The free-and-easy countenance of the other party told Han Li that, so long as the conditions he named were not too excessive, eight or nine in ten might be granted. The goal he sought with ease might thus be won without much trouble.
Yet even such generous treatment was a rare thing in the whole Sect of Seven Mysteries. It was plain the men at the head of the sect knew full well what a physician of consummate skill meant to those who walked the wilds of the jianghu.
Han Li did not stand upon ceremony. He asked on the spot that the whole of Spirit Hands Valley be given over to his sole keeping, and that no stranger should presume to trouble him within the vale while he pursued his studies of the healing art.
A request that scarce deserved the name of a condition was agreed to with alacrity by Vice Sect Leader Ma. Perhaps he wished to bind Han Li more firmly; of his own accord he offered to send a young and comely serving-maid to wait upon Han Li's daily needs.
For a moment the unexpected prize set Han Li's heart a-flutter, and he was near to taking it up; yet when he recollected how many secrets he carried upon his back, he refused, not without a pang of regret.
This late refusal moved Vice Sect Leader Ma to no small admiration. He cast a new regard upon Han Li, declaring that here was a youth both capable and young, one who hankered not after women, and that had he a daughter he would have given her to such a husband.
Such words left Han Li nowise knowing whether to laugh or to cry. It was not that he disdained the charms of the fair sex — only that at present he dared not indulge himself.
And so the whole of Spirit Hands Valley became Han Li's private demesne, into which strangers were generally forbidden to stray.
To this end Han Li set a great bell at the mouth of the vale. Whatever man wished an audience had but to strike it, and Han Li would straightway quit the valley to meet him. This eccentric rule Han Li erected beside the bell with a brazen air, so that even some of the higher officers were bound by it.
And the reason Han Li had laid down so bizarre a regulation was wholly to guard against the last shred of hope that the secret of the bottle might leak abroad. So long as no man recklessly invaded the vale, Han Li could be certain its startling marvel would not come to a second pair of ears.
At the first the rule troubled the lowly disciples not a whit; but many among the high officers were sore displeased, murmuring that Han Li held himself overmuch in his own esteem, that he knew not the height of heaven nor the depth of earth, that even Doctor Mo had never kept so grand a manner, and that a mere apprentice fresh out of his master's door — how dare he ride so roughshod?
But when Han Li dragged back from the very lip of death a Protector who lay sore wounded and at his last breath, and cured him utterly, all that murmuring vanished like smoke, and no man spoke of it again.
For no one would do offence to a divine healer for the sake of some trifling matter, when that healer might a dozen times over deliver a man's life. So the custom of the bell came to be accounted a wayward humour proper to such a physician.
As the days and months slipped by, even the several sect leaders came by degrees to accept the rule, and would send a man to knock courteously upon the bell before, with all respect, inviting Han Li forth.
In this wise Han Li gradually became a very oddity in the legends of the Sect of Seven Mysteries.
Call him one of the high? He held no office, and wielded not a whit of power. Call him a lowly disciple? Yet who had ever seen a disciple of so lordly a manner, whom the very sect leaders addressed as "Doctor Han"? Few now dared to speak his name plainly.
Of this company our Senior Brother Li Feiyu was the single exception.
Before all others Li Feiyu yet kept his accustomed air of frosty aloofness; but the instant he set eyes upon Han Li his manner changed to one of careless ease, and without ceremony he called him by his bare name — nor had his altered standing made him, like Wang Dapang and the others, grow distant and over-courteous. Yet this did nothing but reassure Han Li, for the taste of a lone man with no friend is not pleasant.
At the remembrance of Li Feiyu's merry face, Han Li could not but think upon another countenance — one wry and puckered, like a squash that had soured.
Not long since, by chance he had met another old acquaintance from the days when they had ridden into the mountain in the same cart — one Wu Yan, now a core disciple of the Seven-Absolutes Hall. He had fallen sick with a strange malady, neither grievous nor light, but one that several indifferent physicians had long failed to cure; being sorely plagued by it, he had been driven to beg the good offices of Vice Sect Leader Ma and entreat the divine healer Han to tend him.
It must be said Wu Yan's memory served him well, for when he laid eyes upon the celebrated Doctor Han he knew at once the companion of that carriage-journey of yore. The astonishment that stole over his face stuck in Han Li's recollection, for in the old days Wu Yan's manner toward him had been none too kind — harsh, in fact.
The sight of his abashed air moved Han Li to secret mirth, though he was not one to deny the fellow his healing. Yet, that he might not bring his own fame into disrepute, Han Li strengthened the dose he prescribed, so that Wu Yan was cured within two short days. It was only that during his recovery, thanks to the over-strong dose, the fellow suffered some few degrees more of pain than otherwise. So much for Han Li's petty retaliation for his unkind conduct of yore.
It would seem Han Li was not so large-hearted as he took himself to be, but a good hand at holding a grudge.
And so, by slow degrees, he wholly took the place Doctor Mo had once held upon the mountain — nay, he climbed even a rung higher.
Now each day he would take out the small bottle and set it in some open place within the vale, letting it ripen, in seven or eight days, that marvellous green liquid, wherewith he hastened the growth of rare herbs of long age; and of these he compounded one medicine after another.
A very small part of these was spent upon the sick who came to his door in search of cure; the greater part Han Li took himself, to nourish the vital essence and temper his qi, driving forward his practice of the Art of Eternal Youth.
Han Li shifted in the grand master's armchair, the better to make himself comfortable.
The armchair was Doctor Mo's, and yet this was not Doctor Mo's room but Han Li's own dwelling — only, he had made free with every article in Doctor Mo's chamber that he judged of any use, and carried them off without a word of leave. In his present standing, even had any man witnessed this disrespect, none would have dared to question him, for Han Li's importance now outweighed Doctor Mo's in the eyes of all. Men are ever a practical folk!
In truth Doctor Mo's abode was far the larger, and it would have been more fitting to move in directly. Pity that Han Li ever felt a queerness in dwelling there. For Doctor Mo's death had no little to do with Han Li himself; to set up house brazenly in the room of a dead man whom his own hand had done to death — the very thought sent a chill through him. Far safer was he in his own dog-kennel, as he was pleased to call it.
Yet at the thought of Doctor Mo, Han Li could not but remember the disheartening matter of that bondage he still owed to a corpse.
During this stretch he had examined his body within and without with the greatest care, and there was of a truth a certain cold, yin thing lurking in his dantian that defied all probing. Han Li essayed the Clear Spirit Powder and every other method of ridding poison that he knew, but none availed. And so the distant journey that must be made a year hence was inescapable.