If you asked which house of wine and moonlight in Fenglin City could most thoroughly steal a man's soul, every connoisseur of that particular road would give you the same answer — the Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance.
Not a powder-and-rouge establishment possessing three parts of beauty. Rather: of all the fragrance under heaven, this house claimed three parts for itself.
And this was only a branch establishment.
Yet from the day its doors first opened, it had swept through Fenglin City's mediocre trade in flowers and willows the way a gale sweeps through rotten timber.
If the young gentlemen of Fenglin City could nowadays enjoy a properly refined dissipation, they had the Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance to thank for raising the professional standard of every warbling oriole and darting swallow in the city and its districts.
Which was roughly equivalent to what the fifth-grade master Dong A had done for the standard of education at the Fenglin City Dao Academy. That comparison, naturally, was one Zhao Rucheng only ever made in private, and quietly.
The reigning favorite of the Pavilion of Three Parts Fragrance in these days was a woman by the name of Miaoyu.
How many men dreamed of her chambers from morning to night, ready to crawl along the floor to reach the hem of her skirt? Yet those granted the good fortune of her company remained, in the end, very few.
Behind a bead curtain, upon a lavishly ornamented canopy bed, a middle-aged man lay in the grip of a fervor that had nothing at all to do with the room around him. His eyes were shut, his face rapt, his body rising and falling — and beneath him there was nothing whatsoever but a heap of quilts.
A single curtain of beads away, a low couch stood facing that bed. Miaoyu reclined upon it at her leisure, cheek propped on one hand, every line of her a study in indolent grace. Her gaze was unfocused, and whether the middle-aged man's private theatre was registering in it at all, no one could have said.
A figure in black knelt prostrate before the couch, delivering a report in a low and respectful voice.
"So what you are telling me is that this one called Jiang Wang commands a set of sword formulas of considerable refinement — and that before this, he had never once displayed them before others?"
Her voice was languid as a cat's just risen from sleep, plucking at the heart without ever seeming to try.
The figure in black stayed low, and did not once lift his head. "Just so. Your servant is incompetent. I truly could not uncover where he learned them."
Miaoyu turned it over in her mind, then lifted a finger. "Withdraw."
At the word, the man in black pressed his forehead to the floorboards. He drew in his ring finger and little finger, and set thumb, forefinger and middle finger together in a triangle over his heart, and softly recited, "At the bottom of the River of Forgetfulness, in the depths of the Yellow Springs. The Honored God returns to the world; His light shines upon mankind."
And then the whole of him simply seeped down through the floor and was gone.
"Sword formulas that have never once appeared in the whole Fenglin City Dao Academy? Handed down by some great warrior who tests his blade across the world? Or else..." Miaoyu's eyes went distant and dreaming.
"The Daozi..."
She thought further than that, and farther, and into stranger country still.
"At the bottom of the River of Forgetfulness, in the depths of the Yellow Springs. The Honored God returns to the world; His light shines upon mankind."
She made the same sign with her own hand, and murmured the same words.
And on the canopy bed the naked man was still laboring away with himself alone, sunk in a marvelous delusion he seemed content to drown in forever.
Far away at that same hour, in a certain village of the Yong Kingdom, a bald man with a savage face was tearing at something with his teeth, chewing in great mouthfuls. Blood ran down his chin and slicked both his hands.
And judging by the empty ruin of a hole in the chest of the villager lying dead beside him, what he was eating was quite plainly a human heart.
He was enjoying himself thoroughly when a streak of flowing light came slanting down out of the sky, driving straight at him.
Unfortunately, this was no heaven-sent justice, no flying sword come to strike down the wicked.
The bald man snatched out with one hand and caught the streak of light in his grip, where it resolved into a plain and antique long sword.
"Damn it! One of these days I'll swallow your heart too!" Interrupted at his meal, the bald man was plainly indignant.
"You old relic, what age do you think this is? Still sending letters by flying sword!" Cursing steadily under his breath, he used his blood-soaked fingers to unfold the letter bound to the blade.
The Mohist School's Thousand-Li Voice-Transmission Boxes had been on the market for years now and sold splendidly. But there would always be powers that refused to use them, since no one could be entirely certain that those contrivance-makers of the Mohist School had not left some hidden hand inside the boxes.
Even if the Mohists swore to heaven and drew their oaths upon the earth — the strictest heart-demon oath had long since had dozens of workarounds picked out of it by scholars of the art. What was an oath worth?
"Zhuang Kingdom. Qinghe Commandery. Sanshan City?" He read it out one syllable at a time, and could not help spitting on the ground. "What backwater corner of nowhere is that?"
The long sword swayed in the air, as though prodding him toward some answer.
The bald man grew more irritable still. But the owner of that letter was evidently a presence he could not yet afford to defy.
With a bloodied fingertip he scrawled five crooked strokes across the paper: a stick-figure horse. Meaning, plainly enough — riding out at once, at a gallop.
He fastened the letter back to the blade with a careless hand, and the sword vanished as abruptly as it had come.
Only once the flying sword had shrunk into the distance did something occur to the bald man. "The boss won't fail to understand that, will he?"
He mulled it over for a while, and then shrugged the small worry off his shoulders.
"If he can't even read that, what kind of boss is he!"
Walking up to the door of his dormitory, Jiang Wang heard voices from inside.
Since advancing into the Inner Court he still shared quarters with Ling He and Du Yehu, which made it convenient to spar and seek the Dao at any hour. Zhao Rucheng came by to stay the night every few days, though he never lingered long. The rooms were a great deal better than what they had had before — but to Zhao Rucheng the difference was hardly worth mentioning.
Hearing Jiang Wang's footsteps, Ling He came out at a brisk walk. "You're finally back! Your family's been waiting on you half the day!"
Family...
Jiang Wang's heart gave a jump. He hurried into the room, and there, at the set of huanghuali rosewood table and chairs beside the window — furniture Zhao Rucheng had insisted, over all objection, on having carried in — he saw a woman of middle years who had kept her looks well.
Du Yehu sat beside her with his hands and feet tucked in, the picture of meek propriety, answering as he was addressed: she asked a question, he gave an answer. For all the world like some wild boy reining in his wildness before a friend's mother.
Except that this particular "boy" had rather too luxuriant a beard, and a face that had aged rather too eagerly. Set side by side with the well-kept woman, he looked, if anything, the elder of the two.
Seeing Jiang Wang come in, the woman was already scrambling to her feet, delight breaking across her eyes. "Little Wang! It's been so long! You've grown taller — and stronger, too!"
Jiang Wang nodded in greeting. "Aunt Song. I hope you've been well."
His own mother had died when he was very young, and this woman was the wife his father had taken afterward. He had never been able to change the habit of it, and had always called her simply Aunt.
She was not a bad sort, and had never mistreated him. It was only that within a few years of his father's remarriage, Jiang Wang had tested into the Outer Court of the Dao Academy. Cultivation was bitter work, and apart from festivals he had hardly ever come home. There had never been a quarrel between them; there had never been much depth of feeling, either.
Still exchanging greetings, Aunt Song reached behind herself and drew forward the small girl hiding there. "Go on, say hello!"
She was a timid little thing. Only when her mother pressed her did she open her small mouth and offer, in a very small voice, "Brother."
The silk robe Aunt Song wore was bright and finely woven, and lent her three additional parts of beauty. The little girl's clothes were nothing shabby either, though it was her own exquisite features, needing no help at all, that caught the eye and drew admiration.
A pity, then, that no sooner had she got the word out than she darted straight back behind her mother, leaving only half a small head showing as she studied this brother she had not seen in so long.
He was fond of his sister, of course. Blood was thicker than water, and nothing anyone did could alter that. It was only that his heart had been set wholly on cultivation, and every homecoming had been a hurried arrival and a hurried departure. It had been a very long time since he had last heard that word — *Brother*.
Light as it was, small as it was, it fell like a pearl dropping onto a plate of jade: a clarity and sweetness there were no words for.
He had passed through slaughter, and grown accustomed to blood and to darkness, and had believed his heart had gone cold and hard. Now, all at once, he felt it soften and give.
For the first time since he had come back from Tangshe Town, Jiang Wang smiled — and this smile was entirely genuine.
"An'an!"