When Qian Chen stepped forward to pay his respects to Hong Sihai, the man looked somewhat weary — the events just past and his grief over his sworn brother's savage death had plainly drained much of his spirit. And yet even so, Hong Sihai retained a composure like thunder hidden beneath the nine abysses, and it made Qian Chen feel that even dragging his exhausted body, whenever this man struck, the blow would carry an earth-shaking might.
Hong Sihai was every inch the kindly old man; he said gently to Qian Chen, "Young brother, so it was you who broke the poison laid on the rats today?"
Qian Chen answered carefully, "Reporting to you, Senior Hong: in the medical books handed down in my family there happens to be a record of this very poison. It is a strange venom called 'Cut the Grass, Pull Out the Roots,' once used by the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult of old. On its first flare-up, every hair on the body falls out; on the second, specific sounds send the victim into a berserk frenzy, attacking every living thing within sight!"
"The immortal spirit of long life — the Mist-Riding Lord! That is without a doubt the Snake of the Twelve Yuan Chen laying his poison," the Straight-Talking Brothers cut in. "The one flying through the sky today is nine parts out of ten the 'All the World Turns Bright at Dawn' Dawn-Crowing Lord, and the one burrowing under the earth is certainly the 'Shadow-Cutting, Trace-Seeking' Sun-Chasing Lord. The Snake, the Rooster, and the Dog of the Twelve Yuan Chen have all come!"
"If the Twelve Yuan Chen are all moving at once, they are bound to raise monstrous waves in the martial world."
"This time, I fear, the one they mean to deal with is Brother Hong himself!"
"With this many of us gathered here, would we... would we really fear a mere pack of beasts?" An old beggar standing to one side sneered in a sour, mocking tone. He wore eight tattered cloth pouches, and his whole body was wrapped in a patchwork robe gone filthy and rank. "Let them come... none of them will go back. We'll rid the martial world of a great menace!"
One of the beggar's eyes was ruined; one foot was lame. He had only seven fingers in all, and one ear was deaf. He spoke in a halting stammer, for half his tongue was missing as well. To these add a hunchback, the poison sores on his face, and — so it was said — impotence: as a child he had been tortured by evil men and left with these eight maimings. He was also an elder of the highest standing in the Beggar's Sect, and so he was called the Elder of Eight Cripples.
This man's temperament was extreme and prickly, and his tongue was savagely sharp.
The Elder of Eight Cripples eyed Qian Chen with a cold sneer. "The way I see it, there's something wrong with this boy."
"Do you know how deadly the Mist-Riding Lord's poison is? How could a nameless nobody fresh from his capping ceremony undo it so easily? In the whole jianghu, the men with medical arts of that caliber could be counted on the fingers of one hand!" He held up his right hand — a maimed stump with only two fingers left. "Since when does a masterless fellow come strolling out of nowhere?"
"The way I see it, he's either spouting empty boasts out there, or he is the Mist-Riding Lord's disciple, planted among us as a spy!"
For a moment everyone shot sidelong glances and looked on coldly. Qian Chen flushed red and stammered, "You... you're talking nonsense! My medical arts are a family inheritance — my ancestor was once a Divine Physician of his generation. All of it comes from my forebear's own notes. Because the family later turned from medicine to letters, it was passed down as a legacy. I have no heart for an official career, so I take my delight in studying my ancestor's medical books!"
"I've never heard of any Divine Physician surnamed Qian!" the crippled beggar said disdainfully.
"That is because my ancestor concealed his name..."
At that moment the divine monk Kongming suddenly spoke. "Would your ancestor be the Dust-Forsaking Hermit?"
Qian Chen's mouth hung open, and he said blankly, "Master, how do you know the other name of my ancestor, the Medicine King?"
The divine monk Kongming sighed. "If Benefactor Qian is truly of the Medicine King's line, then his unraveling the Mist-Riding Lord's strange poison is entirely within reason. According to the secret records of this temple, the Medicine King, the Dust-Forsaking Hermit, once had a tangled history with the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult. In those years the Cult produced a prodigy of a leader, who refined a strange divine weapon called the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons. Once it was brought to bear, it was as if five peerless great grandmasters of the poison path had struck at once."
"Thanks to him the Five Poisons Cult flourished as never before, and its conduct grew ever more secretive and sinister — at the slightest pretext it would poison a man's whole family and exterminate his entire household. At that time the Dust-Forsaking Hermit was a fledgling, a genius of the medical path of his generation. Young and hot-blooded, he saved an expert whom the Five Poisons Cult had poisoned — and so enraged the Cult that it massacred his entire family."
"Crushed by grief, the Dust-Forsaking Hermit took that expert as his master and studied the medical arts without rest, until twenty years later, when the Five Poisons Cult had drawn down the hatred of the jianghu and made an enemy of the whole world, he came out of seclusion, broke the Cult leader's Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Formation, and avenged his family's great wrong. But they say that once his debts of kindness and vengeance were settled, his heart had long since gone cold, and he left the jianghu for good."
"Because he held himself to blame for his whole family's deaths, the Dust-Forsaking Hermit suffered bitterly, and never again used his original name."
"That past is long gone now; very few alive know of it!"
Qian Chen's body jolted. He clenched his fists, eyes brimming with tears, the picture of one deeply wronged.
"Even so, that doesn't rule out his being the Mist-Riding Lord's disciple. That snake's origins are a mystery — perhaps he is a descendant of that very Dust-Forsaking Hermit gone down a crooked path, or else one of the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult trading on the name of their own great enemy." The Beggar's Sect's Elder of Eight Cripples went on carping.
"This young brother's way of curing the poison is no transmission of the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult," the divine monk Kongming explained patiently. "In both administering and curing its poisons, the Cult works mostly through living creatures. I have examined this young brother's antidote prescription, and it bears no trace of such methods. Clearly he is no disciple of the Five Poisons Cult; this is learning of the way of medicine at its purest. And as far as I know, the Mist-Riding Lord is indeed a disciple of the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult."
"For one of this young brother's years to break the poison of 'Cut the Grass, Pull Out the Roots,' the likeliest explanation is that he received the Dust-Forsaking Hermit's transmission."
What Qian Chen knew of the Medicine King, the Dust-Forsaking Hermit, he had of course learned from Qi Qiuzi, the orthodox successor of the Azure Phosphor Five Poisons Cult.
And the antidote method, so utterly unlike the Five Poisons Cult's style, really was Qian Chen's own creation. Poison arts were the sort of thing he could master just by looking through Qi Qiuzi's collected books. Devising a matching antidote was, for him, a trifling matter.
Hong Sihai nodded. "With the Medicine King's successor aiding us, our chances of defeating the Twelve Yuan Chen have grown by another measure."
"Against sneaking wretches like the Twelve Yuan Chen, the hardest thing to guard against is poison. With you young brother's help, the Four Seas Hall is a tiger given wings. You have lifted from my heart a worry that gnawed at it..."
"This junior's talents are shallow and his learning meager..."
Just as Qian Chen was about to offer a few polite phrases, Huang Yuhan suddenly came back. "Old Hall Master — we've found traces of an intruder." Hong Sihai rose to his feet. "The Twelve Yuan Chen are treacherous and cunning. Comb the sectors carefully."
Huang Yuhan reported back, "Your subordinate has locked down his movements. He must be between the Bing and Ding defense sectors; I am already arranging my men to search them. The Dog Squad disciples at the fourth post of Gui Sector were killed to the last man — not one managed to send a signal. Only a good incense stick's time later, when dispatch noticed something wrong and sent an action squad to investigate, was it discovered."
"Your subordinate has already posted masters in a ring around the spot, and the rest of the men are proceeding by regulation. I have come to ask the Hall Master to send several more masters to help, lest too many of the Hall's disciples be killed or wounded and a gap open in our defense line."
Chapter 16