Han Li, having trod round and round without number, at last came to a halt.
"Whether I shall strike this bargain or no, I shall not decide until the poison can no longer be put off," he could but think, with much reluctance.
Then he glanced at the giant without the door, and, recalling those strange words at the close of the dying letter, felt a stirring of curiosity; he resolved to try the method the letter taught for controlling the giant.
Han Li stooped, and from the heap of articles drew out a small bell of yellow bronze. It was no great thing — a single palm could hold it level — but it was crafted with exceeding fineness, its proportions balanced in harmony, the work at a glance of a master's hand. The one thing that set it apart from any common bell was a faint trace of blood welling within the wall of the bell, striking and strange to the eye.
Han Li studied this implement, called the "Soul-Summoning Bell," long and carefully, and could not see wherein lay its power; that this thing, as the letter said, could subdue so fearsome a monster as the giant — it was past belief!
With the little bell resting in his left palm and a dagger taken up carelessly in his right, Han Li stepped cautiously out of the stone door, and crept slowly toward the giant.
When he had come within some two zhang of the giant, Han Li halted, unwilling to draw any nearer, to guard against some mishap.
At this moment, the giant stood with his back to Han Li, bolt upright.
"Tang!" A clear, crisp note rang from the little bell, when Han Li tapped it lightly with the dagger.
Han Li knit his brow. The sound seemed no different from that of any common bell; could this be the thing to subdue the giant?
Some wavering stole into his breast; he bowed his body a little, ready to dart back into the stone chamber should aught go amiss.
At the sound of the bell, the giant's shoulders gave a little twitch, as though he had felt something. Overjoyed, Han Li set to tapping the bronze bell again without pause.
"Tang! Tang!..." The notes rang out one after another, and the giant's whole body began to tremble in time with them; at last even his steps grew unsteady, his body could no longer stand firm, and with a heavy fall he pitched headlong to the ground, senseless.
The giant's vast bulk meeting the dry ground threw up no little dust, which set the unguarded Han Li to sneezing several times in a row, in a most sorry plight.
But Han Li spared no thought for such trifles; he flung himself upon the giant in a trice, and tore the cowl from the fellow's head, revealing a face so bloated that at the first sight of it even Han Li felt his flesh creep with horror.
Gritting his teeth against the sickness that rose in him, not daring to look upon the face too closely, Han Li hastily drew the dagger across his own wrist, letting the blood flow freely out, and sprinkled it over the giant's face — until the whole great countenance was slathered thick with it. Only then did he press the wound, and from his own clothing hasten to find a clean strip of cloth, and bind it about the gash to stay the flowing blood. Then, calm and composed, he stood aside and watched the giant's response.
A wondrous thing came to pass. All that blood seeped, slowly, into the very skin of the giant's face, not a single drop left behind; and Han Li stood gawking in amazement, not even heeding that his finger, pressing too hard upon the wound, had let the blood ooze out again from beneath the cloth.
When the blood had been drank up entirely, the giant opened his eyes, and rose slowly to his feet. His manner was dull and vacant, his two eyes without light, not the least feeling stirring in them.
But when the giant turned his head, and his gaze met Han Li's, Han Li felt his head spin with a "hum" — a strange emotion, at once unfamiliar and familiar, rose in his heart, as though something alien had all at once taken root in the inmost chamber of his soul; and this thing, like a dog long used to the household, pressed close about Han Li, calling upon him with a fond, clinging whine.
For a moment Han Li was startled; but he was quick to steady himself, for he saw the giant had thrown off his former dead-stiff countenance, and his face was now full of a ready submissiveness, giving Han Li the oddest sense that he held the fellow's life and death wholly in his own hands.
Mastering the joy within him, Han Li gave the giant a test command, in a low voice.
"Go and break up that stone door."
Without a word, the giant took a few great strides to the stone door, raised both clenched fists high, and, swinging them like a great iron hammer, smashed it to pieces in three or five blows; then, swift as a whirlwind, he turned and came back to stand beside Han Li, awaiting his next command.
Han Li, who had never been one for great outbursts of joy or sorrow, could not now keep his mouth from splitting into a grin of pure delight. With so stout a fighting-man ever at his beck and call, what common peril could henceforth weigh on him in the least?
So Han Li went on, plotting with delight the fair days to come, while he scanned the giant's whole body again and again with a hungry gaze.
The more he looked upon the giant, the more satisfied he grew; and that face, which a moment before he had thought all too hideous, now seemed strangely comely to him, and even wore more and more a look he could not but call familiar.
"Familiar?" Startled by this feeling within him, Han Li could not but wonder at it.
On a face so ugly, which he had never seen before in his life, how could he put his finger upon any familiarity?
Holding this doubt, Han Li began to study the giant's nose and eyes with care, seeking out the cause of it.
By degrees he found that, were the giant's swollen features all set back to their true shape, shrunk by a single size and pieced together anew, the face was not at all uncomely — was, indeed, a very honest, open face: a countenance Han Li knew to the very bone.
The colour drained from Han Li's cheeks. For a long while he stood speechless; then at last he reached out both hands, and stroked the giant's face with the greatest gentleness.
"Brother Zhang... is it truly you?" The words came out deep and low, in a very quiet tone.
The face, pieced together anew, bore a startling likeness to his good friend "Zhang Tie," who had been lost these several years past; and, setting this beside the strange words Doctor Mo had left at the close, Han Li was fully ten parts certain that the giant must have some deep kinship with Zhang Tie. Could it really be, as the letter had said, that this giant before his eyes was no more than the husk of Zhang Tie's body, its soul departed long since? And yet how came his body to be grown so tall and terrible?