In the cold wind, Qian Chen hunched his head and shoulders like a dispirited quail.
One of Liang Dou's disciples glanced outward before entering the gate, saw the state Qian Chen was in, grinned, and strolled through the main gate without a second thought.
"I am Bai Yuanliang, the Iron Fist of Guanxi, and these are my two young disciples..." A plainly dressed middle-aged man beamed from ear to ear, bowing and scraping to the Four Seas Hall disciple outside the side gate. The two disciples behind him — one wooden, the other dull-witted — looked more like a pair of country farmers than men of the martial world. The disciple at the gate impatiently leafed through the roster in his hand.
"Ah, here you are... In you go!" With that he opened the side gate and let Bai Yuanliang lead his two disciples inside.
Once past the gate, someone naturally came to show them to their quarters...
"Even getting through the side gate takes an identity!" Qian Chen lowered his head and scuffed the ground with his foot. Right now he had no identity at all. Or perhaps... he should disguise himself as the Divine Physician Qi Qiuzi?
"No good, no good. Even though I have the real Qi Qiuzi in hand, an identity so illustrious, watched by so many eyes in everything it does, is no easy thing to fake. And the Dragon Head knows the true identities of all the Yuan Chen. These days, the one most likely to see through my disguise as the Mist-Riding Lord is precisely that unfathomable Dragon Head."
"Yet the Dragon Head also cannot possibly fail to keep secret watch on the real identities of the Twelve Yuan Chen — which means the chances of my Qi Qiuzi disguise being exposed would be all but certain."
Qian Chen deliberated carefully, weighing the pros and cons. These days, if he wanted an identity that could win fame and an invitation into the Four Seas Hall, nothing was faster than going out on the street, picking a quarrel with any well-known jianghu hero, and defeating him with a brilliant show of martial skill — the reputation would spread on its own.
This was the quickest, and the most common, way for an unknown nobody in the martial world with no patron to lift him up.
Every year plenty of venerable elders were thus challenged and thrashed by their juniors. The new generation replacing the old — that is the jianghu!
Unfortunately, Qian Chen had no wish to do it that way... He meant to prepare a cleaner identity, to make his next moves easier to carry out.
"And then there is this... In this raid on the Four Seas Hall, every member of the Twelve Yuan Chen must present a 'meeting gift,' to paint the Twelve Yuan Chen's image in colors of cruelty and terror and lay the groundwork for the scheme to come. The meeting gift the Mist-Riding Lord devised was, naturally, to poison several famous masters to death today — indeed, to poison every cat, dog, ox, and horse in the Four Seas Hall, top to bottom — to set an atmosphere of 'not even chickens and dogs left.'"
"Naturally I cannot do that now. But if the Mist-Riding Lord fails to act, it may rouse the other Yuan Chen's suspicions — and that would work against my impersonation of him later."
Qian Chen's thoughts raced, and he soon worked out a way.
He smiled slyly and thought to himself: "Little friends, forgive me!"
Then he set to work at once, proceeding by the proper method...
Outside the gates of the Four Seas Hall, people came and went, and it remained lively as ever. Yet for all the clamor, there was gravity beneath the bustle. Within the main stronghold the air was stern and imposing, the guard strict; the guests were of high standing and great strength, and idle hangers-on besides were extremely numerous — yet everything proceeded in perfect order, without a flaw to be seen. That was exactly why the Twelve Yuan Chen had to prepare their 'meeting gift': to create chaos and shatter such a state of affairs.
This moment of peace and calm was soon torn open by a scream...
The Four Seas Hall guards were startled, but still moved in good order toward where the scream had come from. Soon the screams of the womenfolk were rising and falling in waves... The disciples charged with the Hall's watch hurried into action, and the guests at the gate turned to look, one after another.
At once they beheld a spectacle none of them had ever seen in their lives...
Countless big gray-furred rats went racing all together, swarming from every corner of the Four Seas Hall, converging into a writhing gray tide that poured out toward the main gate. The sudden onrush of rats threw the crowd into an uproar; many stood gaping. The rats were absurdly fat and large, making one wonder how much of the Four Seas Hall's good food they must have eaten to grow that way.
The disciples at the gate were just about to lash out in earnest, stomping the rats dead on the spot.
At once the red-faced burly man who had just been greeting guests at the door barked them to a halt: "Today is the day of the hall master's great celebration. Do you want corpses strewn all over the entrance to the main stronghold?"
With that, the red-faced man channeled his true qi and called out in a resounding voice: "Hall Master Hong Sihai — a thousand autumns of long life, his might shaking the four quarters! Vermin, flee!"
The resonant hum rang through everything, drowning out the guests' buzzing discussion — a display of formidable inner qi.
Soon someone who knew which way the wind blew fawned: "Just so! The old hall master has spent his whole life doing chivalrous deeds and righting wrongs, striking terror into the hearts of vermin, quelling the Demonic Cult's rebellion and crushing the outlaws' schemes. Today, on his grand birthday, rats fleeing in droves from before the Four Seas Hall's gate is surely an auspicious omen!"
And so the gathered jianghu men and visiting guests all chorused: "Truly an auspicious omen!"
"A horde of rats in flight — does it not match the very sign of those days when the Demonic Cult vanished like smoke and its remnant villains scattered..."
Everyone forced up looks of delight. But though the red-faced man wore a smile on his face, there was no smile whatsoever in his eyes. He merely swept a covert glance across the assembled guests, as if trying to pick out whoever was behind this mischief.
And then something even more absurd happened. The rat swarm surging out the gate — each rat a writhing ball of gray fur — suddenly shed its hair. Countless rat hairs flew through the air as the fat rats shed every last hair all together, baring white skin. White-skinned rats packed tight against one another, one after another — an absurd, laughable sight.
A marvel unheard-of through all the ages left everyone dumbstruck, no one knowing how to change their tune and patch things up.
Nor was it only rats. Flies and bedbugs in the Four Seas Hall were flying out as well; often the moment they cleared the Hall's courtyard they dropped from the air, and dense layers of insect corpses carpeted the ground outside.
"It's poison!" Under every eye, Qian Chen stepped into the rat swarm, picked up a fat rat without the least disgust, examined it carefully, and reached his conclusion: "Someone has applied poison, driving these rats and insects to flee out, and then the poison took hold, making the rats shed their fur and killing the insects outright. This poison has struck only its first time. When it strikes again, these rats will go mad and attack every living thing they can see, until they drop dead of exhaustion!"
At these words, Eldest Master Tang — the most outstanding of the Tang Sect's younger generation — also walked out from within the Four Seas Hall and came among the rats to examine them closely.
He too nodded, conceding Qian Chen's view: "Someone has indeed applied poison."
The red-faced man came before Eldest Master Tang and said in a low voice: "Eldest Master, today is the hall master's grand birthday — I cannot bear the blame if a thing like this happens! I beg you, lend us a hand..."
Eldest Master Tang frowned and shook his head. "This poison I cannot cure."
"If he can poison every rat in the Four Seas Hall and poison the flying insects, he can poison every person here as well. This man may well be the most vicious master of poison in the world today." Eldest Master Tang's face was grim as he went on: "He has poisoned every flying insect here, and now every rat here besides. These rats shedding every last hair — that is him flinging his challenge in your faces."
"He means to leave the Four Seas Hall without a blade of grass growing — not even chickens and dogs left!"
Chapter 12