Doctor Mo glanced at his own left hand with a touch of surprise, then turned his gaze at last upon Han Li, and opened his mouth with scorn:
"Interesting. So it seems that through this past year you have by no means been idle, but have actually trained up this strange and outlandish art. Yet do you truly believe, with these few cat-scratch tricks of yours, that you can be a match for me? It has been a long while, too, since I last raised my hand against any man; it will not come amiss to step down myself and stretch my limbs. I give you leave to strike first!"
Han Li gave no heed to the other's words of derision. He had already resolved to forestall his opponent, to strike before the man could, and to snatch what little advantage might be seized thereby.
He held his short sword across in front of him with his left hand, drawing the other's eye to it; and the while, from the fold of his right sleeve, a white paper packet slid down unheard into his right palm. Then up he flung that hand, and a great cloud of white powder burst forth from the packet, turning in the blinking of an eye into a thick white smoke that wrapped Han Li's whole body about, so that his form grew blurred and indistinct, now there, now gone. And the smoke spread apace until it filled the whole room, leaving it all a sea of whiteness where a man could not see his own hand before his face; and Han Li, with an uncanny air, vanished utterly into the mist.
Doctor Mo knitted his brows; this move on Han Li's part had taken him somewhat unawares. Yet within himself he was not greatly moved, for a man of his long experience had a score of ways to meet such low and underhanded tricks. Only, fearing lest the smoke had been tampered with, he held his breath; and with his deep-seated cultivation, to go a few score slow breaths without drawing air gave him no trouble at all.
"Humph! A piddling trick, and yet you dare to flourish it before me!" Doctor Mo sniffed coldly, and of a sudden his right hand lashed out in an empty palm strike into the mist. The white smoke before him heaved and tumbled as though stirred by a mighty staff, laying bare a great clear rift within.
Still he did not spy Han Li's figure. Nor did he stay his hand, but lashed out left and right, one after another a dozen or so empty palm strikes, driving the smoke out clean from the great door until the room returned to its proper state—save only that Han Li himself was nowhere to be seen.
"Strange," thought Doctor Mo, not a little surprised. "This boy does have something to him, to go and make himself vanish clean away before my very eyes." But he was in no wise flustered, for he well knew that he had all the while kept watch beside the door; had so much as a stinking bug flown past, it could not have escaped his ears and eyes.
He cast a careful glance about the whole room: on all sides the many racks of books, a writing desk, a great armchair of office—all things were as they ought, nothing out of the common, nothing amiss. Yet how, then, had a great living man like Han Li managed to vanish within so narrow a space?
Doctor Mo's face betrayed nothing, but within his heart a doubt now began to murmur. Still, he was a man of great art and great boldness; he gave a cough or two, and then, swaying a little, made his way toward the corner of the room where Han Li had disappeared, the better to look into the matter.
When he had come within the space of a single zhang of that corner, he halted, and narrowed his eyes. He had felt, thereabouts, the faintest stirring of an intent to kill, a subtle something breathing about that spot, aimed at himself and ready to strike.
His eyes threw out their keen lights, sweeping left and right over and again, yet nothing strange could he discover. He grew vexed within his heart. There was no one anywhere about. Had the boy gone up to heaven or down to earth, then?
"Up to heaven, down to earth."—The phrase touched a spring in his mind, and he fancied he had caught at something of weight, and would have pursued the thought to the bottom. But of a sudden, from above his head came a sharp clang!
"Too late!" Doctor Mo understood in a flash—the opponent was hidden away in the rafters overhead! Not daring to lift his head, he flung up a hand with a fierce empty palm strike, hoping to shake the fellow who lurked above and meant him ill clean out of his hiding place, stunned by the blow.
A loud rumbling answered in the wake of the palm's force, mingled with the clear ringing of a bell or two.
Doctor Mo was somewhat baffled. He hurriedly raised his head to look more closely—and stood frozen. Up above the rafters there was nothing at all; not a shade of a ghost was to be seen. Only a black iron bell hung there from the beam, set to swinging violently by the force of his palm, and it was from it that the clanging had come. Of Han Li's man-shape, not the half of a shadow!
And while Doctor Mo looked upward in this wise, a thread of cold light, with the speed of a lightning flash, darted up silently from beneath his very feet and drove straight at his lower belly. The swiftness of it could scarce have been outdone by stroke of thunder or spark of flint; nay, only when the gleam was all but touching his garments did Doctor Mo, in his astonishment, become aware of it.
Doctor Mo turned pale with fright. In his extremity his wits stirred in haste, and of a sudden he did a Steel-Bridge Dodge—throwing his whole body, as though he had lost the very spine that held it, into a great folding-back bend from the middle behind him—and so, by the narrowest of margins, slipped past the sword, letting the short blade slide as it were glued to his belly, scoring a long thin gash across the cloth of his robes there, and coming within a hair of opening his whole midriff.
Even after thus escaping the sword, Doctor Mo dared not relax. His feet seemed sprung upon springs; without his body moving a jot of itself, the man slid back several zhang of his own accord, and only then did he dare to straighten himself up, and gaze with mingled fury and alarm toward the place from which the sword-gleam had leapt.
And lo, on the floor near where he had just stood, the earth began slowly to swell and bulge upward, higher and higher, until at last it formed itself into a yellow human shape—which was none other than Han Li, who had combined the Cartilage Art with the Breath-Concealment Art and the False-Concealment Art and put them all together to a single use.
This present self had put on a suit of earth-yellow robes of the very same hue as the floor, and bore in his left hand that short sword which had so all but earned its merit; and in his eyes there sat a look of chagrin, which showed how he grieved in his heart over that stroke just now gone awry.
Doctor Mo's sallow face, for its part, had turned somewhat green. Even yet his heart beat fast and hard within him from the peril of that blow, and a sore dread clung to him ceaselessly. He was no green hand of the rivers and lakes who had never known risk; but to have come so near to death—that, in all his former life, had happened to him but a bare handful of times, and never was it the doing of a lad he had always held so cheap as Han Li.
He drew a long breath; his countenance at length composed itself again, and in a voice gone somewhat hoarse he spoke:
"It seems I truly have somewhat misjudged you, my dear disciple! That trick of yours was very well played, and worthy of my more serious regard."
And having thus flung this word of menace, Doctor Mo slowly raised both his hands and laid them flat before his eyes, and gazing at them with a gentle tenderness said nothing at all, staring as fixedly as a man might gaze on the lover of his heart, as though he had altogether forgotten that Han Li was there at all.
Han Li arched his two brows, and gave a cold smile. He gripped his short sword the tighter in a single hand, and taking small even steps, drew slowly nearer to Doctor Mo.