Han Li looked upon the face of Li Feiyu, grown of late more imperious and proud, and was silent, for he knew not what words were fitting.
Of a sudden, the fierce aura about Li Feiyu was gathered in and put away, and he was back to his wanton, jesting self. He gave Han Li a wink, and laughed aloud.
"How now! Was not my bearing just now grand enough, eh? Did I not drip with the overweening air of a lord of strife, a very picture of the hero born to carve out an empire, so that you are the more ready to fall down and pay me homage, and vow your loyalty on the instant?"
These words left Han Li at a loss between tears and laughter. The speech that went before had somewhat moved him, yet that which followed stabbed the man's pose through the heart and brought him down to his true size again.
Han Li fixed a sour eye upon him for a long while, then ground his teeth and answered:
"Lord of strife? A lord of bears, more like!"
Li Feiyu, caring not a whit, burst into a great guffaw, laughing most freely, as though the mere power to strike a moment's awe into Han Li did him a world of delight.
Han Li, however, by and by grew calm again. Amid the other's laughter he spoke, his voice level and cold:
"Heretofore I warned you, and you know well the pass you stand in. So I ask you once more, and with all care: if you will but dissolve your art, I may yet win you many more years of life, and in such wise you may dwell long with the maiden Zhang. Will you not think on it again?"
Li Feiyu's laughter died in his throat. His countenance darkened; from his eyes there blazed forth a few keen shafts of light, which he fixed full upon Han Li; yet no word would he give back.
Han Li, for his part, wore a face of perfect calm, betraying not the least stir of feeling, and met the other's gaze with eyes as clear as water.
A full term of a cup of tea passed before Li Feiyu drew back the light from his eyes, and his countenance mended somewhat.
"Han Li, you know well I will never entertain the thought of dissolving my own art of my free will. I know you would do me good, but speak of it no more, I pray you," said he, forcing a smile, and in his voice there crept a pleading note.
"And bethink you — were I to become a common man, who cannot so much as truss a fowl, would the maiden Zhang still set any store by me?" These words Li Feiyu let fall with no small self-mockery.
Han Li was silent. He turned his head aside and looked along the little path by which Li Feiyu had come, gazing for a space, then spoke in a low, firm voice:
"Since you have made up your mind, I shall press you no more. Go back now, and may you and the maiden Zhang Xiuer truly bring your affair to a happy close."
When Li Feiyu heard this, joy spread over his face at once; he clapped Han Li briskly upon the shoulder a few times.
"Good brother, those are the words I love to hear, and the gladdest I have heard this day. I take my leave of you, then."
With that he leaped up lightly, and after a few bounds and springs had vanished wholly from the path's end, so that not a trace of him remained.
"It hurts!" Han Li of a sudden clapped his hand to his shoulder. Those few slaps of Li Feiyu's had been secretly larded with his inner force, so that the shoulder now stood high and swollen, like a little red steamed bun, that might not be touched at all. In truth he had eaten a notable measure of woe.
"The rascal! To pay me back for laying bare his sore point, he plays me such a trick with his very palms," Han Li thought as he grimaced in pain, all in a fluster pulling a healing salve from his bosom, parting his garments, and laying it upon the shoulder.
"Ai! The one time my conscience stirs to some better good, and see what I get for it! I was never cut out for good deeds. Better go back and ponder my arts. This ambush of his I shall only requite when next we meet." Thus mused Han Li, none too well pleased.
Months slipped by, and then a great while more passed, and Han Li was now in his eighteenth year.
Through all this time the Sect of Seven Mysteries, harried without ceasing by the creeping encroachments of the Wild Wolf Gang, had at last declared open war upon it. From that day forth, wherever the two powers met along their common border, endless conflicts great and small broke out, and not a few of the companions who had entered the mountains with Han Li in those early days were swallowed up in these struggles, which moved him to no small sighs.
The great bell without the valley, by reason of the swelling ranks of the wounded, was struck with a frequency beyond all wont; and this gave Han Li the chance to practice many arts of healing of the highest difficulty, so that his skill in medicine grew by great strides.
Yet even with Han Li's wondrous knack of bringing the dying back to life, no few of the mid and upper ranks of the sect fell in quick succession. Some were slain upon the field of battle outright; others, wounded too gravely, died by the wayside, without so much as the chance for Han Li to stretch his skill. And because of this, on both sides not a few young masters rose to prominence and set their feet in the high places left vacant by the fallen.
The Five Fiends, Three Eagles, and Two Leopards of the Wild Wolf Gang, and the Seven Heroes and the Twin Paragons of the Sect of Seven Mysteries, were the most famous of these; and Li Feiyu was one of the Twin Paragons. Having slain with his own hand a purple-robed Banner Warden of the foe, he had risen to be deputy hall master of the Outer Edge Hall, a post of no mean power and dignity; and his love for Zhang Xiuer had likewise grown apace, until the two now stood upon the very brink of wedding.
When Han Li learned of this, he could but draw a soft sigh, for he knew not whether Li Feiyu had done well or ill. He was not Li Feiyu, after all, and had not stood where the other stood; one cannot truly weigh the rights and wrongs of a matter unless one has lived it for oneself.
Yet had the choice been his own — to watch, dry-eyed, the maiden he loved throw herself into the arms of another — Han Li asked himself, and could not, would not, do the thing. And yet to marry the woman while knowing full well he was doomed to die — that, too, seemed a courage beyond his means.
So Han Li chose rather to be deaf and dumb for a while. For among men there is ever a gradation of near and far, of the dear and the distant; Li Feiyu was his bosom friend, so naturally he leaned somewhat toward him, and in this Han Li's conscience was perfectly at ease.
Besides all this, another matter of the utmost moment had lately come to pass, one which engrossed the greater part of his mind and left him no heed to spare for the other.
After countless failures, Han Li had at last mastered the use of the art called the Wind-Riding Mantra.
Like the Spirit Eye Art, the Wind-Riding Mantra was a spell of the auxiliary sort, such as could be cast only upon the caster's own person and never laid upon another. Yet its use in practice far outstripped that of the Spirit Eye Art.
Once he had cast the Wind-Riding Mantra, Han Li felt himself light as a swallow; a mere touch of the toe upon the ground would carry him several zhang away with no effort at all. This glorious sensation of racing flat out across the land, of casting everything easily behind him, gripped him like an addiction, so that each day he must tear about the valley five or six circuits before he would call a halt — for all the world living out a lightness-master's dream.
Of course, this manner of quickening was of another sort entirely from the Mist-Wandering Step. That secret art of the Mist-Wandering Step was a thing of threading through cracks and seams, of turning the impossible possible, gaining speed over a short span by the lavish expenditure of one's stamina; it was a gait at its most marvellous in cramped, confined places.
The Wind-Riding Mantra was quite otherwise. Once cast, save for a slow, unbroken drain of magic power, it laid no burden at all upon his body, so that he might run at a gallop without limit and never flag for want of strength. And this speeding would hold as long as his power lasted, or until he chose to let the spell lapse. For this reason it was commonly pressed into service by lower cultivators for journeys over long roads or hasty travel, and might truly be counted among those arts which no fledgling cultivator who wandered abroad could afford to be without.