Ch. 017| The Schemer

Down at the foot of the wall in Well-Bottom Lane, Han Bosheng squatted as he always did, a wine gourd cradled against his chest.

Lin Que took out the lump of rift crystal and set it down before the old man.

Those clouded eyes brightened for an instant. Han Bosheng reached out a withered finger, brushed it lightly across the rift crystal, then lifted it to his nose and sniffed. After a long while he spoke, slow and unhurried: "Something from inside a rift. You went in."

It was not a question.

Lin Que neither admitted it nor denied it.

"This thing is worth no small pile of spirit stones." Han Bosheng pushed the rift crystal back. "But you didn't come today to sell it, did you?"

Lin Que told him about Sun Heng, only what could be told.

He did not tell all of it. Where the rift crystal came from, that he had been inside a rift, that these eyes of his could see flaws—of these he said not one word. The more Han Bosheng knew, the more dangerous it was for him; that was a rule he kept with everyone he dealt with. Nor did Han Bosheng press—the old man had soaked in the underwaters of the market town a whole lifetime, and knew best that "some things, the less you know, the longer you live." He wanted the bottom of Black Wind Hall; Han Bosheng wanted that lump of rift crystal. Each took what he needed, and that was what made the trade one that could last.

When Han Bosheng had heard him out, he was silent for a long time.

"Black Wind Hall means to take you in." The old man let out a sigh. "This hand of yours, this knack for mending pills—it's a curse. The tree that stands out gets cut down."

"How many days did Sun Heng give you?" the old man asked.

"Three. Two left now."

Han Bosheng shook his head. "Three days isn't a grace period. It's to let you work it out for yourself—you can't run, you can't fight, so bow your head and behave. He's reckoned that in these 2 days you can't turn up any tricks."

"Then let him reckon wrong this once," said Lin Que.

"Old Han," Lin Que pushed the rift crystal across again, "this lump of rift crystal, for the bottom of Black Wind Hall. Sun Heng's origins, what the Hall Master is afraid of—everything you know, tell me."

Han Bosheng stared at the lump of rift crystal, stared for a long while, and in the end took it after all.

"This lump of rift crystal is enough to buy half the bottom of Black Wind Hall." The old man tucked the rift crystal into his robes, a movement too quick for a beggar. "And enough to call down a killing too. Boy, you traded your life for this thing, and you part with it so easily—doesn't it pain you?"

"If I keep it, I won't live out these 2 days," said Lin Que. "Traded for news that can save my life, it's the better bargain."

Han Bosheng gave him a glance and said nothing more.

"Black Wind Hall throws its weight around the market town on two things." The old man dropped his voice. "One is hard hands like Sun Heng. The other is the money road of the rush pills. The hard hands you can't touch. But that money road…"

He paused.

"Those rush pills—they're no good thing."

Han Bosheng said that Black Wind Hall's rush pills were waste pills cut with a fierce drug that injured the meridians, forced out by brute means. Swallowed down, they hit hard and fast, but that fierce drug ate at the meridians bit by bit. The buyers tasted the sweetness, couldn't quit, bought more and more, until in the end their channels were eaten hollow—at the lighter end their cultivation was wholly ruined, at the heavier end they suffered qi deviation on the spot and dropped dead.

Lin Que listened, and inch by inch a cold spread through his chest. He thought of Lai San—that lame rogue cultivator who had bought his mended pills, whose qi had been sunk half a year. Back then Lai San couldn't afford a good pill from the Hundred Herbs; if he hadn't come upon Lin Que's revived pills, would he too have gone and bought Black Wind Hall's rush pills? Would he too have become one more rogue cultivator dead of qi deviation at the foot of a wall on West Street? In selling his mended pills, what he cut off was not only Black Wind Hall's money road—each of those revived pills, two coppers apiece, had perhaps snatched a few lives back from the mouth of the rush pills. No wonder, then, that Black Wind Hall had no room for him.

That time with Hu Biao, Lin Que had seen the flaw in his rush pill. But he had not known then that beneath that "flaw" was hidden a money road like this, one that devoured men.

"This past half year, the rogue cultivators on West Street and the South Market who've taken rush pills and died of qi deviation—if not ten, then eight." Han Bosheng's voice went cold. "Black Wind Hall has its hand over the whole sky. One dies, they pay out a few coppers and crush the matter back down with words. No one dares make a sound."

"When someone died and the family came to make trouble, Black Wind Hall either pushed money at them or threatened them, and when that failed—" Han Bosheng drew a finger across his throat. "One after another, all pressed down. Who in the market town doesn't know the rush pills have killed people? But knowing is one thing, and daring to say so is another."

"That Hall Master fears nothing," Han Bosheng said at last, "but one thing—the Xuanzhao Sect."

Something turned sharply in Lin Que's chest.

"These murky, unexplained deaths in the market town fall under the Xuanzhao Sect's enforcement." Han Bosheng said. "Black Wind Hall's rush pills have killed this many people; if the Xuanzhao Sect were to verify it, then by the Xuanzhao Sect's rules, a trade like this—taking lives to rake in money—is to be pulled up by the roots. So this past half year, the thing Black Wind Hall has set its whole heart on is keeping the rush-pill deaths dead and buried right under the Xuanzhao Sect's nose."

Lin Que stood in the shadows of Well-Bottom Lane, his mind turning fast.

Sun Heng he couldn't beat. Black Wind Hall he couldn't fight. But the Xuanzhao Sect—could.

And that enforcement disciple of the Xuanzhao Sect who looked into the market town's strange deaths—he had met her. Shen Ningshuang. She had been investigating the strange deaths for half a year, following the line of the rifts, but she might not know that Black Wind Hall's rush pills had killed this many people too.

What Shen Ningshuang investigated was the rifts' strange deaths—the kind with no wound on the body, the meridians not burst. Those who died of qi deviation from rush pills were a different matter: their meridians eaten away, forced and burst alive, plain to see the moment the corpse was examined. That she had not turned her thoughts to this line before was because no one had thrust the rush-pill matter before her. Yet both kinds of death hung beneath the same case—"the rogue cultivators of the market town dying murky, unexplained deaths." Let someone but tuck the line of the rush pills into her case, and with her suspicion, with her eye, she would follow the vine to the root and, sooner or later, reach Black Wind Hall.

To clash head-on with Black Wind Hall was a dead road. The road he meant to take was another: to tear open a gash in that seam Black Wind Hall had hidden for half a year, and pass it before Shen Ningshuang.

Let the Xuanzhao Sect, that fierce tiger, bite Black Wind Hall.

This was a hundred times better than throwing his own life against Black Wind Hall. A pill-boy stabbing at Black Wind Hall was an egg against a stone; but once the Xuanzhao Sect moved, the very lifeline of Black Wind Hall's rush pills—along with Sun Heng, along with that Hall Master who kept so well out of sight—would all be heaved up by the roots. By then, who would still spare a thought to take in a single pill-boy?

He needn't lift a hand himself. He need only point that seam out to one who could see it.

This was the use of these eyes of his, more vital than mending pills, more vital than breaking through—he could see the seams others couldn't see, and so he could see, too, how to set two forces far greater than himself crashing into each other. That time with Hu Biao, he had let Hu Biao's own qi crash into his own flaw; that time with Xu Wenchang, he had let Xu Wenchang's own empty talisman show its hollowness before everyone. This time, he meant to let the seam of human lives that Black Wind Hall had hidden crash into the blade of the Xuanzhao Sect.

He never clashed head-on with things stronger than himself; he saw only to finding the seam that would let them split open on their own.

"Old Han," Lin Que asked suddenly, "that business of Hu Biao taking a rush pill and suffering qi deviation—how many people saw it with their own eyes?"

Han Bosheng narrowed his eyes, as if he had grasped his meaning at once. The old man was silent a moment, then said slowly: "Boy, you mean to draw the Xuanzhao Sect down onto Black Wind Hall's head?"

Lin Que did not answer.

"Risky," said Han Bosheng. "If Black Wind Hall finds out it was you who called the Xuanzhao Sect in—you die, Lai San dies, and these old bones of mine get dragged in too."

He fixed his gaze on Lin Que. "This seam—tear it badly, and the first thing to split is yourself."

Of course Lin Que knew it was risky. Half a year ago, in the back courtyard of the Hundred Herbs, Shen Ningshuang had picked out that he was "wrong" on the strength of a few words alone. If he went up to her himself to pass along a clue, then at the slightest misstep that tiger might not bite only Black Wind Hall—the first one it turned and bit might be him, the pill-boy who "knew Black Wind Hall's inner workings too well."

"So Black Wind Hall mustn't know it was me," said Lin Que, word by word. "It has to be made so the Xuanzhao Sect thinks they uncovered it themselves."

Han Bosheng looked at him, and for the first time something else came into those clouded eyes—like looking at a young beast that had just bared its claws and fangs. He urged no further; instead he dropped his voice and added a line:

"That woman enforcer, surname Shen. Every three to five days, at the end of the hour of the Monkey, she comes to the enforcement office on East Street to hand in her case files." The old man took a sip of wine. "If you mean to pass word, that's the only time you can catch her without standing out. At other hours the Xuanzhao Sect's people cluster thick, and a pill-boy going up to them only draws the eye."

Lin Que set these words into his heart, not one of them lost. The end of the hour of the Monkey, the enforcement office on East Street.

"And another thing," Han Bosheng said, as if remembering something, and added one more line, "if you're going to pass word, pass the most recent one. Old Wu, who sold charcoal at the mouth of the South Market—he took a rush pill and died of qi deviation half a month ago, and his corpse is still laid out in the charity morgue at the city's south, not yet buried. His wife went and made a scene at Black Wind Hall over it, and got an arm broken and was driven off, and now she's full of resentment with nowhere to lay her grievance."

The old man dropped his voice. "If the Xuanzhao Sect were to examine it, this corpse is the freshest, the manner of death the clearest—how the meridians were eaten away, how they were forced and burst alive, the coroner would know at one look, and Black Wind Hall couldn't shirk it however hard it tried."

Light broke in Lin Que's mind. A fresh corpse from which the cause of death could be determined, a grieving party who hated Black Wind Hall to the bone and was willing to speak—bring these two before Shen Ningshuang, and they would do more than a hundred empty words from him. This "half the bottom" of Han Bosheng's had, in the end, handed him the most vital piece of all.

"I'll remember this kindness of yours, Old Han."

"It's no kindness." Han Bosheng waved a hand. "That lump of rift crystal settled it long ago." He gazed out into the dark beyond the lane, and after a long while said, "Twenty years ago, I too had a brother I drank with, whose hand at mending pills was no worse than yours. Black Wind Hall's forerunner took a fancy to that pair of hands, and he wouldn't bow his head. Afterward… at the foot of a wall on West Street, there was one more corpse no one came to claim."

The old man drew back his gaze and fixed it on Lin Que. "I'm helping you, half for that lump of rift crystal, and half because I want to see—whether, this time, Black Wind Hall might take a fall of its own. When you tear that seam, think first how you'll draw your own hand back out."

There was a story in those words. But Han Bosheng said no more of it, and Lin Que did not ask.

Lin Que rose and walked out into the night beyond Well-Bottom Lane. Of the three-day term, 2 days remained—he had to set Black Wind Hall's back courtyard ablaze before Sun Heng came to draw in the net.

On the night wind, the market town's watch-drum beat far off, one stroke, then another. Before the end of the hour of the Monkey tomorrow, he had many steps yet to take—and the first was to go, before daybreak while few were about, to the charity morgue at the city's south, and take a look at Old Wu's corpse.

【Ch. 017 End · Well-Bottom Lane】