for thy sport?" Han Li demanded, with no small show of displeasure.
"Not in the least. Open the parcel, and thou shalt understand all at once." Li Feiyu drew in his air of jesting, and his face grew suddenly grave.
Han Li, seeing him of a sudden fall to so solemn a manner of speech, was seized with a great curiosity; turning his head back again, he let his gaze fall once more upon the parcel that lay before him.
Cocking his head, he considered the matter for a moment, then stretched out his forefinger and middle finger, and lightly nipped up a corner of the wrapping, lifting it outward—and laid bare all that had been wrapped within.
"This is—" In a single breath a foul sweat of dense cold broke out across Han Li's brow, and his eyes all but started from their very sockets.
"Well, now? Art thou not a little astonished?" Li Feiyu sauntered up at his leisure, and clapped a hand upon his shoulder.
Han Li turned about as one in a daze, and looked straight upon the other, speechless for a long while.
"Why lookst thou upon me with such a face? Be assured, I mean not to give myself unto thee in payment!" teased Li Feiyu, grinning broadly.
It was as though, at the sound of that jest, Han Li at last came to himself.
"I shall draw a line clean between us henceforth!" he cried in a great fury of outrage. "From this day on, I know thee not, and thou hast never laid eyes upon me!"
"Either mine eyes do deceive me, or thou hast run mad!" Han Li went on, pointing a finger at the vast pile of folios great and small that lay before him, and bellowing at Li Feiyu. "Thou hast gone and brought out a full third of the Seven-Absolutes Hall's whole library, and if the hall-patrolling protector should but catch wind of it, both thou and I would find it hard indeed to die a decent death!"
And so indeed it was; for upon the upper-left corner of every one of those book-covers, there was marked out in a ring of brush-ink the same flaring golden characters: "Of the Seven-Absolutes Hall's Collection."