"Your wits run far too lively. If you could stir about freely, then it would be my head that aches." Doctor Mo spoke without haste or vexation. Then, reaching out one arm, he lifted Han Li up with the greatest ease, took a step or two, and walked out of the room.
Without, the fierce sun of the forenoon was still raging hot; Han Li had the sense that he had been within the room for a very long while, yet in truth only a short space of moments had passed.
Doctor Mo carried Han Li as a man carries a parcel of goods, sauntering idly past the medicinal herb garden at the side of the house, until he came to a remote stretch of rock face. The hulking giant too followed close in silence at his heel, like his very shadow, never a step astray.
Through his eyes Han Li saw clearly that before him a stone house had been raised at some point, one he had never set eyes upon before. It was much like the stone chamber where Han Li had once sat in meditation, built up in its whole body of dressed stone; the only difference being that its outer walls had been simply slaked over with a wash of lime.
To judge from the very materials of it, though the building was rough in its make, plainly it had been finished but a little while before. Had he still the gift of smell, no doubt he would have caught the pungent tang of fresh whitewash.
"Iron Slave, stay without. If any living soul comes nigh this house, slay him on the spot, and ask no questions." Doctor Mo gave a bloody order, for plainly he feared that some chance interruption might mar his business.
The stone door swung open easily under his hand, and without a second thought he stepped within, then shut the door fast behind him as a matter of course. It seemed the house was no stranger to him — ten to one he had builded it with his own hands.
The stone house was sealed fast, with no window cut in it at all. When the stone door had been shut, Han Li looked for the place to sink into a pitchy blackness where nothing could be made out. But what he saw instead was that the room was all set about with oil lamps of every kind and candles of every thickness; on so small a plot of ground there blazed a very host of lamp flames and heaps of wax lights, so that within were as bright as at high noon.
The sight within struck Han Li dumb. Though, of course, even had he a question to ask, he could not have opened his mouth to utter it now.
But all this mattered little indeed. What troubled Han Li most was that, drawn out upon the very middle of the stone floor, was a strange pattern some several zhang across. The design seemed to have been traced out in some powder or other; what it might precisely be, Han Li could not come up close enough to distinguish, and so of course could not know.
Around the margins of the pattern, in several places, were set green jades as large as fists. In the candlelight the jade glittered with a crystalline clarity that showed at a glance how rare a thing it was. Had some connoisseur who doted upon such baubles caught sight of it — this fine native jade so wantonly sunk into bare stone flooring — no doubt he would have grieved himself sleepless for nights on end.
Han Li was staring in bemusement from within his own body when, with a dull "thud," his form was flung down into the very centre of the pattern, stretched out flat upon his back upon the ground, with nothing to look at but the roof above.
There was a measure of anxiousness upon Han Li. In such a moment of crisis, with no way to spy out Doctor Mo's every move, how could his heart be at ease? But he was a fish upon the chopping board, and there was no help for it. He consoled himself a little with the thought that at least he had not been flung face-downward; for had he been, even the roof would have been taken from him.
"Puff. Puff. Puff..."
A run of strange sounds rose up, and Han Li grew somewhat puzzled — but then in a moment he saw that the light had dimmed by a good measure, and understood that Doctor Mo had blown out no few of the lamps.
Whether he had done so for some deep design of his own, Han Li could not guess.
After a space, Doctor Mo spoke suddenly.
"The method you spoke of — will it truly serve? Know that I have staked everything upon it." His voice was cold as ice, utterly clear.
Han Li could not make head nor tail of it, and was mightily puzzled. Was that meant for him? But it did not sound like it, not in the least! And yet within the stone house there were none but the two of them. Or had Doctor Mo so soon forgot that he, Han Li, still bore that accursed yellow paper pasted upon him, and could not open his mouth at all?
"Never any question of it. Have the Seven-Ghost Soul-Stealing Art and the Spirit-Pinning Talisman I taught you ever been found false?" The voice of a strange man sounded suddenly within the room — a young voice, it seemed, of no more than one of some twenty-odd years.
Han Li was by now quite numbed. All the strange things that had befallen him this very day were more than he had heard tell of in all his years before, and so the sudden springing up of yet another voice seemed nothing much to marvel at.
"Hmph! That they served before — what good does that do me?"
Doctor Mo spat out a curse, and Han Li was not a little startled. In former days this would have been nothing remarkable. But to think that Doctor Mo, in his present guise of a fine gentleman, would open his mouth and let loose a torrent of such foul language — that could not help but give Han Li some bitter amusement.
"And if, at the very last pass, you were to hold back a trick from me of set purpose, and catch me in a snare — then whom am I to go and blame?"
Before the young man could answer, Doctor Mo went on of his own accord:
"Say not that you will stand surety. For you should, by rights, be a dead man — and he who killed you was I. Can it be that you bear me no grudge at all? That you will not seek to cozen me in the dark?"
Question after question, and Doctor Mo allowed the other no room to gainsay him, as though he meant to vent upon it all the unease that lay heavy on his heart.
Then, besides the loud gasping of Doctor Mo's breath, there was a good long silence.
For a long while no answer came from the young man.
As Han Li listened to these words, a chill crept over his heart. So this young man who had appeared so suddenly had once been dead — could he then be a ghost? And gathering from their talk, the very uncanny arts Doctor Mo had been worked of late had come to him from this very man.
"Then what would you have of me? I have already sworn a fell oath upon the names of my ancestors, my parents, my whole family — aye, my entire clan. Is not that yet enough to content you?" At last the young man spoke, hot and indignant.
A thump went through Han Li's heart. So lost to all decency was this youth that he would pawn his dearest kin, one and all, in a sworn wager, and all only to win the trust of Doctor Mo. Plainly he too was born of a cold and thankless nature. The faint goodwill that Han Li had conceived for him out of a fellow-feeling of misfortune was in that moment swept clean away.
"That may be. Nor can I do aught to you, for your husk is destroyed, and naught remains but your primordial spirit, doomed never to see the light of day — little better, all told, than annihilation of the soul itself." Doctor Mo's tone softened a little, as though he had no wish to rend the very skin of their fellowship.