The snow fell for three days, its silver-grey flakes raging through the air, and every household barred its door fast. The weather had turned utterly cold. Li Tongya swept clean the little courtyard at Lijing Village, gave it into Li Qiuyang's keeping, and led Liu Rouxuan up Lijing Mountain.
Picking their way through the snow, step by step and uneven-footed, Liu Rouxuan wore a long pale-grey fur mantle, and she clutched Li Tongya's hand with a light laugh, chattering without cease:
"Brother Tongya, come spring we shall be wed."
"Very well."
Li Tongya brushed the snow from her shoulder, smiled gently, and tilted the umbrella in his hand, shaking the flakes from its spread, then turned it a little more toward Liu Rouxuan.
Lijing Mountain was not tall. Li Tongya led her through the mist that pooled at its foot, trod the flagstone path buried beneath the snow, and came at last to the courtyard gate.
Scarce had they stepped inside when they saw Tian Yun seated before the brazier, bundled in her furs and beaming, her cheeks flushed with the warmth. At sight of the two she called out:
"Second Brother, Second Sister-in-Law."
Li Tongya answered her with a smile, while Liu Rouxuan, though the girl was four or five years her elder, bore herself with easy openness, drawing close and whispering slyly at the fireside with Tian Yun.
Li Xiangping had gone down early to cast the Spirit Rain over the rice paddies, and was even then settling his breath in cultivation at the rear of the house. Li Tongya freed himself of his greatcoat and hung it upon the wall, then turned to look at Lady Ren, who sat quietly sewing in the corner, and asked in a low voice:
"Where is Father?"
"Old as he is, he sleeps long in winter; he is still in his room."
Lady Ren glanced up and smiled, and seeing Tian Yun beckoning by the brazier, set down her needlework and went over to sit, laughing softly as she began to ply Liu Rouxuan with questions.
Li Mutian had himself widened the skylight the day before, working well into the night, and still lay sleeping in his chamber. Li Tongya stared fixedly through the window at the snow that wrapped the whole mountain, and said in his heart:
"Were only Eldest Brother still with us... how glad a thing that would be."
Winter gave way to spring. The year past had thrived: the rains of spring were fine and brought no drought, the autumn was dry and sharp without flood, and there was neither hail nor locust. A single tenth of the crop went for field tax, which left the households far more ease than in other years; every family had grain to spare, and so no man froze to death that winter.
The second sowing of spirit rice at Lijing Village had likewise ripened. When it was cut, husked, and beaten free of its chaff, it yielded a hundred and seventy jin of spirit rice and fifty jin of rice bran; and, joined to the harvest of the year before, came in all to two hundred and ninety jin of spirit rice and ninety jin of paddy. Enough had been set aside to meet the two hundred jin required as tribute.
With Li Qiuyang and Liu Rouxuan now joined to them, Li Tongya and Li Xiangping found their labours much eased. They could entrust the tending of the many spirit fields to the two of them, and turn their own minds the more fully upon cultivation.
The White Origin Fruit tree had put forth its blossoms too, a spray of white and rose breaking along the branch, and Li Tongya guessed that within a few months the fruit would be ripe — in good time, he judged, for the day when the envoy of Qingchi Sect should come to collect the tribute.
Li Tongya had scarce cast the Spirit Rain when he saw Wan Tiancang enter the courtyard with a woebegone face, come to pour out his troubles:
"That Ji Dengqi crossed the border in a mask late last night and fell upon the many spirit fields of our Wan house. Nine-tenths of the spirit rice at the foot of the mountain was burned, no few mortals were slain, and he very nearly stormed the mountain of Huagan itself."
"Had not our family head been quick of wit, watchful as the rice ripened, and seated herself in the formation in time, all might have been lost. Ji Dengqi beset us with his men for a whole night, and slunk away only at daybreak with a bitter look."
Li Tongya set down his teacup, some surprise in his voice:
"Your clan's formation is truly formidable, to hold out a whole night against a besieging Qi-Refining cultivator."
Wan Tiancang waved a hand and made a wry face:
"It is a knack, nothing more. Two hundred years ago the Wan house produced a master of formations, and he raised this great array by drawing upon a spirit spring upon Huagan Mountain. So long as the spring flows, the formation may restore its own spirit energy without end."
"A mighty formation, indeed!"
Li Tongya could not keep from admiring it, and thought within himself:
"The array upon our own Lijing Mountain is poor beside it. Still, Xiao Yuansi once said that, given a better formation, one might yet lay it out with those array-flags of ours — it is only a pity our house has no tradition of formations..."
Wan Tiancang stole a glance at Li Tongya and, seeing him sunk in thought, went on:
"It is a pity the man was over-proud of his gifts, and sought in haste to forge the Dao Foundation, and so met his end upon Huagan Mountain."
"Forge the Dao Foundation?"
Li Tongya felt a pang of regret and said heavily:
"He was, in truth, an elder at the peak of Qi Refining."
"Alas..."
Wan Tiancang gave a long sigh, and spoke with a touch of longing:
"That was the most glorious age of our Wan house; there were in those days full five Qi-Refining cultivators among us. Within a dozen years of that ancestor's death, we had lost three mountains we had won and held with toil and pain, and given up four Qi-Refining and ten Embryonic Breathing cultivators in battle. Had we not a few friends within the Sect, the house would long since have been broken and undone."
"In time the elders went one by one, and that friend within the Sect would but keep the blood of the Wan from dying out and no longer meddle in our affairs. Generation followed generation, each weaker than the last, yet still the house endured — until, a dozen-odd years ago, our family head broke through to the Jade Capital Wheel, and so at last could open the storage pouches left down from our forbears, only to find within them a scattering of spirit stones and talismans and nothing more of use."
"So that is how it stood."
Li Tongya sighed deeply, refilled Wan Tiancang's cup, and spoke a few words of comfort to the sighing man.
Wan Tiancang sipped his tea, then struck the table hard with a cry of indignation:
"Hateful is that Ji house! In the old days the Wan fought the Yu house of the north without end, and the Ji were but a small family squeezed into the cracks between, without so much as a single Qi-Refining cultivator to their name. Now, currying favour with either side, they have grown to such a stature that they have all but driven our house to the wall."
He looked at Li Tongya, then asked in a lowered voice:
"Might I ask, then, how your elder at home fares?"
Li Tongya knew that Wan Tiancang meant Li Mutian, and was at once on his guard; happily the brothers had long since agreed upon their story, and so he took a sip of tea and said:
"My father left home in his youth and served as a soldier upon the Ancient Li Road, marching against the Mountain Yue at General Yang's side."
"I have heard somewhat of this," Wan Tiancang said. "That Yang Tianya, with his Foundation Establishment, led his men east to harry a branch of the Mountain Yue, and many men died."
He slid his cup aside and asked, puzzled:
"Yet I have heard it said that your father returned to his home a common mortal..."
Li Tongya gave a wry laugh by way of explanation:
"My father had, while yet at home, the guidance of an immortal adept and trained up to Qi Refining; and in the wars of the levy he found a chance and forged his immortal foundation. Why his cultivation should afterwards have been cast down is not a matter I may speak of freely."
"It was careless of me, Tian Cang!"
Wan Tiancang clasped his hands, thinking to himself:
"It must be that, forging his immortal foundation at a tender age, his pride ran hot and he gave offence to some scion of a great house — and those great families fear no revenge, and love this very game of casting a man down to mortal dust."
Yet aloud he only lamented:
"A pity, a pity."
Seeing that Li Tongya would say no more, Wan Tiancang set his teeth and at last came out with it:
"To speak plainly with you, Brother Li, I have come this day hoping to exchange my clan's heritage of formations for a talisman of the peak of Qi Refining, or of Foundation Establishment, with which to slay that Ji Dengqi!"
Only then did the light break upon Li Tongya, who thought within himself:
"So this is why Wan Tiancang comes idling to our house out of the blue — the fellow has been angling at this all along!"