Two new grave mounds stood behind the farmstead. Before one rose a wooden marker — "Grave of the grandfather and granddaughter of this farmstead." The other was left a nameless heap of earth.
The guards were sent off to sleep in the two side rooms, and Wang Yu's three took the main house.
The sky dimmed; the night thickened.
Wang Yu rubbed his hands together, expectant. "So... about that..."
Ziling laid one quilt at the west end of the main house's big kang, set the other two at the east end, and only then slid him a sidelong look. "About what?"
"About when someone's going to teach me the Seven Forms of the Setting Sun," Wang Yu said.
Ziling: "..."
Li Yunxiu laughed despite herself — but she understood his eagerness well enough. "If you still have the energy for it, we can begin right now."
Wang Yu nodded hard. "Do I ever!"
Was that even a question? The misted rains of Jiangnan, the long river through the great desert, the open road of the jianghu — a sword to carry, fine wine to drink, a beauty to lie beside...
Show me one son of the Middle Lands who never once dreamed the wuxia dream!
That he'd held out until tonight before asking was proof of superhuman restraint.
"You have never trained. Starting you straight in on a sword art like the Seven Forms would be a tower built on air — no foundation under it.
But drills alone would bore you senseless. So I will teach both at once: sword fundamentals, and the Seven Forms. You will simply spend the longer hours on the fundamentals — that is what makes the root take hold."
"Done!" Wang Yu agreed on the spot. A man with a previous life's schooling behind him knew exactly how right she was.
So Li Yunxiu began with the fundamentals of the sword — the thrust, the point, the upward flick, the intercept, the lift, and all the rest.
Only when Wang Yu had them all by heart did she move on to the Seven Forms of the Setting Sun.
"The Seven Forms of the Setting Sun: seven forms, each form with seven variations — forty-nine changes in all, enough to answer most of what the world can send at you."
"I learned the Forms from Zhao Yu himself. But my own swordsmanship is nothing exceptional, and I have never cultivated the Flowing Flame Afterglow — so I hold the shapes without the intent, and the internal circuits that drive them, I cannot so much as feel.
The forms and their variations are all I can pass to you. How to run your internal energy through them, you will have to work out alone."
"These are the first form through the fifth. First-rate swordsmanship, all of them — but not the marvel."
"And these are the heart of the art. The sixth form: Fire of the Seventh Month. The seventh: Afterglow of the Setting Sun."
"The one is vast and open, hard beyond matching, its sword intent rolling on and on as if the stroke never fully spends itself — the road you take against an enemy head-on.
The other is surprise itself — strange and subtle, life kindled in the heart of extinction, gone the instant it flashes — the stroke that wins by catching the world off guard."
One was willing to teach; one was willing to learn.
And to Li Yunxiu's real surprise, Wang Yu learned fast. Anyone could see it was his first time — but most things stuck at a single showing. The shapes were rough and the stances wobbled, and that was mere mileage, nothing more.
The moon climbed to its height. Only when Ziling's even breathing had grown loud did the two of them stop, and trade a smile.
"Sleep. We travel tomorrow."
"Right!"
***
Morning sun came through the window-paper and found Wang Yu's eyes.
He blinked awake, bleary. "Nobody drew the curtains last night?"
Then his eyes opened properly: roof-beams with a few slabs of cured pork still hanging off them, the east window's torn paper panes, and Li Yunxiu and Ziling still asleep nearby — and the world reassembled itself.
The instant Wang Yu stirred, Li Yunxiu came awake. Ziling ground her fists into her eyes, thick-voiced. "Is it morning?"
Li Yunxiu nodded. "It's morning. Time we set off."
"You might phrase that differently," Wang Yu said. "It sounds like a funeral procession."
Li Yunxiu smiled faintly. "A funeral is only unlucky for the one in the coffin. When the dead are other people, it is very lucky indeed."
By then Ziling was properly awake. She rose, fetched water, and waited on Wang Yu and Li Yunxiu while they cleaned their teeth and washed. By the time they were presentable, Song Yong and the guards stood ready as well.
Then Li Yunxiu and Ziling brought two travel bundles down from the carriage — and sent the guards, carriage and all, back to the post road, and back to the capital.
Song Yong balked at first — his orders were to see the three of them all the way to Longshan Prefecture. But when Li Yunxiu wrote a letter in her own hand for him to carry back to the Commander of the Imperial Guard, he stopped insisting.
The guards seen off, the three did not set out at once. Li Yunxiu dug eyebrow pencils and cosmetic powders out of a bundle, scavenged the farmstead for stove-soot and stray ends of thread, and went to work on three faces.
A short while later: one down-at-heel scholar, one plain drudge of a wife, and one young sister-in-law lodging on their charity — fresh out of the oven.
Wang Yu inspected himself in the bronze mirror. She had aged him seven or eight years and weathered him with a few streaks of frost — three parts of his good looks buried, two parts of hard living added.
Look closely and his own shadow was still in the face. But this was not an age of technology: if you hadn't seen the man in the flesh, no paper portrait was ever going to catch him now.
Li Yunxiu and Ziling had done themselves the same way — features shifted three parts, bearing shifted two — and at first glance, each was simply another woman.
"I had no idea your make-up skills ran this deep!" Wang Yu marveled.
It was no legendary face-changing art, nothing like the almost person-swapping cosmetic sorcery of his modern life — but it was more than impressive enough.
"Of course!" Ziling glowed with borrowed pride. "My lady sat the examinations dressed as a man — and no one saw through her until the palace exam itself!"
Wang Yu gave Li Yunxiu a curious once-over.
They're not exactly small. How did nobody notice?
Li Yunxiu slanted him a look. "We'll make for the nearest town first and buy an ox-cart. It will ease the road."
An ox came cheaper than a horse — and drew no one's eyes.
So the three shouldered their bundles and left the hills by the small paths, Li Yunxiu coaching Wang Yu in lightness footwork as they walked; by the time they came out of the trees, he had the rudiments of the art.
***
Rumble, rumble...
An ox-cart swayed along the pounded-earth post road, an old yellow ox plodding along in no hurry whatsoever, hauling a canopy frame knocked together from wood and bamboo.
On the driver's bench sat a shabby scholar getting on toward thirty. In the crude, drafty shelter behind him rode a plain-faced woman, and a girl who looked a few years younger.
The three of them, remade.
They had come down out of the hills, bought the ox-cart in the nearest market town, and turned onto a different road toward Longshan Prefecture.
Say what you like — since the disguises and the change of route, not one killer had appeared.
Wang Yu could finally breathe out. Thank goodness. A normal world after all — not Jin Yong's, where the plot trips over an old acquaintance at every bend in the road, nor Gu Long's, where every man alive walks around with radar in his skull. This world ran on sane rules.
Three days had passed since the fight at the farmstead. When he wasn't on the road, Wang Yu drilled.
The pity of it was that the Lesser Returning Pill's potency had been thin soup. His constitution was a touch better, his meridians a touch wider, and the Flowing Flame Afterglow stood firm at the first layer with the shell's help — but sword art and lightness art alike were still at the schoolroom stage.
The trade had been worth it: three quiet days, not a killer in sight, and the Capital Circuit behind them. They were in Hangu Prefecture of the Hexi Circuit now.
"Past Hangu Prefecture lies Daxing Prefecture; west of that, Fengming Prefecture. There we turn north, out of the Hexi Circuit and into the Anxi Circuit — and that is Longshan Prefecture, and home ground." Li Yunxiu laid out the road.
"An ox-cart is slow, though. A month and more to Longshan, I'd guess." Ziling sighed.
"And that's a good thing!" Wang Yu said, supremely comfortable. "No rush to go match wits with a manor full of strangers — and in the meantime, a scenic tour on full salary. And you're still not satisfied?"
"...That does sound sort of right?" Ziling turned it over and found herself half-convinced — then looked to her mistress. "It's not as if we wanted to dawdle. Elder Yan died, and we have to dodge the killers. Right?"
The corner of Li Yunxiu's mouth twitched. Three days. Three days, and her little maid had been talked clean sideways.
Surely the sooner they reached Longshan, the sooner they were safe? Every day on the road was a day of exposure and knives. Only when they stood inside the Westguard Manor, with Wang Yu installed as prince, would they be truly beyond reach.
Though — she understood his thinking, too. A month on the road was a month to train, and a month to settle deeper into Zhao Yu's skin and habits.
The trouble was that Wang Yu could dress any preference of his in a suit of perfectly reasonable argument. Half the time even she couldn't find the seam to pry at — what chance did that silly girl stand?
Sitting in the cart, Li Yunxiu watched Wang Yu's back through the gap in the bamboo curtain.
In truth, she had not known him long. Before all this, their dealings had been lessons — his martial arts, Zhao Yu's temperament and habits. Only since the emperor's bestowed marriage, since leaving the capital at his side, had they lived day upon day together.
The Wang Yu in her memory had been an honest, well-behaved son of decent people — kind enough, and clever enough, but with a timidity and constraint underneath that nothing could quite hide.
Then one assassination scare had knocked him unconscious — and the man who woke up was suddenly composed, suddenly bold, cool-headed and quick in a crisis, and, on top of everything else, silver-tongued.
If she hadn't been present for every minute of it, she would have suspected this Wang Yu had been swapped for another one.
"Not that such things are unheard of. The Buddhists wake men with a shout and a staff-blow; the Daoists, with a millet dream. He walked the line between living and dying once — it would not be strange if it opened something in him."
Wang Yu drove in peace; Ziling watched the scenery; and Li Yunxiu drew her thoughts back in and bent them to the real problem — how to gather in power and govern the region, once the Manor was theirs.
Which was when a figure dropped out of a roadside tree, staggered a half-step on landing, straightened up — and raised its left hand, sword and all, to wave down the cart.
Then he caught himself, snatched the left hand back down, and hid the sword behind his back — hilt still poking into plain view — before raising the right hand, wine gourd and all, in greeting instead. "Brother! This humble one drank past his hour and missed his road. Might you carry me a stretch?"
TL Notes:
TL Note: Kang — a raised brick platform heated from below by the stove, serving as the household bed and sitting area in northern Chinese homes.