Chapter 8

Baozhu could barely breathe. Her whole body was submerged in icy water called fear; she was drowning on dry land. Her limbs had been robbed of the strength to move. Cold sweat trickled from her bun onto her face, yet she lacked even the courage to raise a hand and wipe it away.

She glanced at the storyteller sitting beside her. His face was likewise contorted with sheer terror, and the hand gripping his fan trembled. Clearly, he too had sensed some dreadful change in the air.

When the pipa music ceased, Thirteenth Son's bowed-head chanting became audible. The rain continued its soft patter, and damp, chilly mist spread into the room through the doorway.

"Hungry ghosts and beasts, the blind, deaf, and mute, the suffering of meeting those one hates, the suffering of parting from those one loves, the suffering of seeking what one cannot obtain." Sentence after sentence reached their ears, occasionally interrupted by the pipa woman's painful coughing.

Baozhu thought, This woman is a ghost. She must be a ghost.

Was it because I asked someone to tell The Story of Li Wa on this dark, rainy night that I summoned this wandering spirit from the streets? Her expression and voice were steeped in bitter resentment. Was it her unwillingness to accept dying sick and faded? Or the grief and fury of unrequited love, of being gravely wounded by her lover?

Baozhu had feared ghosts since childhood. The eerie tales of the inner palace that the old palace maids had told her rose in her mind. In those stories, female ghosts were invariably more savage and terrifying than male ghosts, because the injustices women endured in life were always more grievous than men's, and their hunger for revenge necessarily stronger.

Her bow and arrows were in her room. But even if she had a weapon in hand, could she deal with such a terrifying female ghost without demon-slaying arrows blessed by an eminent monk? At the very least, the Shurangama Mantra had failed to drive her away.

The wandering courtesan seemed bothered by Baozhu's remark that her instrument sounded muffled. Holding the pipa, she adjusted its white bone tuning pegs and kept plucking the strings to test the sound. With the endless chanting in her ears, she suddenly snapped, "Noisy baldhead! Shut up!"

The shrill, piercing shout left Baozhu dizzy, her ears ringing. The chanting behind her stopped abruptly. Thirteenth Son had been injured by that single rebuke and began coughing and choking. As one force waned, the other waxed; the chill enveloping Baozhu grew stronger still. Utterly despairing, she burst into frightened tears. If even a monk's chanting could not harm her in the slightest, this must be an exceptionally vicious ghost.

Summoning every scrap of courage, she said shakily, "Every grievance has its source, every debt its debtor. We have no quarrel with you. Go find the man who hurt you."

The pipa woman gave a cold chuckle. "I haven't come to the wrong place. That ruthless little devil was here just now... cough, cough... he was lingering here."

"But we don't even know the person you're talking about!" Baozhu protested through her tears.

The pipa woman's expression changed again. Her eyes brimming with affection, she said softly, "You certainly know him. He likes to wear blue. Word on the road is that a young lady riding a donkey captured him alive. I was terribly curious. What sort... cough, cough... what sort of peerless beauty could make that Ironheart willingly surrender? Yet now that I've met you, you're only a little girl who does nothing but cry. Has that damned little devil lost his mind?"

Hearing this accusation, which all but named its target outright, Baozhu froze. Could the person this female ghost was talking about be Wei Xun?

The pipa woman smiled mournfully. "He treats you very gently, doesn't he? That year, when he dragged me out of bed and beat me, he showed not the slightest mercy..."

Before she could finish, a blue blur flashed through the doorway and darted in at an angle, delivering a palm strike with matchless speed. It looked light and effortless, but the pipa woman knew full well the power of the Sunset Mist-Waves Palm. Not daring to meet it head-on, she slid out of her chair to evade it.

The blue-robed man changed his attack with astonishing speed. Like a hare springing up and a falcon swooping down, his palm bore down toward her shoulder again. Half her body was caught beneath its tremendous force, and her movements already felt sluggish. She knew a solid hit would kill her.

Curling her five fingers into claws, she pulled up the pipa's sinew strings to block. The two masters' true qi surged and collided. With a metallic twang, the strings rang out like a mountain of jade toppling, like a silver vase suddenly shattering. The strings, made from human sinews, absorbed most of the blue-robed man's overpowering palm force and dispersed it in cutting bursts. Countless tiny slits instantly appeared in the curtains and furniture.

Since Wei Xun's arrival, Baozhu had felt the oppressive chill greatly diminish, and she could move her hands and feet again. Though he shielded her from injury, more than a dozen strands of hair beside her temple were severed by the flying force.

The pipa woman used the impact to break free, flickering toward the doorway. Even after taking only half the palm strike's force, she felt the blood and qi roiling in her chest. Unwilling to show weakness, she suppressed the urge to vomit blood and stood gracefully there with her instrument in her arms, teasing in a mournful voice, "You heartless, short-lived little devil. Do you mean to wound my heart and body again today?"

Wei Xun's expression was grim and severe. He spat out each word: "You brought this on yourself."

The pipa woman swayed at the waist and slid backward, seemingly about to flee. Wei Xun closed in swiftly, his knuckles cracking. I might as well beat her to death today. But she reached inside her pipa, drew out three throwing knives as thin as cicada wings between her fingers, and scattered them into the room. One flew straight toward Baozhu.

Wei Xun reacted with lightning speed. Locating it by the sound of its passage, he threw something to intercept it. Another clear clang rang out as metal struck metal. A polished bronze mirror split in two and fell to the floor, while the hidden weapon was knocked away.

Seizing that opening, the pipa woman unleashed her lightness skill. Like a paper effigy made for a funeral, she drifted up on the wind and swept onto the roof. Wei Xun was about to pursue her and finish her off when he glimpsed Baozhu's face, drained utterly of color by terror, her cherry lips turned pale. His icy killing intent faltered at once, and his iron-hard heart softened.

An exchange between supreme masters took place in the flash of lightning and the spark of flint. In that brief moment of hesitation, the pipa woman had already escaped with a loud laugh. Her shrill, sinister laughter echoed through the dark curtain of rain, breaking and resuming as it dwindled into the distance, full of both triumph and mockery.

The woman's ghostlike behavior had frightened Baozhu until her legs went weak. She sat unable to rise from her chair. When she touched her face, she found it drenched in cold sweat and tears.

Wei Xun turned and rushed to her, putting his hand to the Renying point beside her throat. When that icy claw grasped the soft flesh of her neck, Baozhu startled again, instinctively shrinking and trembling as tears rolled onto the back of his hand. Only then did she realize he was applying no force, merely resting his fingers lightly on the point to check her pulse. The large blood vessel beside the throat lay closer to the heart, and in a critical moment gave a more accurate reading than the wrist.

After checking her pulse and confirming she had suffered no internal injuries, Wei Xun released her. He examined her carefully from head to toe before truly breathing a sigh of relief. Only then did he notice how astonishingly hot the tears on the back of his hand felt. He wanted to wipe the tears from her face, but dared not reach out again.

"I came back too late," Wei Xun said remorsefully. Thirteenth Son's martial skills were more than enough to handle five or six ordinary people, and normally sufficient to protect her. Who could have expected that woman to appear suddenly at this unremarkable inn in Lingbao County?

His mind was full of questions when he heard Baozhu ask in a trembling, tearful voice, "Was... was that thing a person or a ghost?"

"She's alive," Wei Xun reassured her calmly. "Someone from the martial world who likes to make a show of mystery. Don't be afraid."

Baozhu still could not quite take it in. After staring blankly for a moment, she asked again, "Then is it true what that courtesan said? That you were her lover, that you gravely wounded her, and that she came for revenge?"

Wei Xun looked utterly astonished at this inexplicable accusation. This is bad. That shrew didn't just throw knives before leaving. She planted an even nastier hidden weapon here for me. He hurried to protest, "She was talking nonsense! That woman isn't a wandering courtesan, either. She's the leader of the assassins in Chang'an..."

Before he finished, a terrible scream burst out inside the room, making Baozhu jolt again.

It came from the storyteller, who had remained seated nearby throughout. Without Wei Xun's protection, he had suffered countless small cuts all over his body from the force scattered by the pipa strings. Those were not fatal, but a throwing knife had just skimmed over his head, slicing off his bun along with a piece of scalp. The blade had been so thin and fast that he only noticed now.

As the bun fell away, a patch of stark white skull the size of an egg was exposed on top of the storyteller's head. Only then did blood gush out. With his hair hanging loose and blood streaming over him, he looked horrifying.

The pipa woman had already frightened him out of his wits. Now, losing blood profusely, he thought he had lost his head, and his reason deserted him altogether. Screaming wildly, he fled the inn and vanished into the night, abandoning both his fan and his storyteller's block.

The hall was spattered everywhere with the storyteller's blood, its dripping trail extending outside the inn. The innkeeper emerged, took one look, and assumed bandits were robbing and murdering people. Hastily reciting the Buddha's name, he retreated to the rear hall and braced the door with a wooden pole, pretending nothing had happened.

The blood all over the floor frightened Baozhu still more. Pale-faced, she stared at Wei Xun and murmured, "I don't know what love or grievances there are between you two. But if she's human, why does everything she does seem so much like an evil ghost?"

Though he did not know why, Wei Xun instinctively sensed danger. Even if I were wrongly suspected of seventeen or eighteen murders, I'd still have to clear this up first. He said loudly, "There's only enmity, no love! I did injure her, but that was because she attacked me first. She had only herself to blame for that beating."

Glancing over, he saw Thirteenth Son standing dazed with his palms pressed together and called for help. "Stop standing there pretending to be Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva! The enemy's already fled!"

The pipa woman's shout had shaken Thirteenth Son's mind and left a sweet, bloody taste in his throat. Only after painstakingly dispelling that violently surging qi could he apologize dejectedly. "I'm sorry, eldest senior brother. I did everything I could to resist, but I truly am no match for third senior sister."

"I didn't expect you to beat her," Wei Xun said urgently. "But you couldn't just let that shrew make up lies about me!"

Thirteenth Son stared, then finally understood why his senior brother was angry. He hurried to explain to Baozhu, "Don't be afraid, Ninth Lady. That woman was our third senior sister, Tuoba Sanniang, the Pipa-Tone Demon. She has a feud with eldest senior brother. They fight almost every time they meet. She... she's always been especially frightening."

The young novice's reassurance began with "don't be afraid" and ended with "especially frightening," failing to provide any of the comfort it should have. Clearly, he himself was very afraid of that woman.

The romantic, sensuous Story of Li Wa had vanished entirely from Baozhu's mind, leaving only the image of a dreadful, terrifying female ghost. She wondered what other demons and monsters lurked in Wei Xun's sinister martial lineage. Why was each one stranger than the last?

Cold wind swept through the doorway with strands of rain. Tuoba Sanniang had vanished without a trace, as though she had been nothing but a nightmare. Yet the blood scattered through the inn and the leather bag used to wrap her pipa proved it had been no dream.

The leather bag lay on the chair with its back facing up. Once Baozhu steadied herself and looked closely, she saw a tattoo of the Heavenly King of the North starkly displayed on the yellowed hide, along with several moles. It looked as though it had been flayed from a human body. The sight made her scalp prickle.

Once she knew the other woman was alive, Baozhu felt both frustrated and ashamed that she had been frightened into immobility.

But recalling that hairbreadth instant when Wei Xun exchanged blows with his fellow disciple, she remembered a blue shadow and a white shadow entwined in combat, both as swift as phantoms. She could barely make out their paths. Even with her bow and arrows in hand, she truly had no confidence that she could hit Tuoba Sanniang without accidentally injuring Wei Xun.

Within halls and corridors, at such close range, a bow really was not a suitable weapon.

Coming back to herself, Baozhu felt sticky cold sweat between her strands of hair and over her chest and back. The dried tears on her face were uncomfortable too. She had practiced archery, riding, and martial skills diligently since childhood, only to be mocked in the face of danger for doing nothing but cry. Deeply embarrassed, her pale cheeks gradually reddened. Eager to return to her room, wash, and hide her shame, she reached the doorway and found Wei Xun still following her, looking rather uneasy.

"I'm not hurt," Baozhu said.

Wei Xun murmured an acknowledgment. Staring at the floor beneath her feet, he repeated quietly, "There's only enmity."

Baozhu paused, beginning to understand what worried him. He thinks nothing of that life-and-death fight, changing in the blink of an eye, yet he cares about this. She replied, "I heard you clearly the first time. Of course I believe you rather than a stranger."

With that, she hurried inside, turned to close the door, and poured water to wash herself.