The Cripple felt a tremor in his heart.
Did the State Preceptor of Yankang and the nation of Yankang truly have the audacity to covet even the Great Ruins, that strange and fearsome place, and seek to swallow it whole?
But there was one thing Old Ma had not gotten wrong: Yankang was indeed a sect disguised as a nation.
Yankang built its rule on the martial, governed its realm through the martial. Its officials were ranked in nine grades and eighteen ranks, from the first-rank State Preceptor and Guardian of the Heir Apparent down to the sub-ranks of Junior Clerk, Ritual Officer, and the erudites—not today's doctor erudites, but men of broad learning, for the sub-ninth rank included the Calligraphy Erudite, the Medicine Erudite, the Mathematics Erudite, the Divination Erudite, and other such offices. All were men forged in the martial way, several of them outright the leaders, sovereigns, or patriarchs of other sects.
As for the soldiers of this nation, every one was a martial artist, skilled in battle—able to seize cities and expand territory abroad, able to crush uprisings at home. An utterly fearsome force, beyond question.
When a sect disguised itself as a nation, governed its own domain in the manner of a state, unified its resources, subdued other sects, and managed all the martial artists and divine-ability masters within its borders, bending every sect in its domain to its own ends—how mighty, how terrifying a nation would it become?
These past years, Yankang had pressed ever onward, its domain ever wider, ever greater. It had swallowed up sects like the Li River Sect and a scatter of petty kingdoms besides.
By now the borders of Yankang had reached the very edge of the Great Ruins, and it was the Great Ruins that barred its way.
Stood in this nation's path were the darkness and strangeness of the Great Ruins. Every time night fell over the Great Ruins, eerie things happened with the coming of darkness; to step into the dark was to die. That was what kept Yankang from venturing within.
Nor was that all the danger the Great Ruins held. Wondrous beasts abounded there, strange events happened constantly, and ill omens gathered on every side. For the State Preceptor of Yankang and his nation to march their army to the brink of the Great Ruins was no simple matter.
Yet the perils of the Great Ruins could not daunt the State Preceptor of Yankang. The Cripple knew the man, understood something of his nature—after all, it was this very man who had cut off his legs.
No terror could frighten him, no danger could stop the man!
Sooner or later he would set foot in the Great Ruins!
Why, that man might be gazing even now, from afar, upon the vast and fathomless, the treacherous and unfathomable Great Ruins!
Before long the village settled back into its calm. The water of the collapsed tributary of the Li River seeped quickly into the soil, and by the next day the blazing sun had dried the earth hard and firm.
This time Qin Mu had come away with a sword satchel—the one belonging to Qianqiu, the Li River Sect's disciple. The satchel was six feet long, not large, stitched from the hide of a baby crocodile. It had a cinching belt at the waist and a pair of shoulder straps, so it could be worn across the back.
When primordial qi entered the satchel, the crocodile's jaws would gape, and out of its mouth would come a sword sheath and a sword hilt.
A martial artist refined qi into threads; to bind those threads of primordial qi around the sword hilt was to draw the blade and drive it by the qi.
Once the first sword was drawn, another hilt would rise from the sheath, then a third after the second. It was for this very reason the thing was called a sword satchel.
The Li River Sect was a sword sect of the Southern Borderlands, and its forging was singular in its way. Hidden within this satchel lay a mother sword—a sword that could not be wielded, for it had merged whole into the hide of the baby crocodile.
Every sword drawn from the satchel was a daughter sword. Qin Mu tried it: all told, twenty-eight daughter swords could be drawn, and adding the seven he had split with the butcher's knife made no fewer than thirty-five.
Just how the Li River Sword Sect managed to hide thirty-five swords within so small a satchel, he could not fathom the trick of it.
Twenty-eight swords were no great burden to Qin Mu. He carried many iron ingots on his person—iron shoes on his feet, more ingots tucked about chest and waist—and their weights together came to more than a hundred catties, little different from the satchel's own.
Qin Mu came to treat the satchel on his back as a kind of training. It spared him the heavy iron shoes and the like, and made moving about easier. But to drive the swords by his qi, that he could not manage. The Li River Sword Arts were subtle and venomous, and his sword-control arts fell nowhere near that standard.
"If only I could learn the Li River Sword Arts," he sighed to himself.
The Li River Sword Arts were exquisite indeed, and its linked-sword technique in particular was brilliant beyond compare. Of the villagers, Old Ma, the Butcher, the Cripple, the Herbalist, and the Blind One were all strangers to the sword. The Mute kept a chest of things that looked like sword pellets, and Grandma Si possessed similar silver pellets—if those pellets were truly sword pellets, then the two of them must be masters of the sword as well.
Yet when Qin Mu asked Grandma Si, she was unwilling to teach him, and the Mute too waved his hands in refusal, as if held back by some misgiving. In sign language the Mute told him in private: study it now, and later a finer sword art would still be waiting for him—but if he learned it now, it would be lost, and they would not teach him.
Qin Mu did not know whom he meant by "they," and could only let the matter drop.
The subtlety of moving qi in his cultivation he had yet to master entirely. Take Old Ma's fist arts: he had still not fully managed to circulate primordial qi throughout his whole body while striking.
When primordial qi flowed through the whole body, it pushed every quality of body and frame to its utmost—strength, nimbleness, speed, and reaction alike at the peak of their power!
The Eight Thunder Moves, cultivated to a high realm, let a man shake out thunder from his palms and hurl lightning in his fists. Qin Mu could reach no more than lightning in the palm through the Seal of the Demonic Deity's Mighty Power; of the Eight Thunder Moves themselves, he could yet manage nothing of the sort.
Were he to reach that step, then the next time he met a martial artist like Qianqiu he could catch the blade with his bare hands and never have his palm slashed open again!
"You lack real combat."
Old Ma came to stand beside Qin Mu, his voice level: "Your cultivation already surpasses that Li River disciple's. The fist arts, leg arts, knife arts, and staff arts you've learned all outdo his Li River Sword Arts. Yet when you traded blows with him, you were hemmed in and could not open up your fight."
Qin Mu nodded again and again. He had felt it too—Qianqiu's swordplay was fine, his linked-sword technique a surprise, but his own reactions had been somewhat lacking, and he had gone so far as to simply grab at the blade.
Now, thinking back, Qianqiu's strength had not in truth been so great. With one stroke Qin Mu had split seven of his swords, and with a single Seal of Heavenly Demon Freedom he had dragged his very soul into his palm—which showed that Qin Mu's cultivation of primordial qi far outstripped his!
Old Ma went on: "Without the tempering of real battle, it is hard to draw out your own strength. That is why the Five Elders of the Li River led their disciples into the Great Ruins to train. Shut up in seclusion, drilling alone in secret—that is no way to become a true master. And so—"
A look of eagerness spread across Qin Mu's face. He had been waiting all along for Old Ma and Grandma Si to allow him out to hunt; now, at last, the chance had come!
"—after taking counsel with Grandma and the Blind One, we have reached a decision."
Old Ma spoke with the greatest solemnity: "You may come attend the temple fair with us."
"The temple fair? The market?"
Disappointment crossed Qin Mu's face, and he murmured: "Could I not go hunting instead?"
Old Ma broke into a smile and clapped his small shoulder: "The market is a test too. Pass it, and only then may you leave the village on your own to hunt. Do well!"
Qin Mu did not know whether to laugh or cry. The temple fair was the great gathering of the neighboring villages—he had heard Grandma Si speak of it. The fair fell on the first and fifteenth of each month, and the folk of every village for a hundred or two hundred li around would come bearing each hamlet's wares to trade and barter.
Whenever the fair came round, Old Ma, the Butcher, the Blind One, the Mute, Grandma Si, the Deaf, and the Herbalist would all travel to the Grandmother Temple, twenty li away. But in times past Qin Mu was never allowed to attend the fair at the Grandmother Temple; each time he was made to stay behind with the Village Chief and the Cripple.
And the Cripple fared worse than he. Grandma Si said the Cripple had light fingers—ever twitchy-handed—and was strictly forbidden to attend the market, for fear he would not be able to resist thieving it clean.
Compared with the temple fair, Qin Mu would far rather go hunting.
There were still two days before the faire of the first of the month. Qin Mu kept on with his cultivation, from time to time dashing off to the valley of the Suppressing Calamity Palace to put up a fight against the demon ape, and when he had leisure he lent a hand at the Herbalist's shop, learning along the way to brew the Qi-Foundation Pill. The Herbalist kept several birds that gleamed with flame about them, and when he was brewing medicine these birds would fly in through the window to help out.
After one brew after another of spirit medicine came to ruin, the Herbalist's face went green. All the better, then, that Qin Mu finally produced a single batch of spirit womb, which eased the Herbalist's expression once more.
Qin Mu hurried off at once with this batch of Qi-Foundation Pills, brewed to nourish his Green Dragon qi, and made eagerly for the valley of the Suppressing Calamity Palace. The Herbalist thought to warn him that he ought first to test whether the pills would kill a man, but on second thought he held his tongue.
"The last time I brewed Qi-Foundation Pills for Mu'er," the Herbalist mused to himself, "I too forgot to test whether the potency would do for a man to swallow."
"The demon ape's a big fellow—surely it won't die of one pill's worth... It shouldn't kill him. Let him be. Though each of these pills Mu'er has brewed is a good fist in size—can the demon ape truly survive that?"