Chapter 54: The Qimen Base

Zhou Fei felt like she could probably lie here sleeping till the end of time. She wished she could just sink right down into the cool earth forever, to spare her the tedium of getting up and dying again a second time round.

Unfortunately, the past few years of sleeping in the wild had trained her to be much too alert. Even if her consciousness were floating around in the ether, the noises of unfamiliar surroundings could still startle her awake. Regaining just the smallest sliver of consciousness, Zhou Fei instinctively tried to move in her bleary state, but even this gentle motion hurt so much that she nearly blacked out again. She intended to continue right on into sweet oblivion, but alas, someone set something down hard on the ground beside her, making a tremendous crash that instantly dragged her back to wakefulness.

Zhou Fei gave a sudden start as her brain began to creak to life again, and all of it came rushing back to her at once, where she was and what had happened. Her hand shot towards the sabre at her waist, but found nothing there. Her eyes flew open to behold a young girl's grimy face.

The girl visibly jumped, her eyes widening. In a thick accent that Zhou Fei couldn't quite identify, she yelled: "She's up!"

A large crowd of 'beggars' – young and old, male and female – immediately came rushing over to gather round Zhou Fei, peering at her with concern.

"Oh my!"

"She's awake! She's awake!"

Only now did Zhou Fei realise that they seemed to be underground, in a wide expanse of space that had been lit up by torches. No wonder the echoes of their footsteps had been making such a din. The girl before her scooped a bowl of something thick and viscous from the large pot on the ground, and approached Zhou Fei: "This pot is too heavy – I nearly spilled this just now. Come on, have a little, it's got everything inside, medicine and water and all."

Zhou Fei tried to move her arms, but found to her horror that her body didn't seem to be listening to her.

"Ah yes, the Snake Maide-…ahem, I mean the Snake…Hero used a special kind of balm on your injuries. He said that it's highly effective, although it will make your wounds feel a little numb at first, and your movements a little stiff. Come, let me feed you." This girl was talking a mile a minute, chattering on as she raised that chipped bowl to Zhou Fei's lips in a familiar manner. "As for me, my nickname is Chungu,[1] that's what I've always been called, and I never had no one to give me a proper name. Feel free to ask me for any help you might need – hey hey, all of you, stop crowding her. Xiaohu, go tell the Snake Hero and the rest that she's up."

With a quick nod, the teenage boy standing beside her sprinted away at once.

While Chungu talked incessantly, it was clear that she was used to waiting on others. She briskly and efficiently fed Zhou Fei the entire bowl of sludge-like mush, managing to get every drop down Zhou Fei's throat without choking her. Then humming a cheerful tune, she pulled a pristine silk handkerchief from her pocket. The sight of that incongruously clean square of cloth made Zhou Fei arch a quizzical brow.

"Ah, this," Chungu seemed to have understood the reason for her confusion, as she explained with a smile: "Hero Li helped us to find it in here. This place is great, it has cups and bowls and plates and all manner of useful things. There's even a big chest full of good-quality cloth, and heaps of dry food and grain, which aren't too fresh anymore, but can still be eaten after a good rinsing and cooking through. It seems like people used to stay here! Here, let me wipe your brow."

Unaccustomed to being fussed over like this, Zhou Fei uneasily averted her head and protested: "Miss, you really don't have to…"

"Ah, this is nothing," chuckled Chungu. "If not for all of you, my brother and I would be dead by now. We were fleeing from the North, and thought that we were about to starve to death, when a few good-hearted folks took us in and brought us all the way here."

Zhou Fei asked: "Were those people priests, by any chance?"

"No." Chungu's hands were busy scooping yet another bowl of porridge for Zhou Fei. She gently blew on it and brought it to Zhou Fei's lips, saying: "But they knew some priests from before. One of them said that many years ago, a travelling priest came knocking on his door for a cup of water to drink. His family was fairly pious, and seeing that it was a priest, invited the man in for a meal. Before the priest left, he gave them a map and told them that if their lives were ever in danger, they could follow the directions on it to find a place of refuge. While they didn't think much of it at the time, when the war started up they recalled the priest's parting words. They quickly gathered their neighbours and friends, and followed the map to this place. When they reached this valley, they discovered that they weren't alone – the various groups of people that found their way here somehow had all provided shelter for priests in the past, who had all told them the same thing."

Zhou Fei pondered this carefully – this must mean that the large valley above the Qimen Sect's secret base had been established many years ago. As the Qimen priests foresaw future turmoil, they had very early on revealed its location to those peasants in the border regions who had showed them some measure of kindness.

"I'd thought that we were finally safe," continued Chungu with a sigh. "But who could have known that it was not to be – those beastly men barged in here one day. At first, they appeared quite civil, even claiming to have our best interests at heart. All of us are mere peasant folk, and dare not go against the authorities, so of course we just did whatever we were told. But they got more and more horrible, starting to treat us like animals. In the end they locked the men up together, while dragging the women away to the encampment at the western side of the valley, intending to use us for their own amusement."

Zhou Fei's brows drew together in a slight frown.

"But as luck would have it, there was a Snake Maide-…oh no, I mean a Snake Hero with us," said Chungu as she stuck out her tongue impishly. "Whenever those lecherous bastards came anywhere near the northwest encampment, they'd get bitten by snakes, and none of the usual snake repellents were any good. Ha! They had no idea what was up, and even began to suspect evil spirits were at work."

A voice interjected: "I had no choice but to dress as a woman. Sorry for the rude surprise."

Zhou Fei turned her head to see Ying Hecong walking towards them. The ridiculous braids that his long hair had been pinned up in were no more. While he had yet to change his clothes, as long as he wasn't trying to conceal his voice and masculine gait anymore, you could more or less tell that this person was in fact a fairly handsome young man.

"Don't exert your chi within the next hour or so. You have a solid foundation of internal strength – while you have sustained multiple internal injuries, for some reason your chi manages to heal these on its own. It shouldn't take much for you to recover." Then looking Zhou Fei over thoughtfully, he delivered a heartfelt compliment: "My, you really can take a beating, Miss Zhou."

Zhou Fei: "…"

After all these years, Doctor Poison's uncanny ability to make her feel like punching him in the face with his words was as remarkable as ever.

Zhou Fei asked: "How did you end up like this?"

"I sought help from the Wayfarers' Union to find the Qimen Sect's secret base, but word of this was leaked somehow, and those men helping me were all murdered. The person who killed them was most likely an assassin, and as he stubbornly assumed that I knew something about the base's location, started to come after me. Fortunately, my snakes alerted me to his presence time and again. But he finally had me trapped in a roadside inn, just when I had run out of my poisons with no time to concoct more. I was left with no choice but to disguise myself amongst a group of women who had just escaped from human traffickers, and depart the inn together with them. Imagine my surprise when they ended up leading me to this valley."

Where those Northern troops had been blind enough to actually mistake him for a fair young maiden.

The only assassin that Zhou Fei knew of who was obsessed with the Qimen Sect's secret base was the recently-deceased Feng Wuyan. Mulling over this, she decided that it did make sense – the high and mighty 'Black Judge' Feng Wuyan would certainly not think much of a bunch of downtrodden refugees. How could he ever have conceived that the key to the secret sanctum of his dreams lay in their hands? And just like that, he'd missed his one chance to find what he so dearly sought. When he'd lost Ying Hecong's trail, Feng Wuyan must have decided to explore other leads, and while doing so chanced upon the various sects' siege of Yin Pei at the Liu Manor. He must have decided to join in to see if he could extract any benefits for himself, but alas, ended up sacrificing his own life instead.

Zhou Fei asked curiously: "But aren't you from the Great Medicine Valley? Why would you be trying to find the Qimen Sect's secret base too?"

"Because the great master Lu Run's tomb in the Great Medicine Valley was merely an empty cenotaph," said Ying Hecong. "He seemed to have lost his marbles in his later years, as he spent his days concocting pills and trying them on himself till his mind became muddled, so much so that he even went missing one day. His peers in the Great Medicine Valley searched the central plains for him in vain. Only several years later did they receive a letter from him, appointing his successor as Chief of the Valley, and saying that after being enlightened by a deity, he had found a secret place unknown to mankind, and would prepare to ascend to the heavens from there…all of it was just completely ridiculous. These things were obviously too humiliating to be known by others, so our sect had always kept this a secret."

Zhou Fei said: "And you suspected that this 'secret place unknown to mankind' was the Qimen Sect's secret base."

"It was because of the Nirvana Parasite," said Ying Hecong. "While perusing those tomes from the Great Medicine Valley which you sent me, I chanced upon one which recorded the weird and wonderful things that the great master Lu Run encountered in his lifetime. As it reads like a bunch of folk tales, perhaps you didn't study it closely – it has a chapter on 'Spirits and Demons', which makes mention of the 'Nirvana Cult' and the Nirvana Parasite. There are some additional lines at the end of that section, written in very small words by the great master Lu Run himself, which says somewhat vaguely that out of sheer curiosity, he'd decided to keep this scourge alive at first, and subsequently, compelled by his own personal demons, he'd actually started to nurture it, but now he feared that it was likely to be a bane, and so on and so forth…when I read that, I started to suspect that the man who calls himself the 'Qing Hui Spiritual Master' might very well have visited the place where the great master Lu Run 'ascended to the heavens'."

Zhou Fei listened to this with rapt attention – she hadn't expected such an intriguing story.

Ying Hecong continued: "So I began to look into the life of this 'Qing Hui Spiritual Master', and discovered that before he obtained the Nirvana Parasite, he was an insignificant nobody that no one had ever heard of before. It took me a great deal of digging around to uncover his true identity – he was in fact a descendant of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers, which I'm sure you know as well, so there's no need for me to elaborate further on that. After spending much time on my investigations at the foot of the Heng Mountains, I finally managed to pick up a thing or two: apparently he'd been seriously injured a few years back, and was rescued by several priests. The only famous Taoist sect not far from there was the Qimen Sect's temple at the Zhuyin Valley; and the first person who died at the hands of the Qing Hui Spiritual Master, the 'White Tiger Lord' Feng Feihua, was known to have roamed the same area after leaving the Mountain of the Living Dead. And since the Qimen Sect specializes in complex tactical formations and mazes, wouldn't their base seem exactly like a 'secret place unknown to mankind', as the great master Lu Run described? So with all of these clues pointing towards the same conclusion, I deduced that the final resting place of the great master Lu Run must have been the Qimen Sect's secret base."

Zhou Fei was a little stunned at his very impassively delivered account. Staring at him in wonder, she asked: "You…did you arrive at this all by yourself?"

Ying Hecong gave her a strange look: "I'm the only one left from the Great Medicine Valley – who else could there be?"

Apart from developing somewhat of a knack for rearing snakes, he didn't think he'd accomplished anything great in his lifetime, really. While he'd learnt little of the Great Medicine Valley's vast repository of medical knowledge, by some cruel stroke of fate he'd ended up being its sole survivor. This crushing fact compelled him to swallow all of his pain and regrets, and desperately try to trace what little still remained of his annihilated sect, determined to chase down even the tiniest of leads. Zhou Fei could not help but feel humbled by this. All this while, she'd thought that she had already gone to the most foolish of lengths for that Xie fellow. She hadn't expected there to be another greater than she – more greatly foolish, that is.

Ying Hecong tossed over a crutch that had been whittled down from a wooden stick and said: "This place is a veritable maze, chock full of impossible traps and formations. Your cousin and the rest went wandering around just now and have gotten themselves stuck somewhere – don't you want to go and have a look?"

Gritting her teeth, Zhou Fei used that wooden crutch to prop herself painfully up. She felt very much like a doddering old lady, tottering along on her walking stick, as unsteady as a trembling leaf in the wind. Chungu immediately went up to Zhou Fei to offer a supporting arm, but Ying Hecong held his hand out to stop her.

With a complete lack of sympathy, Ying Hecong said indifferently: "This girl consorts with danger all the time – she's tough enough. There's no need to help her."

Zhou Fei's multiple wounds and that numbing balm which he'd applied on them were making her sweat buckets with the exertion of walking. She was just barely keeping it together. This unfeeling assessment from her 'doctor' made her seethe with rage. If she could spare any energy, she would surely use it to stab him.

Zhou Fei said through clenched teeth: "Snake guy, you'd better watch it."

Ying Hecong arched a brow at Chungu: "See, what did I tell you? Proves my point."

Chungu: "…"

And then he marched off briskly, at a speed that was entirely inconsiderate of the wounded.

Zhou Fei felt a vein start to twitch at her temple. All of the awe and slight sympathy that she'd felt for him just now were crushed and trampled underfoot – this Ying fellow was as much of an annoying asshole as he'd always been!

Ying Hecong was already several metres away from them in mere seconds. Thanks to those few mouthfuls of porridge and medicine from Chungu, Zhou Fei had regained a little bit of strength at least. She shuffled slowly forward while leaning on her crutch, following the small wooden stakes on the ground that marked out the path. She observed that the rock walls and floors in this vast underground space were covered in a profusion of bagua diagrams, so many and so dense that they made her head start to spin. Thankfully, Li Sheng and the rest had explored the surrounding area while she was still unconscious and planted those wooden stakes in the ground to guide them.

Zhou Fei had to stop to catch her breath for a good long while after each step, which gave her sufficient pause to survey this 'secret place unknown to mankind'. On one of these breaks, amidst this dizzying array of bagua diagrams she spied the contents of the Tao Te Ching in its entirety, thousands of words carved into the stone wall beside her. Compelled to stop here and take a closer look, Zhou Fei saw that the words of this Tao Te Ching looked exactly like those in the paper copy which Chong Xiaozi had given her: while the handwriting seemed incredibly slovenly at first glance, the strokes and dots of the characters so messily splayed out or running into each other that the words were almost unrecognisable, they contained the internal strength technique that had saved her life, and which was still nameless to her.

On further inspection, she discovered that the title of this text, which had been carved at the foot of this wall of words, was not actually the 'Tao Te Ching' at all, but rather, the 'Qiwu Formula'.

Realisation dawning on her, Zhou Fei thought to herself: So the technique I've been practicing all these years has a name.

Recalling how, in that small neglected courtyard in Yueyang City, she'd been tormented beyond her limits by that madwoman Duan Jiuniang, she continued reading on with just a touch of nostalgia. Then she suddenly paused with an exclamation of surprise – while the first half of the Qiwu Formula carved into the wall was identical to the copy of the Tao Te Ching that Chong Xiaozi had given her, the second half began to diverge from it.

Somebody had used his finger to forcefully smudge some of the words in the second half, and he seemed to have done so only to those words that guided the movement of chi through one's meridians. Furthermore, he'd smudged these without replacing them with other strokes or dots, such that many words in the second half were missing strokes completely, as if they had been written by someone as illiterate as Yang Jin!

And between each of these words, there were multiple scratches on the rock left by a sharp blade, as if somebody had vented his frustrations on this wall in a rage. Yet on second glance, Zhou Fei found that something seemed to jump out at her from these frenzied marks. A murderously hostile aura was emanating from it.

Taken aback by this, Zhou Fei took a subconscious step back, and nearly tripped over her feet.

Just then, she heard someone give an exultant shout from not too far away: "We're out! I solved it!"

Firmly kneading her temples, Zhou Fei forcibly tore her gaze away from this wall that seemed to pull one in with its row upon row of peculiar words, to see Li Sheng and the others come running towards her along the path marked out with short wooden stakes.

With one arm in a sling, Li Sheng exuberantly waved the other at her: "Fei! Wow, you've regained consciousness so fast! Do you know what a scare you gave me! Come here quick and see what we've found!"

Arching a brow, Zhou Fei saw that the hand he was waving excitedly around held a bunch of weathered scabbards – all of which looked exactly like the scabbard of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers that Yin Pei had!

"Come and look at this." Li Sheng flung his unwieldy load of scabbards onto the ground. "There are many more of these inside there – eh, this place really is quite something, you could unwittingly trigger a trap just by leaning on any old wall. Even someone like me who knows a little of the Qimen Sect's formations would be stuck for a fairly long time. I'd better tell the rest not to go wandering around in here."

Zhou Fei couldn't quite lean on her leg which had been pierced by an arrow, so she was relying on the crutch and her uninjured leg to hobble around. Fearing that she might not be able to get up again if she were to squat down, she rested both hands on the wooden crutch and bent over slightly to take a closer look.

Yang Jin and Ying Hecong had both drawn closer as well. Still pained by the demise of his Lone Goose Sabre, Yang Jin had gone hunting around for a temporary substitute in here. Yet instead of finding a sword, all he'd come across was heaps and heaps of their empty scabbards. He growled with great disappointment: "What kind of secret base is this? It seems more like a vault to store odds and ends instead."

Li Sheng flipped those scabbards over till they were all facing up, and lined them up in a row: "Does anything strike you as strange?"

Zhou Fei's brows furrowed together in concentration. Each of these scabbards bore that distinctive water ripple diagram, at the exact same spot, and looked completely identical.

"It is said that the Sword of Mountains and Rivers was the work of that famed master craftsman from Penglai, by the name of Chen," said Li Sheng. "But the sword itself was lost ages ago, although its scabbard remained intact."

"The 'Sword of Mountains and Rivers' doesn't in fact refer to an actual sword, but to the great hero Yin Wenlan himself," corrected Zhou Fei. A little curious as to why there were heaps of the same scabbards in here, she shuffled slowly in the direction that Li Sheng had come from, with the help of the crutch and her uninjured leg.

Li Sheng sighed: "Come over here, I'll carry you on my back."

Zhou Fei waved him away as she said: "Throughout his life, Hero Yin must have changed swords numerous times, and these were all quite ordinary weapons which weren't even worth naming. While Madame Cirrus did ask Master Chen to forge a magnificent sword for Hero Yin – 'Snow Falling Heavily' – she never gave it to him."

Ying Hecong said in disbelief: "How can that be?"

Zhou Fei said: "Master Chen is a legendary master of his craft. Some of the weapons he forged were specially commissioned, such as the Mountain of Lost Springs and Snow Falling Heavily, all of which are worthy of being passed down through the generations. However, he was also a little less exacting about some of his other creations. These didn't need much thought to be put into them, and had neither name nor distinctive style. A whole bunch of these could be made from a batch of middling iron, fitted with an equally middling bunch of wooden scabbards, and then sold in any old village market. Master Chen once told me that the sword which Hero Yin bought from him was just such a middling sword. Madame Cirrus probably came to understand this too in the end – given the heights that Hero Yin's skills had reached, whatever he wielded, even a mere scrap of iron, would become the 'Sword of Mountains and Rivers'. It was the man himself that was great, not the weapon he wielded, and so deliberately gifting him with a great sword would almost be an insult…but this is pure speculation on my part, and I can't be sure if it's true."

As she spoke, they had reached the place where Li Sheng and the rest had been trapped in just now. There was a little door set in the rock wall here, which was ajar. Behind it stretched a seemingly endless cavern.

"Follow closely behind me. This place has three layers of interlocking formations, and is incredibly tricky. We were inside here for a whole two hours before we managed to get out," said Li Sheng as he raised his torch up high.

Ying Hecong had one of those scabbards in hand as he said: "So this means that the scabbard of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers, which has been so hotly fought over all this while, was just a simple wooden sheath which Hero Yin got to cover his sword, and not the work of Master Chen. This makes me wonder: when Yin Pei first got here, his martial arts were extremely mediocre prior to obtaining the Nirvana Parasite. If the Qimen priests had switched out his scabbard, do you think he might have failed to notice?"

Zhou Fei paused to ponder this seriously. Mu Xiaoqiao had told her that as the tales surrounding Sea Blends Into Sky grew increasingly absurd, its witnesses began to feel compelled to recover the tokens which had been passed down to the descendants of their original holders. Since Yin Pei was clearly of poor physical condition, and subsequently determined to also be poor of character, it was plausible that the Qimen Sect might want to recover the scabbard that he held.

But if this were truly the case, then it meant that the priests of Qimen had dealt with him dishonestly.

"Hm, giving him a counterfeit – that's actually a possibility," said Zhou Fei. "But just making one fake would suffice, what's the point of having so many?"

"What's the point of thinking so hard about a plain ol' scabbard?" Yang Jin interjected in exasperation: "I mean, aren't all of you experienced swordsmen and women? Don't you know that while some swords and sabres are better than others, but as for scabbards…aren't they just a casing? Who cares if they're real or fake? Or are all swordsmen from the central plains connoisseurs of scabbards instead of swords?"

Zhou Fei arched an amused brow: "I'm impressed, southern savage – that you know what the word 'connoisseur' means."

"Alright Fei, that's enough, don't try to start a fight again the very second you're up – Brother Yang is right, it is indeed strange that they seemed to be so interested in scabbards, as you'll see now." Li Sheng waved his torch in the air, causing the flames to hiss and crackle as motes of dust fluttered through them. Reaching the end of this winding passageway, they entered a small stone chamber.

There were several large chests in this chamber, each one filled to the brim with identical scabbards.

The water ripple diagram, the weathered exterior, and even the faint scratches on them were all exactly the same…even if Yin Pei himself were here, he probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

Planting his torch in a sconce on the wall, Li Sheng pulled out two thin pieces of paper from his pocket: "The water ripple diagram on each of these scabbards is exactly the same. Brother Yang and I stamped them on these papers just now, and look – they are practically copies of each other."

Ying Hecong suddenly spoke: "Hang on, what is that?"

Everyone turned to look in the direction he was pointing at, to find that an object in the corner of this chamber seemed to be reflecting light.

Yang Jin approached it: "Is that a crystal, or ice…"

"Wait, Brother Yang – don't touch it!" Li Sheng quickly called out to him.

There was a little mirror right there, polished to a bright shine, nestled amongst a cluster of sparkling crystals. The light from the torch on the wall had been reflected off that little mirror, and then refracted through these crystals, to converge in an intensely bright beam of light that landed precisely on a stone tile beside these large chests.

Li Sheng picked the torch back off the wall and waved it around, letting the light hit the mirror at different angles. It scattered once refracted through those crystals, no longer converging into that bright beam of light.

"Ah, when we came in here just now, Brother Yang was holding the torch for me." Li Sheng placed the torch back into the sconce. The flames flickered back and forth, causing the beam of light to alternately appear and disappear, wavering uncertainly.

Ying Hecong tapped the stone tile: "It's hollow."

He felt around the edges of the tile and gently prised it up. Peering below it, he reached inside to retrieve a letter that lay beneath.

Li Sheng said in a harsh whisper: "Be careful!"

"It's alright, there's no poison here." Ying Hecong brought the letter up to his nose and sniffed it. "The envelope is addressed to 'My dear boy Yin Pei' – do you think Yin Pei ever saw this letter?"

He opened the letter as he spoke, and quickly scanned it. Then his face grew noticeably solemn, and only after a moment's pause did he pass the letter to Li Sheng, saying: "My apologies for thinking ill of the Qimen Sect just now."

Yang Jin asked: "What does it say?"

"They wanted to protect him." Ying Hecong said: "These scabbards were actually made just for Yin Pei. If they were sent out into the martial arts world, there would be numerous 'scabbards of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers' out there, and nobody would be able to tell which was the real one…"

Zhou Fei sighed: "Then Yin Pei's would become like a drop in the ocean – he would be safe."

How much of a furore had the Huo Clan's Seal of Propriety created when it appeared in Yongzhou? The same thing was certainly liable to happen with the Sword of Mountains and Rivers.

When Yin Pei had been injured by the Azure Dragon Lord, and was taken in and cared for by the Qimen Sect, Chong Yunzi had of course seen that he was a selfishly petty lad prone to extreme emotional outbursts, and that having been born sickly, he did not possess the physique for martial arts. Yin Pei had only thought of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers as a treasured heirloom from his late father, but he had no idea at all what 'Sea Blends Into Sky' was, nor the ability to protect himself. Wouldn't snatching that sought-after scabbard from him be like taking candy from a baby?

Li Sheng finished reading the letter and said: "Chong Yunzi likely told Yin Pei to entrust his scabbard to the Qimen Sect for safekeeping, but Yin Pei must have misunderstood his intentions, and vehemently refused. So instead of forcing him, Chong Yunzi relented and thought up this plan to keep Yin Pei safe, but alas…"

Alas, before Yin Pei could realise the lengths the noble priest had gone to help him, he had revived the Nirvana Parasite, blinded by revenge and his own stubborn pride.

As a descendant of the Sword of Mountains and Rivers, he had been surrounded by people with ill intentions his whole life. Weak and defenceless by nature, he had thus decided that his best defense was to think the worst of everyone else.

Having stumbled upon the sad truth, the four of them were struck speechless, standing there in silence. After a good long while, Ying Hecong finally spoke again: "But don't you find this incredibly strange? This is such an ordinary scabbard. Any old craftsman would be able to make thousands of the same if he wanted. Why did Yin Wenlan choose such a worthless 'casing' as his token for Sea Blends Into Sky – wasn't he taking it all too lightly?"

"I've had my suspicions about other tokens as well," said Li Sheng. "Do you remember the Huo Clan's Seal of Propriety? Don't you think it quite unlikely that it was actually from the Huo Clan itself? While it was considered a treasured heirloom, we heard all of that from Huo Liantao's lips alone. I've been wondering about this all along – didn't Old Master Huo establish his sect with disciples who were part of a travelling circus troupe? While he had a wide circle of friends, he never thought of himself as a lofty leader of the martial arts community, and other sects only started to pledge allegiance to the Huo Clan in recent years – so what possible reason could Old Master Huo have for making such a prestigious seal for himself all those years ago?"

"Oh, you'd find the other tokens strange too," said Zhou Fei. "General Wu's token was Chuchu's longevity lock, and that was just an ordinary silver locket – it wasn't even made of gold. The token that my grandfather left behind was even more absurd. My mother let me have a look at it last year while I was helping her sort out her personal artifacts back home. It was just a ratty old bangle that she'd worn when she was young, the most garish little thing, and so small that even I couldn't fit into it. Unless it were melted down and made into something else entirely, I couldn't see what possible value it might have. If Kou Dan knew that this what she had risked her life to find, she'd probably be furious enough to rise from the grave."

A useless seal, a sword's 'casing', a worthless silver locket, and a little girl's bangle…standing at the heart of the Qimen Sect's most mysterious secret base, the four of them were picking apart what they knew of 'Sea Blends Into Sky', the biggest enigma of the martial arts world today. And the further they delved into it, the more ludicrous it seemed.

They exchanged dubious looks, as Yang Jin said with incredulity: "So what now? Are you telling me that 'Sea Blends Into Sky' doesn't actually exist after all?"

"No, that can't be. Sea Blends Into Sky definitely does exist," said Ying Hecong. "Both the Sword of Mountains and Rivers, and Master Li of the 48 Zhai, died under highly suspicious circumstances. We still have no idea where Huo Liantao got the poison he used on Old Master Huo. After General Wu's death, his wife and children were hunted down by the Big Dipper – who leaked their location? And then there's the Qimen Sect: despite taking great pains to live in seclusion for so many years, they were forced to scatter in the end. I might believe that any one of these happenings was a mere coincidence, but certainly not all of them together."

As someone who chose to immerse himself in poisons and snakes, Ying Hecong's thoughts tended towards suspicion, and he often assumed that evil schemes and plots were at play.

"So you're saying that they were all murdered to keep them quiet about Sea Blends Into Sky," said Zhou Fei. "That's what I thought at first, but I figured later that this didn't quite make sense. If the person who killed them was the same party who came to this agreement with them all those years back, this person must be extremely powerful. Since he was able to kill so many of them without revealing himself, why would he allow those tokens and the rumours swirling around them to spread so widely? If I were that person, I would surely not permit any of these tokens to end up in the clutches of the Azure Dragon Lord."

Ying Hecong looked back at her in bemusement: "That's true."

Yang Jin had been listening to all of this with increasing confusion. Aborting his attempts to make sense of things, he started to pace around this chamber instead. He plucked a scabbard from one of the chests and weighed its heft in his hand as he said: "Hey, don't you think that those old priests were a little off in the head? Since they knew that leaving the scabbard with Yin Pei would lead to disaster, yet he wouldn't trust them to safekeep it for him either, why didn't they just destroy it in front of him and explain to him the whole story? Instead they chose to keep him in the dark, and even made this worthless heap of scabbards…while Yin Pei might be safe once all of this junk is out there, wouldn't this only create more excitement about 'Sea Blends Into Sky'? I don't understand it."

At his words, the other three fell thoughtfully silent.

Yang Jin continued to grumble: "Doesn't seem like there's anything else worth seeing in here. Haven't you been trying to find traces of the Nirvana Parasite? Are you still going to look for it or not?"

Right when he said this, they heard a scream from outside.

Echoes carried clear across this massive vault-like space. At that blood-curdling sound, the four of them quickly emerged from the stone passageway. Holding Zhou Fei by the arm, Li Sheng took her with him as he leapt into the air, hurrying towards the direction of that scream.

These refugees were running helter-skelter, trying to get as far away as possible from a particular corner of this cavernous space.

"What's going on?" asked Li Sheng. "Didn't I tell you not to run…"

The horde immediately parted before them, revealing a sight that made Li Sheng break off mid-sentence – a wall of stone in the corner had caved in, revealing a little path that led beyond it…

To a gruesomely shrivelled-up corpse.

The teenage boy named Xiaohu had been responsible for that shriek of terror. When his sister Chungu asked him to help find Li Sheng, the boy had gotten lost and ended up inadvertently opening this secret door, bringing him face to face with that dried-up corpse.

"Excuse me," said Ying Hecong as he walked up to that corpse, crouching over it to examine it closely. The snake up his sleeve curiously poked its tiny head out to take a look – but promptly stiffened and wriggled back up Doctor Poison's sleeve in double-quick time, as though it had encountered a mortal foe.

While this corpse was covered in a fine layer of dust, its skin had a waxy, preserved sheen to it, and clung so tightly to its bones that the outlines of every single joint were clearly visible.

"It's a male corpse, that was fairly advanced in years. It looks like he'd been practicing something similar to the 'Bagua Palms'.[2]" Failing to find any obvious wounds on the corpse, Ying Hecong looked down at it in puzzlement.

Li Sheng said: "See if there are any puncture wounds on the hands and feet."

"Do you think that…" Ying Hecong's eyes widened as realization hit him, and he quickly flipped over the corpse's hands. There was a three-inch-long puncture on the back of one hand, the torn skin hanging limply off the bones like a sack of flour that a rat had gnawed open. Turning the corpse over, Ying Hecong saw that there was a similar rip on the back of its neck. "The Nirvana Parasite!"

"I've heard that when Yin Pei released the Nirvana Parasite, he used it to kill Chong Yunzi, who rushed here when he learnt what had happened," said Li Sheng softly. He was holding one of the corpse's arms as he crouched beside it. Flipping it back over to see its face, he cast a scrupulous eye over its deformed features, but nothing sparked any recognition. He shook his head slowly and said: "It's far too disfigured. I can't tell whether this person was indeed Chong Yunzi."

Ying Hecong said coldly: "Biting the hand that feeds you seems to be in style."

Choosing not to respond to Ying Hecong, who was being as caustic as ever, Li Sheng said: "Regardless of who this is, we should give him a proper burial."

Under Li Sheng's guidance, they carefully avoided the Qimen Sect's myriad traps and formations, finding a suitable spot to dig a grave.

Since Zhou Fei was incapacitated, she had been hustled away to the side with well-meaning concern. Bored with simply standing there and watching others dig, she picked up her crutch in one hand and a torch in the other, and walked further down the passageway where the dried-up corpse had been found. Zhou Fei found that this tunnel of stone extended much further inwards than she'd thought. She counted a total of seven doors that she had passed through so far, and while the mechanisms which controlled them had already been ruined, the parts still visible were mind-bogglingly complex. If Yin Pei hadn't barged in here before, entering this place by herself would have bordered on the impossible. Zhou Fei's steps instinctively slowed, her senses on highest alert.

Past those seven stone doors lay a dark stone cave. She raised her torch high overhead, squinting in the light of the flames. The second she stepped into it, she was quite sure she felt a deadly chill come surging out at her. This little chamber of rock was a perfect square, and its walls and ceiling were bizarrely and completely covered with row upon row of dense, small words. These words must have been some kind of spell – or curse – as they looked like nothing Zhou Fei had ever seen before. The rocks around her almost seemed to be crawling with these words, which were like worms that had claimed their homes within these walls and were now glaring coldly down at whoever dared venture into this chamber of secrets.

There were five stone statues lined up beside the entrance to this stone chamber, all of them about the height of a grown man. These statues had human faces, but from the neck down they were modelled after each of the five poisonous creatures – centipede, snake, scorpion, spider and toad. The features of these creatures were incredibly lifelike, while their faces were in various contortions of anger or joy, which gave one the creeps.

Staring up at those stone statues, Zhou Fei found herself unable to muster up the courage to take another step forward.

"These are the 'Five Shamanic Sages'." Ying Hecong had come up behind her at some point. "They are the gods of the frontier regions, worshipped by the inhabitants of those desolate lands who hoped that praying to them would provide protection from these poisonous creatures…and were subsequently appropriated by the 'Nirvana Cult' to command their own following."

His voice nearly made Zhou Fei jump out of her skin in fright.

Ying Hecong took the torch from her still-raised hand and strode further into the stone chamber. The second he did so, the little snake on him went berserk, so terrified out of its wits that it betrayed its master at once. Shooting out of his sleeve in a flash, it landed on the ground with a muffled thump before slithering towards the exit as fast as its little body could go.

Zhou Fei used her wooden crutch to block and scoop up that wriggling snake. Grasping it with her hand, she peered curiously at it as it desperately flicked its slender tail back and forth. If it could speak, it would probably be screaming 'Help!' at the top of its little lungs.

"I think we'd better leave this place," said Zhou Fei to Ying Hecong. "Your snakes aren't afraid of fire or any kinds of poison, but this one's scared to death right now. There must be something really horrible in this chamber."

"Oh, it's alright," said Ying Hecong as he circled round those five stone statues. He said unconcernedly: "The queen parasite was probably kept here, and must have secreted some of her fluids on the walls while still alive. These fluids are so fatally poisonous that no creature would dare approach even after many years have passed. So this chamber is in fact much safer than it is outside."

Zhou Fei felt a sudden heaviness in her hand, and looked down to find that the little snake was now hanging limply from her fingers, completely still. Worried that it had fainted or even died, she loosened her grip in alarm and said: "Hey, your snake…"

But before she could finish, it squirmed right out of her hand and fled for the exit without a backward glance – this tiny beast had very convincingly played dead!

"It will return to me later," said Ying Hecong as he rolled up his sleeves. Standing up on his tip-toes to touch the words carved into the walls, he muttered: "This appears to be the 'Secret Text of the Ancient Shamans'."

Zhou Fei asked: "What's that?"

"Before the rise of that sinister 'Nirvana Cult', the Nirvana Parasite was first discovered in the ancient tomb of a shaman from the frontier regions. It is said that the insides of his tomb were covered with words such as these, as well as strange symbols drawn with rooster's blood. But as this shaman hailed from too distant a time, those of his kind must have died out long ago, so nobody could understand this mysterious script. The great master Lu Run decided to call it simply the 'Secret Text of the Ancient Shamans'." Ying Hecong swiped his hand across one of the faint brownish marks on the wall and sniffed it: "This really is blood."

"Since nobody could understand it," said Zhou Fei, gesturing towards these walls, "Then was all of this the work of ghosts?"

Instead of replying, Ying Hecong walked further inside this stone chamber. An altar had been set up at the far end, on which sat a peculiar-looking octagonal box. Ying Hecong reached for the lid and gave it a gentle tug – it came off at a touch, sending a cloud of white smoke billowing out at him from within the box. Zhou Fei quickly hooked her wooden crutch on the back of Ying Hecong's collar, dragging him away: "Stop touching everything in sight!"

Like an aggrieved ghost, this cloud of white smoke shot furiously towards the ceiling of this chamber, where it abruptly dissipated. With bated breath, Zhou Fei and Ying Hecong waited for several moments, and when nothing else stirred within the box, they approached it cautiously. All this box contained was a neatly folded square of silk, which bore the faint imprint of a bug's body.

Ying Hecong must firmly believe himself invulnerable to all poisons – he made to reach for that box again, but Zhou Fei promptly smacked his hand aside.

Doctor Poison cradled his hand and shot Zhou Fei a wounded glance, but didn't try to reach for the box again.

"Move aside," said Zhou Fei as she hobbled forward. She held her breath and very carefully scooped that piece of silk out of the box with the tip of her crutch. When unfolded, each side of this square of cloth was roughly three feet long. Spreading it out on the ground, Zhou Fei saw that it was covered in miniscule words written in a neat, refined script.

Raising the torch overhead, Ying Hecong started to read these words out loud: "Orphaned at a young age, I was kindly taken in by my sect, which gave me the name 'Run'. They raised me up and gave me a sense of purpose, and when I reached the age of twenty, I completed my apprenticeship and left home. I was naïve and full of myself at the time, thinking myself already highly accomplished. I spoke of 'conquering the world', and 'helping the people'…"

Ying Hecong's voice was growing softer and softer, but his eyes were growing brighter and brighter. He knelt almost reverently to the ground, lying nearly prostrate across that piece of silk cloth while muttering in awe: "The name 'Run'…this was…this was written by the great master Lu Run himself!"

Lu Run had summed up his entire life in a few hundred words. His tone was neutral and dispassionate, his words written in clear, precise strokes. But their contents reflected an obsessed, addled mind, with numerous mentions of 'seeking immortality' and 'transcendence'.

"He says that he once searched for the shaman's tomb, and the old lair of the Nirvana Cult. Then he returned to the Great Medicine Valley and spent years studying the Secret Text of the Ancient Shamans, for the purpose of…" Ying Hecong paused here, his brow furrowing: "…finding out if there really is a way to bring the dead back to life."

"You can skip all of that nonsense," said Zhou Fei. "And then what happened? After studying the texts of the ancient shamans, what did he find? The Nirvana Parasite must be of some use, right? Or else why did the Qimen Sect preserve such a vile thing for so many years?"

"When I reached the age of sixty, I realised that my aimless life was about to near its end. As if awakening from a dream, I saw finally that to hanker after short-sighted goals at the risk of harming future generations, and to pursue my own narrow interests at the expense of the greater good, was absurd in the extreme." Ying Hecong read in hushed tones: "That a puny little parasite from the borderlands, whose survival depends on leeching off the powers of others, might be capable of driving men to wickedness and duping legions into its worship – how ridiculous, ridiculous indeed! Nevertheless, the fluid it secretes is of some use, as it can repel all manner of bugs and poisons. While this is a peaceful place, it is also home to many venomous insects, and my friends who have lived here for many years frequently suffer the effects of the dampness and the cold, which cause uncomfortable blockages in their meridians. To clear these, a small amount of this parasite's venom, supplemented with the dual chi of yin and yang, are an effective remedy. As this parasite is evil by nature, it is of utmost importance to exercise maximum caution when dealing with it…hey, what are you doing?"

Zhou Fei couldn't wait for him to finish, grabbing him fiercely by the collar. She didn't know where she had mustered the strength from. While she was still hobbling painfully along on a crutch mere seconds ago, she was somehow energized enough now to raise Ying Hecong to his feet with just one hand, her voice trembling with urgency: "What does it mean – that this can repel all manner of bugs and poisons?"

With great difficulty, Ying Hecong managed to loosen her grip enough for him to speak: "From what I can understand…haven't you ever heard of fighting fire with fire? Let go of me!"

But Zhou Fei's grip only tightened further: "You said the same of 'Bone-Deep Frost' back in Yongzhou. You said that it was one of the strongest poisons in the world, and that a person afflicted with it would be invulnerable to all other poisons…so what would happen should Bone-Deep Frost encounter the Nirvana Parasite's venom?"

"Bone-Deep Frost?" Looking slightly stunned, Ying Hecong blurted out without thinking: "You mean he isn't dead yet?"

Zhou Fei gritted out through clenched teeth: "Choose your words wisely."

"This…has never been tried before," said Ying Hecong as he contemplated the possibility, sputtering: "I..ahem…I can't say."

Zhou Fei fell silent for a few moments. Then flinging Ying Hecong aside as abruptly as she'd seized him, she turned on her heel and left the chamber. Not even bothering to use her crutch anymore, she hopped her way back lightning-quick through all seven of those stone doorways and out of the passageway. She grabbed Li Sheng by his shirtfront, rudely interrupting his coordination of the corpse's burial: "Where did you put that queen parasite? Give it to me. And there are bound to be other secret doors in here – I want you to find every single one of them, to see if this place contains any records of the 'dual chi of yin and yang'."

Ying Hecong, who had just managed to catch up to her, exclaimed in shock: "What? Do you mean to say that you still have the queen parasite? How is that possible!"

After frantically searching all over his person for the little bundle of cloth that held the queen parasite, Li Sheng finally managed to retrieve it from his travel rucksack. He laid it on the ground and unwrapped it. The three of them crouched over it, staring at the lifeless remains of the queen parasite which Zhou Fei had sliced in half.

"No wonder my snake didn't sense it," said Ying Hecong as he squinted down at the extremely neat cut down the centre of the insect's body. "It's already dead as a doornail. My dear Heroine Zhou, from the looks of this cut…I assume this was your handiwork?"

Zhou Fei's one-legged hops down the entire length of the passageway had ripped open the tender wound at her waist. The blood that seeped out of it mixed with Ying Hecong's specially concocted balm, creating the darnedest combination of sore and itchy that made her wish she could wriggle right out of her skin. Her face was scrunched up in discomfort as she ground out: "Oh don't rub it in, I would gladly trade my life for it right now."

Ying Hecong's brows drew together in concentration as he picked up the mutilated parasite.

Nervously observing the expression on his face, Zhou Fei felt her palms start to sweat. Her heart was in her mouth as she asked: "So what do you think, does it still have any of that venom which Lu Run mentioned?"

Ying Hecong gave her a cool sideways glance: "As if! This queen parasite is a dried-up shell – where are we going to find more of its venom, pray tell? You might as well go back to where you killed it and scour the ground for any remaining traces."

Zhou Fei's heart immediately sank. She felt like someone had struck her right in the chest with an ice-cold anvil.

"What a waste!" exclaimed Ying Hecong with bitter regret.

Ying Hecong and Li Sheng continued to bend over the queen parasite's corpse, busy discussing something or other, but Zhou Fei couldn't hear any of it. For some reason, a line from Lu Run's writing came to her: 'All beings are like mere grass, but only humans mistakenly think themselves more enlightened than the rest – when they are simply hapless beasts at the mercy of the universe! Fate is a cruel thing.'

Humans were…but mere grass, and hapless beasts.

Zhou Fei had always been quicker to act than to ponder over things, and certainly had not reached the age for philosophical musings about the nature of existence yet. But in that moment, she thought of those old men and women in the 48 Zhai who insisted on the importance of divination, and knowing one's fortune.

For the first time in her life, she was truly experiencing what it meant when people said that fate plays cruel tricks on us all.

Why did she have to be the one to slice the Nirvana Parasite in two?

Why did she have to be the one who, after killing the Nirvana Parasite, was granted entry into the secret base of the Qimen Sect, and led to stumble upon the writings of the great master Lu Run?

Was there really such a thing as inexorable fate, hurtling relentlessly towards a preordained conclusion – which mortal beings were ultimately helpless against, no matter how hard they struggled?

Surrounded by tens of thousands of enemy soldiers in the valley above, Zhou Fei had been utterly fearless, even boldly declaring to Li Sheng that she would not meet her end today. Yet now that they were safe, she was suddenly assailed by the deepest feeling of dread, and uncontrollable tremors were spreading from her ice-cold heart all throughout her body. Since she'd regained consciousness, the two strong currents of chi within her had been circulating through her meridians of their own accord, to heal her injuries. Now all of a sudden, she felt utterly depleted, and everything in her seemed to crumble and collapse, sending those two powerful currents of chi within her out of control and bringing her dangerously close to a fatal implosion.

Observing the sudden deathly pallor of her face, Li Sheng quickly raised his hand to cut Ying Hecong off: "Let's not discuss this for now…Fei?"

Zhou Fei's wooden gaze fell on him.

Searching her face for signs of what was wrong, Li Sheng said tentatively: "Are…are you alright?"

She didn't say a word.

Realisation seemed to dawn on Li Sheng then, as he quickly covered the queen parasite's corpse with the old shirt it had been wrapped in and valiantly attempted to console her: "Ah…well…good things happen to good people, and Young Master Xie is certainly a good man…a mere bug might not have been of much use anyway. Since we can't get out of here yet with all those Northern soldiers up there, we have ample time to search this place before Uncle comes, perhaps we'd be able to…"

Zhou Fei said: "Oh."

Turning her back on Li Sheng, she swayed unsteadily on her feet before regaining her balance, and limped forlornly away.