Li Xiangping had but yesterday broken through to the Azure Origin Wheel, and like his elder brother Li Tongya, attained to the fourth wheel of Embryonic Breathing. Having set the affairs of the household in order, he was now in the courtyard, poring over that Dark Water Sword Scripture, when he heard the tread of footsteps come from beyond the enclosure wall.
"Brother?"
Li Tongya entered the courtyard plain and travel-worn, his body wet with rain and dew, the soles of his shoes flecked with mud. He set the cloth bag from his hand upon the tabletop, and ere ever they exchanged a word, gave Li Xiangping a great bear-hug.
Li Xiangping let out a long, easing breath, and laughed:
"You are come back at last; else our father had never been able to sleep of nights."
"Ha, ha, ha — and I have brought not a little back with me."
Li Tongya gave a great laugh, and first, with great care, took the silver box forth from his bosom and looked well upon it; seeing that the few Wu-tonic silkworms within wore a drooping, listless air, he could not help but sigh low to himself. Then he unshouldered the dark, crow-tinged longbow from his back and, smiling, laid it in Li Xiangping's hands.
"See whether it sits well in your hand?"
Li Xiangping was delighted through and through, drew upon the bowstring a time or two, and ran his fingers lovingly over the body of the bow. As he poured his power into it the string at once lit up, shimmering with a fair white light, and Li Xiangping cried out in a rush of words:
"This — is this a spirit instrument?"
Li Tongya chuckled low, and explained:
"This I bought at the market-fair, sir; it cost me two spirit stones and a half."
"Dear me! Whence, then, had you spirit stones?"
Li Xiangping grudged it for a breath or two, then, in some wonder, turned his head to ask this of his second brother. And so Li Tongya told Li Xiangping at length of the whole business of Crown Cloud Peak, and as he listened Li Xiangping nodded his head, and then and again, and sighed:
"Jing'er, too, is grown."
Not long after, Li Xuanxuan and Li Qiuyang and the rest, hearing the news, came up the mountain; and Li Tongya gave the Wu-tonic silkworms and that worm-manual to Liu Rouxuan, saying in a grave voice:
"These Wu-tonic silkworms are the first our house has kept. Read this manual through with care; go down the mountain and pick out a few of the old women who are handy at the silkworm-rearing, find yourself a courtyard and rear them well. I shall go this instant and call Li Yesheng, and bid him send you over the leaves and straw of spirit rice; for these spirit worms have been jolted and tossed all along the way, and are already at their last breath."
"It shall be so."
Liu Rouxuan had not seen her husband Li Tongya in these several months past, and was longing for him deeply; but she knew, too, how pressing a matter this was, and so took the silver box with great care, and went down the mountain, away.
"Cousin-uncle, this Qingchi Immortal Sect must be lavish and lordly beyond measure!"
Li Qiuyang sat upon his wooden chair, gazing at Li Tongya with a look of keen interest, and spoke in a low voice. Li Qiuyang was by now eleven or twelve years of age, and these few years it had been chiefly his charge to tend the spirit rice; he kept himself humble and lowly in the villages, and his father, Li Chengfu, being a sensible, knowing man, kept his elder brothers in hand, bidding them till the fields and raise the houses, and so no son of that house ever worked any humiliation of bullying and arrogance.
"Yon envoy drove a cloud-boat in a haze of roseate light, dyeing all the sky scarlet — that, now, was a show of grandeur indeed!"
Li Tongya laughed twice, brisk and full of life, and answered.
-----
"Truly a grand sight!"
Li Chijing set his left hand upon the blue-edged sword at his waist, held back the urge to draw it, and spoke cold and flat.
"For all these years I have been in seclusion, and yet had I not known that Azure Ear Peak had taken in new disciples."
The youth before him lightly tossed the jade bead in his hand, and spoke with an air of unconcern.
He was a comely-featured youth, save that the space betwixt his eyes was a thought too narrow, which took somewhat from his bearing of greatness. He wore a cloak of fox-skin about his shoulders, a storage pouch at his waist, and was dressed with no small splendor.
As the youth drew nearer, step by step, the men in his train pressed gradually forward, penning Li Chijing in upon this narrow little path till they had boxed him into a corner.
"Junior brother, there is no call for alarm — it is but to try your mettle."
"A Qi-Refining cultivator, no less, and you come to hem one who holds but the Spirit-Initial Wheel at the very peak of Embryonic Breathing — does it not shame you?"
Watching the men close in about him on every side, Li Chijing drew slowly back, till his shoulders pressed against the cold stone wall; his hand gripped the blue-edged sword tight, and his eyes never left the youth's movements. The youth smiled faintly, and the golden bead in his hand blazed up with a great light and struck suddenly at Li Chijing.
Li Chijing knit his brow; a net of deep azure took shape before him, and bending low he slipped the golden bead, and two swift strides brought him closing upon the youth.
"Your Azure Ear Peak knows every craft under heaven, one would say, save only how to wield a sword."
The youth had but loosed a mocking laugh, when he saw Li Chijing press forward and draw nigh, and could not help but praise him:
"A bold resolve!"
Li Chijing held the scabbard in his left hand, his right palm pressed upon the sword's hilt; taking squarely upon himself the blow of yonder man's spirit instrument, he spat out a mouthful of blood, yet flew a step onward and was already at the youth's face.
The youth started, and sought at once to recall the bead by his spiritual sense — but lo, that pale blue great net had already wrapped itself about his spirit instrument. Though the bead, at a light stir, shook itself free, yet were those breaths of time lost to it. Li Chijing ground his teeth, and at last the blue-edged sword was drawn; a sheen of dazzling, moon-white curved sword-light rose from the left hand and ended at the pale-white longsword drawn by the right, pouring out all at once toward the youth's throat.
"How can this be!"
The youth's hair stood on end from crown to heel; thoughts chased within his mind, and no time had he even to shape the hand-seal, when the peace-talisman at his throat blazed out with spirit light, throwing up a golden shield that barely caught that sword-light and knocked the youth staggering back a full several steps.
"A bad pass!"
The youth, heedless of the turmoil sent surging through his Qi Sea, hastened to shift and re-shape his seal, and so but narrowly stayed that golden bead which had been streaking for the back of Li Chijing's head. This done, he looked upon Li Chijing standing sword in hand with a face grown complex and wondering.
A Qi-Refining cultivator may command his instrument and fight from afar; only by contriving a stroke at close quarters could Li Chijing hope to find life in the midst of death. And that sword-blow of his — it was one hammered out in long, bitter meditation while he studied the Dark Water Sword Scripture — its power was all the greater for it.
"It is you who have won, then!"
The youth, meeting upon his way the Azure Ear Peak he had ever regarded with distaste, had come with sportive intent to scare a little this new disciple; but now his face wore a complex, brooding look, and he clasped his hands in salute to Li Chijing.
Li Chijing's face was pale; he sheathed his sword and answered, with an effort:
"I thank the dao friend for staying his hand. This stroke of mine was the first I ever drew against a foe, and I had not the mastery to check its force."
The youth clapped a hand to his broidered bag and drew out several bottles of wound-sovereignty, and laid them before Li Chijing, saying in a low voice:
"My men, in their blundering, have wronged the dao friend. I am Deng Qiuzhi, of Yuanwu Peak; in days to come I shall surely come in person to make reparation."
Seeing Li Chijing's face so pale, Deng Qiuzhi made haste to send two men to take him by the arms and see him home to Azure Ear Peak, while he himself, with his fellows, turned and made off as one fleeing in rout.
He had gone but a little way when Deng Qiuzhi turned, his face ugly, and dealt the man behind him a stinging slap.
"Tomorrow you walk with me to Azure Ear Peak, and we make reparation!"
The man bowed his head, hurt and out of countenance, and could not help but mutter to himself:
"It was yourself, sir, that went and provoked him..."
But who would have thought it — Deng Qiuzhi suddenly seized the man by the scruff of the neck and hoisted him high into the air, asking with a face full of tangled feeling:
"He bears me no grudge, does he?"
"Young lord! Why, you even gave him wound-sovereignty! No, young lord, he does not..."
The man was frightened clean out of his wits, and begged for mercy in a stream of words. Deng Qiuzhi let him patter on a while, then suddenly narrowed his eyes and fixed him with a cold stare, and said, word by word:
"You bear me no grudge, do you?"
That man's heart was struck through with terror on the instant; his two legs trembled and shook, and in a voice near to tears he said:
"This humble one bears none..."
"That is well, then."
Deng Qiuzhi set him down carelessly, and murmured to himself, thoughtful:
"Li Chijing, of Azure Ear Peak..."