The girl, for her part, was nothing much affected.
The young Daoist could not help bursting into laughter.
But he suddenly realized the atmosphere had turned rather strange, and hurried to change the subject: "These heart-willow tender leaves from the green pools — oh, the ones we call three-spring willow here — the leaves were picked at the wrong time, seven or eight days too late. And this packet of flying-dragon grass, the sort commonly nicknamed 'maiden's waist' — the grinding was far too careless. And this paper-stack blossom — the Yang household shop is truly beyond the pale! Settled at three taels, and it comes up a full mace of weight missing."
The young Daoist rattled off his complaints like beans spilling from a bamboo tube, finding fault with almost every single thing, so that one might think he bore some private grudge against the Yang apothecary. At last, with a grand turnabout, he delivered his verdict: "This shopkeeper's conscience has been fed to the dogs. Still, the herbs on this table will do well enough for brewing the medicine and saving the life. Of course, that owes chiefly to this young lady Ning Yao's sound constitution — the Yang shop deserves, at the very most, half a copper's share of the credit."
The young Daoist slapped his forehead and spread open a sheet of plain white paper. Setting brush to ink, he instructed as he wrote: "I nearly forgot. Let me write you out another prescription for brewing the decoction. Now this is a truly delicate craft, Chen Ping'an — you must not be careless with it. This medicine of mine both mends wounds and, at the same time, consolidates the root and nourishes the origin — the martial school's fine stratagem of feeding the war upon the war, on the premise of holding itself unassailable. And what is good about it is that its nature is mild, and it harms no one. The only true cost is time — the course runs a while longer, and more herbs are needed, which is no more than a matter of laying out a little more silver. When to boil it hard over a fierce flame, when to simmer it slow over a gentler one — all of that I have set down in detail on the paper. Even the very hour at which the medicine is to be brewed carries its subtleties. In short — for the fortnight ahead, Chen Ping'an, you will have your work cut out. A man, after all, is born to carry burdens; otherwise, whence that saying of 'a man who stands with his head thrust into heaven and his feet planted firm on earth'? You must not shirk your duty, and let the young lady look down her nose at you for nothing..."
At the words "head thrust into heaven, feet planted firm on earth," the young Daoist gave, imperceptibly, a slight shake of his head.
The prescription itself, all told, filled less than half a sheet. The instructions for brewing the decoction, however, ran on for two full sheets — the script a very ordinary small-seal pinyin, square and ordered, straight and proper.
Chen Ping'an grew a little anxious. "Does the Daoist mean to wash his hands of it from here on? For a matter of such life and death, would it not be safer for the Daoist to watch over it in person?"
The young Daoist said helplessly, "Your poor priest is leaving the town this very moment. Somewhere within the borders of the Nanjian Kingdom there is a sect that belongs to your poor priest's lineage — and a congregation ceremony is being held there that I wish to witness with my own eyes."
Chen Ping'an grew only more helpless. "But Daoist, I can't read a single character!"
The young Daoist gave a start, then laughed. "No matter. This young lady Ning knows her letters. Before you brew any of this, you need only consult her on the relevant matters."
The girl nodded.
Chen Ping'an was about to say more, when the young Daoist, suddenly recalling something, drew from his sleeve a small seal of green jade, exquisite and tiny. He blew a soft breath over its face, then pressed it down heavily upon the sheet bearing the prescription. When he lifted the seal away from the paper, he looked rather pleased, tucked the seal back into his sleeve, and handed all three sheets together to Chen Ping'an. "Keep them safe. The books of this town are for the most part privately hoarded by the great families, and hard for you to come by. If you truly wish to learn to read, you may begin with this prescription of mine."
The young Daoist turned to the girl and smiled: "A single leaf of duckweed drifts home upon the great sea — where in life, after all, do folk not meet again? Then, young lady Ning, until we meet by fate's bidding once more?"
The black-robed girl replied gravely: "Master Lu, until we meet again! For a great favor, plain words cannot express my thanks. When in days to come you are in want of my help, send a flying-sword letter across to Daoxuan Mountain. Only — mind you, master, do not forget to sign the name 'Lu Chen' beneath it. Otherwise Daoxuan Mountain may not suffer your flying sword to pass its gate."
At the name of Daoxuan Mountain, the young Daoist was plainly rather taken aback, and seemed on the verge of asking further. The girl gave a faint shake of her head, and he took her meaning at once, and asked no more. Some matters, for the boy within the house, were better left unknown.
The young Daoist was the first to leave the room, taking care to catch the boy's arm: "Chen Ping'an, I have a few last words for you."
Chen Ping'an first set the parcel on the bed, telling the black-robed girl it was a set of new clothes he had bought.
Once the two of them were out in the courtyard, the young Daoist asked directly, in a low voice: "With a memory like yours, you must have long since come to read the characters on that first prescription. And there is a root of learning dwelling in the house right next door also. This talk of 'not knowing my letters' — that is not the true reason you are holding your poor priest back."
Chen Ping'an answered, "With the Daoist's abilities, you must already know the reason."
The young Daoist gave a helpless laugh. "You think yourself bound to die, don't you — and so you fear there will be no one to tend to that little lady?"
Chen Ping'an nodded. "The moment I opened my gate for her, I had to see the matter through to the end."
The young Daoist stood by the cart, and with two fingers drawn together, wiped at some point in the air without a sound. The long sword in its white scabbard, the one into which the Confucian Qi Jingchun had pressed two-character sword-breath, slipped quietly back into the house — the black-robed girl, no doubt unwilling to startle Chen Ping'an, had tacitly permitted this presumptuous return of her flying sword. The young Daoist thought for a spell — for whenever he was deep in thought, he unconsciously raised a finger and tapped it against the lotus-petal crown above his head — and at length said, "Before I came here, I once heard an elder fellow-disciple say that in doing a thing one ought to speak of reason, and in being a man one ought to keep close to human fellow-feeling... In that case, it will not do for your poor priest to be too rigid and cutthroat. To be sure, every soul under heaven has his own fated lot. Yet since the founding doctrine of your poor priest's sect differs, by its very root, from the decrees of the ordinary line of the Dao... to meet at all is already a fated tie, and one I can roughly reckon a tie of good fortune. So I may as well go along with the current. The lots-jar with its one hundred and eight slips, I cannot give you — the tangle of causation thereabouts is too knotty; once it cannot be sorted clean, neither can it be severed, and it makes for a great deal of trouble. As for that private seal of mine — it carries a certain weight. If I were to give it to you, and this town's wards were once to fail and everything lain bare under the light of day, would that not be so much the more running you to ruin? Sigh. What, then — shall I give you gold and silver and copper coins? That would be altogether too crude and low — I should be ashamed to!"
Unexpectedly, Chen Ping'an declared without a tremor: "Master Lu — to give money is most refined! Nothing crude about it!"
The young Daoist regarded him with a knowing smile. "Those first two things I offered — you didn't understand them, but you knew well enough they were of no small significance. Yet you never opened your mouth to ask for them. Why?"
The boy said, slowly: "A white bowl that can hold, at the least, a great vat of water. A Daoist who can burn talisman-paper to send good fortune to the elders of the underworld. A gravely wounded girl of strange and marvelous origins. And a pouch of twenty-eight golden copper coins. In the old days it was old Yao who told me with his own mouth that this place of ours was strange. But it was only today that I saw it for myself. Had I chanced upon those two out-of-town sort before this, I would surely have shunned every one of you — and this gate of mine would never have been opened today."
The young Daoist leaned askew against the cart, and said in a low voice: "That out-of-town woman used a finger to press the point between your brows. That is a shabby, base trade — forcibly prizing open a man's acupoints. In the martial arts it is called 'the Pointing.' The techniques come in high and low grades, and the intent behind them in good and bad kinds alike. Consider an example: the gate of your courtyard is none too sturdy, is it not? She then deliberately battered it with a sledgehammer. True, the gate can still be walked through afterwards — but its very foundations are ruined. Think what will happen in the coming days of wind, rain, frost, and snow. The one who opened that gate with a single strike is long gone, having wiped her feet and fled. But what of the master of the courtyard, who dwells here all the year round? How is he to fare?"
Chen Ping'an hesitated a moment. "I can still bear hardship well enough."
Looking at the straw-sandaled boy, who seemed nothing at all like one cracking a joke, the young Daoist laughed in exasperation: "That was but her first stroke against you. Had you a sinewy and well-knit body, with abundant breath and vigorous blood, you might yet live to three or four score. But the business afterward, when she struck the flat of her palm against your heart — that was the true, fatal wound. It has wrecked the very substance and root of your body, and, worse, it has severed your path to longevity... To speak precisely: you once had one last thread of fated chance remaining. And riding on the vast tide of fortune as this heaven and earth overturn, as the very axis of the world is upended, you might, after all, have spliced yourself back onto the road of cultivation. This is like the torrent of a great river surging straight down — and in the river there are leviathans and fishes without number. The lucky man, of course, hauls up a great catch. But even the least lucky of all — the rest fish up serpents and giant turtles, and he, catching a bit of their reflected fortune, may yet net a little fish or shrimp besides."
Chen Ping'an neither wore an expression of terror nor threw himself into a panic. He stood there quietly — without even the slightest sign of forcing himself to appear calm.
The young Daoist, showing neither admiration nor scorn, said with a soft sigh: "Chen Ping'an — to look on life and death so lightly at such a tender age is not a good thing at all. You think, don't you: it would be best to go on living, but truly, if no way can be found — if heaven itself will not let you live on — then death is death, and there's nothing to fear. Am I right? Because for you, death — this very dying — is by no small chance the one and only hope of meeting again?"
Chen Ping'an did not deny it.
The young Daoist suddenly swore at him: "Then have you ever considered that even if, in the vast and trackless shadows between the worlds, you were lucky enough to meet your father and mother — when they set eyes upon you, what would be in their hearts?"
The young Daoist grew angrier the more he spoke, and raised a finger to jab hard at the boy's head, as though to drill that elm-brained skull of his into opening: "Those White-Robed Reapers of the unofficial histories and the records of marvels — atop their heads a tall white cap. And whenever such a one comes down to the mortal world to seize the souls of the dead, the dead can see, clearly written on that white cap, four great characters: 'You've come too.' Chen Ping'an! I ask you! When your father and mother see you, will they greet you with joy — 'Son, you've come too, have you?' And could they still find the peace of mind to go on to their own rebirth? Do you truly suppose that among all under heaven there is many a man with fortune vast enough to be reborn again and again, eternal child of this pair or eternal spouse of that one? I tell you plainly and without a shadow of a doubt — don't even think it! Even those founding patriarchs of the upper sects, whose single word could set hills and rivers to shifting — they have no such heaven-crossing power either. And even less you, Chen Ping'an — a pauper who cannot guarantee a single midday meal from one day to the next, let alone all three!"
By the end the young Daoist had thrown off all restraint, his words sharp and his countenance most severe.
The boy stood dazed and lost.
It was the first time, since he had come of an age to understand the world, that he had ever felt such fear — his hands and feet gone cold as ice.
The boy crouched down low, his arms clasped around his head. This time, he did not scratch at his hair.
The young Daoist looked down at that small, thin figure. "Enough, enough. For the sake of saving that girl, I owe you a personal debt. I had thought it best to default on it — or at worst to set the remainder aside to be settled in some future lifetime. But as things stand now, I may as well repay you in full, and after this the two of us shall be square. Let me tell you three things, and you must fix each of them cleary in your mind. The first: when young lady Ning is a little better, take her with you to the brook that runs south of town, and find there a father-and-daughter pair of the Ruan surname. Mark my words — you must take her along with you. Otherwise you might as well go a hundred times over and it would avail you nothing. Once you are there, even if it comes to clinging on by your fingernails, or rolling on the ground to make a scene, wrestle your way into becoming their apprentice and helper. Whether it's digging wells and hauling stone, or casting swords and hammering iron, so long as you have found a shade to rest your head beneath, it is enough. In this way, young lady Ning will have repaid the debt she owes you besides — and don't go thinking you are taking some advantage of her."
"The second: after the fifth day of the fifth month, you must often go down to the brook beneath the covered bridge. Whether you go to pick up stones, or to catch fish and feel about for shrimp — do as you please. But go often, in any case. Go when your heart is in turmoil. And go the more, when something stirs a nameless sensation within it. As to what you may reap from such visits — with a share of fortune as slender as yours, heaven only knows. But at any rate, it is the proverb of 'diligence making good for want of wit.' And if even so you come away empty-handed, then, my lad, you may as well resign yourself to fate."
Once he had spoken these two matters, the young Daoist began to wheel his cart, and saw that the boy was still crouching there unmoving — though facing toward him. "Get up and lend a hand!"
The boy rose and went to help him push the cart, asking, curious: "Weren't there three things you meant to tell me?"
The young Daoist let out a cold snort. "I told you plainly all along — work that one out for yourself!"
The boy was stunned.
After that the Daoist gave yet more instructions.
"Those copper coins are fine and valuable — keep them well."
"For the days to come, keep to the house as much as you can."
"Smile more. Stalking about with a long face when you're not even a handsome fellow — who do you think you're showing it to?"
He rambled on and on.
The young Daoist had come to sound, by now, rather like an elder of the generation.
Once the cart was worked clear of the courtyard, the boy said he would see it out of Clay Bottle Alley, and the young Daoist did not refuse him.
The two walked down the lane, one before the other, and at last the Daoist said, "There is one sentence, after all, that I had best speak out. According to the numbering of your allotted fate as your poor priest has reckoned it — the early passing of your father and mother was no fault of yours."
The young Daoist paused for a long, long time, until the cart was just about to leave Clay Bottle Alley entirely, and only then said, softly: "What is more, the manifold hardships of your life under this heaven — you suffer them on account of your father and mother."
The boy was silent.
At the very end, the young Daoist insisted that the boy not see him off, and, pushing the cart alone, made for the East Gate and away into the distance.
When he glanced back, the boy still stood at the mouth of the alley, waving to him with all his might, his face split by a brilliant smile.
Not in the least like a man on the point of death.