"Eat up. Grow strong!"
In the valley of the Suppressing Calamity Palace, Qin Mu took out a Qi-Foundation Pill he had refined himself—a lumpy sphere the size of a fist—and held it up to the demon ape. "Grow strong," he said. "Become sturdy!"
The ape scratched its head, took the pill, swallowed it, felt nothing, and looked puzzled. "Strong?"
Then, all at once, it went rabid. Fur burst from every inch of its body and grew without cease; worse, a sapling sprouted from its skull, then swelled into a great forked tree. A tree seed must have fallen among the ape's hairs, and the pill's potency had roused it into furious growth.
Its size, too, was ballooning. Muscles surged, bones thickened, until the creature howled with strain and smashed about. Qin Mu stepped in to stop it, and a fist drove him flat into the earth; a second blow bounced him up, where another swing sent him flying. He charged back in, and the two went at it again, boulders bursting everywhere.
After swallowing the pill, the ape was larger and far more powerful. When Qin Mu met it head on, his strength was crushed beneath its weight—he could not contend with its might.
Left with no choice, he drove his primordial qi to a fire aspect, and dragon markings surfaced faintly across his back. The dragon's limbs joined to his own; its claws lay precisely where his palms were. A five-clawed fire dragon!
Fire-aspect qi belongs to the Vermilion Bird; yet Qin Mu was no Vermilion Bird spiritual body, but a human-shaped one. The markings came not from his qi but from the Eight Thunder Moves Old Ma had passed down. Had Old Ma himself, a Green Dragon spiritual body, worked that art, his qi would have carried wood and thunder, and the dragon on his back would have been green, wrapped in lightning. But Qin Mu could only use the Vermilion Bird's qi, so his dragon bore a scattering of fire-clouds; and it was only while he drove the Eight Thunder Moves that the markings appeared at all.
With his qi surging, his strength swelled until at last he could face the ape square on. Yet the rabid ape had no sense of orthodox footwork—it would trade blows, gladly take a hit if it meant landing one of its own. At the end, man and ape lay sprawled on their backs, bruised, gasping, unable to move.
The forked tree on the ape's head had grown into a trunk thick as a bucket, hung with bright red fruit. The pill's potency had spent itself, and the tree stopped growing. Qin Mu's batch of pills was indeed flawed—too potent, not gentle and well-balanced in the least. Only a body as mighty as the ape's could endure the shock; any other Spirit Womb martial artist would have swollen up and burst. Now the potency was spent and the ape shrank slowly—though even so it stood far taller and stronger than before. Judging by the beast's behavior, the trouble was nothing serious; even if it were, it was of the good sort.
He plucked a fruit from the tree on the ape's head, stripped the skin, and ate. It was sweet and smooth, with a faint, medicinal fragrance. The ape sat up, pulled the great tree free of its skull, swept a handful of leaves and fruit together, and chewed them slowly.
Qin Mu handed over the rest of the pills. "One at a time," he warned. "Whatever you do, don't gulp down more than one. And if you want to fight, find another beast somewhere else—don't you go tearing down the Suppressing Calamity Palace." The demon ape's eyes lit up. It snatched the pills and nodded without cease.
Qin Mu's pills were overly large; the Herbalist's were fingertip-sized, whereas his own came out as big as a man's fist, which is why the batch numbered only twenty-odd.
Satisfied, Qin Mu left. But the ape, once he was well out of sight, took out one of those absurd pills and hurried off to settle an old grievance with a neighboring beast, which had long plundered its prey and beaten it soundly—until Qin Mu pressed his handprint into the cliff wall and the beast stopped invading. The ape reached its enemy's lair, gulped down the pill, roared, and charged in.
Two days later, the day of the temple fair arrived. Grandma Si carried rolls of cloth, Old Ma brought along some new furniture, and the Herbalist shouldered his medicine basket. The Butcher loaded onto the cart a beast the Cripple had caught the day before—planting to slaughter it at the fair and sell the meat, with the Cripple splitting the take. The Mute brought his furnace and tools; the Deaf carried ink, brush, paper, and inkstone, and called for Qin Mu. Together they hitched the ox-cart and set out for the Grandmother Temple.
The cart rattled along, stuffed to the brim, with Qin Mu at the reins though his spirits were low. Fairs had once held a certain attraction for him as a child, but now they held far less charm. Still, once he reached the Grandmother Temple, he was taken aback. Around the ruin ran a market ten li long, bustling beyond telling—not just folk from neighboring villages, but peasants from every settlement within a hundred or two hundred li. Most of the countryside had gathered here!
"On the old map of the Suppressing Calamity Palace, this place isn't called the Grandmother Temple at all," Qin Mu said, baffled. "It's called the Heavenly Wolf Palace." Why it had been renamed, he could not fathom.
The ox-cart rolled into the market, where Qin Mu saw all manner of strange things on the little stalls: men shaping sugar figurines, cooks frying meals, jugglers and fire-spitters, merchants selling exotic beasts, vendors of ores and gems, even folk selling daughters. Everything one could imagine, and more.
"I am a man of the Niu family village, passing through your honored lands. I seek neither fame nor profit—only because my daughter has come of age and not yet been wed, I hold this martial-arts tournament to win a bride, and pray some valiant master might take her hand..."
Qin Mu saw a lively crowd ahead and stopped the cart. It was a bride-taking tournament before the Grandmother Temple; on the stage a man and a woman fought fiercely. He watched a moment, found it uninteresting, and drove on—only to discover the temple had not one, but several such tournaments going at once, where even white-haired old men were hooted down and driven off.
"In some villages the young men are sparse," Grandma Si explained. "A bride-taking tournament is really about taking in a live-in son-in-law." Then she warned him stiffly: "Be a live-in son-in-law and you're a man of someone else's village. You are not going up there!"
Qin Mu nodded, though his hands itched a little. The Blind One laughed: "What would it matter if Mu'er went up? Make the rounds of every bridal stage and take himself a dozen or two wives..." Grandma Si shot him a glare, and he fell silent.
The Village of Broken Elders had fixed stalls at the Grandmother Temple. Before long the ox-cart reached them. Qin Mu helped the Butcher set up, helped Old Ma unload the furniture, set up the Mute's furnace, helped Grandma Si arrange her tailor's shop, and fetched water and ground ink for the Deaf, hanging up the paintings and couplets he had made.
When all was in place, Qin Mu noticed the Blind One had hung a banner from his bamboo staff and sat behind a table: "Six-line trigrams and the eight diagrams; fortune told, calamity undone." Grandpa the Blind knew how to tell fortunes? The Herbalist had set his stall beside it. The Butcher had already gutted the beast and hung the meat, and the folk of the village had begun crying their wares, exactly like ordinary folk.
"Mu'er, there's an empty stage to the side. Take this scroll and hang it up." The Deaf dashed off a scroll in flying strokes and handed it to him. "Once it's hung, don't come down—just stand there. That's your business for the day. If you can still be standing when the sun sets, you'll have passed your fair test."
Qin Mu looked the writing over: "Kicking aside all foes of the Yong River, sweeping through eight hundred villages of the Great Ruins!" below it, a horizontal scroll: "No.1 in the Spirit Womb realm." He glanced at the adjoining stage. "Grandpa the Deaf, will someone kill me?"
Just then he saw the Blind One draw forth another banner: "Wins and losses by millions; stakes set, hands kept off." Clearly he meant to make a fortune off Qin Mu's bouts. Grandma Si had already laid a wager. The Herbalist was laying out wound salves, ready for the wounded. Old Ma was fitting crutches and a stretcher. The Butcher, meanwhile, was selling "flood-dragon precious blood," a tonic to strengthen the body!
Qin Mu's face went dark. These crafty old folk were finding every which way to turn a profit off him!
"Deaf," said Grandma Si, thinking it over, "write out a notice for me. Only martial artists of the Spirit Womb realm may go up." She added: "What if some divine-ability master should leap up and kill the boy?"