Han Jiu shut the door and turned around.
Yun Qingshuang was already on her feet. She was holding herself very carefully, like someone standing up after a long illness, but her eyes were sharp.
"He came a week early," she said. "People don’t kill two horses for moss."
"I know."
"Then be careful what you show him." She crossed the room and stopped in front of him. "Don’t show him the Canon. He’s an alchemist, so he probably won’t know it’s Coldpeak’s, but I don’t want to find out that I’m wrong."
"Then what do I show him?"
"Whitegrass doesn’t care about bulls. They care about what a body can do with ingredients." She looked down at his hands. "And you have a body that eats cold."
He hadn’t thought of it that way.
"What about you?" he asked. "You just broke into Body Tempering. If anyone sees you today—"
"Nobody will see anything. I’ll show eight iron bulls if anyone asks, and I’ll look tired, which won’t be hard." She pushed him toward the door. "Go. Auntie Fu said don’t keep him waiting. It was good advice."
...
The Whitegrass man was standing in the middle of the north yard, next to two horses that looked like they wanted to lie down and die.
He wasn’t what Han Jiu had expected. Han Jiu had pictured an old man in fine robes. This man was maybe forty. He was thin, with a grey travelling coat that had mud up to the knees, and his eyes were red from not sleeping. His fingertips were covered in small, shiny burn scars, the kind that came from pulling things out of a furnace too many times.
A heavy canvas bag hung from his shoulder. It clinked when he moved. It sounded full of empty jars.
A stable boy was standing in front of him, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. When he saw Han Jiu, he pointed at him with his whole arm.
"That’s him, sir. That’s the ninth young master."
The man turned and looked at Han Jiu. He didn’t bow. He didn’t ask Han Jiu’s name. He just looked him up and down, the way a man looks at a vegetable in a market.
"You cut the moss at the frost pools," he said.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Four years."
"Every day?"
"Most days."
The man grunted. "I’m Lu Mingzhi. From Whitegrass. People call me Master Lu, but I don’t care what you call me." He shifted the bag on his shoulder. "Four years in that water. Show me your hands."
Han Jiu held them out.
Master Lu looked at them. He took Han Jiu’s right hand and turned it over. He ran one scarred thumb across the palm, then across the knuckles, then along the tips of the fingers.
"There’s nothing here," he said.
"No."
"Four years in a cold vein pool should have taken your fingertips. Your nails should be split. Your knuckles should be stiff." He let go of the hand. "These look like the hands of a rich man’s son who has never lifted anything heavier than a teacup."
Han Jiu said nothing.
Then Master Lu did something Han Jiu didn’t expect. He smiled. It was a small, tired, interested smile.
"So either you’re lying to me about the moss," he said, "or you’re interesting. Take me to the pools. We’ll find out which."
...
They walked up the north track in the grey morning.
Master Lu walked fast for a man who hadn’t slept. He didn’t talk on the way. Twice he stopped, crouched down, and pressed his palm flat against a rock beside the track. Both times, he stood up again without saying anything and kept walking.
The frost pools were exactly as Han Jiu had left them. Six black pools in the rock, with cold coming off the water and moss growing on the walls.
Master Lu stood at the edge of the first pool. He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeve, and pushed his arm into the water up to the elbow.
He pulled it out again after two heartbeats. He swore quietly and shook his arm. The skin had gone bright red.
"Good," he said. "That’s what I rode nine days for." He wiped his arm on his coat. "Cut me some moss. From underneath the waterline, where it’s thickest. I want to see how you do it."
Han Jiu knelt at the edge of the pool.
He had done this thousands of times. He knew how it was supposed to feel. First the cold, which was like a slap. Then the ache in the bones of his wrists. Then the numbness, which crept up from his fingertips until his hands stopped feeling like his hands.
He pushed his hands into the water.
Nothing happened.
The water was cold. He could tell it was cold. But the cold didn’t bite. It went into his hands the way warm water goes into a man who has been out in the snow. It felt good. It felt like his hands were drinking.
He took out his knife and started cutting.
He cut three bundles of moss from under the waterline, carefully, the way he always did, and laid them on the rock beside the pool. When he was done, he pulled his hands out of the water.
They were exactly the same colour as when he had put them in.
Master Lu hadn’t said a word the whole time. He was crouching on the rock with his arms on his knees, and he was looking at Han Jiu’s hands.
"How long was that?" he asked.
"I don’t know. A quarter of an hour."
"A quarter of an hour in a cold vein pool." Master Lu said it slowly, like he was writing it down in his head. "I lasted two heartbeats. A normal cultivator at your stage would have lost feeling in his hands in a minute and lost the skin in ten."
"I’m used to it."
"No. Nobody gets used to that. You just told me you were a normal moss-cutter for four years, and your hands would be ruined if you were." He stood up. "Something changed. Recently."
Han Jiu kept his face still.
He thought about what Qingshuang had told him. Whitegrass doesn’t care about bulls. They care about what a body can do.
"Yes," he said. "Something changed."
Master Lu nodded, as if that answered one question and opened three more. He picked up one of the moss bundles and turned it over in his fingers. Then he put it down, and he knelt, and he pressed his palm flat on the rock at the edge of the pool, the same way he had done twice on the track.
He stayed like that. His eyes were closed.
When he opened them, the tired interest was gone from his face. He looked very serious.
"This vein is wrong," he said.
"Wrong how?"
"Our sect keeps records on every spirit vein within fifteen days’ ride of the mountain. This one has been the same for sixty years. The cold in it has been pulling in one direction the whole time. Toward the north, under that ridge." He pointed up the track, toward the old mine shafts. "Like water running down toward a drain."
He took his hand off the rock.
"It isn’t pulling any more. Something that has been drinking from this vein for sixty years stopped drinking. And from the feel of it, it stopped very recently."
He stood up and brushed his knees off. Then he looked at Han Jiu. He looked at his face first, and then at his hands.
"Last night, I would guess," he said. "Somewhere up there, behind those sealed shafts." He tilted his head. "Ninth young master. Have you ever been inside the old mines?"