Chen Ping'an was about to leave the courtyard when the girl in black called out: "Wait — I have some things to tell you."
He pretended not to hear. When he reached the gate, she raised her voice. "Chen Ping'an!"
He had no choice but to return to the threshold. Her face was rosier than before, though her voice was still rough. "First — we outsiders who came here are sturdier than common folk, as I told you, but apart from that we're no different from you. Second — outsiders may not kill anyone here. Whoever breaks this rule will be driven out and is sure to leave empty-handed. Third — in a moment of peril we outsiders act even if it means leaving empty-handed, for staying alive is the most fundamental thing of all."
"Then when doing a thing, one must strike fast?"
She grinned wide, face radiant, eyes blazing as if to light the room. She patted the green scabbard across her knee. "Right! Fast — faster, and fastest of all! Take me: I carry both knife and sword, and I mean to be the fastest in the world at drawing either!"
Then she turned at once from a sword-mistress of great ambitions into a neighbor girl eager to show off. "Hey — do you know how many worlds there are under heaven?"
Chen Ping'an blinked. She saw his blankness, the savor left her, and she waved him off. "Just bring that pot back. I'm waiting here for my medicine."
This time his steps out of the courtyard were slower, and steadier.
He had not been gone from Mud Vase Lane long when the unlocked gate was pushed gently open. Inside, the girl in black opened her eyes; a moment before she had been breathing in a strange, deliberate way, and now she looked toward the door as one who faces a grave foe. The flying sword in its snow-white scabbard fell into sudden silence, though an invisible killing intent gathered about it, bitter enough to freeze bones and slay men.
Then the maidservant Zhigui drifted to the doorway like an ordinary neighbor. She did not cross the threshold, but craned her neck, peering everywhere — while of the girl on the bed she made a show of taking no notice. After a long while she seemed at last to see her. "Elder sister, who might you be? How is it you're sitting on Chen Ping'an's bed? I don't recall his ever mentioning kin."
Ning Yao glanced at her once, then shut her eyes, neither asking nor answering.
Seeing her feign deafness, Zhigui took no offense. She tilted her head, pursed her lips, and wore a flicker of disdain. But as she glanced at the white-sheathed sword, in the depths of her eyes there hid a hatred and fear of the deepest kind, faint threads of gold darting through her pupils. She hesitated, lifted a foot — then drew it back, coughed, and said with affectation: "I'm coming in, then. Not answering — no objection, then? Just as well. This is Chen Ping'an's own home; I've known him for years… But never mind. We're about to move away, and I can leave plenty to Chen Ping'an. You've no idea how hard these years have been for him."
She chattered on, making them sound like childhood sweethearts.
Zhigui went to the little table, sat on a stool, and watched that sword from the corner of her eye. She had barely settled before the girl in black drew out the three sheets of paper the young Daoist had left — but though she turned them over and over, she still found no way in. "These characters," she said at last, disappointed, "are written with no… savor at all."
She remembered clearly that on the long wall of her homeland stood eighteen brokenly spaced characters, each carved by a sword, each carrying the sweeping force to hold ten thousand demons in check — and as a child her greatest pleasure had been to stand within one of their strokes and gaze out into the distance. So for this town's plaque, "the spirit surging to the Bull and Dipper," she felt nothing but contempt.
Zhigui turned back, straightening her slender waist, hands folded on her knees, striving to carry herself like a lady of good family. "Ah, young lady," she said softly, with a smile, "you really are too careless."
Ning Yao could not help asking: "Who are you?"
Zhigui pressed a hand to her breast, feigning surprise: "Oh — so you do speak our local dialect?"
"You have business here?"
Zhigui pointed at the sword. "Is that yours?"
Ning Yao frowned and said nothing.
Since she would not answer, Zhigui cared not at all. She rose and inspected the jars and pots on the wooden racks — those worthless goods. In his apprentice-kiln days Chen Ping'an wandered barefoot over every mountain and stream round the town, digging clay and chopping wood alone, darting up and down at a run. Whatever anyone would teach him, shallow or obscure, he met with the full twelve measures of effort; how far it carried he never minded, nor could he help it even had he wished. Old Yao taught him to fire porcelain but was grudging of his true treasury-piece secrets — yet anything old Yao put into words or did with his hands, Chen Ping'an practiced with extraordinary earnestness. When Liu Xianyang taught him wooden bows and fishing rods, he learned with the same care. The sharp-tongued Song Jixin called this habit of his "doing one's part and leaving the rest to heaven" — yet Chen Ping'an had no such fortune. Why not, then, let the cracked pot stay cracked?
Zhigui waved a hand, smiling. "Off I go, then. Rest and tend your wounds. I'm called Zhigui; I live in the next courtyard. Call out if you need anything."
Ning Yao's face was blank. In the courtyard, pitched just loud enough to be heard within, Zhigui muttered: "Not much worth looking at, either." And Ning Yao, as though by accident, said softly: "What a plain, vulgar name." Zhigui shut the gate so hard it banged; Ning Yao closed her eyes again to rest.
The strange girl's visit left her heart unmoved. Yet she had truly come to detest this town — and above all the practitioners seeking fortunes, with their scheming, base, fawning ways. They were called immortals, said to stand tall; but that was only because they stood upon a mountain. In the heart of Ning Yao, the Great Dao ought not to have been so small.
——
When Chen Ping'an walked out of Mud Vase Lane, the light stung his eyes. He shaded his brow, let out a soft breath, and jogged off. Threading lane after lane, he felt no weariness — for to a boy used to scrambling up and down hills this road was far too trivial to count. What truly earned the name of hardship was going up to burn charcoal: a single dragon kiln needed twenty to thirty thousand catties a year, and on great rainy days, staying up in the mountains chopping and firing was a misery beyond words. Once he had nearly died inside a charcoal kiln that collapsed while it was built. His work these years was, for the most part, sheer bodily labor — some skill there was, but once he grasped the rudiments it was pure brute strength that earned his keep. So his outward thinness was only an illusion; beneath lay the wiry leanness of one hammered and tempered a thousand times over.
Chen Ping'an stopped at a cross-shaped junction, set his back to the wall, and crouched, one hand clenched, the other retying his straw sandal. His heart was quiet as still water; he simply missed the one true friend this town had ever given him.
That fellow had once boasted that his grandfather told of a man who, in his own childhood, stood at a brook's edge, took a few quick steps, and leapt the whole stream in one bound. Later Liu Xianyang and Chen Ping'an went to try it at the narrowest stretch; both stepped back and leapt at once. And Liu Xianyang, a few years older, spent his strength in a single bound and splashed down — then noticed a dark shadow passing over his head, driving on with a soft whoosh to come down a long way off.
After that, Liu Xianyang never again spoke of any such pond-leaping immortal. But he came to know that Chen Ping'an would often go alone to the brook, run up, leap, fly across, and splash down — drawing closer to the far bank leap after leap, never tiring. Once, watching from a distance, Liu Xianyang caught that breathtaking sight, and the soot-darkened boy seemed nothing like the dullard he kept in his memory — flying over the water like one of those snake-catching eagles that wheeled above the town.