Lu Yaoniang pondered for a long while, then said, "The man my junior brother and I ran into was well-versed in the Great Vajra Palm, but he never once used the Ice Soul Finger, so we cannot be entirely sure of this lecher's identity."
Su Luo Yan let out half a breath of relief. Her own younger brother had died beneath the Ice Soul Finger; if Sun Yanqi was not White Chrysanthemum, her vengeance was not yet complete. But if there was another White Chrysanthemum who did not use the Ice Soul Finger, then he was not her brother's murderer, and she would not care nearly so much about that White Chrysanthemum's identity and origins.
Slaying the lecher was still something she wanted, but set against avenging her own brother, it dropped a whole tier.
Sun Mingke put away his twin swords and said, "This lecher's palm force was deep and powerful. He must be of Shaolin's true lineage. Follow that thread and the truth is bound to come to light."
A clear voice spoke up: "I have already looked into every Shaolin disciple versed in Vajra palm force and Prajna palm technique, and none of them is suspect. I have also examined the bodies of all the victims. I am nine-tenths certain that the one who struck is not a Shaolin disciple. He may be an heir of the Green Mountain Sect of the Western Regions, and what he used was the Vajra Prajna Palm of that Western Regions lineage."
"Though this palm art claims to fuse the Great Vajra Palm and the Prajna Palm into one, in practice it walks an utterly hard and fierce road, laced with vicious explosive force. Cultivated to its utmost depths, a single palm strike can carry thirteen layers of force; and precisely because its palm force is fierce to the extreme, it loses the essence of the Prajna Palm—emptiness running through it from start to finish—and is often mistaken for Shaolin's true-transmission Great Vajra Palm." With these words, Li Qingge came gliding in, bringing Wang Chong and Yu Zao with her.
Wang Chong had been on tenterhooks the entire way. He dreaded that this brother-and-sister pair, Lu Yaoniang and Sun Mingke, would draw their swords on sight and denounce him as the lecher, leaving him no way to defend himself. He had once boasted that if he really were White Chrysanthemum he would take his own life, but now that the moment was upon him he was, frankly, rather loath to die. And so, for the first time, he carried his long sword at his side, and the instant he stepped into the garden where Su Luo Yan was lodging as a guest, he rested his hand on the hilt, standing as if arrayed for battle.
Sun Mingke was young and hot-blooded, and he had lately, single-handed and with a single sword, gravely wounded the notoriously lecherous White Chrysanthemum; his fighting spirit was at full blaze. The moment Wang Chong entered and fixed his burning gaze on him and his senior sister, hostility smoldering beneath it, he could not contain himself and barked, "What are you looking at?"
Wang Chong jolted into reaction on the spot—his long sword flashed out!
Sun Mingke's hand pressed to his waist, and Nightglow, Striking Waves—the twin swords wove together into a net of blades that came shrouding down over Wang Chong's head.
In the space of a breath, their sword-light crossed and struck a hundred times, long swords clashing with a sound like dragon-song, on and on without pause.
Wang Chong fell back several steps and thought only of fleeing, but Sun Mingke's sword intent rolled like a tide and had already locked him fast. What was more, the young man's internal force had something strange about it: it seemed able to probe the changes in Wang Chong's body, the circulation of his internal force and true qi, judging in advance and seizing the initiative before his opponent moved. In sheer difficulty he was not a whit below Qian Luo Yi.
Sun Mingke, too, was faintly astonished. In his first fight since descending the mountain he had routed the infamous lecher "White Chrysanthemum"; he had never imagined that in his very second clash he would meet such a vicious customer. Ever since he had achieved some small mastery of the Nine Mysteries True Scripture, his internal force and swordsmanship had advanced by leaps and bounds—yet he had not expected this man's swordsmanship to be astonishingly fast, his internal force even deeper than his own. Even though he could predict the man's sword lines, he could only parry hard and clash hard, with no room at all for cleverness.
Wang Chong had a guilty conscience. He clutched the folding fan in his sleeve, ready at any moment to face a group assault, and kept shifting his footing, hunting for a chance to break away.
Su Luo Yan and Lu Yaoniang both knew Li Qingge—the three of them were numbered among the Ten Great Female Masters, and Li Qingge ranked ahead of both—so they hurried to rise and greet her.
Su Luo Yan tilted her head for a glance at the two men locked in their sword duel and could not help a soft laugh. "Young master Wang, what brings you back again? What a pity Sister Chu has already gone on ahead, leading her junior sisters back to Mount Qingcheng."
Wang Chong, locked in fierce combat with Sun Mingke, saw that no one was rushing up to gang up on him and relaxed a little; his wits gradually returned. He thought to himself, "The lecher Sun Mingke wounded knows the Vajra Prajna Palm. I don't know this art at all—I am certainly not the one tied to the Li Miaomiao case." He smiled sheepishly and said, "Constable Li felt I too was under suspicion of being the lecher, and when White Chrysanthemum struck again, she kept me at her side."
Su Luo Yan teased, "If you were the lecher, young master Wang, Sister Chu would be in real danger. Lucky for her she went back to Mount Qingcheng first."
Lu Yaoniang, for her part, felt no worry for her junior brother. Hearing the two of them chat, her curiosity stirred, and she asked, "Sister Su, you know this young gentleman too? Why ever didn't you introduce him to me?"
Li Qingge had meant to introduce Wang Chong, but Su Luo Yan had gotten in ahead of her; and since she did not know Wang Chong well herself, she could only say that he belonged to the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance, with nothing more to be said.
Hearing that Wang Chong had some standing, Lu Yaoniang called out in a soft, lilting voice, "Little junior brother, stop fooling around with young master Wang. Break off at once."
Sun Mingke drew back two steps. He felt genuine admiration for Wang Chong's martial arts and swordsmanship, and a measure of liking had formed besides. Not long had passed since he came down the mountain; Lu Yaoniang and Su Luo Yan were of comparable standing, and neither found it proper to mix freely with a crowd of men, so he had had no chance to meet anyone of the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance. Wang Chong was the first peer of like age and comparable skill he had encountered since his descent. He said, "I was the rash one. I thought Brother Wang bore my sister and me some grudge."
Wang Chong could hardly admit that what he feared was this youngster pointing him out as "White Chrysanthemum," so he said quickly, "A misunderstanding, nothing worth speaking of."
Lu Yaoniang had never heard of the Green Mountain Sect. "What is the origin of the Green Mountain Sect of the Western Regions?" Li Qingge broke into a smile and recounted the sect's history.
Sun Mingke exclaimed in alarm, "Going by what this elder sister says, does that not mean the swordplay the lecher used was not Wudang's Holding-Candle Swordplay at all, but the Green Mountain Sect's Fire-Burning-Eyebrows Swordplay?"
Li Qingge answered, "That is indeed my judgment."
Sun Mingke was not much interested in White Chrysanthemum's identity and origins. Leaning close to Wang Chong, he said, "That White Chrysanthemum your Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance killed may well have been a fake!" Those words were the sort to give offense, but Wang Chong paid them no mind—White Chrysanthemum was not his kill in any case, and he did not covet that fame. He said, smiling, "I discussed the case with Constable Li a long while. The one our alliance's Brother Qin Han killed was versed in icy, yin-cold martial arts, and he was caught in the act of attempting to violate a woman of good family—no doubt whatever that he was a lecher. And the man you and Miss Lu met was caught red-handed assaulting Nun Li Miaomiao; he too must be a lecher. The identity of both lechers is fully certain, so White Chrysanthemum plainly cannot be one man."
Sun Mingke had always believed that the man he wounded must be White Chrysanthemum and that the Chrysanthemum-Killing Alliance had simply made a mistake. But Wang Chong's explanation was so reasonable that he accepted a good part of it. "I always felt one of the two White Chrysanthemums had to be false," he said. "I never imagined there might be two of them."
Li Qingge said, "It may not be merely two. Even in a world with its geniuses, the odds that one man has trained every one of these arts to such depths are vanishingly small. White Chrysanthemum's martial arts are a motley hodgepodge; the possibility that several people committed the crimes is very great. My inference is that there may be at least three or four."
Seeing that Wang Chong showed nothing whatsoever amiss to Lu Yaoniang or Sun Mingke, the last thread of doubt in Li Qingge's heart dissolved as well. She thought to herself, "There must be some reason Li Miaomiao behaved so strangely at the sight of young master Wang, but it should have nothing to do with the White Chrysanthemum case. That matter can wait—close the White Chrysanthemum case first."
...Wang Chong: Surely I'm not one of the three or four White Chrysanthemums...
...Su Luo Yan: Chu Qiuzi isn't here. Now there's a chance...
...Sun Mingke: Wang Chong was staring at us brother and sister the moment he came through the door—he must have taken a fancy to my senior sister...
Chapter 37