Ever since Han Li had mastered the Wind-Riding Mantra, his interest in the other two arts — the Spirit-Pinning Talisman and the Object-Drive Art — had grown the greater. He lavished upon them a vast store of time and pains, hoping that one day he might, as with the Wind-Riding Mantra, all at once come to a sudden and perfect understanding.
But after he had studied them again and again, Han Li discovered, to his surprise, that his failure to work these two arts might not, after all, be of his own doing; it might simply be that the outward conditions for casting them were not yet present.
The Spirit-Pinning Talisman, so the books said, was a charm, and must needs be worked with a ready-made talisman prepared beforehand. Therefore Han Li had throughout bought coarse yellow paper from the town nearby, and, following the signs and figures in the book, traced out with a brush his so-called talismans. Although the book said not a word of what pigment one should use for drawing the signs, Han Li bethought him of the talisman of Doctor Mo with its silver signs, and naturally fell back upon the costly luxury of silver powder. Whether this pigment would serve its turn he could not tell; but at least, to outward seeming, these homemade talismans matched the examples in the book exactly, stroke for stroke.
Alas, likeness of outward form alone would not do.
When Han Li urged these charms with his incantation, the signs upon them blazed not with the dazzling silver light they had thrown out in Doctor Mo's hands, nor came there any other marvel to pass; one might say his casting had utterly failed, and left him caught in a strait of dilemma. For he could not tell whether the failure sprang from some error in the chant or in the clenching of the fingers, or from the imperfect fashioning of the charms themselves.
But after this bout of study, all was changed.
Diving deep into every manner of book on charms and learned tomes on matters of the arts, Han Li at last stumbled upon the truth: the talismans of cultivators could surely not be traced upon the common paper and pigment known to secular men, but must be made of certain materials proper to cultivators themselves, and perhaps demanded, moreover, some special method in their making. Therefore, even were his chant and gestures flawless beyond reproach, the spell could never come to pass.
As for the Object-Drive Art, it followed the selfsame reasoning.
Heretofore Han Li had thought that, for this art, he needed but take any chance object to serve as his target, and so the things he drove with clenched fingers and murmured incantation were ever the common furniture of the room, or swords and blades — and, of course, not the least effect followed.
But now, awakened by this business of the charmed paper, it came to him that what the Object-Drive Art drove could not be the ordinary thing at all, but must be some particular object proper to cultivators.
And so Han Li took the odd and outlandish articles that had come to him from Doctor Mo — the Soul-Summoning Bell among them, and those seven silver blades that went to the working of the Seven-Ghost Soul-Stealing Art — and made them the objects of his driving, trying them one by one. Yet still was there not a single one upon which the spell would take. This dashed Han Li's hopes most sorely; it seemed that what the Object-Drive Art drove were not even these instruments, but some other things altogether.
Now that he knew the rough root of the matter, and understood that without the proper objects neither the Spirit-Pinning Talisman nor the Object-Drive Art could be brought into effect, Han Li put the matter from his mind, and turned instead to the scheme of wedding his secret martial arts to his several spells, hoping thereby to build up his own strength with all speed, and in a short time to raise himself another rung or two.
With this far-fetched notion lodged in his breast, Han Li set out once more upon the toilsome road of self-tempering — and very soon had reaped no small accomplishment.
After much trying, he at last blended the Mist-Wandering Step with the Wind-Riding Mantra.
To call it blending was but saying that he first cast the Wind-Riding Mantra upon himself, then turned to the Mist-Wandering Step after; only the timing and the fitting between the two must be governed with the nicest care, else was a blunder all too easy to come by, and this alone cost Han Li much pains of mind and body.
But thus worked, the two defects of the Wind-Riding Mantra, which was never skilled at sudden wheelings and turnings, and of the Mist-Wandering Step, whose every move drained his stamina, were little by little made good; and he came, in his shiftings from place to place, to be seen only as a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder — one who is sighted but never caught. In the matter of bodily movement he grew more elusive than ever before.
Soon thereafter, too, Han Li devised his own invention in the wielding of the Fireball Technique.
By its proper use, when the little ball of flame of the Fireball Technique had sprung into being, the caster should urge it on with his magic power and hurl it against his mark, to slay his foe; such was the art's original manner. But Han Li held this in no great esteem.
To his thinking, the little fireball sped by magic power flew far too slowly, and any lightness master of skill could slip aside from it with ease, which hemmed it about with no little hindrance in the close work of rivers-and-lakes slaying, and made it something of a gaudy, hollow thing. So of the Fireball Technique he would cast but the half; once the ball of flame had sprung, he would no longer loose it, but, grasping at the virtue it had of devouring all things, keep it in his hand and use it as a short divine weapon, held firm in his grip.
In this wise, what with his body-work already brought to a most refined degree, and the white-hot ball of flame he carried in his hand, Han Li was now confident he could slay with ease any master whatsoever.
With such supports beneath him, Han Li could at last draw an easy breath, and no longer fret that his own strength fell short. Now could he go with a full and sturdy confidence to Lan Prefecture, there to be rid of his poison.
And through all this while, his Art of Eternal Youth, fed each day upon the finest of his medicines taken as one would munch dainties, had slipped quietly into its eighth layer, so that his magic power grew yet another goodly measure.
Were one to speak but of the depth and shallowness of magic power alone, Han Li at this hour stood already above Yu Zitong as the man had been in the days when he yet kept his own body. But if one spoke of the store of arts mastered, or of the skill of an actual bout of sorcery, Han Li could not overtake the old Yu Zitong by a thousand miles. For Yu Zitong, when he had trained his arts within his family, had elders above to guide him and fellow disciples below to spar with him, and was a very far cry from a half-soused novice such as Han Li.
Han Li knew nothing of all this; and even if he had known, he had cared little. He had never been so puffed up as to fancy that two or three crude arts would let him stand contest against a true cultivator; the foes that then beset him were, for the most part, but the fighting men of the secular world.
Thus was Han Li's heart in a very good mood, and just as he brimmed with purpose, ready to find an excuse to leave the Sect of Seven Mysteries and go down the mountain, the Wild Wolf Gang of a sudden put forward a request for peace between the two powers.
At the tidings, a great stir went up throughout the Sect of Seven Mysteries. For all this while past, it had been the Wild Wolf Gang that held the upper hand in their clashes, pressing the Sect of Seven Mysteries ever back; how, then, when the wind blew so fair for them, should the foe of a sudden sue for peace? Was there no trick lurking in it? Such doubts were in many a breast.
For a while, the voices of those in the sect for the peace and those against it rose together, and every high personage held his own differing view; Li Feiyu was among the most stubborn of the dissenters.
Since the clamor of the agree-to and the not-agree-to was near equal, and neither could argue the other down, in the end the Sect Leader Wang settled it with a stroke of his hand: let them, at the least, go and speak with the foe first; if the terms were none too harsh, then shake hands and make peace; if they proved too niggardly, then the strife would go on.
This scheme, which sought to water down the wine on both sides, could not please the one faction or the other; yet it was the only way of threading the needle between them, and so it perforce must stand.