Ch. 025| The Blue-Robed Man

Early on the second day, Lin Que went down the mountain with an old menial from the pill hall.

The mountain road took the better part of an hour. The old menial had worked the pill hall a decade or two and was full of talk, murmuring away the whole road. Lin Que let him talk, but a good deal went into his ears: how this season's monthly-allotment pills were rushed on the higher-ups' urging; how the pill-warden steward had refined pills half his life and was stiff-tempered, yet dared not change a single word of the monthly-allotment formula—that formula was handed down by rule from within the sect, and one refined it as written; to change one ingredient was a grave crime.

Lin Que shouldered the empty basket and did not answer. But he noted this in his heart: that flaw in the monthly-allotment pills was not in the pill-warden steward's hands. The formula was issued from above; the flaw was left from above.

The shopping list was written out by the pill-warden steward: polygonatum, ophiopogon, pinellia—a few fresh herbs the market-town herb stalls had. The old menial led him from stall to stall checking goods and weighing, Lin Que helping shoulder the basket, quick with hand and foot, but his eyes never idle.

Checking the third stall, he glimpsed from afar that last talisman shop at the end of the market town—Qinghe's shop. Beneath the tea awning across from it sat a blue-robed man, a bowl of tea before him, but his eyes were not on the bowl; they only slid toward the talisman shop.

It was the same one. The blue-robed man Lin Que had glimpsed last time as he left the market town, the one watching Qinghe's shop, was here again today.

Without a flicker, he shouldered the herb basket and finished checking the last ingredient with the old menial. The old menial sat down at a tea stall by the herb stalls to rest his legs and ordered a bowl of coarse tea. "Mind the herb basket—I'll take a slow sip of tea."

Lin Que agreed, and with half a basket of herbs in hand, skirted the crowd and walked toward the end of the market town. The blue-robed man's gaze brushed once across his back, then moved away.

---

Qinghe was bent over tracing a talisman. Seeing Lin Que come in, she didn't stop her brush, only lifted her eyelids. "Down the mountain again so soon? Are the Xuanzhao Sect's duties this slack?"

"Fetching herbs for the pill hall, and dropping off your thing along the way." Lin Que set the oil-paper packet on the table and pushed it over.

Qinghe's brush-tip paused. She set the brush down, opened the oil-paper, pinched up a measure of red fine sand to hold to the light, then dabbed a bit on her fingertip and touched it to the tip of her tongue; her brows knit first, then eased.

"Faint, it's true," she said, looking up. "Where's it from? This stuff the pill hall keeps under lock, weighed and booked—a mace short and the accounts won't balance."

"Washed out of the dross."

Qinghe blinked, then eyed him with half a smile. "The pill hall's spent waste-dross... the stuff people haul off to fill pits, and you've washed what you wanted out of it."

Into her habitual touch of haughtiness had crept, for the first time, something else—like looking at a thing she hadn't expected. Lin Que didn't take it up, only asked, "Enough to draw the unbinding talisman?"

Qinghe withdrew her gaze, pinched the sand and dripped water to grind ink afresh, took up her brush, and drew a stroke in the air over a spent talisman blank. The ink went onto the paper and the line held—it stood, and did not scatter.

She nodded, spread Lin Que's rubbing under the lamp, and traced her fingertip along the meridian-cutting seam upon it, explaining low as she traced. "An unbinding talisman that answers cut with cut takes three stages. The first: following this rubbing, restore the run of that cut-and-rejoined seam stroke for stroke—how it cut, where it opened, where it rejoined, all of it must be traced clear." Her fingertip paused at the seam. "This stage is the hardest; a hair off, and the next two stages are all ruined."

"The second: set a stroke against its force, and use that stroke to pry open the stretch it rejoined. The third: grind red-scale sand into the ink and seal the mouth, pinning down the counterforce, so the talisman stands." She drew her hand back. "Three days—not a single stage can be rushed."

When she said "three days," her eyes stayed on the talisman, not on him. As her words fell, she added half a line more, her voice a touch softer. "You brought the sand all this way... I'll draw it well."

Lin Que was about to answer when a shadow lifted at the shop's door.

---

The curtain flicked aside, and the blue-robed man came in.

"You draw Green Seal-Script Talismans here, miss?" His tone was idle, his gaze roving slowly over the few stacks of talismans in the shop.

"I do." Qinghe set down her brush, her expression cool. "Which sort?"

"I hear the Xu family's Green Seal-Script is an old craft handed down six generations." The blue-robed man stepped half a pace nearer. "I'd like to ask for one—drawn in the Xu family's oldest style. Not the newer, altered kind—the original sort, the final stroke unbroken, carried through in one breath. Can you draw it, miss?"

The shop went still for a moment.

Lin Que stood to one side with his eyes lowered, and the point of heat beneath his left eye swept quietly over the blue-robed man—this one's qi was middling, no more than a fourth- or fifth-layer Qi Condensation rogue-cultivator's foundation. But along the edge of his cuff was embroidered a dark pattern, utterly unremarkable; and the run of that dark pattern, Lin Que knew: it was the same hand's manner as the meridian-cutting seam on the rubbing, as the break at the final stroke of Qinghe's family talisman.

"The newer talismans anyone will draw; what I want is the original," the blue-robed man said, unhurried, drawing a silver ingot from his sleeve and setting it on the corner of the table. "For an old Xu-family Green Seal, I'll pay fifty spirit stones a piece. Draw it, and this is merely the deposit."

Fifty spirit stones for one talisman—the price was absurd to the point of nakedness.

Qinghe glanced at the silver ingot and did not touch it. Yet she smiled and truly took up her brush. "The original, then. Since the guest offers this price, I'll try."

She dipped ink and set brush to paper, drawing stroke by stroke, very steady. The blue-robed man paced to the table's edge and watched her wield the brush, not blinking.

The first several turns were all by the book, ordinary strokes anyone could trace. Yet the blue-robed man's gaze drew tighter and tighter, fixed not on the whole talisman but on the very tip of her brush—Lin Que could see it: this one understood the Green Seal, understood enough to see through whether that final turn was a true break or a feigned one. The crux lay in that one stroke.

As she drew that final turn, Lin Que's breath caught without his willing it. He saw it clearly beneath his left eye—Qinghe's stroke could have smoothly mended that broken meridian; but her hand paused for the briefest instant before it fell, and forcibly changed course, following the old flaw to close the final stroke broken—broken so naturally it was as though she truly could not rejoin it. This alteration held its whole measure within a hair: mend back one part more, and a trace showed; break one part too far, and it rang false. The talisman done, she lifted a finger to spur its spirit-light; the light reached the flaw at the third turn and, with a snap, scattered—the talisman paper scorched to a small point.

"It won't come," Qinghe said, pushing the broken talisman across the table and spreading her hands. "The Xu family's original talisman—the lineage broke off in my generation. I can only trace the newer flawed talismans; the original-style, no one's known it for a long time. If the guest wants the original, ask elsewhere."

The blue-robed man stared at the scattered talisman for two breaths, and the probing on his face faded. He smiled, neither vexed nor pressed. "The lineage broken off... a pity." Leaving, he dropped one line: "The day you remember how the original's drawn again, Miss Xu, do send word. Someone pays a great price for an original Xu-family talisman."

The curtain fell; he was gone. The silver ingot on the table's corner he did not take with him.

Qinghe pinched up the ingot with a handkerchief, not sparing it a second look, and set it in the very back of a drawer. Leaving the silver, taking no one—this was to make her remember: this shop, he'd marked it, and he would come again.

---

The idle air in the shop sank all at once. Qinghe set down her brush and only now felt the thin sheen of sweat in her palm; without a flicker she wiped it on her lapel. That stroke just now she had drawn steadier than anyone, yet the string in her heart she'd not dared ease until this very moment.

"He didn't come to buy a talisman," Lin Que said.

"I know. He's watched this shop of mine three days." Qinghe stared toward the curtain, her voice cooling. "That broken talisman just now was drawn for him to see—so he'd go back and report that the Xu family still can't mend the original."

"This 'original' he wants—what is it, in the end?" Lin Que asked.

Qinghe took the Xu family's Green Seal-Script original from the old wooden box and pointed at the broken meridian of the final stroke. "What the meridian-cutting method cut away is precisely this original's final stroke. From then on the Xu family's Green Seals all became flawed talismans missing a stretch—drawable, but unable to stand. He came today just to sound out whether I can draw this one stroke back."

Lin Que did not answer. The dark pattern on that blue-robed man's cuff was still branded in his left eye.

"That blue-robed man didn't come to buy a talisman," he said low. "That dark pattern on his cuff—the run of it, stroke for stroke, matches to the hair the cut at the final stroke of your family's talisman, and the break on that ward. The one who cut your family's talisman is of his line. Today, this man sat across from your shop and drank tea a whole afternoon."

The hand with which Qinghe held her brush tightened. That the hand had stretched its threads into the market town, she'd long known; but she had not reckoned it was right here at arm's length, watching this shop of hers.

For a long while she said nothing. When she spoke again, her voice was very steady. "Then all the more reason to enter that door." She dipped ink afresh, her voice cooling. "The unbinding talisman, I'll have drawn within three days, and send you through that door. As for the rest—the tampering that hand did to the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, that I'll count on those eyes of yours to see clear for me."

---

Over at the tea awning, the old menial's coarse tea must be near its dregs.

"To enter that door, pick the window when the scroll-warden dozes," Qinghe cautioned once more. "That ward-probing talisman I gave you lasts only one incense-stick. Past the hour the ward restores itself, and if you're still inside, you won't get out."

She paused, her brush-tip hovering over the talisman paper without falling. "And—that place is sealed tight; there's likely more than this one ward inside. What you brought back was only this one, and this one is all I can undo; if there are other defenses, I haven't seen them and can lend no strength. So look only at the Xuanzhao Breathing Art's shelf, and touch none of the other scrolls. Trip some other ward and snare yourself in there, and I can't pull you out."

"When the incense is half spent, whether or not you've found what you're after, withdraw first." Her voice sank without her noticing, until she could hold it no longer. "That hand could topple even my Xu family, and now it's stretched its threads into the Xuanzhao Sect—for you to go alone and turn over its bottom is too dangerous. Don't press your luck. Come out alive, for my sake."

At that last line, the hand tracing the talisman paused lightly, and the ink gathered to a drop at the brush-tip, hanging, not falling.

"Noted," Lin Que said, taking up the herb basket. He paused as he left. "That blue-robed man is likely still in the market town. Take care."

"I can look after my own shop." Qinghe took up her brush again without lifting her head. "In three days the unbinding talisman will be done, and I'll have the porter who goes down to buy carry it up to you—your door, get through it ahead of Senior Brother Chen."

"Keep well," Lin Que left the words and turned to lift the curtain.

In the instant he lifted it, he glanced back.

Qinghe had set down her brush and was watching his departing back. Seeing him turn, she hurried her gaze away and bent again to dip ink; but the brush-tip hovered over the talisman paper and did not fall for a long while. The thread of red at her earlobes had not yet faded.

Over at the tea stall, the old menial rose with a yawn and asked whether the herbs were all gathered. Lin Que answered, folded the half-basket into the large one, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and followed toward the mountain road.

Reaching the mouth of the market town, he glanced back once. Qinghe's shop-curtain hung low, the lamp inside lit, a single shadow bent over the desk tracing talismans. The tea awning across from it was empty; when the blue-robed man had left, no one knew.

Lin Que drifted out of the market town with the crowd and started up the mountain road. Halfway up the slope, a dozen paces ahead, a blue-robed back was walking up, unhurried—toward the Xuanzhao Sect.

【Ch. 025 End · the market town below Xuanzhao Mountain · Qinghe's talisman shop】