The next morning, Qin Mu was startled awake by the villagers' clamor. The night watchman had dropped dead the night before. He had just felled a tree from which a great snake burst; that a watchman had also died at dead of night set everyone whispering.
The couple came bearing a tray spread with red cloth, upon it gifts of thanks. "Midwife, young brother," they said, "we are poor, but this little you must accept."
Qin Mu meant to refuse, but the Blind One said, "Mu'er, take it. Don't let folk hold your kindness against you." So he received the gifts. The man laughed, "Young brother has rare skill — a dragon among men, a phoenix among folk to be!"
"What good are dragons and phoenixes?" Grandma Si said. "Their liver and gall are but dishes on the table. Don't become the dragon or the phoenix — become the one who feasts on them." The couple traded bewildered looks, and she waved a hand, "Go home. Mu'er, Blind One, on to market!"
Catching up, Qin Mu asked, "Grandma, what truly happened last night? Was the one working his arts that watchman? How did he die? And that silver pellet before my brow? You said everyone in our village was ordinary folk, yet the folk of other villages feel different."
"So many questions!" Grandma Si's head felt ready to burst, and she shot the Blind One a look of appeal. He ambled cheerfully ahead, banged headlong into a tree, and fell in a dead faint.
Grandma Si stamped his face a few times in vain. Qin Mu hoisted him onto his back and looked at her with hope. She drew a needle from her basket and jabbed the Blind One's rump; it squirted blood, yet still he slept.
She had no choice but to blink and explain: "The watchman was indeed the demonic expert who raised the snake, no mean hand. His art was the Demon Shadow Phantom Art, a superior technique of the Heavenly Demon Cult, fearsome beyond guarding against. I used the Art of Splaying Shadows to wound his shadow, and through it his body. But a demon had claimed my heart, and I once swore never to harm a disciple of the Heavenly Demon Cult, so I sent him off beaten. The killer was not I, but the Blind One."
Qin Mu blinked. "And the silver pellet? Is it a sword pellet? Is Grandma skilled in the sword arts?"
She blinked too; old and young, they blinked until their eyes grew sore. Gnashing her teeth, she jabbed the Blind One again — no waking.
"The silver pellet? Er, this?" She turned over her palm, and there sat a silver pellet. Qin Mu nodded eagerly. "Teach me your sword arts!"
She sighed. "It is not unwillingness, but inability. My sword arts, though named, are not the finest in the world. If you learned mine, others would refuse to teach you theirs. So to my death I must not pass them on."
Disappointed, Qin Mu rallied: "The finest in the world? Are they in our village?"
"Do not pry." Grandma Si warned. "Beg him and he'll teach all the less. He teaches only when he wishes! You carry several supreme arts, adept in none. When, at equal rank, you can outbox Old Ma, cut down the Butcher, spear the Blind One, and outrun the Cripple, then speak of grinding swordplay! Then, if he holds back, we'll force him!"
The Blind One yawned, languid, "His sight is keenest, his cultivation deepest. He has grown ever more terrifying; all of us together might not beat him."
"So you wake at last?" Grandma Si jabbed him again.
He climbed down, leaning on his staff. "This you explain better than I. But the watchman's slaying I can tell. His Demon Shadow Phantom Art had reached the point of trading body for shadow — his body was no longer himself, his shadow was. Duel him and strike only his body, and his shadow would kill you. When he meant to kill me, I nailed his shadow to the ground with my bamboo staff and pinned him dead."
Qin Mu mused. "Then the snake — what was he cultivating with the innate essence and souls of babes?"
The Blind One said, "Grandma, you know demonic arts best. Explain."
"That art is the Unfettered Innate Art." Grandma Si said. "It is the Heavenly Demon Cult's way of passing from the acquired into the innate. But the fragment he won was studied awry, and he took to training on unborn infants. The true art, though demonic, is upright, deigning no such filth; it drinks the spiritual breath of heaven and earth, the essence of sun and moon."
Worry crossed her face. "That the Heavenly Demon Cult turns up nearby means the Great Ruins will be calm no more. Such folk always come in a swarm."
The gathering at the Grandmother Temple wore on; come afternoon, folk left for their villages, and Qin Mu drove the oxcart back toward home.
"Mu'er, from now you may hunt alone." Old Ma, rising and falling with the jolting cart, said suddenly, "You have grown."
Warm, Qin Mu smiled with a radiance like spring sun. "But only strange beasts," Grandma Si said. "No challenging a beast lord. And each evening you must return to graze the cattle, let the oxen eat their fill." The cowherd's face darkened, and the two bullocks loosed indignant cries, tears in their eyes, as though wronged. "Grandma," Qin Mu asked, "are these oxen people too?" "Guess." Grandma Si cackled. Qin Mu did not care to guess.
A wind rose at his back, and the boy's heart swayed. He broke into a run, leaped from the cart, and chased the wind, meaning to catch it and walk the sky on its crest! Swift, he burst from the pines, raced the treetops, overtook the wind's vanguard, and vaulted into the air. A strange lifting force rose beneath his feet.
The boy whooped, feet skipping the emptiness, treading the crest through the sky. Those on the cart craned their necks. "Will he fall?" the Blind One asked unconcerned.
The Herbalist caught a fistful of wind and sniffed. "He will. This is no true wind but a demon wind, and a demon hops along within it. When it spies him it stops. Which of you catches him?"
Qin Mu ran, and the wind ran; a dozen li fled by. In high spirits, he saw to his astonishment a snow-white fox flying up beside him on a great banana leaf, forelegs out, hind legs tucked. Both were struck dumb, then loosed a scream alike. The whistling wind stopped dead; Qin Mu flailed and fell, while the fox, still on its leaf, pointed a forepaw, shrieking in alarm.
"Disaster!" His feet shifted, working the Heaven-Thieving Leg Arts. "Run fast enough and I can walk the sky..." Only then did he see he was too slow; his feet found no purchase, and he went on whistling down. Below — rocky hillside, jumbled boulders, not a tree. To land there would scatter his bones!
In that instant the white fox regained its wits, and the banana leaf flew over. Wind rose beneath Qin Mu's feet; he could tread the crest again, checking his fall, and sprang up to race away upon it.
He sighed in relief as the fox caught up. Eye met eye, and the fox spoke in a human voice, pleasing yet reeking of wine, tipsy: "What are you doing? How did you come into my wind?"
"I meant to chase the crest of the wind and tread it through the sky. I did not know it was yours. Can you fly? And talk?"
"I command the wind by sorcery, and ride it to travel." The fox said, "I am returning from a feast, and nightfall nears, so I am in haste. I will not escort you — I must go. If fate wills, another day!" It rolled up the wild wind and vanished.
Qin Mu felt the wind slacken and slanted down, alighting before the Village of Broken Elders; the fox was already gone. "Returning from a feast?" he wondered. "A speaking fox, skilled in sorcery, that goes to feasts? What play is this? Next time I meet it, I must ask it out..."
Two days later, an old and a young wandering Daoist priest came travel-worn to Zhangzhuang Stockade. "Good folk," the elder said, "may we beg a bowl of hot water? We wander far, and our stomachs are tender." The villagers poured two bowls; the pair thanked them and drank. The elder's brow was kindly: "Master and disciple know something of sorcery. I sense demonic breath around your village. Do you need us to exorcise a demon?"
The villager laughed. "It is already dealt with. A great snake hid in the body of a tree, and a young man from a neighbor village cut it down!"
"Then why do I still feel demonic breath?" The elder asked, surprised. "Has anyone died here of late?"