Fu Nanhua came back to himself, sweeping the surroundings with his gaze, not even sparing the rooftops of the narrow alleys. He caught no sign of anything amiss, and quickly drew a deep breath, neither advancing a step nor retreating. Once more he reached, by reflex, for the ancestral jade at his waist — and once more his hand fell on empty air. Instead he hurried to murmur a fragment of a broken Daoist incantation. It was no art of sorcery, no spiritual technique, merely a verse to calm the heart and gather the breath. If the mind's state were a little boat adrift upon a broad lake, then this verse served as its anchor.
He turned his body sideways so that his back pressed against a wall, and shifted his steps until he stood athwart the fork of two lanes, his muscles drawn taut, his stance defensive. He dared not let his guard slip even a jot as he fixed his eyes upon the little alley, and there, in his sight, stood the straw-sandaled boy beside the body of Cai Jinjian, fallen in a pool of blood. The boy's torso was bent in a slight bow, holding a subtle posture of attack, and he in turn was staring hard at Fu Nanhua. Man and boy faced each other like tiger and wolf — one seeking answers, the other seeking to survive; each driven by a different need. The boy who had burst in from nowhere had surely aimed at Cai Jinjian and no other. As for Fu Nanhua's appearance, the gesture the boy showed by pure instinct was more a warning of "you do not offend me, nor I you."
Fu Nanhua asked a question that was almost redundant. "You killed her?"
The boy said nothing, never loosening his grasp on the murder weapon — a shard of broken porcelain, a little smaller than his palm, the part that jutted past his fist glinting with savage sharpness. His whole hand was slick and streaming with blood, whether Cai Jinjian's or the cut the shard had opened in his own palm, no one could tell; the drops pattered down onto the ground of the lane. Now that Fu Nanhua had made certain there was no one else about, he felt both that the whole affair was a grotesque absurdity and that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. At last he let his gaze fall on Cai Jinjian's fair form. Even in this pathetic ruin of a scene, it could not dim her born loveliness — lithe and graceful, with her full bosom rising and falling faintly, while vermilion blood gushed without cease from her neck and mouth, and her life was on the very point of guttering out. Yet a body so strong, so repeatedly tempered by the flow of breath-energy, would make the agony she suffered burn deeper and last longer than an ordinary soul's.
A smile crept onto Fu Nanhua's face, though a hard coldness lay at its core. He asked, "Why did you have to kill her? You and this lady had no quarrel, no grudge at all. Could it be that because she played a little joke on you in Mud Vase Lane, you went and took her life? Since when has this town become so lawless? Do you not know that murder must be repaid with a life, and debts with money — it holds the same everywhere?"
The boy might as well have been a mute; he spoke not a syllable. Fu Nanhua gave no thought to what the boy might be thinking. He began to advance slowly, his steps firm.
He knew Cai Jinjian was as good as dead. This was not Cloud Mist Mountain, that immortal grotto where the breath of the divine lingered. This was the cage of heaven's law, where all sorcery lay forbidden. Unless a Land Immortal of boundless cultivation appeared, or a golden-bodied arhat, willing to trade the better part of a lifetime's attainment to buy her life — only then might one suppress her wandering soul and raise her from the dead. But Cai Jinjian could hardly hope for such a heaven-sent fortune. The sage who presided over this town bore grave burdens and looked down upon the myriad creatures; he would never favor one over another, but would only follow the current of circumstance.
On the path of cultivation, a man might well perish unexpectedly upon the broad highway, or die upon the single-plank bridge while contending for a thread of opportunity. Such deaths happened; they were not numerous, but they were hardly rare. If walking toward immortal longevity could hew to orderly progress, step by careful step, with no calamity and no adversity, enjoying every benefit while shouldering no risk at all — then the carefree immortals of common folk's imagination would seem cheap beyond measure.
So Fu Nanhua had come into this town prepared, even for the worst — a desperate, life-or-death brawl. But to say that here in the town, right beneath the very nose of a sage, he would watch with his own eyes a sworn ally who had been walking at his side be butchered in the blink of an eye — that was beyond anything the young heir of Old Dragon City had ever witnessed. No dazzling clash of magic treasures, no heaven-shaking strokes of immortal craft. Just that — killed by a mud-footed peasant of the lowest sort? Fu Nanhua was shaken to the core, and could not in the least accept this monstrous fact. Were it not for this town, a nobody as cheap as wild grass, this straw-sandaled boy would have deemed it an impossible luxury merely to catch a distant glimpse of Cai Jinjian of Cloud Mist Mountain.
Fu Nanhua's face turned grave, and he said in a low voice, "I may have been too late to save the immortal lady Cai, and I cannot kill you to avenge her. But since I witnessed your crime with my own eyes, if I did nothing about it, and word ever spread, the gilded reputation of Old Dragon City would be broken. So reason and duty alike demand that I teach you a lesson. As for what Cloud Mist Mountain will do about it afterward, and how they will see justice done for the lady Cai — that will be your affair."
These high-sounding words of the young heir of Old Dragon City were spoken for the sage of this domain to hear. They were polite formalities, merely so that he would not seem too greedy in his conduct and draw the sage's displeasure. There was also a chance they were meant for the ears of the founding elders of Cloud Mist Mountain — all Fu Nanhua wanted was a show of utmost benevolence laid out plainly on the table. For the truth was that Fu Nanhua had long since harbored the intent to kill Cai Jinjian, and now he truly wished to thank the boy before him. What a stroke of fortune, to have come blundering in by accident! The lad had saved him a world of trouble — he was truly a bringer of luck.
Fu Nanhua went on advancing as he spoke: "Judging by the way you did the deed just now, the instant burst of strength in this ugly carcass of yours is no smaller than any strong young man's. That is actually quite rare. Had there been no such disturbance today, you would merely have needed the chance to join the army — bold enough to kill, fierce enough to fight — and with a little luck and chance to catch the eye of some great commander or a general of an old martial clan, who might toss you a body-tempering secret verse of the military school, so that you could slowly hone your body. Twenty or thirty years hence, who is to say but this young fellow might not carve out a new world for himself."
As Fu Nanhua moved forward, the boy began to fall back, always facing the young heir of Old Dragon City in his tall cap and wide sleeves.
Fu Nanhua, tall and slender, walked the lane like a jade tree in the wind, bearing a naturally royal and wealthy grace.
Fu Nanhua extended one hand, palm turned down, resting it at his waist, and laughed: "What a pity. You were not fortunate. Otherwise, by my reasoning, you would have had the chance to rise to such-and-such heights… impossible."
Fu Nanhua was quite amused by his own joke, and his smile deepened. As he took a step forward, his foot suddenly hung suspended half a foot above the ground. "I beg your pardon — such-and-such heights, but so high as this, perhaps."
It was hard for Fu Nanhua not to be pleased.
Ever since he had entered the town, first there had been the bargain with Song Jixin, that boy of Mud Vase Lane — the gains of which far exceeded all expectation.
Then came this: Cai Jinjian, who had so likely been the very obstacle barring his great dao, dropping dead before his very eyes. Not only could he keep his two hands clean of blood, he might also freely help himself to the two pouches of gold copper coins on her person, and perhaps even pluck out one or two secret treasures of Cloud Mist Mountain. Even if they were not the mountain's crown jewels, they could hardly be shoddy. He did not believe for a moment that Cai Jinjian had gone entirely without some talisman to guard her. He himself, for instance — besides the Old Dragon Rain-Pendant, which was only an illusion, a trick of the eye — carried two small objects of the finest quality and the highest grade, in all but name the very treasures Old Dragon City kept in reserve.
And so among the wandering cultivators, the heretical believers of the side paths, there circulated a folk saying everybody relished: help a man to his burial, and good fortune is sure to follow.
When Fu Nanhua passed by the body of Cai Jinjian, he did not even glance at her.
On the contrary, the faint reek of blood set his whole being into a strangely feverish elation.
One advanced, one retreated, and between them the distance held steady at a dozen or so paces.
Fu Nanhua needed only to be certain that the boy could not escape the lane. Once the boy were out the alley and gone to ground in the town, where he was born and bred, catching him again would be like fishing a needle from the sea — and the still-warm body of the beauty behind him was proof enough of the stakes. Give the boy even a moment of breathing room, and a "surprise" might come crashing down on his own head.
Fu Nanhua appeared to be a cat toying with a mouse, but in truth he was adjusting the rhythm of his own body, for the simple reason that, in all the years since he had formally set foot on the path of cultivation at the age of nine, he had never once had the chance to settle a contest purely through close-quarters combat.
He had, of course, no need to settle matters of life and death with the boy; that would cost him more than it gained. And together with Cai Jinjian, the boy was a second fortune that had fallen into his lap. But he absolutely had to see to it that this surprising boy spent the near future lying quietly in bed, with not the least room left to stir up any trouble.
Fu Nanhua suddenly asked, with a laugh, "By the way — what did you say your name was?"
The boy, whose bleeding hands would not stop, answered the question with a non-sequitur. On his dark face was written a toughness like the wild grass of the countryside. "You and her both might not know this, but my sight is very keen. So back in Mud Vase Lane, when she was chatting with me, the look you gave her — it was exactly the same as the one you're giving me right now."
Fu Nanhua took a moment to digest this, and now he really did look at the boy with a fresh respect. He chuckled with a note of surprise. "Interesting. Truly interesting."
Fu Nanhua's manner no doubt seemed as light as a drifting cloud, but all the while he kept watch on the boy's left hand, which was still dripping blood.
That meant the boy's grip had never once slackened. An ordinary man would have long since crumpled before that grinding, bone-deep pain.
It was only now that Fu Nanhua realized that his earlier offhand remark, "what a pity," had struck the mark all too accurately.
Thinking the moment near enough, Fu Nanhua asked the last question he cared about. "You killed her with such resolve — surely someone tipped you off. I'm not curious about who he is. What I can't figure out is this: you're a child who grew up here. How did you cross that threshold in your own heart so quickly, and kill so… at ease with yourself? Do you understand what I mean? You know, even I — the first time I killed a man, after that excitement finally burned itself out, my whole body began to tremble, and I had to recite the heart-calm verse for a long time before I felt better. But look at you — calm as can be, as easy as eating and drinking. That's not right…"
The boy, who had kept his face utterly blank until now, suddenly wore a look of horror and a face of panic, his gaze fixed straight past Fu Nanhua, toward something at his back — as though the tall dead woman had come back to life.
Fu Nanhua, cautious to a fault, turned his head by reflex. His neck had only swung halfway round when a great tremor seized his heart.
By the time he swung it back, because of the disparity in their heights, in the low, straight-ahead field where his gaze had been fixed, the boy was gone!
In that split second when a single strand might decide all.
For then it was clear.
After making that look and that face, in the twinkling of an eye the straw-sandaled boy flung himself into a sudden burst of sprint. Three strides and his left foot drove hard into the ground, and his whole body launched high into the air, until his right foot landed against the wall at the side of the lane, sprang off it and rebounded sharply — and the boy swung his left hand high at the man in the tall cap.
The boy was truly a snake-catching eagle.