With the death of the giant deity, the incense qi he had tempered scattered on the wind, and the arrows still lodged in the strange serpent Yuan Qi dissolved into wisps of incense smoke and vanished without a trace.
Xu Ying bent over the snake yao's wounds and frowned slightly.
Yuan Qi was hurt badly. He had taken internal injuries the night before, and now the arrows and sword cuts from the battle with the giant god piled on top of that. If left untreated, his life might very well be cut short.
"I reckon I'm done for," Yuan Qi said, taking his fate in stride. "When I'm dead, you can dry me out into jerky, and it'll spare you a year of taxes. Oh wait, I forgot — walking into that government office to pay your levy would be walking into a trap! Ha ha ha ha, cough, cough." He broke into violent coughing.
Xu Ying laughed. "You won't die. Did you forget? I'm a snake catcher. I catch snakes, and I can heal them too. Huangtianpu Town is just ahead. I'll go fetch some herbs there, and once I get my medicine on you, you'll be back to leaping around in no time."
Yuan Qi was weak, his spirit listless. "Going to Huangtianpu Town is just delivering yourself to their doorstep, isn't it? The deity of Huangtianpu Town is probably no less formidable than that giant god we just fought. In your current state you're not much better off than I am — you're no match for it. I'm a strange snake, you're a snake catcher; we're supposed to be enemies. If you throw me aside and leave right now, I won't blame you."
Xu Ying shook his head. "There is no deity in Huangtianpu Town. I came through here some time ago — the god of Huangtianpu, they said, had been promoted and transferred away, and the City God hadn't yet appointed a new one. Still, you're right. I should just leave you behind and go."
He dropped the snake yao and walked toward the village.
Yuan Qi panicked. "Wait, I can still be saved — don't leave me! At least try to patch me up!"
Xu Ying said irritably, "You think I can carry you into town to gather herbs and tend wounds? I'm hungry, I'm going to grab something to eat first. Don't go anywhere."
Only then did Yuan Qi relax.
Xu Ying went to where the giant god had just been eating. The villagers had fled in terror, all but one little girl of ten or so who sat on the ground, clutching a half-gnawed chicken leg and staring at him in a daze.
Xu Ying glanced at the table. Half a chicken was left uneaten, so he took a sliver of silver from his chest and set it on the table. "This is the food money I'm paying on behalf of the big fellow of a god," he said.
Then he wolfed the food down, and in no time finished the rest of the chicken.
Seeing his hunger, the girl offered him the chicken leg she hadn't finished.
Xu Ying wanted very much to take a few bites, but he held back, fished out another piece of silver, and gave it to her. "Girl, look after my brother for me. Bring him a basin of water to drink and make sure he doesn't die. And don't get too close — he's poisonous."
The girl nodded, licking the shreds of meat from the bone like a cat.
Xu Ying strode out of the village and before long arrived at Huangtianpu Town.
The whole town was strung with lanterns and bunting, the place a hubbub of festivity. Down the street, people shouldered roasted suckling pigs, chickens and ducks, led young oxen along, and carried flower-decked bridal palanquins, while horns and suonas piped and shrilled as the crowd surged forward.
Xu Ying blended into the crowd, looking about as he walked, searching for an apothecary. "So lively — could some Master be marrying a wife?" he wondered.
A drum troupe came by pounding great drums, and behind it rolled a towering flower float, led by a yellow ox draped in red silk. On the float stood a lotus-shaped shrine, and on the shrine sat a stone idol.
The idol had six arms, bronze streamers twined about hands and limbs and looping around to the front and back. It bore a face on both sides, the carving fine and lifelike.
Before and behind the shrine sat two incense burners, with candles thick as an arm burning, curling smoke perfuming the idol.
"The deity of Huangtianpu was transferred away," Xu Ying mused. "Have they invited a new god?"
The people of Huangtianpu Town had also laid out a long running feast in the streets, the fragrance overwhelming. Xu Ying squeezed forward, grabbed handfuls of meat and stuffed them into his mouth to fill his belly.
It was strange, he reflected. Ever since he met that Great Bell on Mount Jian, he had been plagued by hunger, never able to eat his fill, and he was running low on both qi and blood.
He followed the flower float another half li before he finally spotted Huangtianpu Town's apothecary.
The shopkeeper and his assistants were out in the doorway watching the float, and besides Xu Ying, the shop was empty.
Xu Ying swept a glance around and called one of the assistants over. "Fetch me some herbs."
The assistant peered out at the street, distracted. "Do you need a physician to write a prescription?"
"No," Xu Ying shook his head. "I'll name the herbs and you fetch them — and be quick about it." So saying, he laid out his last few taels of loose silver.
He had meant to flee to another county, saving his money to find a wife with. But now that Yuan Qi was wounded, there was no room for such concerns — buy the medicine first.
The assistant's eyes lit at the sight of silver. "And what herbs would the gentleman like?"
Xu Ying called off a string of herb names and weights, and the assistant's jaw dropped. He muttered under his breath, "Is he treating an elephant? Who needs this much medicine?"
Besides himself, Xu Ying was treating Yuan Qi, the snake yao, who was over three zhang long and weighed eight hundred jin. Not quite as heavy as an elephant, but no small matter either, and that meant a great deal of medicine.
As a snake-catching family, they spent their days in the mountains and woods, dealing with venomous snakes, insects, and demons and monsters of every kind, so they had to know something of medicine. Xu Ying had trailed his grandfather and foster father for years; his medical skill was not weak, and healing wounds came easily to him.
Only, Xu Ying needed so many herbs that the assistant couldn't gather them all at once, so Xu Ying simply left the shop and fell in behind the float. "Let me see how they perform a deification," he thought.
He had witnessed deification in the countryside before, and it was a simple affair. When a virtuous elder passed away, the villagers raised an ancestral shrine, carved an idol from clay or wood, set his spirit tablet before it, and made offerings daily. In time, the idol took on something of the divine.
But deification in a town was nothing like the countryside. The gods of a town all held posts in the Yin Court's establishment and required the Yin Court's formal appointment. In the reign of the Great Sagely Enlightened Filial Emperor, such gods also received the Emperor's own investiture, in rites of the gravest solemnity.
This was a kind of deification Xu Ying had never seen, and he was curious despite himself.
The crowd bore the float up to a temple in town, which was already packed solid, impossible to squeeze into. Xu Ying stopped outside and peered in. Offerings and sacrificial beasts were streaming endlessly into the temple, and a crowd of burly men had lifted the idol down and were moving it onto the shrine inside.
In the curling incense smoke, a squat Land God rose up out of the earth, unfurled a green painted scroll with a snap, and wagged his head, chanting: "By the mandate of heaven and the decree of the Yin Court: Huangtianpu Town's nether officer Huang Sanduo, generous in life, broad in good fortune, his virtue moved heaven and earth, his righteousness made gods themselves weep. Now, on orders received by Xue Lingfu, City God of Lingling, Huange Sanduo is herein enfeoffed as the God of Huangtianpu, to enjoy the incense offerings of the mortal world and to receive prayers for prosperity of the departed. Thus decreed —"
The squat Land God snapped the green scroll shut and shrilled: "Strike up the rites and music! Let the Dragon God stir the clouds, and the Rain Deity spread the showers! Now bring the spirit tablet of Master Huang!"
At once drums and music erupted, and the suonas blew louder than ever.
Dark clouds suddenly gathered in the sky. Xu Ying looked up and saw, amid the mist, a colossal creature soaring and twisting — like the divine serpent carved on the temple pillars.
Then rain began to fall, and through the mist he could dimly make out a deity standing upon the clouds, governing the downpour — the Rain Deity the Land God had spoken of.
The Rain Deity and the Dragon God were both officials of the Yin Court. Their coming to deify the god of Huangtianpu was a mere formality. Once the spirit tablet of Master Huang Sanduo had been brought in, the rain stopped and the clouds parted, and both deities vanished from sight.
Within the temple, the investiture ceremony continued apace.
Xu Ying asked the people nearby, "This Master Huang — he must have been a man of great virtue, to be deified as the town's god right after death? This is a high rank indeed. He must have done countless good deeds in his life?"
The people only sneered. One man, right in front of Xu Ying, hawked up two fat gobs of phlegm onto the ground and ground them into the dirt with his heel.
Baffled, Xu Ying pressed for more detail, but the townsfolk of Huangtianpu fell silent as mice, afraid to say a word.
Just then an old, hoarse voice chuckled: "Our young friend here is out of the loop. This Master Huang Sanduo is the most famous great benefactor of our Lingling County, said to be rich in fine fields, rich in gold and treasure, and rich in pretty concubines. Why, the great benefactor never once skied a good deed in his life. The great benefactor made offerings to the City God, stuffing no small amount of money into the City God temple every festival. And to the folk of the town he was just as bounteous in kindness. The great benefactor opened brothels, sending the girls there to work so they could earn money. He gobbled up land, forcing the townsfolk to sell their good fields, all so they could work for him — and he, so kind, would pay them wages to keep them fed."
The moment those words left his mouth, the crowd scattered like startled birds, giving them a wide berth.
Xu Ying looked at the speaker. He was an old man with silver hair and beard, dressed in splendid dark-purple silk, hands clasped behind his back, his chin whisker tied with a little black cord. He looked hale and spirited.
"Master Huang did evil on every side," Xu Ying asked, puzzled. "How, then, did he come to be deified?"
The spirited old man beamed. "He bribed the City God. The City God Xue Lingfu took his money and greased the palms of the whole Yin Court bureaucracy for him. Buying a divine office in death was child's play for one who had come by it easily."
Xu Ying cried out, "Is the Yin Court truly so corrupt?"
The spirited old man laughed. "If the Yin Court weren't corrupt, could the common folk be ground down like this? You suffer his abuse in life, and in death you suffer his abuse still."
At this, the people around grew sick with fear and shrank back again, moving away from Xu Ying and the old man.
All at once a thunderous voice rang out in a cold laugh: "Master Huang bribed the City God, true enough. But what are the magisterial offices but the same? Did the bureaucracy get nothing from Master Huang's coffers?"
Xu Ying followed the sound. The crowd parted before a giant who stood twice as tall as a common man. He wore black boots filigreed with gold, embossed with a liyou beast devouring the sky; a flowing robe of dragon-brocaded crimson; and a black-and-red official hat. His face was lean and hale, his sleeves billowing, his bearing extraordinary.
Wherever the god passed, the crowd was pushed apart as if by unseen hands.
Xu Ying's heart leapt. A single, grim realization: "The City God idol!"
The giant was none other than the City God of Lingling, named Xue Lingfu, who had held his seat for five hundred years — on it since the reign of the Great Sagely Enlightened Filial Emperor, enjoying incense offerings all that time.
The City God Xue Lingfu walked straight up to where Xu Ying and the spirited old man stood. "Master Huang stuffed his silver into the government offices plenty in his day," he said coldly. "When he forced good girls into whoredom and a brothel woman, unable to bear it, hanged herself — the court took his money and found him innocent. When he gobbled up land by bullying purchase and forced sale, driving the poor commoners to throw themselves into wells and rivers — it was the magistrates who cleaned up after him. You officials could do such things; can my Yin Court not do them either?"
"This old man is an official?"
Xu Ying's heart jolted and he hurriedly stepped back from the spirited old man. "Is the City God talking about him? Who is he? Just now he acted so upright, like a good man — turns out he's in league with the City God. Neither of them is any good!"
The spirited old man roared with laughter, completely unafraid of the City God Xue Lingfu. Hands clasped behind him, he said airily, "The City God speaks true. I have indeed accepted no small amount of the money and treasure Master Huang so generously sent. In this life one must, of course, enjoy oneself as much as one can. When those on high are filthy, how are we officials down below to stay clean?"
The City God Xue Lingfu was rather taken aback by his admission. "I thought you living folk would brazenly deny everything," he laughed, "yet here you are, Old Master Zhou Yihang, owning up. You officials — your faces are hammered and tempered until they're thicker than I'd imagined."
The spirited old man Zhou Yihang took no offense at the jibe. "My son is the County Magistrate of Lingling," he laughed. "Why would I not own up to what he has done? Can the Emperor govern my Zhou family, or can the Yin Court govern my Zhou family?"
Xu Ying stepped back another pace. "This old man is Magistrate Zhou Yang's father!" he thought. "I'm done for now..."
Ordinary Nuo masters like Ding Quan or Wei Chu he could have managed, but it was beyond him to handle the Nuo masters of the Zhou family — and Zhou Yihang was, besides, the father of County Magistrate Zhou Yang, with strength unfathomable and deep!
At the mention of the Zhou family, the City God Xue Lingfu's expression changed. In these days, when imperial authority had fallen from the emperor's hands, the Zhou family really was a monstrous force that even the throne could not control.
"Xu Ying, who has beaten Master Jiang to death and offended the king's law, I mean to take with me," Zhou Yihang said, serene in his confidence.
Xu Ying's body suddenly sagged. His limbs felt locked fast by an invisible force, unable to move a muscle — held in the mighty grip of the old man Zhou Yihang's qi!
Under that pressure, his qi and blood ran sluggish and would not circulate, and there was no hope of breaking free of the lock.
The City God Xue Lingfu laughed, his voice like rolling thunder. "Imperial authority falls from the throne, great houses play at power, the military governors carve up the realm, but my Yin Court's divine authority has not slipped away! The Zhou family goes unchecked in the mortal world, throwing its weight around as it pleases, yet before the Yin Court — even your Zhou family's founding ancestor would have to yield a step! Xu Ying has wronged the laws of heaven, and he shall be taken to the Yin Court to face trial!"
Xu Ying's body sagged once more. A second, mightier force seized hold of him — the qi of the City God Xue Lingfu!
Xue Lingfu, a City God deified five hundred years, and Zhou Yihang, a Nuo master of the Zhou family's unfathomable depths — either one was far beyond Xu Ying.
A single wisp of their qi was enough to pin him fast and hold him helpless.
"Two old coots — not that strong, and yet so arrogant." In Xu Ying's mind, that mysterious voice suddenly spoke.
Xu Ying was both startled and delighted. "Senior," he asked at once, "can you strike out and kill these two old coots?"
"No."
The Great Bell refused him flatly. "I am badly wounded now, hard pressed to save myself. I could not match them."
The City God Xue Lingfu and Zhou Yihang, of course, could not hear the Great Bell. But they heard Xu Ying's lips blurt out the words "two old coots," and in the same instant both turned, eyes savage, fixed upon him.
Xu Ying let out a muffled groan, blinked innocently, and whispered, "Gentlemen, the old coots I meant — they weren't you..."