Li Mutian's funeral was far too grand. It did not look like the passing of an ordinary old man, but of some commandant or prefect. Long bolts of white cloth draped the villages, and the direct-line descendants of the Li family, in white mourning robes, gripped the trailing cords and pulled the funeral carriage slowly along the flagstone road.
The news swept into every village on the wind. Chen Erniu had just risen from bed when the tidings Chen Sanshui brought back struck him dumb. Setting down his willow twig, Chen Erniu rinsed his mouth, seated himself silently at the table, and a grief beyond words rose in his heart.
"Whatever sort of figure a man may be, none escapes death. Unless one achieves immortality, in the end it is but a handful of yellow earth."
Chen Sanshui, however, was unimpressed, and curled his lip: "It is all because the three Li brothers took up cultivation after all. When has a passing commonplace old man ever commanded such splendor? That Li Mutian, whatever he was, was hardly some great figure."
Chen Erniu narrowed his eyes, seized the willow twig, and struck Chen Sanshui a heavy lash, cursing with wild spittle: "Fool! You knave will sooner or later be the death of yourself through sheer stupidity!"
"Yes, yes, Fourth Brother is the best, doesn't he just have a spiritual aperture?" Chen Sanshui muttered, picked up his bowl and chopsticks, and left the table, walking out of the courtyard on his own without a care for Chen Erniu's dark face behind him.
Lijing Mountain. Lu Jiangxian looked out over the courtyard all in mourning white, and where the wooden chair Li Mutian had so often sat in the back courtyard now stood empty. A chill wind of desolation seized his heart, and as he watched the burial, his divine sense was suddenly stirred. He beheld a streak of flying-shuttle light racing toward him across the sky, slowing to a stop outside the great formation of Lijing Mountain.
"Xiao Yuansi of the Xiao family comes to call! Please open the mountain gate."
Xiao Yuansi halted beyond the mountain. Though the guardian formation beneath his feet was as nothing to a cultivator who had already broken through to the eighth layer of Qi Refining, Xiao Yuansi nevertheless stopped in politeness.
Before long, the two brothers Li Xiangping opened the great formation, and only then did Xiao Yuansi descend slowly into the mountain courtyard. Seeing Li Xiangping and Li Tongya in white, and the courtyard all in mourning hues, he drew in his smile, and said solemnly:
"The elder... has he gone?"
At the two brothers' nod, Xiao Yuansi sighed, offered his condolences, and said low: "Chijing and I leave for the southern border in the coming days, and may be without tidings for decades. Your fellow disciple has obtained for you the orthodox Qi Refining method and the Qi-Gathering Art, and since I was returning home once, I have brought them."
"This is the grade-three River Qi Gathering Art. It swallows the clear qi of rivers, and requires finding a place where river ways are dense and reeds and calamus grow profusely. Wait until dusk and dawn, when the clear qi rises and the turbid qi sinks, then use the Qi-Gathering Art to take it from the river's surface. In six months or so you gain one strand, and ten strands make a single portion."
Xiao Yuansi clapped his silk pouch and took out several jade slips, continuing: "As for this grade-two Clear Spirit Method, it employs the Small Clear Qi — gather spiritual qi, and that will do. It is not equal to the River Qi Gathering Art, yet it is better than the ordinary methods found on the market."
Li Tongya hurriedly took the wooden slips Xiao Yuansi handed over, and thanked him in a low voice. Only then did he see Xiao Yuansi heave a soft sigh, his expression slightly complicated as he spoke:
"The shelter of Azure Ear Peak is limited, and the winds and clouds shift, the surging waves rise — take good care of yourselves!"
Si Yuanbai, their master, had gone into seclusion for unknown reasons, and the disciples of Azure Ear Peak had not seen even a glimpse of his face. The voices within the sect urging the several of them toward the southern border grew ever more urgent, and all of this made Xiao Yuansi smell a strong air of strangeness. Then he suddenly recalled that the Xunlin Plain, a holding of Azure Ear Peak, had been given over to be plundered by the Tang Gold Gate without a single word of protest. Xiao Yuansi felt his hairs stand on end, as though he were but a small counterweight handled in the hands of those Purple Mansion cultivators, and for a moment he lost himself.
"These years the Immortal Sect has been busy with one thing after another, repeatedly handing over the mortals under its rule. Could it really be, as the rumors say, that some Purple Mansion elder within the sect is nearing his appointed end?"
A chill ran down Xiao Yuansi's spine, and only after Li Tongya and the others called out to him tentatively several times did they pull him back to the present. Forcing a smile, he asked: "What is it?"
Li Tongya clasped his hands and said: "We wished to ask whether the immortal master carries any of this river clear qi. We have some savings and would try to buy a portion."
The worry in Xiao Yuansi's manner and his veiled words made the two Li brothers uneasy as well. The Mountain Yue in the west were restless, and the Ji family in the east eyed them greedily; Li Tongya, too, wanted to advance to Qi Refining as soon as possible. Were he to spend five years gathering that river clear qi, then another four or five breaking through to Qi Refining, it would likely be too late.
Fortune had favored them — from killing that old Daoist they had gained some goods, scattered but enough to exchange for thirty or forty spirit stones. Added to the old Daoist's storage pouch, a full zhang square, worth another eighty or ninety spirit stones, they would surely have enough to buy the river clear qi.
"I do have some." Xiao Yuansi nodded, and with a smile undid the small jade bottle at his waist, saying softly: "Within this bottle there is a single portion. On Gathering Qi Peak it customarily sells for around fifty spirit stones. Can you lay hands on that much?"
Li Tongya nodded, turned his hand over, and drew from the storage pouch the pale green metal left from the melted old Daoist, saying gravely: "May I ask what this is worth?"
Xiao Yuansi glanced at it, frowned, weighed it in his hand a couple of times, and mused: "It should be green-patterned steel, a Qi Refining material. A piece like this is worth around twenty spirit stones."
Li Tongya and Li Xiangping exchanged glances and nodded, then produced the twenty-five spirit stones from the old Daoist's storage pouch, added to the five the family had saved in previous years, and handed them all to Xiao Yuansi in exchange for that portion of river clear qi.
The old Daoist's storage pouch was a full zhang square and a zhang tall, enough to match a courtyard, and of great use whether for marching or for storage; the two brothers were naturally unwilling to sell it.
The two took out the jade bottle that had once held the earthly fire miasma and filled it with that portion of river clear qi, then brought out the old Daoist's Jade Sprout Pill to show Xiao Yuansi, who merely took a sniff and said with a laugh: "A fine Qi Refining resource. It should be worth seven or eight spirit stones."
The two thanked him, chatted with Xiao Yuansi for a while, and only then did Xiao Yuansi take his leave. When he had flown far away, Li Tongya gently opened the jade bottle and gazed at the river clear qi within, like river water seen under the sunlight. The six wheels of the Embryonic Breathing in his body stirred eagerly, and he was seized by the impulse to swallow this spiritual qi of heaven and earth on the spot.
Li Xiangping smiled lightly and said low: "Once Second Brother breaks through to Qi Refining, that Qi Refining demon beast will find its settlement as well, and we can make an offering to the magic mirror and try the register qi."
There was barely hidden joy on Li Tongya's face as well. He took out the jade slip of the River Qi Gathering Art and slowly probed his spiritual sense into it.
The formulas and methods of the Qi Refining stage are often extremely long; had they been written on wooden slips they would have piled into a small mountain, and so they were recorded on jade slips of warm jade, from which information can be read simply by probing one's spiritual sense within. Yet these jade slips were light and fragile, used commonly only for recording methods; for passing messages one still used durable goods like spirit-silk fabrics.
Having read the orthodox method carefully through, Li Tongya raised his head, radiance in his eyes and said solemnly: "Let me settle my qi for a few days, and then I can go into seclusion and break through to Qi Refining!"