Ch. 032| That Fresh Injury

But Lin Que did not leave.

This side-alley of the Qian family was secluded—on one side a blue-brick wall a good ten feet high, on the other a heap of split firewood. Du guarded this side gate: by day hauling water, splitting wood for the Qians, and keeping the night watch, in exchange for a bowl of food and a woodshed to live in. A man who had toiled ten-odd years in the Xuanzhao Sect, on the verge of being transferred to the inner gate, now huddled at the foot of this wall mending a broom of loosened teeth—the calluses on his hands had moved from the place that grips a sword to the place that grips a firewood-hatchet.

He crouched, in no hurry to speak. The heat beneath his left eye had not yet dispersed, and it swept along Du's body. Three main meridians were withered like burnt-out kindling—old injuries burnt to ruin by qi deviation, past nursing back. But at one spot beneath the right shoulder-blade, the qi-channel was swollen, a knot of unspent stasis pooled there, red and hot to burning—qi deviation hurts the meridians within, breaching from the inside out; this spot was force from without, hammered hard in, the injury still fresh. The shape of the bruise could still be made out: five fingers spread, a hand pressed on backhanded, the blow both precise and vicious.

"Behind your right shoulder," Lin Que opened, his voice set very level, "you were struck by someone a few days ago."

The hand mending the broom stopped with a snap.

He jerked his head up, that ashen-blue face whitening another shade at once: "You… how do you know?"

"I attend at the herb-lodge; reading injuries is my trade." Lin Que did not look at his face, only stared at that right shoulder. "The palm-print pressed three inches beneath the shoulder-blade, without harming the bone. The one who struck knew his measure—what this palm was after was to make you keep your mouth shut henceforth."

Du's lips began to tremble; for a long moment he could not squeeze out a word.

The broom slid from his hand and knocked against the wall's foot.

---

"When did that man come?" Lin Que asked.

Du did not answer. He shrank into the wall's corner, his eyes darting about, as if the man who'd struck him were hiding behind the wall this very moment.

Lin Que did not press either; from his sleeve he drew a small porcelain box, set it on the ground before Du, and lifted the lid. Inside was the herb-lodge's stock bruise-dissolving salve, dark brown, its medicinal scent sharp to the nose—an ordinary formula for dissolving bruise-swelling and freeing the blood through the meridians.

"That knot of stasis on your shoulder is pressing on half a good meridian beneath it." Lin Que pushed the box toward him. "If the stasis doesn't dissolve, it'll pool on down along the meridian, and drag on another ten days or half a month, and this right arm from shoulder to elbow will stiffen. You, a gate-guard—if you can't even put strength into your right hand, can you still hold this rice-bowl?"

This struck home. Du guarded the gate; his rice-bowl was this strength of his. He stared at that box of salve, his throat rolling.

"…What do you want?" he asked hoarsely.

"First, to keep this arm of yours." Lin Que said. "The rest—what you don't want to tell, I won't ask."

Du was taken aback. What he'd guarded against was someone coming to draw out words about that threshold. But the man before him crouched down and, with his first words, asked after this nearly-ruined right arm.

"You're out of the Xuanzhao Sect." He stared at Lin Que, the wariness not wholly gone from his eyes. "Why would a man of the Xuanzhao Sect care about one ruined arm of mine?"

"I'm no more than a new disciple who brews medicine and does odd jobs at the herb-lodge." Lin Que said, pushing that box of bruise-dissolving salve half an inch nearer, the lid open, the medicinal scent wafting out in waves. "You and I are both lives ordered about, trodden underfoot by others. I've no cause to trample you one more time."

This was not wholly true, but not wholly false either.

Du stared at him a long while, his throat working, and that guarded breath he'd held taut at last leaked away. He turned aside and yielded up his right shoulder.

---

Lin Que took the salve in hand. As his fingerpad pressed to the edge of that knot of stasis, Du drew a hissing cold breath, his shoulder jerking, nearly shrinking away.

"Bear it." Lin Que held him down. "The stasis has set into a lump; if it's not kneaded open, salve alone is useless."

His hands did not stop; his left eye fixed on the course of that pooled blood beneath the skin, working from outside in, avoiding several fine meridians not yet wholly ruined, pushing the pent qi open inch by inch. Kneading to the hardest spot at the very center of the lump, Du gave a muffled groan, sweat beading on his brow; but Lin Que's finger-strength abruptly turned light, like melting a block of frozen-hard fat. The bruise-dissolving salve seeped in, and that burning red faded shade by shade, the hard lump softening.

This shoulder had ached for days, piercing him even when he turned over at night. Now, for the first time, someone had loosened it for him; the body Du had held taut for a month sank down, and he slumped over his knees, a sound humming from his throat that, toward the end, carried the note of weeping. A man who had toiled ten-odd years in the Xuanzhao Sect, who had forced the sixth layer—now, for one arm no longer aching, his eyes reddened.

Halfway through the kneading, he opened his mouth of his own accord, his voice so low it was like talking to himself.

"He came last month. A strange face, dressed well, not like a runner or a menial." He stared at the ground. "He came in without beating around either, and just asked me—over these years, of those in the outer gate who deviated forcing the sixth layer, who exactly were they, one and all; and whether any had grown suspicious, had gone asking after that scroll."

Lin Que's hand working the salve was steady, did not stop.

"I said I knew nothing, was just a ruined man watching a gate." Du smiled bitterly, tugging at the shoulder injury, and drew another breath. "He didn't believe it. Left me this palm-blow, said the affairs of the Xuanzhao Sect were not for a ruined man to prattle about; that henceforth, if anyone came asking the same questions, I was not to let slip a single word—and if I let it slip, this gate-watching life of mine would come to its end too."

"Did he leave a name?"

"No." Du shook his head. "But that bearing of his—not like a runner off the roads. A set of fine cotton in a straight cut, a mutton-fat jade token hung at his waist, speaking slow and measured. More like someone of standing within the gate had sent him out."

The hand Lin Que was wiping the salve with paused very slightly, then unconcernedly kneaded on.

Du didn't notice, going on of his own, as if he'd bottled it up a month and now, the pain eased, the words loosened with it: "Ruined to this state, out of the gate, hidden away in this market watching a house—I'd thought I'd have nothing more to do with the Xuanzhao Sect this life. But they won't even let this one breath of mine go."

He bowed his head, silent a while, then suddenly said: "You said just now, 'those who investigate that threshold come to no good end'—that line I gave you, I meant it sincerely."

Lin Que's strength slowed half a fraction: "How do you mean?"

"Before me, there was another senior brother surnamed Xu, who fell two years earlier than I did." Du's voice pressed lower. "The two of us tumbled from the sixth layer one after the other, ruined our cultivation, went out of the gate—brothers in misfortune, and now and then we'd still send word. Everyone else accepted their fate; he wouldn't. He always said one thing—"

Du raised his eyes, and in those turbid eyes was a long-absent light.

"He said: 'I forced it so many years, my qi was clearly nurtured full, and at that threshold it simply scattered out of nowhere—this doesn't fit the reason of cultivation. It's not that I'm not good enough; it's that the art is wrong.'"

Lin Que's lowered eyes stirred.

These words meant the same as what he'd seen in the deep scrolls. But spoken from the mouth of a ruined cultivator—Xu had no such eyes; he had wrung it out by force, on the strength of having fallen once and refusing to accept his fate.

"He thought further than anyone." Du smiled bitterly. "He asked all around after that advanced annotated scroll for the sixth layer, said that as long as he found that scroll and compared, he could find out where exactly the art was flawed. He wrote to me that he'd got onto a thread of it, said that scroll in the Archive Hall wasn't lost but was being kept by someone, and that he'd found out who the man collecting the scroll was—"

Du suddenly stopped, as if he'd spoken to a place he shouldn't have, and his face went white again.

"…The letter ended there." He said hoarsely. "The next letter never came. What came was the news: Senior Brother Xu, walking a mountain road at night, missed his footing and fell into a ravine. The body was carried back with the face smashed to pieces."

Walking a mountain road at night, missed his footing, the face smashed to pieces.

"Those few letters of his—do you still keep them?" Lin Que asked, wiping the salve as he spoke.

"Burned them." Du said in a low voice. "After that palm-blow, everything that touched on the Xuanzhao Sect, I burned clean." His throat rolled; he struggled a while before adding, his voice pressed so low it could barely be heard: "…Only his last letter mentioned a place. Said that 'man collecting the scroll' went, at the end of every ten-day span, to a place down the mountain called the 'Listening-Rain Tower.' I didn't dare write it down, but those three words won't burn away."

Lin Que kneaded that last knot of stasis apart, withdrew his hands, and took a cloth to wipe the salve clean from Du's shoulder. A man who had found out "who the one collecting the scroll was"—his next letter, before it could be sent, and he lay smashed to death on a mountain road.

"Done." He capped that box of bruise-dissolving salve and set it into Du's hands. "Rub it on twice a day. Once the stasis is fully dissolved, the right arm will take strength."

Du clutched that box of salve and stared blankly at him, finding his voice only after a long moment: "You… what are you after?"

"There's still one lying in my herb-lodge." Lin Que stood and brushed the dust from his knees. "Like you, fallen from that threshold of the sixth layer. He's surnamed Chen. I want him to have it easier, later on, than you did."

He asked no more about that Senior Brother Xu, nor mentioned that scroll. Ask deeper, and this door of Du's, just cracked open a seam, would close dead again.

But as he was about to leave, Du suddenly reached out and tugged at the hem of his robe, lowering his voice: "Your coming to seek me today—don't let anyone know. Those watching me may not be watching only me—since you too eat your rice inside the Xuanzhao Sect, mind yourself, and take care."

He said this in a rush, the wariness in his eyes long gone, and what remained looked rather like a genuine concern he carried for Lin Que.

Lin Que nodded.

---

Out of that side-alley of the Qian family, the sun had already slanted west.

The old menial who'd come buying with him had long since dozed off beneath the tea-awning at the market mouth; seeing Lin Que come over with the herb-basket on his back, he grumbled sourly, "picking a few herbs and dawdling half the day." Lin Que smiled apologetically, said fresh goods were hard to choose and had to be compared stall by stall, tipped his half-basket of herbs together into the big basket, hefted it onto his shoulder, and followed him up the mountain road.

Reaching the market mouth, he turned to look once toward the Qians'. At the wall's foot, that ashen-blue figure had already stood up and, hands behind his back, was slowly turning his right arm—that arm which for days he could not raise, now, could turn.

Later, coming down the mountain, he would detour to this side-alley again. One box of bruise-dissolving salve would not buy all the words; but this door, at last, had opened a seam.

【Ch. 032 End · the market town below Xuanzhao Mountain · the Qian family's side-alley】