Huang Yuhan had used rare medicinal herbs worth a fortune to bring a single rat back to life. Far from minding, he nodded away and asked, "So the poison in its body is cured?"
"The poison's already cured!" Qian Chen nodded as he jotted down the results at his side.
Huang Yuhan cast an eye over the prescription; without a second look at the prices and dosages written there, he swept out a grand hand. "Just write out a prescription, young brother, and I'll have my men take it to be filled."
Qian Chen turned and stared at him in astonishment. "Steward Huang, these medicines don't come cheap. Are you going to save the rats one by one? They're only a few rats..."
"These are no mere rats. This is the face of our Four Seas Hall. What the man who dares provoke the Four Seas Hall means to kill, we must save. Set against the Hall's face... this much is nothing."
Qian Chen said, "But if the poisoner spent a few hundred taels of herbs on his poison and I have to spend tens of thousands to cure it, haven't I lost? Steward Huang — chop this rat up, mix it into their feed, and let those rats eat it... The poison will be cured of its own accord!"
"So that's how it is... Haha, I underestimated you after all, young brother." Huang Yuhan clapped Qian Chen on the shoulder with a great laugh. Seeing Qian Chen worked up to the point that his ears had gone a little red, looking terribly shy, Huang Yuhan was all the more pleased. As though nothing had happened, he asked, "Young brother, the man who laid this poison has designs on our Four Seas Hall. Tell me — is your medicine a match for his?"
Qian Chen lowered his head. "For now I still fall a little short... But give me time, and I can meet every move of his with a counter."
"Haha... With a talent like yours, young brother, catching up to him is only a matter of time."
"Come — walk with me to pay our respects to the honored seniors of the martial world in the main hall."
Qian Chen and Steward Huang had barely reached the main hall when a report came: "Chief Hall Master, the Sha family martial brothers are carrying a sedan chair and asking to see you, the Hall Master."
A deep, resonant, calm and steady voice answered, "Oh? Why not show them in? If the Sha brothers want me to come out and welcome them, then let me tidy myself up, beg everyone's pardon, and go."
"The gall of those little beasts of the Sha family!" someone shouted. "Do they even see where they stand?"
"The Sha family's juniors were never taught their manners. Show some face, all of you, to their family elder, 'Great River Sunderer' Sha Tongtian — don't lower yourselves to quarrel with these juniors."
But the messenger's voice shook: "Reporting to the Hall Master — the four Sha brothers dare not set the sedan chair down. They say someone forced them to deliver a gift to the Hall Master, and if the chair touches the ground, all four of them will die!"
At last Hong Sihai was puzzled. He rose to his feet. "Oh! Then I must see for myself who has sent me such a magnificent gift." With that, Qian Chen saw several martial artists of imposing bearing escort a burly old man, hair and beard wholly white, out of the main hall. The hall and the main gate stood on one straight line, so from the doorway of the hall one could clearly see everything at the gate.
Beneath the memorial archway at the gate, four men in black stood bearing a small black sedan chair on poles.
Their faces were pale, sweat sliding ever and again from their temples; they were soaked through and looked utterly wretched. At the sight of Hong Sihai coming out, a fierce light burst into their eyes, as if they had glimpsed a savior. They truly did not look like men come to make trouble.
"My four worthy nephews—" Hong Sihai had barely begun to salute with cupped fists
when the eldest of the Sha brothers answered in a trembling voice: "Fourth Master, we were forced to bring you this sedan chair. On the road — three days and three nights — we never once set it down. Everyone the Sha family sent to attend your birthday feast has been slaughtered by that man, all but the few of us! We beg you, Fourth Master, look upon this gift, and avenge our Sha family..."
Hong Sihai's face went grave. With the brass tobacco pipe in his hand, he lifted the sedan curtain.
A corner of the heavy curtain rose before Hong Sihai, and everyone saw his face twist into a ferocity it had never worn. Never in his life, not even before the Demonic Cult Master, had he been so shaken. The hand gripping the pipe trembled, and a cry of anguish broke from him: "Second Brother!"
At that heartbroken shout, the third Sha brother, who had long since passed his limit, felt both arms shake, and a corner of the little black sedan caved in at once.
From within rolled out a "man" — called a man only because he no longer had the shape of one. He had become a puddle of mire. Qian Chen had never imagined a human body could go so limp: boneless, as if the skin wrapped nothing but a pool of flowing minced flesh. Someone wielding a fearsome heavy technique had snapped every bone in his body, from crown to sole.
Even the flesh and blood had been pounded to paste — yet the skin was not marked by so much as a hair.
Such a method was horrifying beyond measure — and the horror did not stop there... For the most dreadful thing of all was that the man, limp as mud, was still alive.
The Shaolin divine monk Kongming, who had come out with Hong Sihai, could not bear it. "This... what a sinister, venomous method... The man who did this is mad past all reason."
Beside him, the Straight-Talking Brothers — a pair of unaffiliated drifters of the jianghu — could not help crying out, "Isn't that Bi Tiantong, second of the five sworn brothers of years past — the 'Four Absolutes, One Lord'?"
Qian Chen had chanced to hear that name from the Mist-Riding Lord.
The Four Absolutes, One Lord had been five sworn brothers, famed throughout the jianghu thirty-five years before. Just at heart and kindred in spirit, they had righted wrongs under the lead of their eldest brother Qu Hanjun and sworn themselves bond-brothers. Aside from Qu Hanjun, the One Lord, there were the Blade Absolute Fang Ruomu, the Leg Absolute Bi Tiantong, the Sword Absolute Liu Duxing, and the third-ranked of the five — the Fist Absolute, Hong Sihai.
Thirty years before, the death of their eldest, Qu Hanjun, had bred rifts among them, and they had not met for many years since.
It was precisely after the Four Absolutes, One Lord went their separate ways that Hong Sihai founded the Four Seas Hall and set out on the road to becoming a grandmaster of the martial world. After the five parted, only Second Brother Bi Tiantong still kept any contact with Hong Sihai; the bond between the brothers had been deep and true. Now he had been delivered to Hong's very door as the Twelve Yuan Chen's "meeting gift."
The Straight-Talking Brothers could not help themselves: "'Trampler of a Thousand Mountains' Bi Tiantong — they say his leg art climbed to the very summit, with a might beyond fathoming. One step, and it fell like a mountain, like a crag... and now..." At last someone could bear no more and gave the pair a tug, putting an end to their "straight talk."
Hong Sihai cared nothing for the filth on Bi Tiantong's body and gathered him up with care — yet Bi Tiantong's eyes seemed to hold words unspoken.
Tears brimmed in Hong Sihai's tiger eyes, and he sobbed, "Second Brother... are you asking me to kill you?"
Resolve hardened in Bi Tiantong's eyes. Master Kongming intoned the Buddha's name and bowed his head, unable to watch. With wounds like these, not even an immortal could have saved him; Bi Tiantong had held that last breath until now for one purpose only — vengeance. No one present had the heart to urge him otherwise. In such a state, death was a mercy beside life.
"Senior Hong..." Kang Qiandeng, the Three-Absolute Swordsman, the most brilliant rising star the martial world had seen in recent years, seemed unable to bear it either. He stepped forward and raised his sword, offering to do it in Hong's stead.
But Hong Sihai raised a hand to stop him. He laid his trembling right hand upon Bi Tiantong's brow, and forcing down his vast grief, he said, "Second Brother — I, Hong Sihai, swear to Heaven: I will find the villain who did this to you and carry his head here to lay before you!!!"
Chapter 14