The village was pools of standing water and bristling swords, so thick underfoot that it was near impossible to set down a step, and the corpses dotting the ground cast a strange, horrifying pall over everything.
The Village Chief swept his eyes over the carnage, frowned, and spoke: "Cripple, go see to it. Lay them out properly, don't leave them to rot in the wild. Send them down the river. Burn spirit money, candles, paper boats, and cranes for them too."
The Cripple limped forward, glanced at the Blind One, and chuckled: "What a show—spouting poetry, and nonsense at that."
The Blind One flew into a rage until the whiskers by his mouth bristled: "You couldn't manage it if you tried! You can barely read a single word!"
Grandma Si hurried to speak: "Cripple, mind you keep the good things when you lay them out—don't bury them in the coffins. They're worth something, after all. We can sell them off next time for a bit of oil, salt, and vinegar!"
"Right then!"
In the Great Ruins, the most precious things were not gold, silver, or jewels, but oil, salt, vinegar, and fine silks. These the Great Ruins did not have; merchant caravans had to haul them in from outside to Xianglong City, and the folk of the Great Ruins bartered their jewels and beast pelts for them. It was fair to say salt was dearer than gold.
Every time Grandma Si went to Xianglong City she hauled a cart full of treasures with a few head of livestock, selling off livestock and treasure alike, and only then could she bring back a bit of oil, salt, and vinegar.
The Herbalist came forward, doctoring Qin Mu's wounds and binding the cut on his hand, shaking his head: "Grabbing at a sword barehanded—your primordial qi is nowhere near strong enough for that. Don't push your luck next time."
Qin Mu felt his palm go cold and numb, scarcely aware of any pain, and said: "My sword-control arts aren't enough. I can't match that Li River Sect man's deftness. I can feel the strength in my body, but I just can't drive it out."
"Perfectly normal. That Butcher's sword-control is too crude—he couldn't teach you if he tried."
The Herbalist broke into smiles: "There's someone in our village who knows deep sword-control arts, but unfortunately she has no mind to teach you."
The Village Chief's face darkened, and he said bluntly: "Herbalist, the water's high around here. Carry me back to my house."
The Herbalist smiled: "Then the Chief will have to wait. I'm still binding Mu'er's wounds."
When the bandaging was done, Qin Mu saw the Mute gathering the swords from the ground. The mute picked up one blade, gave it a light shake, and at once hundreds upon hundreds of flying swords came darting over on their own, clanging and ringing as they collided with the sword he held. Every last one vanished—merged into the single blade in his hand. Qin Mu could not help clicking his tongue in wonder.
He went forward and picked up a sword himself, gave it a light shake, yet nothing happened.
The Mute grinned, toothless tongue gone; he made a pair of hoarse cries, then rubbed the sword between his two hands. The blade, his rubbing squeezing it smaller and smaller, shrank in the blink of an eye into a tiny silver pellet, no bigger than a fingertip.
Qin Mu studied the sword in his own hand, thinking he might rub it into a silver pellet too, when the Herbalist cried out: "Don't rub at it! I've only just wrapped that wound! Mute, stop teasing him, or I'll poison you dead!"
The Mute laughed and laughed, snatched the flying sword from Qin Mu's hand, and tucked the silver pellet into his palm.
Crack.
Qin Mu heard a faint sound from his own shoulder, then the pellet in his hand crushed him flat to the ground under its weight. The Mute jumped with fright and slapped his own forehead—he had forgotten that this pellet had been forged from the congealing of several thousand swords together. Thousands of swords clasped into one—how could the weight be light?
Taken entirely by surprise, Qin Mu found his arm wrenched from its socket, the whole boy flattened to the earth.
The Mute was about to set the arm right again when Grandma Si came striding over and kicked him clean out of the village, to goodness knows where—only the sound of his groaning cries carried in from beyond the gate, fading farther and farther.
Grandma Si wore a black face as she set Qin Mu's arm back in place, and fumed: "Anyone who can't talk is pure wickedness, a belly full of poison schemes! Mu'er, these swords are mother-and-daughter swords. Out of several thousand blades, one is the mother sword, and the rest are daughter swords. Find the mother sword and you can call every daughter sword back to it. But the Li River Sect's sword pellet is dreadfully heavy—you can't lift it yet."
She picked up a sword herself and, like the Mute, gave it a light shake; several thousand fine swords came whirling over and dissolved into that mother sword.
Grandma Si smiled: "To turn the mother sword back into a pellet, you need not rub it—the Mute was only toying with you. All you need is to let your primordial qi merge with the mother sword, and it will shrink back into a pellet. And by the same method, you can also send the daughter swords flying out from it."
Qin Mu examined the pellet in her palm, blinking, and said in puzzlement: "Grandma, I think there are silver pellets like these in your room. Lots of them!"
"Are there?" Grandma Si blinked her rheumy old eyes, feigning bewilderment.
"There are!"
Qin Mu remembered then. He had seen such silver pellets in Grandma Si's room—no small number of them. Some had been tossed under the bed, some lay in shoes she no longer wore, and not a few sat forgotten in the corners.
When he was little, he had even used these silver pellets for marbles, knocking them this way and that.
He had even seen Grandma Si's old hen swallow silver pellets like this straight down, treating them as though they were grit!
Now that he thought of it, it was terrifying. What if one of those silver pellets had suddenly burst open into a sword inside the hen's belly? What a ghastly scene that would have been!
Luckily nothing of the sort had happened.
Grandma Si's eyes glinted, and she said: "When you were little and could lift them, naturally they were ordinary silver pellets, not sword pellets."
Qin Mu was not so sure: "I've also seen, in Mute Grandpa's smithy, a great chest crammed so full of these silver pellets it was overflowing."
Grandma Si blinked and blinked her rheumy old eyes, blinking even faster than Qin Mu, and said with a smile: "Do you think the Mute could be that rich?"
Qin Mu felt a little lost at her words. The Mute truly did not seem the sort to be bursting with wealth—he was plainly nothing but a poor wretch who spent his days at the forge.
Grandma Si smiled: "Don't let your mind wander. Everyone in our village is ordinary, poor wretches with not a coin to their name, and all of them old cripples to boot. This is just a common sort of village, and everything here is perfectly normal. If you're set on suspecting that chest of the Mute's was full of sword pellets, you might as well suspect that water vat in the corner is a treasure too!"
Qin Mu turned to look at the vat she meant. It sat beneath the eaves of the smithy, kept there to catch rainwater when it fell. But the odd thing was, Qin Mu had never once seen that vat full to the brim—no matter how heavy the rain, there was always only half a vat of water!
What was more, the vat's water had never run low, never once gone dry. The Mute used great quantities of water for his blacksmithing, scooping it out by the bucketful, and yet the vat held just as much as ever!
When Grandma Si saw the doubt in his expression and realized this example had gone somewhat astray, she hurried on: "You wouldn't think the Herbalist's heap of broken pots by his door were treasures too?"
Qin Mu looked at the broken pots beyond the Herbalist's door. Potted within them were sundry nameless herbs, and crawling among them were spiders, silkworms, centipedes, and the like.
A moment ago the floodwaters had soaked the pots and spilled water inside, and a few of the insects had climbed out to scuffle along the rims. Suddenly a black spider flew into a rage; fire shot over its whole body, then the spider swelled to the size of a table and sprayed flame at the other crawlers. Out of the blaze, several golden silkworms sprouted wings, grew to a full foot in length, and burst free of the fire to throw themselves on the spider, biting and gnawing with a chattering of teeth.
The Herbalist poked his head out and shouted a reprimand, and in an instant the insects shrank back down and shuffled obediently into their pots.
Qin Mu's suspicions only grew. Grandma Si gave two dry laughs and mumbled: "These are all normal. Common as can be..."
Qin Mu tested her: "Grandma, do the people outside also fly, like Blind Grandpa?"
Grandma Si nodded: "Everyone outside can fly."
Qin Mu said: "And are the people outside like the folk in our village—spiritual bodies?"
"Every last one a spiritual body!"
"Are the people outside every bit as formidable as our villagers?"
"Formidable indeed! Otherwise Grandma here and the Blind One would never have been hounded into hiding in the Great Ruins! Don't you keep scheming to run off outside—mind you don't get yourself killed out there. The people out there are far more ferocious than the Blind One!"
Qin Mu was only half convinced. Were the people beyond the Great Ruins truly as fearsome as Grandma Si made them sound, soaring to heaven and sinking to earth with nothing they could not do?
At the riverside, the Cripple had finished laying out the dead and encoffined them; Old Ma drove wedge after wooden wedge into the coffin lids, nailed each coffin shut, then shoved the coffins one by one into the river, letting them drift downstream on the current.
The current ran swift, and further down the river lay many hidden shoals and jagged rocks. The coffins would hardly make it to the sea; on the way they would be dashed to pieces, and the bodies would sink into the water, food for the great fish of the Yong River.
"Li River Sect," the Cripple mused as he watched the coffins recede into the distance, "may well be struck from the roll of the Southern Borderlands."
"Those aren't the things on my mind at the moment."
Old Ma shook his head and gazed into the distance: "What I'm thinking of now is that first man under the gods. Mu Beifeng was the Prefecture Governor of the Five Miao Prefecture in the Southern Borderlands, and the State Preceptor of Yankang personally recruited and enfeoffed him with a second-rank post. Now that he's dead, and the Five Elders of the Li River are dead, too—will this not rouse that first man under the gods?"
The Cripple shook his head, and said flatly: "It will rouse him! But he would absolutely never dare set foot in the Great Ruins!"
Old Ma glanced at him: "Don't you forget—the State Preceptor of Yankang alone cannot prevail over the Great Ruins, but behind the State Preceptor stands the nation of Yankang! And Yankang is a great sect that wears the name of a nation! How could such a leviathan not be casting its covetous eye upon the Great Ruins? There are countless treasures to be had here!"