Flower Stealing Master

Time slipped by unnoticed. Song Qingshu had worked his way through the better part of the twenty-four stone chambers. The fifth line — ‘shí bù shā yī rén’; the tenth — ‘tuō jiàn xī qián héng’; the seventeenth — ‘jiù zhào huī jīn chuí’ — each contained a fragment of the Twenty-Third Sword. Piecing them together, he found to his delight that he seemed to have grasped something of its essence. [G: The three lines: “ten paces, one man slain”; “the sword laid across the knee”; “the golden hammer swung to save Zhao” — all from Li Bai’s Xia Ke Xing.]

The underlying principle of the Twenty-Third Sword still eluded him, however. It seemed to consume not inner energy but something altogether more ineffable — he felt he was almost touching it, and then it would slip away entirely. But he was not a man given to fretting over what he couldn’t yet reach. He would work it out in leisure once he had left the isle.

The sixth line — ‘qiān lǐ bù liú xíng’; the seventh — ‘shì liǎo fú yī qù’; the eighth — ‘shēn cáng shēn yǔ míng’ — each held a fragment of the movement art. And here Song Qingshu encountered something that genuinely puzzled him: he was certain he had learned it, and yet he could not perform it. [G: “A thousand li, and none could hold him back”; “the deed done, he shakes out his robe and leaves”; “his name and self buried deep from the world.”]

It was a strange feeling. If he couldn’t perform it, that should mean he hadn’t learned it — yet by any measure of his current cultivation, he knew he had. It was rather like Duan Yu in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, who had clearly mastered the Six Meridian Divine Swords but found them working only intermittently.

‘I’ve ended up worse off than that foolish Duan Yu,’ Song Qingshu thought with a wry smile. At least Duan Yu could occasionally get it to work. Song Qingshu had learned it perfectly and couldn’t produce it even once.

That wasn’t quite accurate, either. What he could produce was a perfectly good movement art — just not better than what he already possessed, and an enormous distance from the gravity-nullifying ideal he had theorised from studying the diagrams. He first suspected this was because his inner energy was still locked away — but he eliminated that possibility quickly. The Supreme Mysteries Scripture’s qi-circulation routes were entirely unlike conventional martial arts in their mechanics and seemed unaffected by the Heavenly Devil Flower’s interference.

‘There must be some catalyst I’m missing.’ He arrived at that conclusion quickly and found it settled his mind. If a movement art this extraordinary were that easy to achieve, that would be a violation of the natural order.

He set the movement art aside — his existing qinggong was sufficient for now — and turned his attention to the fist and palm techniques. The ninth line, ‘xián guò Xìnlíng yǐn’; the fourteenth, ‘wǔ yuè dǎo wéi qīng’; the sixteenth, ‘zòng sǐ xiá gǔ xiāng’ — together these chambers outlined a fist-and-palm system of considerable subtlety. Song Qingshu’s mastery of unarmed arts had never matched his swordsmanship, and though he could see the technique’s ingenuity, it struck him as far less astonishing than the sword art or movement art. There were likely deeper layers he hadn’t yet perceived.

At his current level, one more fist method or one fewer made little practical difference. He moved on to the internal cultivation techniques — after all, the whole point was to see whether the Supreme Mysteries Scripture might help expel the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison.

Beyond the foundational first chamber, the thirteenth line — ‘sān bēi tǔ yán nuò’; the eighteenth — ‘yì qì sù ní shēng’; the twentieth — ‘hè hè Dà Liáng chéng’ — all contained breathing and internal cultivation methods. But even combined, their qi-circulation routes were incomplete, and to Song Qingshu’s eye, these were less the Scripture’s true internal art than the groundwork upon which that art would be built.

‘The most important part must be in the last chamber.’ His eyes fixed on the twenty-fourth chamber not far ahead, burning with anticipation.

“Halt. What’s your business here?” The moment he reached the entrance, two figures stepped out to block his way.

Song Qingshu startled. Every other chamber had been freely open — he hadn’t expected a guard. He looked up. One man wore yellow, the other blue-black — identical in dress to Zhang San and Li Si.

Reward and Punishment Envoys. Their cultivation was almost certainly on par with Zhang San and Li Si’s. Under ordinary circumstances, Song Qingshu would have given men at this level a very wide berth. But having just absorbed the Twenty-Third Sword, he felt an almost irresistible urge to test it.

The Reward Envoy, misreading his hesitation for confusion, waved him off impatiently. “This chamber is reserved for the two Island Masters only. Go look elsewhere.”

The island’s other chambers were open to everyone — even the servants drifted in occasionally, each nursing private hopes of a sudden breakthrough. He had taken Song Qingshu for one of them.

Song Qingshu was still weighing whether to deal with these two and slip inside when, from further along the passage, a second pair of Reward and Punishment Envoys rounded the corner, talking quietly between themselves.

“That gentleman is impossible to please. All those women before, none of them right — I think this one might finally do.”

“Heh, this little lady is fresh and lovely, easy on the eyes. The kind that makes even an old man like me feel something — let alone a young blood.”

“Strange thing, though — young as he is, he’s not interested in untouched girls. Prefers w0men who’ve already been married. Can’t quite fathom it.”

“That’s because you don’t understand. A girl who’s never known a man starts crying the moment things get going — where’s the fun in that? A married w0man, now — she knows what she’s about. A young man with that kind of fire in him wants a storm, not a drizzle. Married w0men suit that perfectly.”

“Personally I still prefer the untouched ones. That look on their face — like a split-open jade melon — the tears and all. Nothing beats that for a sense of conquest.”

The two of them chatted on for a few more exchanges before noticing there was someone else nearby, and fell abruptly silent.

Song Qingshu drew a long breath and let reason win out over impulse. He had only just learned the Twenty-Third Sword and had never used it in practice — he had no idea how it would actually perform. Deploying it against four opponents who each approached the level of the Five Greats was too great a gamble.

And even if he somehow overcame all four in an instant, the rest of the isle would notice before long, and that would leave him in a far worse position than before.

Besides — that passing conversation had reminded him sharply that Qi Fang was still in danger. If she came to harm because he had wasted time here, he would never forgive himself.

“Changing of the guard,” the newcomers announced to the original two, then looked curiously at Song Qingshu. “What’s this one doing here?”

“Wandered over by mistake, I expect,” the first pair answered carelessly.

No suspicion. Song Qingshu gave a casual bow, then scurried off in the manner of a startled servant and disappeared from view.

He surfaced from his immersion in the Supreme Mysteries Scripture and found that the sky had darkened without his noticing. Urgency hit him at once. He needed to find Qi Fang — and quickly.

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