None of those who complained this way knew the truth of the matter. The elder who had devised this sword style had, in the very prime of his manhood, lost his formidable inner power wholly and forever in the course of a single jianghu fray. By mischance his opponent had crippled his cultivation, and never again could he refine internal true qi within his frame.
Lest his standing in the sect tumble headlong, the elder never breathed a word of this to any man. On the contrary, from that day on he made a great show of his martial might, playing the part of a man grown yet deeper and stranger in attainment, and by this counterfeit he hoodwinked the whole of the sect, high and low alike.
Yet it was the hard, unyielding truth that from then on he possessed no means at all to defend himself. From that hour he kept strictly to his own rooms, and came abroad but seldom; and for all that he did so, being a man of surpassing wit, he was never once laid bare before the eyes of others.
Those were the days when the Sect of Seven Mysteries ruled Jingzhou as its very lord, in the full noon of its glory.
When at last the elder perceived clearly that his lost power could never be restored, despair took hold of him; and in that despair he turned to his own authority to serve his secret ends. Carefully concealed from the other holders of power, he sent his men to fall at the same time upon many obscure and little-known minor sects, whose very existence was a matter unbeknownst to the wider world.
From those sects he wrested all manner of secret martial manuals, such as were not to be spoken of openly, in the hope that he might light upon some supreme art that could be wielded without recourse to internal force.
And in truth, after years of such plundering, he did unearth a great many astonishing secrets; yet there was not one among them that served his own poor case.
Great was his disappointment.
But this elder was after all a man of deep learning and a wit of the keenest edge. In the very hour of his dejection a new thought seized him: he would seize upon all those many secrets in his hands, and from them forge a masterpiece of martial art that should be made in his own image and for his own need.
The stirring of that thought set his heart ablaze with excitement. For to found a martial art of one's own is the lifelong dream of every fighting man; and from that moment on his course admitted of no turning back. He gave himself up wholly to the enterprise, and day and night he studied, tested, and refined his manifold designs. At the last, for fear that the cares of the common world should entangle him again, he even entered into seclusion, and troubled himself no more with the feuds and arguments of the sects abroad.
To found a martial art is a thing of exceeding difficulty; and how much the harder was it here, where the art he sought must answer to such narrow limits—to be usable without true qi, and yet to hold within itself so many stolen secrets, until it grew into a supreme and lofty attainment?
The working out of so unprecedented a skill, in all its bitter toil, far exceeded everything his fancy had conceived. Yet he was also a man of iron purpose; and after near half a lifetime of draining labor, through long decades of unrelenting devotion, this Blink Sword Manual at last saw the light of day.
The elder was beside himself with joy. When, all eager, he hastened to announce the glad tidings to his fellows in the sect, having but newly completed his art, he found to his astonished dismay that the Sect of Seven Mysteries had already sunk into utter decay. The whole body was even then ringed about and ravaged by a host of great and petty gangs, threatened at any moment with the extinction of the entire sect.
This old man, already past sixty, was seized alike by wrath and astonishment; yet in that hour of peril he called upon the uncanny sword style he had but newly perfected, and fought with terrible effect. Strike by strike he cut down many of the mightier foes, overawing the ring of enemies that yet remained, and wrenched the Sect of Seven Mysteries forth from the midst of its besetting siege through a path of blood—a service beyond price to the sect's very continuation.
Alas, scarce had it won free of peril ere the elder's allotted span came to its end. He left behind only the command that the manual of all his life's labor be given into the keeping of the Seven-Absolutes Hall, and so departed.
Yet the more to be lamented, in all the years since, not one disciple—down to the coming of Han Li himself—had ever so much as attempted the practice of this art; and so that peerless jewel lay unseen, gathering the dust of ages in its dark hiding place.
Of all these bygone happenings Han Li knew nothing at all; and even had he known, he would have felt no stir of interest. For him it was enough that this sword style suited his own circumstance, and that it held out to him some hope of preserving his life from the grasp of Doctor Mo. As for its origin, or the name of him who made it—Han Li had not the smallest concern for such things. He was a most practical young man, and would never waste his pains on aught that brought him no profit.
In his own room, Han Li lit the oil lamp and crouched over his wooden desk. In the dim, flickering glow he went on turning the pages of the secret manuals, one after another.
He had resolved not to copy them out afresh. Instead, by dint of his uncommon memory, he meant to stamp the whole of their contents into his own mind; in this way they could neither be lost nor blabbed abroad, and no taint of discovery could ever betray him.
For he kept yet a most wary regard for Doctor Mo, and was not so foolish as to suppose that the man let him go entirely unwatched. Were such a pile of copied manuals suddenly to appear within his room, would it not at once lay bare his every design, and put the doctor on his guard against him far too soon?
The orange flame of the lamp gave a soft "pop," and burst out a single spark, bidding Han Li note that the hour had long since grown late, and that it was time he bethought him of rest.
But Han Li paid it no heed at all. His whole being was sunk into the world within those books, and the weird feats he found written there had caught up every shred of his attention.
Spark by spark the lamp-flower cracked and blossomed; and cast against the wall, the shadow of his form wavered and danced, swelling and shrinking by turns, while he himself sat never moving a hair's breadth. That strange pairing of stillness and stir made for an eerie contrast, and yet to any watcher it seemed marvellously in keeping, the one dovetailing with the other.
Quarter-hour by quarter-hour the time slid by; the shadow at Han Li's back passed from clear to dim, and from dim to nothing at all, until the heavens outside grew bright with the broad day.
Unawares, Han Li had spent the whole night through in ravenous reading.
With a sharp "crack," the last great spark burst from the flame, and the oil lamp guttered out entirely; and so at last Han Li was started from his books.
He looked up at the lamp, then cast a glance at the daylight beyond the window, and smiled a wry, rueful smile within himself.
Here he was, come at last to such a pass that he burned with so fierce a passion for the studying of the arts of killing. Truly he was no longer the lad he once had been.
He stood musing thus for a goodly while before he rose, rolled his neck, and loosened his arms and legs until all his joints cracked and popped aloud. Then he turned, thrust open the door, and stepped beyond it to the deep well hard by, drew up a basin of cold water, and washed his face thoroughly, so that his spirits sprang up afresh. After that he put the Art of Eternal Youth through a single full circuit within his body, and every trace of the night's weariness vanished without remainder.
Through that whole night of reading and study, Han Li had come to understand that to master this body of martial learning thoroughly was no matter of lesser years. Short of eight or ten years of bitter toil, there was no thinking of it; and even for one so gifted in this line as himself, full two or three years must pass before he could hope to attain a modest measure of success.
But time waited upon no man!