Once the poison of the Entangling Incense Threads takes hold, it spreads by way of the blood vessels, little by little, throughout the whole body.
Within a short space of time, if the man so stricken be a commoner — a man of the common folk — then it is well enough; there is no great danger. But if he be a warrior, then the threat is mortal. For during that while he may not recklessly stir his internal true qi; should he do so, it would hasten the poison's outbreak, turn his blood flowing backward through all his limbs, and wrack him with a misery past enduring.
And the longer the poison stays within him, the deeper it sinks, and then the matter grows worse indeed.
For he may have won back the mastery of his true qi again; yet he must take the antidote daily, to hold the venom in check. Else his very bones will slowly change and warp, and his whole body begin to shrink, until at last he crumples into a sodden mass, like a lump of clay, and lies sprawled upon the floor, unable to stir a finger.
And what is more fearsome yet — because the venom has sunk down into the very marrow of his bones, there is no way at all to tear it out utterly; he can only, by the long and patient taking of remedies that meet the case, keep it from breaking forth for a while, so that the poison clings to him even as the threads of a lovesick heart cling to a man, companion to him his whole life long, that never parts from him.
Moreover, the herbs that go into the compounding of this venom are of every kind, and many of them are things that can be swapped for others; though the outcome they work be the same, yet the venom's particular nature varies with the man who compounds it, and so grows strange and inscrutable. And so, of course, the antidote differs as well; only he who wrought the poison can, suiting his remedy to the case, hold the venom in check. Even another who likewise knew the way of compounding the Entangling Incense Threads could not, for all that, set about making an antidote fit for it.
Thus it was that the life of the poisoned man lay wholly within the hands of him who had poisoned him; he could do no more than obey, and would not dare resist.
Doctor Mo turned over in his mind all that he recalled concerning the Entangling Incense Threads, and knew full well by then why Han Li stood so unshaken, so free from all care.
He laughed coldly within himself, his countenance showing no change, and said in a detached tone:
"Is this then your last means?"
"Little wretch, if you have no other trick behind you, then stand quiet and let yourself be taken!"
Han Li's heart sank with a sudden heaviness. Seeing that Doctor Mo's face had never altered, and that he set his threat at naught, as though it weighed with him not a whit, Han Li knew that in some point or other his reckoning had gone amiss.
He could see that Doctor Mo truly set this poison at naught — that with the venom of the Entangling Incense Threads in his very body he cared nothing for it, that it had not touched the least nerve in him at all.
And for this very reason Han Li knew full well that he stood now in utter disadvantage, that the other seemed to hold in his hand a mighty certainty of taking him.
Seeing Han Li thus mute and wordless, Doctor Mo gave a low chuckle, a flash of guile crossing his eyes, and of a sudden roared aloud:
"Iron Slave, go take him in hand!"
The selfsame moment he heard the words, Han Li bethought him that since he had come into the room he seemed to have clean forgot some person of great import. He had no time to mull it over; with the tip of his foot he hooked the weapon at his side, and the iron spike leapt up clean into his hand of itself.
In that very instant a vast black shape, borne on a fierce gust of wind, burst forth from a corner of the room and was at once before him, come so swiftly that Han Li could in no way dodge aside.
Left with no choice, he thrust the spike in his hand straight at the black shape's belly, hoping only to check it a little, and so win for himself a breathing-space to slip away.
To stab with a short pointed spike at the belly — truly it was a sorry choice. But Han Li had no help for it; the other was so towering tall, and the weapon in his hand but a few inches long, that this was the only place he could reach.
All at once Han Li felt as though he had dashed himself against some monster that was no man — his outstretched wrist was smitten as by a mighty log, and went straightway out of joint; his body was flung back several paces on end, and the iron spike, striking as against a stone, was knocked clean away, and vanished from sight.
Furious and astonished beyond measure, Han Li had scarce steadied himself against the blow when he felt the light before him grow dark, and the huge shape came on again; and then a searing agony seized both his shoulders, for two enormous hands had hooked fast upon his collarbones, squeezing him as though to crush him to pulp.
Han Li struggled with all his might a time or two, but his body was held as though a whole mountain pressed down upon it, and he could not stir a jot.
In his desperate strait, he recked of nothing else — he drew up his knee and drove it hard at the tender spot between the huge shape's legs.
"Ay!" A cry of pain; Han Li's cold sweat streamed down, for even that fatal place was as hard as iron; his kneecap felt like an egg dashed against a stone, as though it had cracked into a score of pieces.
Yet this move of his seemed to rouse the other's rage; the great hand on his shoulder suddenly lent a fresh measure of brute force, so that the pain nigh swooned him away, and his whole body went limp and sagged to the floor.
"Gently, Iron Slave. This man, I have great use for yet." At that most perilous of moments came Doctor Mo's rebuke.
The words had scarce died upon the air when Han Li felt his shoulders lighten, and the agony upon them much abated. He could not but breathe the easier for it, and it seemed to him for the first time that Doctor Mo's voice fell wondrous sweetly on the ear. Yet amid his relief, the riddle that had so long gnawed at his heart grew the greater by a measure more.
From the very beginning Han Li had marked that Doctor Mo, whatever the cause, at every juncture of import held his hand against himself, and was fain to spare him hurt. He would not take it, of course, that the man had grown good-hearted of a sudden and spared him of goodwill. There must needs be in this some dark and hidden thing — some secret that he was to fear the man could not hide — that tied the other's hands, so that he dared not throw himself headlong into the fray; else he should not have been wrangling with Han Li to this very hour.
Han Li resolved within himself that he would turn this very thing to his own advantage, and drive his bargain with the man upon it, and so contrive some way to slip out of his clutches.
Doctor Mo walked up to stand before him, seeming to read the very thought in his heart; a jest of scorn flashed across his face. He first ran his hand over Han Li's chest, and from there drew forth a heart-protecting mirror — and could not forbear a mute wonder; it was this, then, that had turned aside his point-striking.
He shook his head gently, saying nothing, and then from within his robe drew out an oblong case of yellow wood — a case of the finest workmanship, carved all over with dragons and phoenixes, such as any man would know at a glance for a rare and precious thing, such as common folk would scarce ever set eyes upon.
There, before Han Li's very face, Doctor Mo unlatched the lid with due ceremony. Within there lay an array of silver blades, all one and the same shape — a shape most strange, being neither sword nor knife nor anything akin, their edges curving in a crescent of a half-moon, and in size like unto a dagger's; a very curious thing.
When Doctor Mo took one of the silver blades up out of the case, Han Li saw at last that this strange blade was thin beyond all measure — of a thickness like a sheet of paper — and a cold gleam flowed and flickered over the face of it, so that a man could tell at a glance how keen it was; fit, one would think, to slice through living flesh and blood as easily as one clips a garment. Yet stranger still — set at the butt-end of the blade's haft there was a ghost head, its eyes shut fast, its face green, its fangs bared, and a pair of horns upon its crown; monstrous beyond all telling.
Doctor Mo held up this strange blade, and from the corner of his eye cast a glance at Han Li, full of meaning.
That glance struck Han Li with a crawling horror to the marrow of his bones. Could it be, after all, that his own chatter of a crow's beak had hit the mark — that the man meant to use this strange blade to cut him up?