「Practicing with my magical implements makes a great deal of noise and commotion. If anyone near this county town caught sight of me, there would likely be trouble. That Zuyin Mountain I went to yesterday is not far, and few people set foot there—a fitting place. While I am at it, I can pay a visit to that Old Fox family and ask about the lie of the land hereabouts: what cultivation sects there are, and which cultivators of real attainment come and go.」
「Having been shut away inside Louguan Dao for millions of years, I am utterly in the dark about this world. Better to make a friend or two, and have some footing in this life.」
「Of course, that will have to wait until I have finished my first mission, when I find the chance.」
Qian Chen planned before he moved; once his mind was made up he set out at once. He walked out of the desolate little courtyard and headed straight southeast toward Zuyin Mountain.
On his way out, Qian Chen noticed that the cloth shop's assistant from the day before was hiding in the shadows, spying on him. He paid him no mind. He simply leaped, and vanished where he stood; the young assistant caught only a black blur streaking past like a galloping horse, and stood frozen in fright. It was a long while before he came to his senses, and then he said in a shaking voice, 「He really is no ordinary man. I had better hurry back and report to the shopkeeper.」
Today he was faster than yesterday. In only a little under an hour Qian Chen had followed the familiar route to the back slope of Zuyin Mountain.
He did not go to see the Old Fox family either. Qian Chen always put proper business first: however many interruptions came along the way, if they could be set aside, he would finish what he had set out to do before considering anything else. Today he had come to get familiar with his implements; even if the Old Fox had a houseful of ravishing daughters, every one of them willing to offer herself to his bed, it had nothing to do with the business at hand.
Qian Chen first activated the Dragon Sparrow Ring. The jade ring on his right wrist spun and swelled to the size of a washbasin, then slipped free of his hand; at a downward point of his finger it became a five-colored halo and fell. In a single pass it tore a great tree several zhang tall up by the roots and made it vanish.
A pit several zhang deep was left behind.
Steadying his breath a little, Qian Chen circulated his qi for a quarter of an hour before he recovered. 「Driving a magical implement with inner force is still hard going,」 he thought. 「This sort of thing is not for a Foundation Building cultivator to play with. In the Foundation Building stage a man ought to keep his qi calm and smooth and get through it honestly and diligently. Only once he senses the primordial qi of heaven and earth, joins inner qi to outer qi, and refines a mouthful of true qi, should he come out to strut about.」
「But the Reincarnation Lands, I fear, will not give me that time.」
「This Dragon Sparrow Ring has enormous force—tearing a tree ten zhang tall out of the ground alive. What divine strength. It must have the strength of an excavator... Ai! Put that way, it does not seem like so much after all!」
Qian Chen was only joking. Even an ordinary excavator has close to two hundred horsepower—the pulling force of two hundred horses together. How many strongmen were there in his past life who could hold back one maddened draft horse? And the Dragon Sparrow Ring captured and drew things in only in an instant, its burst of force extremely violent: two hundred horses yanking at a man in a single instant, and few men could withstand it.
Next Qian Chen enlarged and shrank the ring: sometimes hiding it as an unremarkable little circlet and steering it into a sudden sneak attack; sometimes pouring in all his strength and, with great fanfare, capturing rocks and boulders.
In the end he worked out that the ring's capturing force depended on the size of the ring. Shrunk to its smallest, the size of a ring for the index finger, it could at most capture a stone the size of a head—roughly the strength of one grown man. With its power fully open and swollen to the size of a water vat, it could barely pull up a boulder half sunk in the earth, weighing some twenty-eight tons.
That test nearly made Qian Chen pass out from exhaustion; he regulated his breath for a long while before his breathing settled back into normal internal breath.
The Dragon Sparrow Ring shrank to the size of a bracelet and hung floating above Qian Chen's hand.
「This size is best for a sneak attack. I suppress its spiritual light until it is as hidden as can be, release the Dragon Sparrow Ring in secret, and steer it around behind someone's head—and I ought to be able to slip it over his skull and carry it off. Cultivators' bodies are only somewhat tougher than ordinary people's; they are not as hardy as martial artists trained in external conditioning. With a sneak attack like this, I could certainly take a man's head without a sound.」
「Who says the Dragon Sparrow Ring can only capture and draw things in? In my hands it is about the same as a flying guillotine,」 Qian Chen joked.
Of course he knew that was only a joke. A cultivator at the Spell Comprehension realm could master any number of protective spells, and unless the Dragon Sparrow Ring broke those spells it would never touch the man's body. As for those who had protective implements, they could raise them and shield themselves without a single gap. If, say, the Heavenly Net Umbrella hung above Qian Chen's head, there would be no getting near him without first using the Dragon Sparrow Ring to carry the umbrella away.
A flying sword like the Black Gold Baleful Hook, however, could use sword technique to break through a protective precious light in an instant and take an enemy's life in the space of a breath.
One seizes with brute force; the other stabs when you least expect it. Which does more killing needs no asking.
A sneak attack with the Dragon Sparrow Ring like that would only bully those below the Spell Comprehension realm, or poor wandering cultivators who did not even own a protective implement.
Qian Chen then tested various other aspects of the ring. He flicked out the jade ring with a toss of his hand, and it knocked a head-sized chunk from the boulder he had pulled up earlier. He sighed and put it away—it really was no weapon of slaughter. Then he brought out the Seven Baleful Banner. Qian Chen waved the black banner, and at once sand and stones flew, baleful qi rolled, and a column of black qi rose from the banner like a giant python, coiling three times around that boulder.
A ceaseless hiss and rustle sounded. When Qian Chen put the Seven Baleful Banner away and the boulder showed again, it was a full half smaller, with scattered stone powder all around it, fine as dust.
Qian Chen's breathing was steadier even than when he had used the Dragon Sparrow Ring.
「Now this is a weapon of slaughter!」 Qian Chen said with something of a sigh. Leaving aside the White Bone Relic, this implement was probably the mightiest in his hands. Of course, there was almost no room left to raise it any further!
Once Qian Chen reached the Spell Comprehension realm, a single exchange would let him carry off this black banner with the Dragon Sparrow Ring.
Next he tested the protective implement. Qian Chen raised the Heavenly Net Umbrella and used the Seven Baleful Banner to wear away the precious light hanging down from it; in no more than a dozen breaths Qian Chen was spent. 「If the me holding the banner went after the me shielded by the umbrella,」 he thought, 「in less than a quarter of an hour the umbrella's spiritual light would still be unbroken, but I would certainly have run out of inner force—and been killed with ease.」
「In this art of dueling, seizing the moment—who strikes first and who answers—matters a great deal too!」
Qian Chen then found a few wild boars, spotted deer, and other beasts in the mountain and tested the ring's power to capture living things and the banner's subtle use in stirring the seven emotions. Once the Dragon Sparrow Ring drew a living creature in, the restriction space inside instantly suppressed it, leaving it not a scrap of strength to resist or move. That is, anyone taken by the ring would never do what the monkey did when he was sucked into the spirit flask or gourd and could still pluck a life-saving hair from his body.
Instead, as with Zhen Yuan Daxian's trick of stowing heaven and earth in a sleeve, the victim could not even keep his wits clear.
When Qian Chen tested the Seven Baleful Banner, he stirred the seven emotions and clouded the minds of the little deer and the boar, and saw the two small beasts nearly die of fright. He hurriedly put his implement away, soothed the two animals with an apology, gave them two Qi-Boosting Pills, and let them go.
「There is no way to test this seven-emotion yin demon... unless I use a living person... or should I try it on myself?」 Qian Chen's urge to court death stirred. On a moment's thought he took out the Seven Baleful Banner and stirred a touch of the seven emotions. The result... Qian Chen's face stayed unmoved, and he shook his head. 「Not the slightest reaction!」
He gradually increased the force; he began to grow a little restless, and at its strongest it seemed about to stir up all sorts of memories in him—but as soon as Qian Chen made the slightest effort to gather his mind, that restlessness melted away like ice and snow.
「Useless!」 Qian Chen sneered. 「It cannot even make me remember Sister Jingkong!」
The Seven Baleful Banner had no spirit sense of its own, or it would surely have felt deeply aggrieved to hear that... Qian Chen knew it was probably the Taishang Dao Dust Pearl at work: his true self's spirit sense was still anchored in the Taishang Dao Dust Pearl. Or rather, the pearl was his real body, and this flesh was merely a second spirit incarnation he had seized.
Of course, if he lost this body, he would fall back into the awkward state of stirring a single thought every sixty years.
Worse than death...
Ask yourself: whose heterodox implement could bewilder a spirit treasure passed down by the Taishang Dao Ancestor himself? If it were really that formidable, why had it not applied to be a supreme treasure of the demonic path?
Once Qian Chen had practiced with his implements until they were familiar, he found a clean spot, took a meditation mat from his Qiankun bag, released the Heavenly Net Umbrella to shield himself, and sat in meditation for four hours. When the sky was turning dark, he made to rise.
Before leaving, Qian Chen looked toward the Fox Grave and thought, 「Should I drop in on the fox den as a guest? I have never been inside a fox den.」
But on reflection: 「Never mind, it is getting late. If I turn up at his door, the Old Fox will insist on keeping me for a meal, and I do not want to eat inside a grave mound. That would be the second way of showing disrespect to the tomb's owners, after dancing on the grave. I will come visiting some other day when I have the time!」
He was just looking for a path off Zuyin Mountain when his spiritual sense stirred and he turned his head, sensing something. A moment later a pillar of black qi rose from the direction of the fox grave, shooting several zhang into the sky. Qian Chen sighed inwardly. 「When I practice my spells I have to keep quiet and dare not make too much noise. This black qi is steeped in evil, and whoever it belongs to does not look like a good man—yet he dares be this blatant.」
Qian Chen was not a cold-hearted man. The Old Fox family were neither kin nor friends, but they were foxes he knew.
Besides, the Old Fox family scraped by on the grave mountain, and apart from squatting in some unlucky noble's ancestral tomb they had no record of wrongdoing. This black qi was grim with evil. Qian Chen did not discriminate against heterodox implements—there were several in his own treasure pouch! But mostly such things belonged to people who were not good... Faced with a situation like this, he had to look into it.
And if he really did meet a villain or heretic cultivator who shattered his worldview, well—he had been worrying that he had no one to test the true might of his implements on.
The missions of the Reincarnation Lands, he supposed, were not kindly errands like helping an old lady across the road; they would mean risking his life. Cultivation was not a way of avoiding things. Qian Chen cultivated so that he might live free and easy, and pay back both kindness and grudges as he pleased. So he raised the Heavenly Net Umbrella over his head, pinched out a qi-hiding talisman, and crept quietly toward the Fox Grave...
Before he arrived, Qian Chen heard a gloomy voice say, 「You foxes actually have spirit pills of this quality—rare indeed. When this poor Daoist finds the right moment to take them, I may well break through the barrier that has held me, and my cultivation attainment will surge. A happy occasion like this naturally calls for blood sacrifice—the blood of a few mangy foxes, offered to my Hundred Ghosts Baleful Tiger Banner!」
The Old Fox said bitterly, 「You promised me that if I handed over the treasure you would let my family go... to break your word like this... I will fight you to the death!」
「A joke. I was always going to use you for my spell work... Kill you, and your things naturally become mine. What is it to trade my own property for a few fox lives? Fox souls are among the easiest living souls to refine into yin ghosts, and fox ghosts are held in check by the baleful tiger that is my banner's master soul. Let the fox borrow the tiger's might—with a few fox ghosts as my henchmen, my precious banner ought to gain a measure of power.」
「I need a full hundred foxes. I have searched a long time, and even counting your family I still do not have enough!」
Hearing that the Old Fox still had some strength in his voice, Qian Chen did not act rashly. He hid behind a cypress tree not far from the grave mound and peered out. He saw an ascetic monk dressed half as a monk and half as a layman, holding a demonic banner. The banner's shaft was a crooked spine, its top a tiger's skull, and the banner cloth that hung from it bore tiger stripes as well.
The ascetic shook out the long banner, and from its cloth came many foxes wrapped in black qi, with pointed snouts and bared fangs, green ghostfire burning all over their bodies; shrouded in the black qi, in groups of three and five, they darted into the several openings of the Fox Grave.
Chapter 5