Chapter 9

The Seventh Form

The market outside the north gate differed from the markets within the walls of Hangzhou starting with its smell. If the markets within the walls were decorously dressed in the scents of silk, tea, and incense, then outside the north gate the stink of fish, the smell of animal blood, and the reek of cheap wine were tangled together and rolled about any which way. Porters come up the Grand Canal, wandering peddlers who could not set foot inside the walls, and the men who squeezed stall fees out of them were all mixed together, raising a din from morning on.

Lao San left the cart at the hitching place at the entrance of the market and disappeared toward the harness makers. He left only one remark: to come back to this spot before the sun reached its height. Xiao Han nodded and walked into the market. In his breast was the string of copper coins Shuran had pressed into his hand, and in his head was far more than five candied haws.

The candied-haw shop caught his eye soon after he entered the market; it was the stall of an old couple who threaded hawthorn berries on skewers and coated them in melted sugar. Xiao Han ordered five, and while waiting for the sugar to harden he looked at the alley behind the stall. At the end of the alley he could see an herbalist's shop whose door panels had come off, and the characters on its signboard were half effaced by wind and rain.

"When did that shop close?"

The old man stirring the sugar pot raised his head and glanced at Xiao Han. There was no particular reason to answer a question from a boy dressed as a servant, but this was a customer who had bought no fewer than five candied haws.

"About a month ago, maybe. Those Black Wind Gang louts came and bought up every last bit of stock. Paid only half the price. The old owner argued and got his arm broken. He hasn't opened since."

"What did they buy?"

"How would I know that? From an herbalist they'd buy herbs, I suppose. But if they cleaned out two herbalists, what medicine are they making so much of? Do those Black Wind Gang louts have that many places that ache?"

When his wife jabbed him in the ribs and flicked her eyes toward the alley, the old man shut his mouth. Xiao Han received the five candied haws wrapped in oiled paper and paid in ample coin. The old man held out the change, and when Xiao Han waved it away, he bobbed his head in a bow.

For the next hour Xiao Han made a circuit of the market. The Black Wind Gang men who collected stall fees went about in pairs, wore blades at their waists, and stopped at every stall to collect coins. In his former life Xiao Han had remembered the faces of several of them. Of the three beheaded at the execution ground before the magistrate's office after the fire, two were among that band. At this moment they were in the marketplace, cackling as they squeezed coins out of a fishmonger.

Whether they had truly set the fire three years later, Xiao Han could not be certain now. The magistrate's office of his former life had wanted to find the culprits quickly, and three low-ranking members of the Black Wind Gang were necks easily caught. The master had believed so too, and so he had torn the Black Wind Gang out by the roots. At the time, everyone had considered that enough.

But the name of the poison-making deputy who had cleaned out two herbalists was nowhere to be found at that execution ground.

It was as the sun was sinking that he returned to Qin Manor. Xiao Han handed the five candied haws to Shuran beside the crocks behind the inner hall. Shuran opened the oiled paper, took one out, and held it out to Xiao Han.

"Because I promised."

Xiao Han took it and bit into it. The sugar broke crisply between his teeth and beneath it the sourness of the hawthorn spread; whatever a forty-five-year-old head might say, a fifteen-year-old tongue was honest before sweet things.

"Good, isn't it?"

"...It is good."

"That's why I sent you for them."

Shuran hid the remaining four in her sleeve and ran into the inner hall. Xiao Han finished the rest of his candied haw and tossed the skewer into the stove, reckoning that it was to both parties' advantage to leave no evidence of his bargain with the young lady.

That evening Old Wang called Xiao Han and told him that from tomorrow he was to attend at the clearing at dawn. The old servant who had been bringing towels and tea to the master's training had hurt his back, he said.

Xiao Han bowed his head. In his former life he had taken on this task from the year he turned sixteen, so it had come a year early. Since Old Wang did not say why, Xiao Han did not ask either.

The next day, before dawn, Xiao Han climbed to the clearing ahead of his master, carrying a teapot and a towel. He swept the pine needles off the rock and stood in the corner below it. It was the very spot where he stood alone in horse stance every night. To stand in that spot in the capacity of a servant was the first time in this life.

When at length the master came up, Xiao Han bowed at the waist, and the master nodded once and stood upon the smooth place on the rock.

The four lines of the formula flowed from his master's lips. It was the voice he had heard for close to thirty years, but now it was the voice of a man of forty, a little higher and a little quicker than the voice at seventy.

The First Form unfolded. As clouds part and a single shaft of light descends, the sword left its scabbard and cut across the air. As it continued into the Second and Third Forms the sword flowed like the water of a mountain gorge, going around when blocked, seeping into low places, and at last arriving where it must arrive. Xiao Han watched once again the flow he had seen thousands of times in his former life.

Yet as he watched that flow, the warmth in his belly would not keep still. That warmth the size of a jujube stone stirred faintly each time his master's sword flowed. When his master's energy spread across the clearing, Xiao Han's dantian trembled as if in answer to it. The Xiao Han of his former life had not felt this and had watched only with his eyes, but now, ever so faintly, he could feel on his skin where his master's breath entered and where it flowed.

Through the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Forms too, his master's breath flowed evenly, so that sword and breath were one, and Xiao Han followed that flow without even noticing the sweat seeping into the hand that held the teapot.

And then came the Seventh Form. The Seventh Form of the Heavenflow Sword Art was the first of the twelve in which the sword turned its direction back upon itself. As flowing water strikes a rock and comes rushing back, the sword that had been thrusting forward halted for an instant, then wrapped around and returned in the opposite direction. In that moment of turning, the energy surging up from the dantian had to change its direction as well.

In his former life Xiao Han had watched without knowing this; he had known only that each time his master unfolded the Seventh Form, his breath grew rough for the briefest moment. In the summer of the year his master turned forty-two, one dawn while practicing the Seventh Form, he had coughed up blood on the rock and collapsed. The physician had said his qi had flowed backward and injured his meridians. The master had lain abed for three months, and for the rest of his life thereafter he had guarded his right side.

On that night at seventy, the place the masked man's blade had driven into was his right side as well.

Forty-two was two years hence. Yet even before he coughed up blood, his master's breath had already been growing rough in the Seventh Form.

As his master's sword thrust forward and the place of turning drew near, Xiao Han took hold of the warmth in his belly and stopped his breath. His dantian trembled, and at the very place where his master's energy turned, he felt something go ever so slightly awry. As in the moment when flowing water comes rushing back, a single strand of the current goes astray and seeps into a crack in the rock.

His master's sword returned and the Seventh Form ended, continuing into the Eighth and Ninth, but his master's face was calm, the face of one who had felt nothing at all.

When Xiao Han looked down at the teapot, his hand had trembled and a little tea had spilled over.

When the training was done and his master sheathed his sword and came down from the rock, Xiao Han offered the towel, and his master wiped the sweat from his face and took the teacup.

"Han'er."

"Yes, Master."

"The tea has gone cold."

"...Forgive me. I will warm it again."

"Never mind."

The master emptied the cold tea in one draught and went down the mountain. As Xiao Han watched him go, his stride was as straight as ever, and his shoulders as broad as ever. There was no sign anywhere of his guarding his right side.

Swallowing inwardly the words not yet, Xiao Han swept the rock again. His master's footprints remained around the smooth place. Where he had unfolded the Seventh Form, the print of his right foot was a little deeper than elsewhere, and Xiao Han left that one print until the very last before sweeping it away.

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