Until such time as Doctor Mo should return to the mountain, Han Li knew that it would be safe enough to use the bottle here in Spirit Hands Valley. For the whole valley held no living soul but himself, and no stranger was like to stumble unbidden into it, and so for the while he could rest assured that nothing would go amiss, and make free and bold use of the small bottle.
Han Li turned over in his mind the time his master's return would likely take. The old man could hardly hope to find any plant worth the having in the country round about the mountain; he would be forced to journey far afield, very probably into deep forests and untraveled wastes where few men ever set foot, for only in such remote corners was there any hope of gathering herbs of rare worth. But such a journey, with the going and the coming and the searching of the wilds between, could not well be done in less than the better part of a year.
Half a year had now gone by since Doctor Mo had gone down the mountain, and Han Li reckoned him no more than six or seven months from setting foot again within the Sect of Seven Mysteries. In all the days before he returned, Han Li could do no more than hasten the growth of as many herbs as would serve his purpose, and must lay his plans carefully, matching his gathering to the few rare recipes he knew, and not squander the green liquid blindly.
The medicines Han Li meant to prepare—drugs to swell his puissance and break through the bottlenecks that held him back—were none other than those peerless saintly remedies that Doctor Mo had themselves yearned to compound but had never been able to gather ingredients enough for. Let any one of them appear upon the market and it would beggar an ordinary house, and set the whole jianghu scrambling to fight over it.
Even a physician of Doctor Mo's surpassing skill had never once clapped eyes on a single finished one among them, let alone compounded them with his own hands. He might know the methods by which these holy medicines were to be made, but with no plants in hand he could do nothing but heave his sighs to heaven.
When Han Li had studied medicine under Doctor Mo, he had taken a lively interest in these rare recipes. Even though he had never dared to hope he might one day compound medicine so priceless, he had committed not a few of them to memory. As for Doctor Mo, he had looked on this eager hunger for such formulas with a wholly indifferent eye; whenever Han Li asked, he laid it all out in fullest detail, with not the least sign of wishing to hold anything back. No doubt he reckoned these recipes a chicken's rib—of no great savor, yet a pity to throw away.
Now those very recipes had become as dear as the apple of Han Li's eye. He set himself doggedly to the task of coaxing forth, under each for which his formulas called, a herb of just the needed age, and dared not be careless in the least, for time was not his friend. He must have these medicines compounded before Doctor Mo returned, and then set the bottle aside upon a high shelf and never lightly take it up again on the mountain.
For Han Li had not the least confidence that he could put the little bottle to use before Doctor Mo's eyes without betraying himself. He knew too well how shrewd and wary a man his master was, and he had not one shred of intention of ever letting the bottle's secret slip to him.
Indeed, Han Li felt that the bond between himself and Doctor Mo was a very strange one, by no means the plain and simple thing that held between master and disciple.
Doctor Mo had a way of fixing him with a singular sort of gaze, and this had long made Han Li fancy that the old man kept hidden some secret that boded no good to him. In the last year or two above all had this feeling grown the stronger. And so between Han Li and Doctor Mo there could never be that closeness, that speaking of all and hiding of nothing, which ran between an ordinary master and his pupil.
In the daily comings and goings of life, Doctor Mo treated him in truth very well—no flailing fists, no bursts of cursing, and in the matter of the cultivation formula he spared no effort in making for Han Li the finest conditions he could devise. Yet between master and disciple there hung ever a certain film of separation, and a strange discomfiture drifted in the air about them.
Doctor Mo had plainly marked this rift, yet he betrayed not the least wish to mend the bond between them. He simply went on as he always had, thinking only of urging Han Li on in the cultivation formula. Only it seemed that the old, strange glance he used to cast at Han Li had grown rarer by degrees, until it could go a long while without showing itself at all.
But Han Li's keen sixth sense told him, faintly, that his master had not truly abandoned whatever purpose he nursed, only hidden it away most artfully beneath the surface. And this deepened Han Li's wariness toward him all the more. Under such a cloud, how could he ever dare to let the bottle's secret be known to such a man?
From no few histories Han Li had drawn an iron lesson, the old saw of the ages: "Let a man harbor no thoughts of harming others, yet let him never lack the caution to guard against harm."
Whether Doctor Mo truly meant him ill, or whether it was no more than a misjudgment of his own senses, to keep his guard all the more alert toward him could never be a bad thing. Did his master's heart truly hold evil toward him, then the greater his prudence the greater his safety from hurt. And if his sixth sense had led him astray, he had still done nothing amiss in sharpening his watchfulness, nor would he of his own will ever do aught against his teacher—he, Han Li, would yet remain Doctor Mo's good disciple, and render his master every filial duty he owed.
Even so, his heart was not wholly at ease as he thought on it. This master and this disciple, so strange a pairing, were likely without parallel in all the Sect of Seven Mysteries, and he could not forbear a sigh.
That the bottle must never again be used once Doctor Mo came back to the mountain was beyond all question. For no wall in this world is so thick that no word may pass it; even should he escape Doctor Mo's notice by the narrowest luck, some other man of the Seven Mysteries might stumble across the secret. The surest course was to put the thing away and behave as though it had never been at all.
With every plan laid and the resolve firm in his breast that he would keep the bottle hidden and rarely touch it thereafter, Han Li's heart loosened at last, and he drifted off into a muddled sleep upon his cot.
In the months that followed, Han Li made stealthy use of the green liquid in the bottle to hasten the growth of great heaps of precious herbs. With these he compounded, following his recipes, no mean store of rare medicines; yet in the mixing of them he suffered not a few failures along the way. For not one of the herbs that went into such medicines was other than the finest material this world had to offer, and to lose a single batch meant that heaven knew how much silver had been thrown straight down the drain. Still, he could hardly blame himself, for no man compounds such medicines save for the very first time; a failure or two was only to be looked for, and even Doctor Mo himself, were he to mix these very drugs, would slip once or twice.
The "Yellow Dragon Pill," the "Clear Spirit Powder," the "Golden Marrow Pellet," the "Nutrient-Essence Pill"—all those peerless, rarely-glimpsed medicines of the outer world now stood ranged before Han Li, each housed in its own small bottle, a dozen and more in a row. He gazed on those vessels, and his face brightened with delight; with such wonder-working elixirs in hand, he had not even to strain at the fourth level of the formula—the fifth and sixth would come to him without any great labor.
Among all these medicines, the Yellow Dragon Pill and the Golden Marrow Pellet were the greatest aids to his practice, for both had the marvelous power of increasing his puissance and of remaking his bones and sinews from the very foundations. The Clear Spirit Powder was a peerless antidote, of a kind rarely matched in the world, able to undo a thousand and ten thousand of the direst poisons. Last came the Nutrient-Essence Pill, a spirit medicine of singular virtue against wounds both inner and outer; whatever the severity of the hurt, a single swallow of it, even should it fall short of raising the dead, would yet ease the injury mightily and hold the sufferer fast to life.