Han Li pressed on through the black and gloomy forest, his senses stretched watchfully wide before him. Over the mountain path, which by any ordinary man's eyes would already have grown dim and indistinct, his own sight fell as fair and clear as though it were broad daylight.
Such wariness as his was not directed against the wild beasts of the hills, but was rather a sort of instinct that he had long since schooled into his very bones. For it must be known that since the Sect of Seven Mysteries had shifted its seat to the Caixia Mountain Range, the few beasts, great and small, that had once peopled the mountain woods had been gradually swept clean away. Of the fierce and fearsome predators there was not one remaining; even the venomous serpents that lurked in the wild had, for the greater part, ended their days in the bellies of the many disciples.
And this habit of walking with his ears pricked and his eyes quick, of keeping himself always alert in any strange and untrodden place—this was no fashion he had been born to. Rather, after he had once escaped the grasp of Doctor Mo, and after much pondering of the matter, he had deliberately gone to the pains of cultivating it in himself. Such a sound custom would, in all the ventures that lay before him, spare him no small number of mischances, and reduce the hazard of the path to its very lowest bound.
The mountain wind seemed to be rising ever stronger, and again and again it came howling past, now one gust and now another, a sound that was enough to make a man's flesh creep.
From far off Han Li could feel that he was already drawing near to the forest's edge. He let out a soft breath of relief, for to walk alone through that black and tangled wood had borne down not a little upon his spirit. He quickened a little his own step, striding further than before, as though he were minded to be out of this forest with all the speed he could muster.
Then, of a sudden, a violent gust of mountain wind swept straight into his face.
When the gust had passed, Han Li halted his step on a sudden, as though he had marked some strangeness in the air. He knit his brows a little, then cocked his head to one side, inclined his ear, and listened.
After a while, the mood upon his face slowly gathered into gravity. To his ear there came the faint, far-off sound of footsteps. The steps were light, and those who made them were still a good way off, yet there was no mistaking that two people were walking toward him, and drawing ever nearer.
With a single flicker of his body, Han Li slipped like some quick cat into the dense undergrowth by the roadside, agile and utterly without sound. A dozen-odd spans from the little path he took his stand behind a great tree, drawing his whole body up into a small, tight knot and tucking himself behind the trunk, so that from the face of the tree no part of him at all was to be seen.
Now that he had found himself a hiding place, Han Li's heart was set somewhat at ease.
Not that he was over-wary, but rather that in so remote a spot, and at such an hour of moonless, wind-driven night, it was little like to be for no good reason that two men should come there. In nine cases out of ten they had some business that could not bear the light of day. And he had no wish, by stumbling upon some other man's secret, to draw down upon himself a murderous intent and be hunted down for the silencing of his tongue.
Yet if he could listen in upon some small secret of theirs while his own person remained safe and untouched by danger, Han Li was more than content to do so. He was no stiff-necked prig, and for such good fortune as came knocking of its own accord upon his door, he was hardly the man to turn it away.
"...down the mountain... to arrange matters... the time... the person... the gang leader..."
Words spoken low and broken came drifting from afar, cut up and scattered. For the wind upon the mountain was now at its fiercest, and the greater part of what was said was borne away and torn asunder upon the gusts, so that only a fragment here and there came to his ear.
Han Li was astonished. Little had he thought to overhear so weighty a secret. For in all the several hundred li of this land, the only one who could be called a gang leader was the chieftain of the Wild Wolf Gang—the Golden Wolf, Jia Tianlong himself—that great and sworn enemy of this very sect. That his name should come up in such a place could not but give a man pause.
In the minds of the disciples of the Sect of Seven Mysteries, Jia Tianlong was a blood-drinking fiend without the least mitigation. In the tales told of him, he was a man of broad back and thick waist, with a livid countenance and bared fangs, of a savage and ruthless temper, who three times a day must gnaw upon raw human flesh and drain down living human blood—a very being not of this mortal race at all. And indeed those fables had thrown the fear of death into no few of the sect's younger disciples.
Yet by the telling of Li Feiyu, the truth of the matter was nothing of the sort. Jia Tianlong, far from being tall and fearsome of build, was in fact thin and slender of frame, and handsome withal; nor was he old, being but just past thirty—the very reverse of the legend. But that iron, blood-soaked temper of his, which killed men at the least offense, was as cruelly real as the tale allowed. For how else, with such a comely face as his, could he have held in check the pack of his followers, men who had once been mounted bandits?
Han Li called back to mind what he knew of Jia Tianlong, and drew in a sharp, cold breath. Huddling himself up still tighter, he let his breathing sink low and gentle.
"...this time... steal... the list of names... to be struck down..."
Another murmur of low speech came drifting faintly to him, clearer this time than before. The two must by now have drawn somewhat nearer. Han Li dared not let out so much as a single loud breath, knowing that were he once discovered, death and nothing else awaited him. These two were surely spies sent by the Wild Wolf Gang, and they would never suffer a third man to live and know their secret.
"...the plan... to... no... quickly..."
By slow degrees the talk of the two men sank even lower, for they had come, it seemed, to the very heart of their business. After another brief space the voices swelled a little again, but after that could no longer be made out at all. Only the howling of the wind swept past his ear, for the two had already crossed that stretch of mountain road before him, and their figures were fading slowly into the distance.
For a good while longer Han Li still lay crouched behind the tree and dared not stir, until, by the art of Eternal Youth, he had assured himself that within a few dozen spans there was no second person to be found. Only then did he slowly rise.
This time he had very narrowly rescued his own life. Had he not been beforehand in catching the stir of the two spies, they must have met him squarely on the path. And given what manner of men they were, he would certainly have been put to death for the silencing of his tongue—the more piteous part being that, for all his own skill, he had not the faintest glimmer of hope of fleeing.
Han Li stayed where he stood, idly rubbing his chin with his fingers, and gazing fixedly in the direction where the two figures had vanished, his countenance thoughtful.
From the broken snatches of their talk, one could make out that they intended, before long, to set some scheme in motion against the Sect of Seven Mysteries, and that this scheme had not a little to do with a certain list of names.
But what astonished Han Li even more was this—that even without having seen the two men's bodies or faces with his own eyes, he had nevertheless caught the sound of one of their voices. Though he had dealt with that man only once or twice, yet by the strength of a memory far sharper than is common to men, he had linked one of the two speakers to that insignificant steward of the great kitchens upon the mountain.
That this man—the very fellow who had once sold him a rabbit, whom he remembered as a petty, grasping sort, quick to seize on any small advantage, with his little drooping mustache and his face of a common huckster—that this man should prove to be a spy of the Wild Wolf Gang was enough to tax the very nerves of Han Li.
Yet upon reflection, it was no such marvel after all. For it was only by occupying such a place that the man could come and go freely between the peak and the foot of the mountain, and pass his messages back and forth without ever drawing the notice of others to himself.