Chapter 58

The first of the third month. The morning sun shone over all, and warmth wrapped the body round.

In one corner of the green-stone hollow, thirty or forty long spear-shafts snapped in two lay heaped together. Xie Liuhao threw the freshly-broken one over onto the pile, grumbling: "How the days fly, a blink, and here we are at the day itself..."

These new-fitted shafts were of no ordinary stuff: they were heavy shuo-shafts, a hardwood core bound about with bamboo strips, lashed round ring by ring with stout cotton cord, soaked through with oil, and then coated over and over with kudzu-cloth and glue, dried, and glued again, made so, again and again, until the shaft was firm past all telling, with the very ring of iron to it as it clove the air.

And still, another shaft snapped! What was to be done? The little immortal-lady was a monster: a few days of beatings and no more, and she could already send her inner-qi out beyond her body. Weren't they told not to let her strike back? The springy white-wax shafts snapped before they'd so much as touched her.

There was no help for it, so they'd changed to shuo-shafts, and even these, sturdy as they were, held up under half a day and, sure enough, broke the same. No one knew what move the little immortal-lady used. She seemed to put out no strength at all, but the instant a shaft touched her she'd find a clever spot, reach out and pinch it lightly, and the shaft would snap clean through the middle.

The first time a shuo-shaft went, even the worldly-wise Old Xin was startled out of his skin. Such a gift, and who under heaven would have thought it belonged to a little back-courtyard wife?

The little immortal-lady was a peculiar one: she would by no means own that she was a person of the martial world, but held stubbornly to it that she was an innocent back-courtyard wife. By now, though, they all knew one another's roots at last, and every hidden thing had come out into the light. Xie Liuhao and the rest were long past minding, so much already out in the open that one thing more made no odds, and they did just as they pleased!

Hearing Xie Liuhao's sigh, Qi Qian'er rubbed her neck and gave a snort: "What? Not had your fill of beating me yet?"

Xie Liuhao both admired her and went in fear of her, and understood well enough why her tongue was so sharp. One look at all those wasted shafts told the story: so many days denied a single blow back, and no wonder there was such a fire pent up inside her.

So he gave a sheepish smile: "Listen to you, how would I dare! These little thin arms and legs of mine aren't worth one snap of yours!"

And it puzzled him: how had she come to love pinching things so, and to pinch them so cleverly, so neatly, every time?

Qi Qian'er was in a poor humor, and Old Xin was in no better.

He sat up high, his eyes fixed unmoving on the distance, still as a carved image.

A stack of white death-notice slips lay beside him, weighted with a stone against the wind, a good chopstick's height of them.

For two or three days now the old man had been low. He was, after all, a very senior elder of the Baiquan Mountain country, five hundred li around Yanjing, and a Beggar Sect disciple may not sit at the board, but only beg at the gate, under the eaves. So many children of the martial families he had watched grow up. When they were born he went, all smiles, to beg a bowl of their birth-noodles. At their month-old feast he cadged a bowl of hot broth. He'd pass their doors with his little beggars and watch them go from tottering their first steps to standing tall between heaven and earth. These were no sheets of paper. This was life itself!

Age softens the heart. Let others love to hold themselves aloof, lofty recluses who never come down to the world, that was their affair. But the Beggar Sect was always down among the dust of the common world, and so his grief was real.

When his old self went begging at those children's doors, the young folk were open-hearted. When had they not received him full and free? Not one house but had a good pot of wine to spare him, and sometimes, in high spirits, the men would sit down on the ground with him and drink deep and talk over old times, and when he was merry he'd give them a few pointers, and they'd try one another's skill, how blithe it had all been then, what pure delight!

Pang Tu, entering the capital to set himself against the court, had brought bitter ruin on the whole Baiquan Mountain line of martial families. And now, how many of the Baiquan gates were broken?

Zhou Wujiu and Xie Liuhao looked at each other, and went together to the foot of the rock and made their bow: "Grandfather Xin, we'll be off now."

Old Xin came to himself with a start, looked down, and gave an "Ah!" Clutching the stack of white slips, he hopped down off the rock: "Aiyo! Off already, then. It's been hard on you these days. Look, I've broken so many of your armory's shafts. How will you answer to your superiors for it by and by?"

Qi Qian'er, alarmed to hear it, looked at Xie Liuhao and the rest: "Is that so? Then let me give you some silver, I mustn't be a burden to you!"

Zhou Wujiu laughed at that, and waved his hands, over and over: "Old senior, little immortal-lady, you must never think that way..." He pointed at Xie Liuhao: "This fellow's the sixth in his family. His eldest brother's called Xie Yihao, does the senior know of him?"

Xie Liuhao ducked his head, a shade embarrassed. Old Xin, hearing it, showed on his gloomy face a flicker of a smile at last: "I said that boy's name was familiar, so he's the younger brother of the northern enforcer!"

He turned and made Qi Qian'er a deep bow: "I am not the man I was, in the old days."

For once Qi Qian'er didn't jeer, but nodded, though her tone came out hard as a board: "Mm. So I see."

It was no fault of hers that her temper was foul: there was a ball of fire banked in her dantian, and Old Xin had banked it there on purpose, no venting, no striking back, all of it held in wait for Pang Tu. And a great fire makes a person short and testy.

Zhou Wujiu and Xie Liuhao traded a look, then laughed together and cupped their hands: "It's been a strange fate, this. Senior, immortal-lady, rest easy, though it cost us our lives, we'll not leak a whisker of your affair..."

From down the hill came, of a sudden, the urgent sparrow-call they'd grown used to these last days.

The eased mood froze on the instant.

Qi Qian'er and the others looked at one another, and withdrew behind the big green stone at one side.

Before long, over came a few young beggar-lads, leading a woman in hemp mourning and three children stepped like a flight of stairs. They came before Old Xin, held up their white slips, and knelt all together.

The martial-world white slip the woman held up was a very plain thing. It did not say to whom it was addressed, nor who had died, only, on the one white folded sheet, the few words: Baiquan Mountain, the Sheng house, reports a death.

The woman said, holding back her tears: "Grandfather Xin, this junior comes to report a death. My father-in-law, and my own husband, both were lost yesterday!"

Old Xin slowly put out his hand and took the two slips, and it was a good while before he said: "A small household like yours, how did it fall to your lot, and both the men that held your doors at that?"

The young woman smiled bitterly: "Those who needn't go don't go, though their house teem with sons and grandsons. And those who must go must go, though they have but two men to their name..."

That said, she unfastened a wine-gourd from her waist and held it out to Old Xin: "My man said, before he went out, if he didn't come back, I was to bring you this. He said four years ago he made you a promise: that when he got a son, he'd send you a good pot of wine!"

Old Xin took the gourd, and looked at the little, uncomprehending child kneeling to one side, and a long while later said: "Good! This old man takes this pot of wine today. And when the boy is eight, send him to me to be a little beggar a few years, if you don't grudge it, if you can bear to part with him..."

A look of firm resolve came over the woman's face, and she at once caught up her smallest child to kowtow to Old Xin.

"I can bear it!"

Old Xin reached out and felt the child's root-bone, and at the last smiled and comforted the woman: "Good! Good! A fine root-bone, and the look of his father in him. Rest easy, a few years' hard schooling, and he'll surely be another man who stands tall between heaven and earth..."

The despair on the woman's face slowly eased, and a trace of gladness came into it at last.

But before the old beggar had done speaking, the little girl who had kept her head down all this while said, of a sudden: "I'm not a man, but I want to come too! Grandfather, take me as well!"

Fearing to give the elder offense, the woman tugged at her, alarmed: "You're a girl, what do you want with learning this?"

But the girl threw off her mother with one motion, and knee-walked a few steps up to Old Xin: "Grandfather, I want to kill Pang Tu! Take me too, please..."

Behind the stone, Qi Qian'er watched the mother and her three children, and her heart-fire surged, unbearable! It was not one lot of such widows and orphans she'd seen now.

Zhou Wujiu, ever the steady one, was banking his own rage now too: "A pity I've already joined the Jiusi Hall! Tomorrow that murdering wretch passes Qingfeng!" He drove a fist into the stone beside him and said, bitter: "The Master's ordered the two of us to hold the city, and the rest to watch him along the road. The Master says, if any righteous men come again, we're to stop them at all costs, Baiquan Mountain can add not one more hole to its death-roll..."

Xie Liuhao nodded too: "Aye, truly, enough! My own house isn't of Baiquan, but I honor them from the heart! After this, no one under heaven with a conscience and a head on his shoulders will dare belittle the Baiquan line. It's thanks to Baiquan's righteous men throwing their whole strength across his road that the court won't now take every kind of martial-world man for one and the same lot.

"But it's a hateful thing! They've all died for nothing, and still the wretch has got past our Qingfeng. Five hundred li, and dozens of stout men bled into a river, and Pang Tu never checked a step for it. What in the world is Yuegong Mountain thinking? In the old days, faced with such a thing, so many lives thrown down, and for the sake of its name that mountain-gate would surely have called the order back. How is it, they've turned so hard of heart now?"

Qi Qian'er said, without turning her head: "You said it yourselves, a man needs a conscience, and he needs a head, too."

The woman kowtowed to Old Xin once more, and took her three children off down the mountain.

Qi Qian'er came out from behind the big stone, and walked slowly to Old Xin's side: "You stubborn old man, would it not be better if I challenged him up on the dueling platform?"

Old Xin pulled the stopper from the gourd and took a pull of the fiery stuff: "Dozens of lives were given up to keep him out of Qingfeng! Let him in, and the men will have died for nothing."

Qi Qian'er said with a jeering little smile: "So you've been scheming me all along!"

Old Xin smiled bitterly: "There's no help for it. Our men are all dead now. So, will you settle the account?"

Time and again Old Xin had had the slips sent up the mountain, and always at just this hour, it was all to maneuver Qi Qian'er.

The bargain struck earlier had been that Qi Qian'er too would put down a challenge-notice, and formally challenge Pang Tu, and so keep within the court's law. But if the martial families of Baiquan Mountain let Pang Tu into Qingfeng, into Yanjing, then from that day they would stand against the court.

Each was in a hard place!

The mountain wind blew over, and the stone-weighted white slips lifted at the corners.

Qi Qian'er looked at the Qingfeng city below, and there rose in her, all at once, a kind of clear understanding: that, in truth, everything had changed long ago. From the moment she'd meant to do one good deed, from the moment she'd hopped up onto the rooftop, she had ceased to be that back-courtyard wife.

Seeing her silent so long, Xie Liuhao grew anxious: "Little immortal-lady, don't you fret. We two will swear you a killing oath, if we leak a trace of your tracks, then let us be cut off without heir! We're of the Jiusi Hall, and I'll not hide it from you, from the Master on down, there's not one of them but wishes some soul would bar that Pang Tu's way. Rest easy: even should you break the law, at the very most the city walls will hang up a wanted-notice to go through the motions, and no one at all will come to lay hands on you..."

A wanted-notice? To lay hands on her?

Was that not frightening enough!

Old Xin started, and looked up at her: "What slip?"

Qi Qian'er pointed at the ground, helpless: "This white slip, I've taken it up!"

A great mountain wind swept over Baiquan Mountain, and the leaves of every kind, thrusting out their tender buds, shook and shook with all their might.

Qi Qian'er went slowly down the mountain with a stack of death-notices in her arms, and thought the whole way: what has come over me? All at once, from a back-courtyard wife, I've turned into this kind of woman, ah, restless after all! Never to be kept clean and quiet! After tomorrow, like enough there'll be a wanted-notice for me hung up outside every city in Liang. Just think of it. Tomorrow? And which outfit of mine would look best?

But what she did not see was that, on the low hillock far behind her, three men, from the old to the young, cupped their hands and bowed deep, and saw her off so, until her figure was gone from sight.

"Beggar-lord?"

"Mm?"

"Is it truly a good thing, to drag the little immortal-lady into the martial world?"

"Is she not of it already? From the very day her elder forced open her channels, she was fated to be one of the martial world..."

That night, coming out of the mill-house, Qi Qian'er found, on the steps by the main-hall door, a neat little pair of steel-plate arm-guards, and upon them a white mask marked with three elm-leaves at the brow. Mm, that old thing. Truly he left nothing to chance, sly as a very ghost.

The second of the third month. Every escort agency within five hundred li of Yanjing turned out to the last man. The colored horses, fifteen abreast, went to welcome the guest.

The colored horses gathered by the way-pavilion twenty li outside the city, and forty thick-muscled men in bare-armed soft armor bore a huge palanquin, and so brought Pang Tu in.

The martial world is ever far from the common folk, and the newcomers of Qingfeng took this crowd for some festive show. A great many people came, and ringed them round three deep. They followed the whole way, hemming Pang Tu and his party about like a crowd at the opera, and moving slowly with them toward Qingfeng.

All along the road, horse-bells, cracking whips, a two-string strand of a thousand crackers let off every li, until everywhere the party passed had the very smell of the New Year about it.

Shen Fanjiang, astride a coal-black horse, guarded his master's palanquin in high state. There being so many people, he was driven to call out to his master aloud: "Master! Even when Gu Hongyun of the Qingluan Sword entered the capital, back in the day, it can't have been so grand as this!"

A trace of pride crossed Pang Tu's eyes, but he glared, stern, at this unsteady disciple of his.

Shen Fanjiang let his boyishness show, stuck out his tongue and said no more, though he was smug as ever, holding the reins high and looking down his nose and out the corners of his eyes at the crowd.

And so they drew nearer and nearer to Qingfeng.

By the gate stood the chief masters of the several escort agencies. Seeing the mighty crowd draw near from afar, they lit their incense-sticks, and ran the length of it to Pang Tu's palanquin, and set off thousand-cracker strands, and carried them along with the crowd, sending them on together into Qingfeng.

On they went, to within fifty paces of the gate, when of a sudden, down from the gate-tower there came flying a huge tung-oil pole, a good two zhang tall.

It struck the whole crowd dumb on the instant.

The pole was driven deep into the ground by some strange force. When it stood steady, the people saw fluttering upon it a red banner of the Qingfeng dueling platform, the banner of the duel to the death.

The platform flew three banners: the white for a friendly bout, the blue for settling a martial-world matter by win and loss, and the red, the red was no quarter, to the death!

The banner Pang Tu had laid down against Chen Dasheng was this red one.

All the clamor stopped in a breath, only the firecrackers, unwilling yet, went on booming to shake the heavens.

Amid the sulfur-smoke on every side, a woman came slowly flying down from the top of the pole: her hair dressed as a man's, a small jade crown upon it, her face covered by a New Year mask of the Elm-Tree Lady, three-color gold flower-ball boots on her feet, a red gold-shot qilin battle-dress on her, and fish-scale guards on both her arms, and in her hands she cradled a small bundle of red cloth.

The last firecracker gave one unwilling pop, and the hushed crowd about all started at it.

Qi Qian'er set the red bundle down at the foot of the pole, looked up at the streaming banner, and thought: "Good! Worth the trouble of carrying this main pole here after all. Count it a challenge on the platform, and it breaks no law! The Emperor and them are clever people, they'll surely understand."

To be able to hoist so huge a pole and hurl it from the gate-tower, and drive it firm and standing into the ground, that was no ordinary person.

Pang Tu, arrogant the whole road long, showed a change of face at last. He rose slowly to his feet in the palanquin, and, looking at the red-clad woman in the distance, said: "You there, ahead, the pillar that props the sky and guards the realm, the three sticks of incense of the halls, north and south, long robe, short coat, and round of collar. Which garment does the lady wear? And which stick of incense do you burn, and at whose altar?"

Qi Qian'er would by no means own that she was of the martial world. She did not understand such talk, still less could she take it up. So she only looked at Pang Tu, in dead earnest: "I say, you'll not get past!"

Pang Tu was taken aback, and asked, by reflex: "Not get past what?"

Qi Qian'er pointed at the gate behind her: "You'll not get past!"

Pang Tu was fairly moved to laughter with anger. But the sects and schools of the martial world held strange people past counting, and a woman who dared to walk the martial world at all had generally some skill to her, with, likely, a great sect at her back besides.

So he took stock of himself, and thought: could it be I'd struck too hard, and given offense to some old thing off the mountains that seldom comes out in public?

And so he cupped his hands: "Since the lady knows how hard it is to keep a mountain-gate, all the more should she know the bitter lot of us who live on offerings. When a man has fed you for decades, for a hundred years, then without some lives given up, how is the patron to be satisfied? I see the lady is young, and surely worked on by some other's spell. Today, Pang must go into the city, but if the lady will grant the favor, only report your mountain-gate, and give way three chi, then Pang will step down from the palanquin and walk through the city on foot, and tomorrow Yuegong Mountain will send its thanks in due form!"

Astride the storm the whole way here, Pang Tu was being uncommonly civil now. As a grandmaster, how could he fail to see how formidable Qi Qian'er was.

But a pity, of all Pang Tu said, Qi Qian'er understood not one word. She knew only that this man was a bad man, who meant to do her child's father harm, to stop An'er from ever being born, who went about killing everywhere, and cold-heartedly, and had made so very many widows and orphans.

So she took a step forward and pointed at Pang Tu, blunt: "You old brute! Come down here and fight me!"

A back-courtyard wife, pushed to it, talks just so. That she hadn't cursed his ancestors was already a mercy.

Pang Tu's face went white with anger. He gave a cold snort and was about to speak, when he heard someone at his side curse: "Base slut! Hold your tongue!"

A silver spear, its point gleaming, flew out at Qi Qian'er.

Pang Tu, greatly alarmed, cried: "Fanjiang, hold-"

But too late. The long spear was already driving at Qi Qian'er's throat. Quick as words are slow, the point came in a blink to her very face, and Qi Qian'er, who of late had all but sickened of the sight of the thing, only tilted her head a little, and the point grazed past her neck. When the shaft had come to just the right span, she reached out and pinched, and with a crisp crack, Shen Fanjiang's long spear snapped through the middle.

Master and disciple stood dumbstruck, watching the woman shake the two halves of the shaft a few times in the air, muttering as she did: "Yes, that's right, I ought to have a thing of my own too! Hitting a man bare-handed always smarts the flesh."

Her muttering done, she held the spearhead up at Pang Tu: "You bad man! I'm going to hit you now, mind you take it well."

An honest back-courtyard wife, this.

No dodging it now. Pang Tu's face turned cold and grave. He reached out and caught up his awl-spear, and with a stroke of hidden force in his palm the great red silk wrapping the spearhead shattered of a sudden into dozens of scraps, and flew straight at Qi Qian'er.

The First Spear Pang Tu, by this one trick, the red flower that blinds the eyes, there was no telling how many men he'd ambushed.

Qi Qian'er felt only a chaos of red before her, her sight blurred in an instant. In her ear she heard the bad man cry: "The lady must forgive me!" And then the shrill wind of the spear came tearing in.

Fierce!

That was Qi Qian'er's involuntary admiration. For neither Zhou Wujiu nor Xie Liuhao had ever given her such a feeling. A keen, keen spear it was, wrapped in a bitter, life-stealing wind, and it came straight for her throat.

By her drilled habit, at the point but an inch from her throat, Qi Qian'er sprang backward with the momentum of it. Pang Tu was a grandmaster, how should his spear stop halfway? One-handed he thrust it fiercely on and on, send! send! send! and one more send, and could send it no farther, and Qi Qian'er was leaping backward still.

Where had this monster sprung from?

The curse done in his heart, Pang Tu turned the spearhead with both hands, and loosed three great neck-coils one after another, not coiling at Qi Qian'er's neck now, but at her arms.

Qi Qian'er's experience against a foe of the high grades was, after all, wanting. So, after a few crisp clashes and a spray of sparks, her newly-made robe was torn open a hole, a good big one, too, such that however you patched it, it would show for a ruined garment ever after.

Qi Qian'er, who had been so cool all this while, flew into a fury on the spot! She shouted out: "My new robe!"

Pang Tu was startled by that battlefield roar, the like of which he'd never heard, should it not have been something along the lines of you seek death, or you base coward? How was it my new robe?

Never once thinking of the dire end she'd have come to without the arm-guards, Pang Tu's ambush would surely have told, Qi Qian'er's whole head was now filled with just this: this, this, this shameless creature! Without him, she'd be at home this minute, holding the keys to the money-chest, the grain-store, the silver-cellar, thin gruel when she wanted thin, dry rice when she wanted dry, a lie-in when she pleased, the mill when she pleased. She was the mistress of a house, a proper court Lady of the sixth grade! But for this hateful thing, why would she ever have taken beating after beating?

In an instant everything was gone from her, and nothing thought at all. Without the gold garment, her speed was a dozen times and more what it had been. Gripping the two shaft-halves, she went straight at Pang Tu:

"You lightning-blasted old thing! You water-logged-ancestral-grave good-for-nothing..."

Pang Tu: "...?"

However Pang Tu attacked, however he blocked, however he stabbed, lifted, burst, Qi Qian'er saw none of it now. Her two sticks whirled like a little whirlwind, and by the one scrap of knowledge she had of the human body, remembering the channel-points on that golden acupuncture-man, she struck at all the fitting spots on Pang Tu's body.

Mm, those spots were, in fact, the acupoints.

And where she struck one home, it was a numbing, sore ache past bearing, the blood-course blocked, the body gone stiff.

In her ear she seemed to hear something snap, but! that was of no matter! What mattered was that the most costly robe of her two lifetimes was gone, the folk-woven red satin she'd loved best of all the hoard beneath the Plague God's temple, that bore no dragon or phoenix...

And woven with gold!

And in the qilin pattern!

Pang Tu was struck witless by the wholly patternless assault. He raised his spear to fend, to parry, to burst, but under sheer force, that was of no use at all. Two blocks, and no more, and his awl-spear's very head was whipped flying by the madwoman.

Only hear what she was crying: "Do you know how hard a thing it is to come by one good bolt of silk in this world? You must plant the mulberry! Pick the mulberry leaves..."

Pang Tu, whipped off his feet, went crashing into the palanquin frame and smashed it. The crowd of big men took such a fright that they scattered every way.

Qi Qian'er sprang across and went on whipping: "Even the Book of Rites says that, before the picking of the mulberry, the imperial consorts themselves must keep the fast, and go to the eastern village, and bend to the mulberry with their own hands! And what are you, that you'd dare tear my robe!"

Two ribs broken in his chest, one after the other, Pang Tu spat a mouthful of blood, put out a hand and caught the new spear his disciple Shen Fanjiang flung him, and fended with it. Sparks flew every way, and the new spearhead too was whipped flying off.

The madwoman turned her head, saw the one who'd handed him the spear, and in the blink of an eye she left Pang Tu, sprang across, and dealt a few slaps, and Shen Fanjiang, then and there, had both his arms broken by Qi Qian'er, and a leg besides.

"Pah! Like father, like son, a crooked beam breeds a crooked rafter!"

The trouble dealt with, she turned back to go on with the one-sided beating of poor Pang Tu. By now half a mouthful of Pang Tu's teeth had been whipped clean out. His mouth all blood, he rolled about on the ground. Every force he'd ever borne in all his years in the martial world, put together, was not the strength of this monster! Every move he'd ever caught in his life was never so chaotic as this monster's, she had no moves at all, only wild hitting, and just that he could not catch!

This was no human being, this was a madwoman! A monster!

Old Xin, and Zhou Wujiu, and Xie Liuhao crouched trembling on Qingfeng's broken gate-tower.

Old Xin pressed his lips, swallowed hard, and it was a good while before he stammered out: "I, this old man, I don't know either, whose lineage is this? I've never seen the like!"

Zhou Wujiu was a quiet, settled sort. He only watched, quiet, then turned, his teeth chattering, and rounded on Old Xin: "You, you found people to hit her, you, you even ate four of her sheep. What if she'd not listened to you? What if she'd struck back, and hit me and Liuhao?"

The three of them looked at Pang Tu's wretched state, and thought of what might have been, and shuddered all together.

Outside the city, Qi Qian'er whaled away and let it all out at once: "Pick the mulberry! Raise the silkworms! Reel the silk! Wind the silk! Ply the silk! Warp it! And weave, shuttle by shuttle! Thread by thread! Grain by grain! Inch by inch! How many days and nights before you have one bolt of cloth! You thousand-cuts, lightning-blasted turtle-spawn of a bastard! By what right do you make other people into widows and orphans, speak!"

She could hit no more at last, and stood panting where she was a while, then cursed on in broken snatches: "Lightning-blasted thing! Bold enough, weren't you, daring to cut off this old dame's own root..."

When she had cursed her fill, and vented it all, she looked at the bloody, motionless heap that was Pang Tu, and heard Shen Fanjiang's heart-rending shrieks over yonder, and Qi Qian'er gave a hiccup. Eh, eh?

She looked left and right, and every soul about was frozen, unstirring as the clay idols in a temple, watching her, and only now did she remember who she was, and loosen her fingers, and let the two shaft-halves drop. A death, had this ended in a death?

Qi Qian'er's eyes rolled. She turned, walked to the foot of the flagpole, took up the red bundle and opened it, a whole bundle of white death-notices.

She'd meant, in good faith, to have a proper word with the man about how a person ought to live. Who could have known he'd ambush her?

Cradling the thick sheaf of death-notices, Qi Qian'er walked to the blood-smeared Pang Tu, and, from his head to his feet, laid them over him, even and neat, and covered him with them!

The whole business done at last, Qi Qian'er clapped her hands, turned and made off. As she went she thought: let it be reckoned a grudge of the martial world, at any rate it was none of my doing.

So many death-notices, so many wronged and grieving houses. Let the court go find whoever it liked, at any rate it was none of my doing. My An'er! He must be the young master of an official house, the son of a great minister of the court...

The spring rain fell of a sudden. The bright-red figure went in one leap two zhang high, off into the depths of Baiquan Mountain.