As Fu Nanhua saw that Cai Jinjian's spirits had fallen, he took her strolling through the town to clear the air, sharing odd tales of the south of the Baoping Continent. Her smile was still forced, but her mood was far better than on leaving Mud Vase Lane. Her regard for this noble scion of Old Dragon City had grown; for although that city, deep-rooted and teeming with bright talents, stood a hair's breadth from the apex of sects, a proper orthodox celestial sect like Cloud Mist Mountain carried a congenital disdain for such a southern backwater, where not muttering "southern barbarian" was already good breeding.
"Brother Fu," she said with bitter gall, "though the Cloud Root Stones are our sect's lifeblood, since we agreed beforehand I shall not go back on my word. Even if it strips my house to the bone, I will repay you all the same."
"Whether the chance at Gu Can's is truly settled," he comforted her, "is not yet certain."
Her face darkened. "True Lord Liu Zhimao, Who Severs the River, has a name soiled, true — but his means are far from weak; else he could never hold a place at Letter Scroll Lake. This chance cannot be forced; if I stir his wrath, how could I stand against a great true person of the side path? Once we leave the town, with no sage-guardian and no rules, who knows what rash move he might make. Surely you caught some trace of it at the border — the retainers this sect sent with me are no match for him."
Fu Nanhua laughed: "Set your heart at ease. Even for ten Cloud Root Stones alone, Old Dragon City will see you safely home to Cloud Mist Mountain."
Cai Jinjian turned and smiled at him, brilliant and bewitching, her autumn-water eyes brimming. Pleased with himself, Fu reached by habit for his jade pendant — and grasped nothing, remembering his Old Dragon Rain-Pendant had gone to the boy Song Jixin. Relieved, she inclined her step slightly left, so her shoulder brushed gently against his.
That visit to Mud Vase Lane had been a wager made outside her plans, weighed with care, and lost — the price ten Cloud Root Stones of incalculable worth. It filled her with dread, and without meaning to she had come to lean on Fu Nanhua; or rather she had caught a gambler's temper. Ten stones was a wager; were not fifty just the same? Win, scoop a brimming basin; lose — she did not believe she could lose, she, the foremost talent of all Cloud Mist Mountain, never yet capsized in any ditch.
And as her spirits lifted, so Fu Nanhua, sensing the affair all but settled, found leisure to admire Immortal Maiden Cai's looks and figure — a woman born with an inner allure, a dao companion of rarest worth, whom a venerable senior had praised as "the wind of Cloud Mist Mountain's crags, the bearing of a flying immortal," and whom the Cloud Mist elders held up for a price. But Fu Nanhua had no liking for Cloud Mist Mountain: to rest a sect's fate on one woman's shoulders was not to be borne.
He cautioned her: "What if the boy next to Song Jixin is also one chosen by an outside power, still holding the porcelain vessel born with his own name? Then this strike of yours will drag up trouble — folk will follow the vine to Cloud Mist Mountain and you along with it. And Song Jixin's household or True Lord Liu Zhimao might take note as well."
She laughed: "Perhaps you've been too fixed on the fortune to mind this place's unwritten rules. A town-born boy who by nine years has not been taken away by a 'porcelain buyer' who waited near a decade is a sign his endowment was wanting from the start. For those sects, to shell out a princely 'adoption fee' and play the fool is far worse than lavishing the wealth on disciples of their own."
Even speaking of that straw-sandaled boy turned her voice to gall. "Common folk ought to know their place as common folk!" Fu Nanhua reasoned, his words chosen with care, that the boy's vision was shallow and a single lesson would have sufficed — why strike twice? He sensed her sudden, brutal strike smacked of "when a thing turns against its course, a demon lies beneath," perhaps bound to the fortune, and hoped to draw out a thread. He would guard against the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware the oriole behind; let her take him for the cicada when she was the oriole. From scraps of secret lore paid for beyond even Zhengyang Mountain and Cloud Mist Mountain, he knew that through the town's three thousand years the so-called fortunes — after that cataclysm of war — had been, aside from a few gifted children, only the magic vessels the ancestor-masters left behind. But with the blessed land on the verge of collapse, matters were no longer simple: when a dynasty's last reign falls, divine weapons are sure to come forth, heralding a new dynasty's spirit.
Cai Jinjian fell sullen. "Don't mention him. The thought turns my stomach." Yet in her long autumn-water eyes flashed a glint of raw malice — though she would not spoil her immortal-maiden image before Fu Nanhua by giving it voice. If ever she met that little mongrel outside the town, she would see he died a clean, swift death. What she loathed most were his eyes — the clear, spotless gaze whose like she had rarely met in all her years at Cloud Mist Mountain, famed for being "stainlessly lucid"; what right had a poor boy of a shabby alley to hold so fair a thing, day after day?
She tilted her head and rubbed her eyelid, which served only to make her penciled brows seem longer. Fu Nanhua, taking in the sights, teased: "In our Old Dragon City there's a saying — 'the left eye twitches for fortune, the right for disaster.' Which is yours?" She snatched her hand back as though scalded, glaring; plainly it was her right eyelid. "Foolish fancies of the common folk," he hurried to add. The corner of her mouth curled. "Taken in, weren't you?" Startled, looking at the coy, playful girl, he felt his heart stir for no reason.
All at once he wavered — his murderous intent toward her swinging this way and that. Would it not serve Old Dragon City's plans of pushing north to become, with her, a pair of peerless fated lovers? If she won the fortune, she might even become mistress of Cloud Mist Mountain, where women taking the helm had precedent. Then Old Dragon City would gain a springboard into the belly of the Baoping Continent, plying north and south in concert — the foundation of a hegemonic enterprise, freeing it from centuries as a strong loner cooped in a corner.
A few steps ahead was the crossroads of two crossing lanes. At the sight of it, Fu Nanhua started, as if something had dawned on him, and his gaze hardened; fine beads of sweat broke on his brow. Whosoever disturbs my resolve — him must I kill, to firm my dao-mind! In that moment he looked on Cai Jinjian once more with his former careless ease, as purely as at a painting; and since she was doomed to wither by his hand once she left the town, he might as well steal what glances he could. Murder and arson earn a golden belt; building roads and bridges buries the bones. Some maxims of the street's low folk hold true the whole world over. And Fu Nanhua's heart opened wide and clear.
Cai Jinjian turned, her voice sweet and seductive: "Nanhua, what came to you, that you look so happy?" She had quietly shifted to a more intimate address. He shook his head and smiled, about to speak — when the corner of his eye caught a dark shadow.
A thin, lean boy, as though with one step, had crossed from the transverse lane to stand before Cai Jinjian. His left hand flew up in a fierce upward slash even as his right fist hammered into the maiden's belly, biting out with a whoosh and forcing her to double over. Though his right fist was already far stronger than any boy his age, he was in truth a left-hander, and the sharp thing in his left hand sank clean into her throat, piercing through into her mouth. Still he did not stop — his right fist crashed into her chest, his left hand lifted again, ensuring the ambush left no trace of chance. Blood gushed from her once-delicate white throat. Then his waist and ankles drove, and with his shoulder he slammed her whole into the transverse alley.
The young master of Old Dragon City stood rooted, his mind wiped utterly blank.