By the time Han Li had put a good deal of distance between himself and that cliff, the clamor of those voices had faded through the trees. What became of the quarrel between Wang Dapang and Zhang Changgui was no longer any business of his.
Instead, his mind turned back to the figure of Jin Dongbao standing at the edge of the pine grove, staring after him in blank bewilderment, and Han Li could not keep a smile from creeping over his face. The jest had lifted some of the gloom that hung about his heart, and the lightness of spirit spread through him, driving out the melancholy that had dogged his steps.
He pushed through the pine grove and struck off toward ever more remote ground, wandering until a slender brook came into view, winding over stones worn smooth by the passing years.
Han Li squinted up at the blazing sun, then let his gaze fall to the clear water drifting past his feet. To wash the dust and the cares from his face in such a stream struck him as a capital notion.
He crouched low, and the moment his hands slipped into the chill water, a succession of pained groans came drifting down from the upper reaches of the brook.
He followed the sounds of suffering upstream and presently came upon a man in the robes of an inner disciple lying face down by the bank, his whole body convulsing ceaselessly, his limbs shaking as though possessed. One glance sufficed to show Han Li this was an acute malady, one whose onset was so sudden and savage that, without prompt help, the man might well lose his life.
Without a moment's hesitation, Han Li sprang forward. From his bosom he drew a small box of sandalwood and took from it a sheaf of glittering silver needles. In swift, sure strokes he set them into the acupoints along the man's back, his hands moving with a smoothness that told of long years of training. His work on the spine done, he turned the still figure over, meaning to continue the treatment along the chest.
No sooner had the man's face come into view than Han Li drew in a sharp, startled breath. Here, in the very person whose life hung in the balance, was none other than the "Senior Brother Li" who, moments before, had displayed such fearsome prowess on the cliff and routed all his opponents.
Han Li studied the face he had glimpsed not long ago with renewed care. Where were all the graces that had made the man the darling of that crowd? His cold, hard countenance was twisted with agony, a thin trickle of white froth leaking from the corner of his mouth. Pain had wracked his wits quite out of him.
Recovering his composure, Han Li fell to work again, scattering needles across the man's body in a flowing rhythm until tens upon tens had been set in place. When he placed the final needle, he wiped the sweat from his brow. This method of emergency treatment pressed no small burden upon the one who wielded it.
When at last every inch of Senior Brother Li's body bristled with gleaming needles, the man's eyes flickered, and consciousness returned to him.
"Who... who are you?" He struggled to speak, but his breath was too weak, and the words died in his throat.
"I am of Spirit Hands Valley," Han Li answered. "Do not speak now—save your strength. I can only wake you for the moment. This ailment of yours is a strange one, and I doubt that anyone but Doctor Mo could hope to cure it. A pity he is not on the mountain at present." He took the man's wrist and felt his pulse, frowning all the while.
"The... the medicine... it is..." Alarm mounted on Senior Brother Li's face, and his lips worked soundlessly as he strove to lift an arm and point to something, but the effort proved too much for him.
"You carry the remedy for your ailment upon you?" Han Li guessed, reading the man's intent.
"Ai—" Relief slackened the man's brow, and with an effort he managed a nod.
Han Li wasted no courtesy in searching him, turning out a great many odds and ends among which one small bottle of white jade caught his eye. So precious a vessel, sealed so well... surely this was the very thing he sought.
He picked up the bottle and glanced back at Senior Brother Li's face for confirmation. His eyes were alight with joy, and he blinked furiously by way of a nod.
Han Li unstoppered the bottle. To his surprise, no pleasant fragrance of medicine drifted out; instead, a thick, pungent, sickly odor burst from its mouth and struck him full in the face.
At that stench Han Li's expression darkened. He tipped the bottle and rolled a single pill of a pink, tender hue into his palm. So pretty a thing—plump and rosy as a maiden's cheek, yet giving off so rank an odor. Hard to credit.
"Is this the pill?" Han Li asked, his face smooth once more.
Senior Brother Li was in too great an agitation to answer in words, and could only blink his eyes again.
"The Marrow-Draining Pill," Han Li said, his voice flat as a ritual recitation, "is compounded from twenty-three rare ingredients—among them the gelasia herb, the scorpion-tail blossom, the roe of the centurial blue ant, and more besides. Once refined, it takes on a pinkish hue and gives off a singular, fetid stench. Taken, it may vastly overdraw the body's reserves, bartering years of future life to purchase a swift enhancement of present power. Is all this as I say?"
He spoke the words one by one, in a tone that brooked no denial.
At this, Senior Brother Li's face drained of all color, turning white as a shroud; wild alarm flitted across his eyes.
"Once this drug is taken," Han Li went on, "it must be taken again and again at fixed intervals, and every dose is bought with the inhuman torments of convulsed sinews and drained marrow. Neglect it, and at least your body will go wholly limp and paralyzed; at worst, your life is forfeit. Moreover, even if the doses are never missed, within the first ten years of that first swallow a man is certain to spend his life to the dregs and die of the overdraw."
He paused, fixing the other man with his gaze. "Tell me this bottle does not hold the Marrow-Draining Pill." The words fell like stones. At that, hope crumbled from Senior Brother Li's face, replaced by a look of utter despair. Yet still, to the very end, there lingered in his eyes a wondering, unbidden surprise.
"You are astonished, are you not?" Han Li saw the question working behind the man's brow and turned the talk upon himself. "So rare a pill, and yet I know it on sight—how can that be? The reason is a simple one. I, too, have swallowed one of these pills."
The words struck like a thunderclap. Senior Brother Li was dumbfounded—yet almost at once his face showed clear disbelief.
"The manner of my taking differed from yours," Han Li said. "I used but a single pill, and that one I split into ten portions and took across ten separate doses, each piece serving as the tonic for some other medicine. As such, it did me no harm. Because the pill's looks and stench are so ill matched, its memory is seared deep in my mind. I had always believed that, apart from the one pill I tested, there could be no one else in the world mad enough to truly take such a secret drug. It never occurred to me that within our own sect there was such a man."
As he finished, Han Li looked upon Senior Brother Li with a gaze at once grudging admiration and pity.
Senior Brother Li could not bear to meet that look, let his eyes fall shut, his chest heaving and falling in great turbulence—plain token of the turmoil within him.
"You have been taking this pill for several years now, I should think," Han Li said. "If you abandon it now, I can beg Doctor Mo to compound a secret remedy of another sort. It cannot win back all the life you have squandered, yet to grant you another score or thirty years of it is well within its power. The price is that your martial arts will not be preserved. If you persist with this pill, then to judge by the seizure that struck you today, you have at most some five or six years left, though your skill will advance faster and faster in them. The reckoning of your own body is yours to make. What say you, then—do you swallow this pill, or cast it away?"