Flower Stealing Master

Song Qingshu moved as though treading on thin ice. Without access to his inner energy, and with the Isle of Heroes being as mysterious as it was, caution was everything. According to the original story, even the most ordinary disciples on this island could thrash the top fighters of the Central Plains without breaking a sweat — though the martial world of this era was a far cry from the one in that tale. Still, his encounter with Zhang San and Li Si had put their cultivation somewhere near the level of the Five Greats, and the isle had dozens of men at that tier. As for the two Island Masters, their depths were beyond measuring. If he were discovered, even at full strength he might not escape cleanly — let alone in his present state.

‘Every step must be careful.’ The Soul Capture Technique was his only real card to play right now, and in his current condition it could only be deployed as a surprise — using it against multiple opponents at once was out of the question. His disguise arts were the only other thing standing between him and disaster. Without them, he genuinely doubted he could leave the Isle of Heroes alive.

He pressed his fingertips to his cheek, checking the impression he’d taken of the yellow-jacketed man’s face. It held. He let out a quiet breath.

After roughly the time it takes an incense stick to burn, Song Qingshu frowned and stopped walking. The isle was enormous, and the passages branched like a maze. Wandering blind without knowing the layout was getting him nowhere.

He was still puzzling it over when a sharp voice came from behind. “You there — halt!”

Song Qingshu’s nerves snapped taut. Had his cover slipped?

He weighed whether to use the Soul Capture Technique, then turned slowly. A man in a blue-black robe stood watching him with a frown.

After days of quiet observation, Song Qingshu had worked out the isle’s hierarchy. The lowest were the servants — the ones who’d brought him his meals — dressed in short yellow jackets. Above them were the two Island Masters’ disciples, among whom Zhang San and Li Si ranked. Zhang San, as a Reward Envoy, wore a robe of yellow silk; Li Si, a Punishment Envoy, wore blue-black. This man’s dress matched Li Si’s exactly — plainly one of the Punishment Envoys.

Knowing what that meant about his martial level, Song Qingshu dared not be careless. He lowered his head at once and gave a respectful bow. He didn’t know how people addressed each other on this island and had no intention of finding out the hard way, so he said nothing — only arranged his face into an expression of dutiful deference.

The blue-robed man evidently noticed nothing amiss. “Why are you still wandering around here?” he said coldly. “They’re short-handed over at the stone chambers. Go and help.”

Stone chambers? What stone chambers? Song Qingshu was completely lost, but he couldn’t show it. He nodded compliance. Fortunately, years of navigating the martial world had honed his eye for detail — he caught the blue-robed man glancing almost involuntarily toward the right-hand corridor as he spoke, and concluded that was the direction he meant. Keeping his manner composed, he turned and headed that way as though he’d known all along.

A few paces in, the man raised no objection. Song Qingshu relaxed and walked on with a more confident stride.

Before long he spotted a cluster of yellow-jacketed servants filing in and out of a room, carrying wooden trays deeper into the corridor.

“You — over here.” A round-faced, heavyset man inside the room spotted him and waved him over urgently.

Delivering food to someone important, by the look of it. Song Qingshu eyed the trays — wine, dishes, delicate pastries, fresh fruit. Considerably better fare than what had been shoved through his door.

He ambled over to the heavyset man, who promptly thrust a laden tray into his hands before he could say a word. “Take this to Zhào kè màn hú yīng.”

Song Qingshu stared blankly. Zhào kè màn hú yīng? What in the world is that? He couldn’t ask without exposing himself, so he simply picked up the tray and fell in behind the others.

After a short while, the man behind him tapped his shoulder. “You’ve gone past it. The room you want is back that way.”

Song Qingshu turned and looked where he was pointing. Not far back, a stone chamber opened off the corridor. He gave the man a grateful smile and doubled back.

None of the servants thought anything of it — they were low-ranking lackeys, and who didn’t lose their bearings sometimes? No one suspected a thing.

Song Qingshu steadied himself and stepped into the chamber.

The eastern wall had been polished smooth, lit by eight great torches that cast the space in warm, bright light. The wall was covered in carvings — figures and text both. More than a dozen men already occupied the room. Some stared at the carvings in deep concentration; some sat in meditation, cultivating their qi; some murmured to themselves with closed eyes. Three or four others were engaged in heated argument.

“Food’s arrived,” Song Qingshu announced quietly. Not a single person acknowledged him. He set the tray down near the entrance and glanced at the untouched dishes already sitting on the table. They really have forgotten to eat. Whatever these people were studying, it had them completely absorbed.

Nearby, the argument grew louder. “The first line,” one man was saying, “Zhào kè màn hú yīng — the commentary glosses the character hú as: ‘hú denotes a man of the Western Regions. The New Book of Tang, in the biography of Chengqian, records: several hundred men studied the music and adopted the customs of the hú people, binding their hair and cutting cloth for their dancing robes…ʼ”

Another man shook his head. “Brother Wen, look at the figure in the illustration — this is clearly no hero of the bold and mournful Yan-Zhao tradition. So why is he called a ‘Zhào kè’? One cannot make sense of this line without first resolving that central question.” [G: The debate in the chamber concerns the opening line of Li Bai’s 《侠客行》, “Zhào kè màn hú yīng” — “A hero of Zhao, with a plain tassel on his cap.” The scholars are dissecting every character with minute pedantry, as the joke in the original novel goes, precisely missing the point because they are looking for profound martial meaning in what is simply a poem.]

Song Qingshu looked curiously at the carved wall. It bore the image of a young scholar-looking figure — left hand holding a fan, right hand extended in a flying palm, the whole posture carrying an air of elegant ease.

A third man nodded in agreement. “I’ve been pondering this lately. The figure looks refined and graceful — which suggests a quality of yin softness at its core. Yet the commentary says: ‘begin from a place of fierce, unyielding hardness.’ Clearly this speaks of yin as the substance, yang as the function — that part isn’t too difficult. But exactly how each serves as substance and how each serves as function — therein lies a profound question.” He shaped his left hand to match the figure’s pose, then drove his right palm forward with a sharp crack of displaced air. “Left as yin, right as yang — that seems to be the principle at work.”

The fourth man read aloud from the carved annotation: “The ‘Discourse on Swordsmanship’ in Zhuangzi records: ‘The Prince said: the swordsmen our King favours all wear wild, tousled hair with protruding temples, loose-hanging caps, coarse-tasselled cords, and short-hemmed garments.’ Sima’s commentary notes: ‘Màn hú yīng — a coarse tassel, without ornamentation.’ Brother Wen, the two characters màn hú belong together — ‘màn hú’ means rough and plain, and ‘màn hú yīng’ describes a tassel that is not elaborate. It does not mean the man wears a Western barbarian’s tassel. This hú is the hú of ‘muddled and unclear,’ not the hú of Western peoples.”

The one surnamed Wen, battered from all sides, was beginning to lose his patience. “Not at all! Look at the next annotation: ‘Zuo Si’s Ode to Wei Capital: màn hú yīng. Commentary: Xian says, màn hú is the name of a warrior’s tassel.’ This is a tassel worn by fighting men — it could be plain, or it could be fine. Some years ago I sought guidance from Kang Kun, the sect master of Liangzhou’s Guoyi Sect. He is from the Western Regions himself, and knows everything there is to know of the hú people’s customs. He told me that hú warriors wear tasselled caps of a particular form —” He crouched and began tracing the shape on the floor with his finger.

Song Qingshu stood to the side, quietly stifling a laugh. These men were like pedantic village scholars picking over a classical text, chewing on every character — and they had no idea they had been wandering entirely off track from the beginning. In the time it took to watch them, something had finally clicked into place: he now knew exactly which chamber he was standing in.

One of the twenty-four stone chambers on the Isle of Heroes — the ones said to contain some of the most profound martial arts in existence!

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