The Vice Sect Leader Ma seemed to have marked the growing discord between the two men; yet far from being troubled at it, he let a covert joy creep visibly across his countenance.
"The young Physician Han may be scant of years, but his medicine-making is verily beyond compare — I dare say he might bring even the dead back to life," he suddenly declared, praising Han Li's art to the skies.
"Is that so? So young, and truly possessed of such skill! I can scarce credit it," replied the other elder, whom the Vice Sect Leader had aimed this barb at. "Is his medicine to be reckoned higher than that of Doctor Mo himself?" This elder was plainly of a hasty, fiery temper; no sooner was he pricked by the subtle provocation than he took the bait, and blurted out before Han Li himself the words of misgiving he had not paused to weigh.
These words once spoken set the several kinsfolk standing by at a sore loss how to bear themselves. To agree with the elder was out of the question — for was it not upon this little physician alone that they depended to unravel the poison and save the life at stake? And yet to refute him seemed no more fitting, for he stood as sworn friend to Elder Li, and as elder to the greater part of those present.
"Ha! The Elder Zhao knows not, then," the Vice Sect Leader made answer, masking his secret delight, "that the Physician Han is Doctor Mo's own cherished pupil, and that his art has surpassed his master's."
"A brat of a bare ten-odd years — even were he to have studied since he lay in his mother's womb, how high could his medicine mastery be? I still can scarce believe it, unless I see it with my own eyes." The Elder Zhao shook his head to and fro like a winnowing fan, never once awake to the snare into which he had fallen, or that he had given offence where offence was not to be given.
Han Li, standing by, could not but roll his eyes in disdain. That my medicine should be good or not — is it for you to prove it? He knew full well that the Vice Sect Leader had craftily drawn these very words from the other's lips, and that this Elder Zhao was plainly not of his faction; yet a certain vexation swelled within him all the same.
"Your Hunyuan Palm, Elder Zhao, is practiced to every last subtlety, its power beyond all measure!" The Vice Sect Leader, marking how displeasure gathered on Han Li's brow, felt his joy swell yet greater; and suddenly, turning the drift of his speech, let fall an arrowed remark of most unfathomable import.
"Humph! How should it vie with the purity of the Vice Sect Leader's Mysterious Yin Finger?" the Elder Zhao made answer, with no regard for the other's lofty office.
"Ha ha! The Elder Zhao does me too much grace!"
Clearly the Vice Sect Leader Ma was a man who wore a dagger beneath a smile. He made no account of the sarcasm in the elder's words, but received the empty flattery with a smiling countenance.
This was not the first time the Elder Zhao had faced such a plight. He found himself powerless against it, and so fell silent, only marvelling that the other should aim such a shaft at him at just this juncture, and to what end he could not fathom — for though the two were of no common faction, to lay bare the feuds of the upper ranks before so many of the younger generation was a thing he had never done before, and some dark design must surely lurk beneath it.
Han Li heard these two wrangle, shaft against shaft, yet his countenance never changed, and he made as if he knew nothing at all. But his understanding was all too clear: the Vice Sect Leader was even now sowing discord anew between him and the other high ones of the sect.
Ever since he had once held converse with Han Li, the Vice Sect Leader had more than once probed at him, seeking to draw so skilled a physician into his own faction and so magnify his sway within the sect. But Han Li had never once looked to take part in the quarrels for power that vexed the Sect of Seven Mysteries. Not that he was one to hold himself loftily aloof; rather, since he had come to know such masters as Doctor Mo and Yu Zitong, and above all since he had learned the two magic arts, his ken had been insensibly widened, and he had come to look down upon the petty strifes of a sect so small as the Seven Mysteries. Neither did he wish to offend the man; and so he played a game of delays with him — neither acceding to his suit, nor shutting his door wholly against him, but withholding any clear word of answer. Thus the turn of vexation fell upon the great Vice Sect Leader.
For since Han Li gave no answer, and his healing art could not be dispensed with, he could not be forced; and so the matter of his joining the faction had been put off even to this very day. But the Vice Sect Leader, lest Han Li should throw in his lot with some other faction, made the most of every occasion to break the bonds between him and the other high ones. Whether these seeming-childish arts availed aught, Han Li could not tell; yet this much was certain — no high elder of any other faction had as yet come to trouble him, and this unlooked-for gain secretly rejoiced his heart.
Now the great Vice Sect Leader was about his same business once more; and surely, in the mind of this Elder Zhao, no pleasant recollection of Han Li should henceforth linger.
Ma Rong, seeing this cock-fighting air hang over the assembly, felt his heart quail within him, and hurried on with his introductions.
"This is my shiniang, the Madam Li," he said, first pointing to a middle-aged woman whose features bore no small likeness to the maiden's.
"This is…"
"This is…"
The maiden, being the youngest, was put last of all; and her name, it was told, was Zhang Xiuer — who turned out, to Han Li's no small surprise, to be the very niece of Elder Li.
When the introduction came round at length to Li Feiyu, that one made a great show of having never set eyes upon Han Li, wearing an aloof, forbidding air, as of one who would fain keep all men at arm's length; which threw Ma Rong, who had looked to present the two, into some embarrassment. He made haste to whisper to Han Li: "Protector Li is ever thus — it is by no means aimed at you, Physician Han. I pray you will not take it to heart."
Han Li smiled faintly, knowing full well that Li Feiyu had no wish, before so many gathered eyes, to lay bare the true bond between them. "It is nothing; I shall not bandy words with a certain fellow on such a score. Best that we first look to Elder Li's condition," he said, not stinting to prick Li Feiyu with a soft needle of his own.
Ma Rong, hearing this, breathed easy, and hurried the company into the sick-chamber where the patient lay. Li Feiyu, for his part, heard it with only the merest twitch at the corner of his mouth; yet when the whole company had turned their backs, he suddenly pulled a frightful grimace at Han Li, and in the next instant had smoothed it away again, as though nothing at all had passed.
Han Li held fast against the laughter welling in his breast, heeded him no more, and followed close upon the heels of the Madam Li to the bedside of Elder Li.
The moment his eyes fell upon the face of him who lay there, even Han Li, bold as he was wont to be, could not choose but draw in a sharp cold breath; and then only did he know why none of the other physicians had dared to write out so much as a single prescription.
Elder Li, who of yore had worn so kind and amiable a countenance, now lay in a swoon from which he could not be roused. Yet from face to neck, from both hands to both feet, there had broken out poison-spots each of the breadth of a copper coin, and every one of them gay with varied hue, so bright and vivid that the very sight struck terror to the heart. What troubled Han Li yet more was their deadly sort: the man's lips were turned livid, and a pall of black venom lay upon his face — the plainest tokens of a poison far gone in its last extremity. To snatch back his poor life from such a pass were well-nigh beyond the reach of any man.