Han Li strolled slowly out of Spirit Hands Valley, following the little mountain path as he always did, and made his way by habit toward the dim shape of Redwater Peak, just visible on the horizon.
He had nothing pressing to do at the moment. The only reason he trudged over to see Zhang Tie at the same time every day was a simple, mischievous boyish pleasure: he wanted to watch Zhang Tie pull the most absurd faces while training beneath the waterfall—the bared teeth, the contorted grimaces, the whole agonized performance.
The Elephant-Armor Art was truly not something any ordinary person could endure. Just the first layer demanded such an appalling amount of torment. By the later layers, a man would have had to be flayed down to a few layers of skin before he was through.
"Zhang Tie is probably starting to regret taking this on by now," Han Li mused to himself as he walked. "The brute force of the Elephant-Armor Art is far more vicious than we two little brats ever imagined."
He scuffed his foot idly through the fallen leaves and scattered branches that littered the path, kicking at them without much thought.
"Once a few more days have passed," he went on thinking, "we can both go plead with Doctor Mo together, and get him to let Zhang Tie switch to some other art, so he doesn't have to suffer through this living hell."
Han Li felt a small surge of warmth at the thought. He was rather pleased with himself for having found his friend a way out of his present misery.
He looked up at the trees lining either side of the road. The season had already turned to late autumn, and every branch stood bare and naked. The path was buried under a thick, soft quilt of fallen leaves and withered twigs, and walking over it was pleasant, springy, and altogether comfortable beneath the feet.
Just then, the faint clatter of clashing weapons drifted over from a distant peak, punctuated every so often by bursts of loud, spirited cheering.
Hearing the sounds, Han Li glanced toward that mountain, and the mood that had just begun to lift sagged again.
That was Hundred-Temper Hall's teaching senior brothers running weapon-combat drills for the newly admitted junior disciples.
Whenever Han Li watched other sect members gather to train in earnest with real blades and real spears, a bitter, sour feeling rose in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to snatch up a real knife and a real lance himself and have a thorough go at them. But unfortunately—he could not understand why—from the moment he had formally become Doctor Mo's disciple, Doctor Mo had strictly forbidden him from touching such things. He was not allowed to go to the other instructors to learn any other martial art, either, on the grounds that it would interfere with the progress of his cultivation formula.
So Han Li could only stare and covet from a distance. Every now and then, in private, he might borrow a weapon or two from a few of the sect brothers he had made friends with, whirl them about a couple of times, and whet his appetite a little.
Really, what was so fine about this formula he practiced? Even now, he had yet to see what use it was. All the other disciples who had entered alongside him grew sharper and stronger day by day, their martial skill advancing by leaps and bounds, while he stayed rooted to the same spot, unable to perceive the slightest change in himself.
Even Zhang Tie, who had trained the Elephant-Armor Art for a mere two months, had grown so thick-skinned and tough that he could take far more punishment, and his strength had increased considerably.
And yet, had he not been taken in as Doctor Mo's disciple, Han Li probably could not have passed the registered-disciple test two months ago in the first place, let alone stayed on the mountain and sent so much money home.
If he could not learn anything else, then so be it.
So Han Li grumbled on the inside even as he comforted himself.
Dragging his gaze back from the distance, he kept muttering to himself, but his mind drifted even further off. His unfocused eyes swept over the two sides of the path without really seeing anything at all.
Suddenly, Han Li sucked in a sharp breath, and his expression twisted into something strange. The next instant, he had grimaced so hard that it felt as though his mouth had been pulled all the way back to his ears. His body dropped into a crouch from pure reflex, and both hands clamped down hard on the big toe of his right foot. Then the pain knocked him half over into the grass. That unexpected agony felled Han Li at once; his face drained white as a lance-like, drilling ache throbbed up from his toe in endless waves.
It seemed he had kicked, hard, into a very solid stone hidden somewhere in the pile of leaves.
Doubled over, Han Li wrapped both arms around his ankle, and by instinct began blowing with all his might on the wounded toe through the cloth shoe he still wore, even as he fretted inwardly over whether the injury was serious, whether the toe would swell up and bruise into a mess, and whether it would spoil his ability to walk from day to day.
Only after a long while did the pain finally ease enough for him to recover. He lifted his head and swept his eyes over the leaf-strewn ground near his feet, hunting for the culprit that had dealt him such heavy injury.
Every leaf scattered about was the same monotonous color—withered, dead yellow. It was utterly impossible to single out what he was looking for from among that jumbled mound of foliage.
With a frown, Han Li ran his hand blindly over the ground, grabbed up a longer, sturdier branch, and leaned on it to raise himself gingerly, rising on his heel with great care.
Then, refusing to give up, he took the branch and jabbed and swept it hard through the thick drifts of fallen leaves around him.
Eh! A small object about the size of a fist was flipped into view by the branch.
Han Li studied it carefully. The culprit that had earned him his glorious wound turned out to be a round, bottle-shaped object with a long, slender neck. Its surface was caked entirely with dirt, so thoroughly coated in grimy gray that its true color was nowhere to be seen.
At first Han Li had assumed it to be a little porcelain bottle. But once he had it in his hand, he found the weight all wrong—it was heavy, very heavy indeed.
It must be made of metal then? No wonder such a small thing had struck his foot so painfully. Though you did not often come across a bottle forged from metal.
Han Li had grown curious about this little bottle, and for the moment he quite forgot the pain in his foot.
He rubbed the dirt from the neck with his fingers, and the bottle's true color began to show through. An emerald green, beautiful to behold. Etched across its surface were exquisite leaf-shaped patterns in a darker green, and the top was closed by a small, snug-fitting lid that sealed the mouth quite tight.
He wondered if there was anything inside. He held the bottle to his ear and gave it a gentle shake, but could not feel anything shifting within.
He set his hand to the lid and screwed at it with all his strength. It would not budge.
Han Li's curiosity burned hotter. He was just about to try the next trick when a fierce stab of pain shot up from his foot.
Damn it! How had he forgotten? His foot was still carrying the unfortunate consequences of its close encounter with this very object.
With this injury, he plainly could not make the trip over to Zhang Tie's place. He had better head back to his lodgings first, apply some wound medicine, and then take his own sweet time puzzling over this little bottle he had stumbled upon.
With that settled, and careful that no one should see him, Han Li tucked the bottle—heedless of how filthy it was—into his bosom, turned back, and limped his way home.