Chapter 56

"The Emperor won't let him take it up!" Qi Qian'er swore blind to the old lady, and the whole family played along with her show, nodding to the old lady in chorus.

Yu Qingguan put in: "That's right, they say fight, and he must fight? Your Dasheng's an officer, when all's said and done!"

The old lady, who'd been lying on the kang in despair, sat bolt upright. She whipped the cloth off her forehead, and every ailment was cured on the instant. Joy all over her face, she stepped down in her stockings and asked Chen Dasheng: "Good grandson, truly?"

Chen Dasheng, of course, wore an untroubled look, and nodded, easy as could be: "I'd have liked to go, it's a name to be made! But the Emperor says that's a matter for the common folk, and I've a post on me now..."

He hadn't finished when the old lady clapped her hands and bowed, over and over, toward one corner of the room: "What did I say! What did I say? The Emperor's grace is vast..."

Qi Qian'er's cheek twitched: "Granny, you're bowing the wrong way!"

The old lady started, and looked round at the roomful of people: "The wrong way?"

Everyone nodded together and pointed the opposite way. The old lady briskly turned and bowed to that side instead: "The Emperor's grace is vast! I said the Emperor couldn't be a muddlehead, so many men to be had, and he'd send my grandson?"

Her bows done, and her whole body eased, the old lady yawned: "So late, and a whole day's to-do, off to bed, all of you, sleep, sleep..."

After all, some years of hardship had taught the old lady to turn her moods quickly, and the medicine the doctor had left had something in it to help her sleep, so the old lady couldn't hold out.

Qi Qian'er looked down, and the old lady, clear-eyed, gripped her wrist and asked: "Qian'er, will you swear Granny an oath? You're truly not deceiving me?"

Qi Qian'er was a shade taken aback, then soon gave a soft laugh, and said, gentle: "I'm but sixteen, do you take me for one who wants to be a widow?"

But the old lady didn't believe her, and held her hand still: "Swear it to me!"

Qi Qian'er, helpless: "All right, I'll swear it. I swear on my own life, that grandson of yours will surely be fine. And if I've deceived you, then let Lord Laojun take five..."

For, come what may, she could not let that Pang Tu into the capital.

Seeing her truly about to make the oath, the old lady turned tender-hearted after all, and stopped her: "No, no, don't! What are you talking such wildness for? I believe you, Granny believes you. If I don't trust you, whom should I trust. I trust you..."

Muttering I trust you, I trust you, the old lady fell asleep, and this time her heart was easy.

Seeing the old lady asleep, her brows still knotted into deep grooves, Qi Qian'er reached out and smoothed them a few times. But the grooves were long since set, and it did no good.

She stood, blew out the candle, left the room, and eased the door shut. Turning, she saw Chen Dasheng, hands behind his back, standing under the eaves watching the spring rain.

Under the long eaves of the garrison hung seven or eight wind-lanterns of pasted straw-paper. With the spring rain, and the spring wind coming and going, they blew Chen Dasheng's shadow into a dim wavering. One moment he was like himself frozen into a cold-ice stone stele, the next like himself grown tall and strong, standing four-square between heaven and earth.

Qi Qian'er went over and asked him: "Why not resting?"

Chen Dasheng turned and smiled at her, and held out a brocade bag: "I'll take you to the guest room. And there's this, I forgot to give it to Granny."

Qi Qian'er took it and asked: "What's this? Oh, this."

Chen Dasheng said nothing, only watched his woman, quiet. Yes, this was his, the one woman that was his alone.

These last days, standing on the south-gate wall, he'd often watched the palace, and Yanjing, and all the couples of every kind in the world. In the end he was sure of it, that he seemed to have a woman not the least like other men's.

She was said to be his, and yet at times he felt it was rather he who was hers.

It was an awkward thing to say, but there it was.

She was not the soft rush his teacher would idly recite. If she were like anything, she was more like a boulder, standing alone between heaven and earth, keeping some one thing safe. And yet that thing did not seem to be himself?

...Be you the boulder, and I the rush. The rush is pliant as silk, and the boulder never stirs...

Qi Qian'er took no notice of Chen Dasheng's look. She took the bag, and knew by its weight what it held, the merit-coins!

She drew one out to look at it in her hand: cast of the finest bronze, the face reading the Martial Emperor's Merit-Reward, the back left plain. A good thick, big piece, and heavy in the hand, a heavy thing, one life.

Qi Qian'er pursed her lips, put it back in the bag, and sighed softly: "Granny means them for burial-goods. Only, I'm afraid Fourth Uncle and the cousin-brothers won't allow it."

Chen Dasheng was a little taken aback, and remembered at last that this was, after all, the old lady's own one-sided wish. Beyond the three that were his father's and his own blood-brother's, the rest were truly not his to dispose of.

His heart went a touch heavy. But soon he heard his little wife say, in a light, certain tone: "Then don't tell them!"

That said, she tied the brocade bag briskly and handed it back to Chen Dasheng: "Once we're home I'll go with Brother Meng to the yamen and buy a plot, and order the coffins, and pick a good day and bury them fast. And then, let's see which of them dares dig up a grave!"

Chen Dasheng was struck dumb. A good while later he snorted a laugh, took the bag and nodded: "There's no need to go so far. Everything the old lady does is for her children. If there's some good in not burying them with her, then explain it to her plainly, and she'll not be angry."

Qi Qian'er caught his meaning at once, and nodded: "Mm, that's just it, all her life the old lady's been for her sons and daughters. What?"

She looked, puzzled, at the fist Chen Dasheng was holding out to her.

A fine rain swept across the hair of them both. Chen Dasheng slowly turned his hand over, and opened his fist, and in his palm lay a bright, shining gold merit-coin.

"Mine. I'll give it to you."

But Qi Qian'er did not take it. She only stared, fixed, at that merit-coin, without a stir, and Chen Dasheng's hand stayed stiff in the air a long, long while...

The gold coin fell to the ground with a dull sound, and rolled a good way down the slightly-sloping corridor, and struck the wall at last, and turned over to its plain face.

Qi Qian'er caught Chen Dasheng by the front of his robe and hauled the upper half of him down before her eyes, and, with a ferocity and a gravity never seen in her before, threatened him, word by word: "Chen Scabby! I say you will not die! Do you believe me?"

Chen Dasheng blinked, and was about to say he believed. But his wife went on, threatening: "Believe me or not, you'll believe me! Your life, this life of yours, is mine, is Huo Qi Qian'er's! From the one hair on the crown of your head to the old skin on your heel, every bit of it is mine! Let the old Emperor himself come, and I'll not give it up! No one's any use, I tell you..."

The wind-lantern swayed, and merged the two shadows into one.

Bound by his heat, held taut and close, pressed near, Qi Qian'er could hear, with no flesh between them, the violence of his heartbeat. Chen Dasheng's whole body shook with a fierce feeling, and his breath came deep, heavier and heavier with every draw.

She seemed to hear, now, the truly-living Chen Scabby, not that cold memorial tablet she had once caught up in her rage and flung to the ground and railed at till her voice broke. The living him said: "I'll not die! No one may make me! Not the old Emperor either..."

Qi Qian'er bit down on his lower lip, bit it till the blood came, and mumbled: "Then swear it to me..."

Swear it to me, that you won't die!

A greater spring wind blew, and beyond the wall the mountain-peaches came, every one, into bloom.

The next afternoon the old lady struggled her way out at last from among the load of goods in the cart, and, her face all pinched with the pain of it, roared at Qi Qian'er: "Still not moving! You lightning-blasted thing, spending your man's money doesn't cost you a pang, does it! Ancestors of every generation, I'll never bring her here again, never again!"

To get the old lady out of Yanjing without a fuss, there was but one method that answered: to spend her grandson's money hard, right before her eyes.

That whole morning Qi Qian'er had scattered money past counting. First she went to the biggest coffin-shop in Yanjing, and bought eight sets of the eighty-tael boards. Then she took the old lady to the newly-opened gold-and-silver shop, and bought three sets of head-ornaments apiece, and ordered a dozen more set with pearls and jewels. Ordinary cloth she wouldn't so much as look at. If she bought, she bought this spring's new patterns, ten bolts at a go, ten for herself and ten for the old lady. At the new furniture store on the east street, tables, chairs, cabinets, stools, wooden basins, clothes-racks, chests great and small, satin-wrapped ornament-cases, she'd not glance at the little foot-and-a-bit rhombus-glass mirror, but bought a twelve-jin great Kunlun half-body mirror. Bookcases and kitchen-racks she'd not have of common wood either, but must have them of the finest red sandalwood, carved with curling flowers and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the sort where even a little stool ran to five hundred cash. Incense, lamps, lacquer, vases, jars! Hair-oil, rouge and powder, hibiscus-cream...

She said buy, and Chen Dasheng paid up behind her, meek as a lamb. When the money on him was gone, he sent someone into the palace to borrow of his teacher. At which the old lady could bear no more, and grabbed her people and went, unwilling to stay another quarter-hour.

The old lady's grumbling and scolding in her ear, Qi Qian'er stood staring blankly at Chen Dasheng, and he at her, until someone behind poked her with a newly-bought cane. Then Qi Qian'er stepped aside out of the way, and, in the same motion, handed Chen Dasheng a heavy cloth bundle, and charged him in a low voice: "Take this to pay your teacher back. Our house isn't yet so poor it need borrow money."

That said, she turned and boarded the cart, then lifted the curtain and called out: "After the third of the third, I'll come."

Chen Dasheng smiled at her and said all right.

At which the old lady roared: "Come again! Never coming again!"

That said, she yanked the curtain down, hard. Her spleen still unspent, she raised her new cane and thrust the top half of herself out of the cart to strike Chen Dasheng, couldn't reach, so Chen Dasheng had to step up and let her hit him: a great-thunder-small-rain of an empty swat in the air. And so, scolding and grumbling, off she went.

When there was no more of them to be seen, Liu Daya, sweating from helping shift the goods, came over from one side, planted himself beside Chen Dasheng, and stuck up his thumb: "Say what you will, brother, for spending money, in all Yanjing, your wife's this. No one alive can match her."

Chen Dasheng felt at his sleeve, and a sweet, small smile came over him. When he'd smiled he said: "And how many times has she even been?"

Liu Daya was won over past all hope, and clapped him on the shoulder, helpless: "But how much do you earn? Brother, take a word from your elder brother, you mustn't spoil her so! Three carts to Yanjing and ten carts home again, your wife's made a name for herself now: Yanjing's first and finest great sieve!"

He held out a hand still twitching with it: "You're a court officer of the junior fifth grade, at the least! And what was today? The house-moving servant of his lordship Chen the Great?"

He was only ribbing to cheer Chen Dasheng up, and seeing Chen Dasheng laugh in earnest, he warmed the more to his act: "Heh! The two of you are ruthless enough, this grand opera to drive the old lady home, a full-house triumph! I'll guarantee it: for the rest of this half-year your old lady won't dare think of a single other thing, she'll be too busy grieving over all this money!"

Chen Dasheng snorted another laugh.

Liu Daya sighed: "Tsk, so that's how you're packing the old lady off to the temple? Can you bear it?"

Chen Dasheng nodded: "Too many mouths out here, it's no good, her hearing all the idle talk."

That said, he turned to go. Liu Daya grumbled after him: "Hey, you heartless thing, use me and toss me, is it? Where are you off to?"

Chen Dasheng answered without turning: "The palace."

In the palace, Attendant She was sowing vegetable seeds in the bare ground of his little courtyard.

Looking up, he saw his student come in, and stood, and let his robe-hem drop, and asked: "Gone, then?"

Chen Dasheng nodded, took the water-bucket from his teacher in passing, and handed him a cloth bundle: "Paying you back your money."

Attendant She knew by the feel of it that it was gold, and opened it, and found ten gold ingots of a very crude shape? An odd thing indeed, as though someone had squeezed them out by hand, all crooked and askew, of no proper form at all. But by their weight they were more than enough to repay the thousand taels of silver his student had borrowed off him that day.

He laughed, and held one up: "Look at that, I seem to know it!"

Chen Dasheng, not taking his meaning, looked at his teacher in puzzlement.

Attendant She tossed the ingot up and down: "This stuff is of better grade than that batch our Emperor gives out! Top-quality purple-polished gold. In the old dynasty's flush markets a tael of it was reckoned at eighteen strings. Our Emperor, fearing that pricing gold too high would harm his officials, now holds it down by force to twelve strings the tael. A pity, your Emperor's forever wanting things his own sweet way! Nowadays gold's not to be seen through the official channels, and floods the private market instead. A tael of this sort would fetch twenty-one strings of new cash at the very least, you've come off the loser."

Seeing the shock all over his student's face, Attendant She teased him with a soft laugh: "Tsk, regret it now? Look, there's no stamp on it, no mark, it's surely something your little wife dug out of her natal home. You lucky boy, you've found yourself a wife with a family fortune behind her."

Chen Dasheng set down the bucket, reached out and took the ingot his teacher passed him, and looked, and true enough, it was not the ten he'd given his wife.

He asked, shock all over his face: "Hers? These are hers?"

Where had they come from?

Attendant She, seeing his student's foolish look, rapped him on the brow and said through his teeth: "Where from? Her ancestors squeezed it out of the old dynasty, that's where! Fool! What are you thinking! How many years did the Huo family manage salt-wells for the old imperial house? One of the two or three greatest estate-stewards near Yanjing. Three hundred years' foundation at the very least, I tell you. The stuff she couldn't carry off, your wife's dug the whole of it up, that wife of yours, tsk. And you're this dense? However did she come to fancy you?"

Chen Dasheng, aggrieved all over, felt, without thinking, at the lower lip that had been bitten open the night before, and thought: to this day she still hasn't come to fancy your student. It's my Granny she fancies, more like.

Without Qi Qian'er's knowing it, that whole hidden foundation of hers had been turned inside out by Attendant She and the Emperor. For it was, after all, the largest salt-well anywhere near Yanjing, tangled with too many interests. Without looking into it, it was all just her one mouth talking wild.

Chen Dasheng, less afraid now of the Emperor and the court, was worried instead for his wife's safety, and asked Attendant She: "Then, if her natal family come back and can't find it..."

And made trouble with his wife, what then? His wife was the very one who'd pushed over the ancestral hall, overturned the salt-well, and dug up the ancestral graves.

Attendant She laughed softly, went in a moment, and came out with a sealed dispatch, which he handed to his student: "Come back? Her whole house is gone! Meeting you was her blessing. Else by now her very bones couldn't be pieced back together."

Chen Dasheng took the dispatch, drew out a letter in the style of an official document, made a great show of picking out the characters he knew and guessing a while, then pressed his lips and handed it back to his teacher. The characters, most of them he knew, but the sense of it, no idea!

Attendant She took it, holding back a laugh: "Ahem, mm! This is an extract of the bandits' confession. That family were a pack of fools, loaded a cartful of gold and silver, threw a bit of scrap firewood over it, and set off down the road. Any sharp eye would have marked the trail at a glance. The whole household of them, before ever they reached Xiaonan Mountain, were swept up by bandits, not one soul left alive.

"The one who put down those bandits was Little Hua's second brother. You should thank him by and by, he's avenged your wife's natal family, at the least. Ah, never mind! Your wife wouldn't care, else she'd not have led men to sweep out her own natal home."

Chen Dasheng listened with a deepening frown. What sort of remarks were these?

"The things were sent back by Chang the Second. Two reports were made, one lodged with me and one with the Emperor. Not so much of her family's fortune was recovered, and among it this privately-cast purple gold, and some loose sand-gold besides. Your wife's a fine rake. She'll have swept up every last bit of what her family had left, I'd guess, this much at the least..."

Attendant She held up three slender fingers, reckoning his student's wife's fortune for him: three thousand taels of gold at the least, enough that a private money-shop could change it for sixty thousand strings of the new dynasty's great cash, floor price, and that was about what a second- or third-rank minister's true-born daughter went out to be married with these days.

Chen Dasheng stood dazed a while, then asked: "Then, then should I go back and have her give it all to the Emperor?"

Attendant She rolled his eyes, and took up the envelope to rap his head with, cursing: "Are you out of your wits! Tomorrow, when you're home, have your wife stew you some sheep's brain! Since when did our Emperor turn into a clear-sky lord righting wrongs for the old imperial house? It's not as if she's filched anything of our Emperor's."

Realization broke over Chen Dasheng, and he scratched his head: "Right, what my wife took was nothing of the Emperor's." And at that he looked at Attendant She and asked, careful: "Truly no trouble in it?"

Attendant She raised his eyebrows: "Not a fart of trouble! Before last year, that spell when the Emperor couldn't raise the army's pay, didn't he let them be for two whole years? How many great maggots swallowed a deal more than three thousand taels of gold? In the yamen of the four southern commanderies, the old Tan house alone swept up two commanderies at the least. This sesame-seed of yours doesn't so much as catch the Emperor's eye. Go and spend it!"

Attendant She put out a hand and tossed the rest of the ingots back to Chen Dasheng.

With a kind of stubborn grievance Chen Dasheng pushed them firmly back on him: "Didn't I just take a thousand taels off you?"

At which Attendant She was fit to burst. He'd neither son nor daughter. This little he had in hand would sooner or later be the stinking boy's anyway. But as they pushed it back and forth, he remembered the third of the third month, and, his heart aching, stopped pushing.

He swept the pile aside in vexation and asked his student: "They say you've sent your old lady off to the Qingque Nunnery, to have a rite done for the souls?"

Chen Dasheng nodded: "Mm, and I've found a carpenter-master too, to make the coffins outside the nunnery while the rite goes on. When the dead are buried, the old lady comes back to Quanhou Manor, that'll be after the third of the third."

Attendant She took up the tea a little eunuch offered, drank a mouthful, and nodded: "That'll do. Tomorrow I'll look at the land registers over there, and have the Directorate of Astronomy send a steady man to survey it, and mark you off a good grave-ground to prosper your line..."

At that, another thought struck Attendant She, and he said to Chen Dasheng, smiling: "Your wife's a good many fine two-story shopfronts along the streets besides, did you know?"

Hearing it, Chen Dasheng went a little wild. He opened and shut his mouth, numb, and a good while later asked his teacher: "Teacher, when will I ever earn two thousand dan a year?"

At which Attendant She sprayed out a mouthful of tea, and it was a while before he cocked his head and told him the plain truth: "Perhaps, by the time you die of old age?"

Below the Qingque Nunnery, the old lady, her eyes brimming, held Qi Qian'er's hand and asked: "You death-brat of a child, sending me off to the temple, just like this?"

Qi Qian'er, feigning unconcern, coaxed her: "What are you thinking! With all our things, mustn't I keep watch over them every day? And there's this over there besides, would you rest easy at that?"

Qi Qian'er held up four fingers to the old lady.

The old lady thought: true enough, never mind that pile of things Qi Qian'er had bought, there was no small store of treasure in her own rooms alone.

At the thought of it, and at the thought of all that money wasted that morning, the old lady's rage flared up again, and she scolded: "You spendthrift thing! Buying so much, and for what? A heap of broken wood, and cracked jars and pots! And that great mirror, to look at ghosts in? Spending my grandson's money, and it costs you not a pang?"

Qi Qian'er, righteous as could be: "Not a pang, no. Such a great estate, and not a decent article in the house! And besides, next year, once my shops are up, whichever of them will bring in a dozen strings a month. I'll pay this money back myself! No need for your grandson to pay it."

The old lady of course knew Qi Qian'er had shops, and all along her grumbling road, this was the very thing she'd been angling at.

At the words she smiled, and briskly put out a hand for First-Moon and the others to help her up the mountain. A few steps on she turned back and asked: "It's agreed, then, yes?"

Qi Qian'er nodded and nodded: "Agreed, agreed! Every other day I'll come to see you once."

"Not deceiving me?"

"Not deceiving you!"

"You'll pay the money back?"

"I'll pay it back!"

"Will you swear it to me before the Bodhisattva?"

Qi Qian'er truly couldn't take any more, and waved a hand at the smiling old nun: "Take her up, take her up quick!"

They'd gone a good stretch up the path, and still you could hear the crotchety old lady muttering: "I'm not even old yet and she's tired of me, see that? Can't wait to dump me here, so she'll be free of me from now on, ha! She'll be the one in charge!"

Slowly they climbed the mountain, a whole file of craftsmen bearing coffin-boards coming up behind.

In all this long while, the grandmother and granddaughter had never once been parted.

The old lady, well on in years after all, wiped away a tear. Before the Bodhisattva she dared not scold, but she muttered still: "Go, go, all of you go. All go, and I'll have some peace, they all take me for a fool to be cozened! Bodhisattva, oh, do you see. They're all cozening me. You must watch over them, or this old woman's left with none to lean on..."

Early the next morning.

At the east gate of Qingfeng, the old beggar Old Xin, dozing muzzily against the ruined wall of the gate, heard from the broken bowl before him that familiar clatter of a cracked ring.

He opened his eyes, thanked the giver out of habit, and looked down, to find it was the half ox-bone board he'd given away.

He started, and looked up, and there was a fine-featured, comely young lad in blue cloth, standing with his back to the light, smiling at him.

Sharp-eyed as he was, one look at the build and Old Xin scrambled up to make his bow: "Aiyo, and who's this? The little immortal-lady. A rare thing, this! What's brought you down the mountain today? Never did I think we two would meet again! My respects to you, is all your family well?"

Qi Qian'er, got up as a plain-clad youth, gave him a smile and made a show of helping Old Xin up: "Old man, the truth is, I've a matter I'd ask your counsel on."

Old Xin nodded at once, over and over: "Ai, ai, say on, say on. And not to boast, within five hundred li of Yanjing, there's little this old man doesn't know!"

Qi Qian'er looked about her, and asked him low: "I'd like, to ask about a matter of the martial world."

A light flickered in Old Xin's eyes. He stooped and gathered up his ragged bedroll, and picked up his broken bowl: "Then that's a wide field you're asking after. Shall we two find a quiet spot and talk it through?"

An incense-stick later, on a bald green-stone hillock at Baiquan Mountain outside Qingfeng, Qi Qian'er took a hard rock in either hand, bore down with her left and her right, and the two stones crumbled to powder and sifted away.

Old Xin fell back two steps, and stared at the little immortal-lady, dumbstruck and none the wiser.

The little immortal-lady took up two more stones, then sprang two zhang into the air before him, and, landing, drove one foot back at the great rock behind her with all her force.

Down came that kick, and the huge green stone split with a crack and slid away, half of it collapsing.

Poor old Old Xin was frightened out of his very wits by her turn of tricks, and thought the whole while: what, what have I done? Given offense to the little immortal-lady, and she, she means to put a fright in me?

When Qi Qian'er had finished, she turned at last, all earnestness, and asked Old Xin: "Trouble you to reckon it for me, with these few things of mine, can I crush that Pang Tu of Yuegong Mountain, crush him to bits?"

Poor Old Xin had had no small scare. He pressed his chest and said, over and over: "You've frightened the life out of this old man, the life out of him!"

Having comforted himself a while, Old Xin lifted his face and asked, trembling: "The little immortal-lady's skill runs deep. But I don't know whose art you're the heir to, nor what feud you have with Yuegong Mountain. Can it be for the matter of the Yanjing dueling platform? Ah! You, you're a person of the court?"

Qi Qian'er pursed her lips: "I'm no one's heir! Whatever the case, I can't let that man of Yuegong Mountain, that one called Pang Tu, come into the capital and mount the dueling platform..."

The old beggar's eyes brightened by degrees, and at the last he straightened his back, and put off his old air of feebleness, and actually cupped his hands in a martial-world salute, and his voice, too, came neither hoarse nor aged: "The little immortal-lady is high-minded indeed! Hard-won it was, this realm but newly set at peace. Hard-won it was that this old beggar might lean on a city gate and beg himself a few coins for his belly, and now comes word that those thieving birds of Yuegong Mountain are out to bring grief on us all again. North and south are scarce gone quiet, and out they come, and the world's to be thrown into chaos afresh. You are high-minded!"

Qi Qian'er tipped her head back, and her lips twitched.

Old Xin raised his face in wondering admiration: "Never did I think it would be you. These two days, this old beggar has thought too: were I but twenty or thirty years younger, I'd stake this crippled old carcass to stop Pang Tu coming into the capital. Only, a pity, the world fell into chaos, and our Beggar Sect lost its very sinew and bone. There's not a soul left to call on! And now I'm old and spent, and no match for what I was. Only, what I never looked for, that of all the grandmasters and recluses hereabouts, the one to step forth and do the great righteous deed should be a woman! Truly, truly it puts us of the martial world to the blush!"

Qi Qian'er blinked, puzzled, and thought: what's he saying? Why can I make no sense of plain speech? But, sense or none, she mustn't show she was out of her depth.

So she nodded and asked: "Mm, then, then, do you all not wish Pang Tu to come into the capital either?"

"Of course we don't!" said Old Xin, bitter: "Great rogue or small drifter, let none call another clean! Yuegong Mountain fears no trouble, deep-rooted, wide-connected, rich in its lineage! But what can we do, we who seek our food underfoot? They come and stir up trouble and then slink off, and when the court cracks down, when is it ever not the folk at the bottom who get dug out? Our own household, the immortal-lady's seen it, hasn't she? It's only a few children now. Ai!"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Mm, so those Yuegong Mountain folk must be bad people."

At that Old Xin laughed: "The little immortal-lady's talk is a child's talk there. What is a good person? What is a bad? This old beggar, leaning on the gate, whoever tosses me a few coins is a Bodhisattva come to save the suffering, a good person! Whoever watches my children go hungry is a rich, heartless, hell-bound dog-thief! The people of the world are just that shallow. Yuegong Mountain is not all Pang Tu, it's all only the driving of profit, no more."

Qi Qian'er nodded slowly. She thought this very sound, with the great good sense of one who has been through the world in it.

So she thanked him: "Thank you for the guidance. By your meaning, then, this Pang Tu is being driven by others?"

The old beggar smiled and nodded: "Heh, isn't it just so! The great rogues, once they take to a mountain, don't work the land either. They're not like this old beggar, whose lineage is a broken bowl held at a city gate. That First Spear's three hundred disciples don't so much as till a plot, so what do they eat, what do they spend? This old beggar reckons Pang Tu likely has no wish to come to the capital either, only, he's taken others' silver, and a hand that takes is a hand that's tied, and one who lives on offerings must one day offer up his life for them. Hmph! This is no case of the old dynasty coming out to overturn the mountains, this is surely a fight within the court itself! A sickening business, however you take it. But, little immortal-lady, Pang Tu must not come into the capital, else the lower rungs of the martial world are in for another great ruin..."

Old Xin thought a moment, then said, smiling: "I'll not hide it from you, before now I watched your way of moving, and I take it your elders never handed the whole art down to you. Ahem! And so you've been held back. Even so, you spring quite high. This old beggar's never seen a second who could go as high as you. And your stone-crushing, it comes out oddly fine-crumbled, but with no method to it at all, on brute strength alone. Against Pang Tu it'll go hard: the man's past sixty, and out walking the world since his teens. His experience alone would be enough to hold you down."

A wave of disappointment went through Qi Qian'er, and she pursed her lips: "Then there's no way of it?"

Old Xin smiled and shook his head: "Not so. The First Spear, whatever its forms, whatever house's lineage, trace it to the root and it's no more than those few strokes: thrust, block, lift, snap, roll, smash, shake, coil, brace, jolt, and parry. Match yourself against the moves more, and you'll come to know them."

Qi Qian'er's eyes lit up. She reached behind her, drew out the ox-bone board, and gave it a few waggles at the old beggar: "Heh!"

Old Xin caught her meaning at once, and hastily waved his hands: "Heh! That's truly a great tool for a small task! You needn't lean on the like of that to press me. If the little immortal-lady trusts me, come up the mountain tonight, and I'll find a few to feed you the moves?"

Qi Qian'er nodded like a pestle pounding grain, holding back a laugh: "Done! And I'll not have you work for nothing. From tomorrow I'll keep you in three meals of good wine a day, and I'll have ten fat sheep led over to you besides, so you can feed those little ones of yours nice and plump!"

Old Xin was taken aback, then threw back his head and gave a long whoop. Catching up his bedroll and broken bowl, he sprang half a zhang off down the hill.

Qi Qian'er watched, dumbfounded. She heard the old beggar call from far off: "Little immortal-lady! This old beggar, now, he can spring quite well too, hahaha..."

Qi Qian'er, who knew nothing at all of the martial world, likely did not know that the man had not been talking wild after all: were he ten years younger, he'd have gone to bar Pang Tu's road with his own body. One who could shoulder a thousand years of the Beggar Sect's lineage was, in the martial world, a named old recluse in his own right.

That night, near the Qingfeng dueling platform, inside the Jiusi Hall's branch-office, Zhou Wujiu and Xie Liuhao were having a lovely dream.

They dreamed they could fly, floating on the clouds, drifting and drifting, until of a sudden they felt the cold, and woke.

Their eyes opened, and they found themselves wrapped in their quilts and propped in the great fork of a tree on Baiquan Mountain! The cold ridge-wind swept over them, and Xie Liuhao called out, quavering: "Ai, h-help, help..."

He hadn't finished when he heard an aged voice below the tree: "Yell a fart! If I hadn't lost a wager years back and sworn never to come within three hundred paces of Baiquan Mountain, would I need to go finding a pair of useless things like you? Damn it all, where's the person gone off to? A whole night this old man's worn himself out, gone round the whole hill, and near had his ox-hide poked through besides..."