Sword-Forging Manor

After supper, Liu Gong and his wife lingered a while to play with their children. At last Liu Gong donned a straw raincoat, and Madam Liu gently placed a bamboo hat upon his head. “Go early, return early,” she said tenderly, “and take care through the night.”

Liu Gong stroked the knot of hair above her brow. “You and the children, wait for me at home.”

So saying, he stepped into the vast darkness beyond the threshold.

Perplexed, I turned to Gongsun Bai. “At such an hour, what errand takes him abroad?”

With calm voice he answered, “Of late, a new vein of phosphor stone has been found in Mount Wu. This ore glimmers only beneath the cloak of night, thus it is best mined after dusk.”

“Oh, so you know quite a deal.” I replied, though in my heart I thought: This Liu Gong is bold indeed, to leave behind such a peerless wife in the company of two strange men!

Such musings were broken when I felt a tug at my trouser leg. Looking down, I beheld the little girl of the twins, her bright eyes upturned and smiling.

My heart softened. I crouched and asked, “What is your name?”

Softly she answered, “Zi’er.”

“And your brother?” I asked again.

She whispered, “He is my younger brother. I am Zi’er, he is You’er. I was born a single stick of incense earlier.”

From nearby, the boy abandoned his crickets and ran up. “Nonsense! Mother says we are equal. I am elder brother, you the younger sister!”

Thus the two children quarreled.

From the kitchen, Madam Liu laid down her bowls and came to hush them, sending them off to bed. Then she led us to a small guest room she had prepared. “Young Master Su, please rest early,” she said. Then her gaze turned toward Gongsun Bai. “Master Gongsun, may I trouble you to step outside? I have a matter to discuss.”

What? Matters to be spoken in secret with him, excluding me? Since when had those two grown so familiar?

Bewildered, I watched as Gongsun Bai followed her out, the door shutting behind. Pressing my ear to the panel, I strained to catch their voices, but my hearing failed me. Soon footsteps returned, and the door creaked open. Gongsun Bai looked down at me from the threshold. “What are you doing?”

I hastily drew back, forcing a smile. “N-nothing at all.”

He regarded me with a trace of suspicion, then entered and poured himself tea.

After some hesitation I ventured, “What did Madam Liu… say to you?”

His lips curved. “Do you wish to know?”

I nodded eagerly.

“Then I have a request.”

“Speak, speak!”

“Tonight I take the bed, you the floor.”

I glanced about the chamber—indeed, only one bed stood there. I agreed readily. A man must endure; what harm in sleeping one night upon the boards?

Pleased, he answered at last: “Madam Liu would have me kill a man.”

“Who?”

“That is another question. To hear the answer, you must grant another request.”

“…What request?”

“The reward I promised for saving my life—halve it. Five hundred taels instead of a thousand.”

I nearly choked with fury. “Shameless! You hoard silver, delay paying me, and now you dare cut the price? Curse you!”

He shrugged. “Refuse if you like. I am going to sleep.”

And with ease he shed his robe, lay upon the bed, and soon the sound of his snores filled the room. I trembled with rage, near ready to strike him senseless, but knowing myself no match, I swallowed my wrath.

At cockcrow, a crash resounded. Gongsun Bai felt the world spin as someone dragged him to the floor, then pinned him down.

“Su Qi, you—” he began, but broke into laughter. For upon him sat a figure, hair disheveled, dark rings under his eyes, clearly sleepless all night. Gongsun Bai stowed away the hidden weapon in his sleeve and said, “Brother Su, your greeting is most passionate.”

I wasted no words, tightening my grip about his throat. “Tell me! Tell me at once! Whom does Madam Liu want slain? Speak, or you shall never rise again!”

Amusement lingered in his voice. “So simple a question, and you brooded all night?”

My fingers itched to crush him.

“Very well,” he relented. “Qinyan bids me slay Zhao Jin, master of the Sword-Forging Manor.”

I froze. Qinyan? Who was that?

One day earlier, Madam Liu had drawn Gongsun Bai into her inner room, and produced a scroll. “I see Master Gongsun’s martial prowess, and judge you to be a swordsman. Pray tell, are you interested in this?”

He raised his eyes. Four bold characters adorned the scroll: Secrets of Sword Forging. Beneath, in tiny script, the seal of the Sword-Forging Manor.

This was priceless indeed. Fourteen years past, a fire ravaged the Manor, consuming treasures and generations of lore. Since then, not a single peerless blade had been wrought. That such a scroll should rest in a peasant woman’s hands was beyond belief.

“On the black market,” Gongsun Bai said lightly, “this could fetch a thousand taels of gold. Were Madam Liu to sell it, Liu Gong need not mine phosphor ore by night.”

Unmoved, she replied, “If Master Gongsun aids me in one matter, this half-scroll is yours.”

“And the matter?”

“To kill Zhao Jin, lord of the Sword-Forging Manor.” She added, “This is but the upper volume. If your skill proves great, and you slay yet another, then the lower volume will also be yours.”

His eyes slid over the script. “And who is the other?”

“Yu Hanjun of the Jadefall Pavilion.”

Gongsun Bai clapped his hands in irony. “A fine bargain! A few words, and you would have me cut down the two most powerful men in Yichuan. The scroll is precious, but I must live to use it. Accepting this task, I would pass the rest of my days hunted like a beast. Lady Qinyan, you are indeed a shrewd dealer.”

Madam Liu—no, Qinyan—smiled faintly. “You flatter me.”

“So Madam Liu is none other than the famed First Beauty of the realm, Qinyan,” Gongsun Bai later told me.

“What, she?” I gasped. True, she was a rare beauty for a matron, but to crown her “First Under Heaven” seemed odd indeed.

Suddenly I thought of another. “And this Jadefall Pavilion—what of it?” Known across Yichuan for its secret weapons, why would Qinyan wish its scion slain?

Gongsun Bai stroked his fan, and with a flick sent a spray of needles darting forth. “It takes three to play a drama. Could the tale be told without Yu Hanjun? He too was a player in those years.”

And the story he told was plain enough:

A decade past, Yu Hanjun, second son of Jadefall Pavilion, met Qinyan in a brothel. The two were matched in beauty and talent. He paid a fortune to ransom her and prepared to bring her home in eight sedan chairs.

But on the wedding day, Zhao Jin passed by, and his eye fell upon Qinyan. At once he drew the treasured blade, Duming, and offered to trade it for her. The world’s finest weapon for the world’s finest beauty—it was a bargain none could resist. Yu Hanjun consented at once.

So Zhao Jin carried Qinyan to the Sword-Forging Manor as his concubine. Yet eight years ago a fire swept through, destroying the Manor’s wealth and strength. Rumor held that Qinyan perished in that fire, along with her twin children.

But I remembered the twins—Zi’er and You’er. Their noble bearing hardly matched the rustic Liu Gong.

Yet still questions pricked me. “But that fire was eight years past. Qinyan has lived quietly as Madam Liu, with a good husband who treats her well. Why, now, should she desire the deaths of Zhao Jin and Yu Hanjun? Could it be… lingering love? Torn between the honest present and the gallant past, she seeks to end it with the sword?”

Gongsun Bai’s mouth twitched. “And to sever ties, must one kill?”

I nodded firmly. “Indeed.”

He rolled his eyes skyward.

Later, with gossip aired, my heart grew light. I slept again, rising late to find Gongsun Bai gone. In the rear courtyard I spied Madam Liu—no, Qinyan—standing with a man clad in black brocade, golden boots, and at his waist a long black sword.

They stood close. Suddenly the man seized her, forced her chin, and kissed her harshly.

Eyes wide, I turned to see Gongsun Bai crouched beside me, also peering.

I whispered, “Isn’t this… improper?”

He narrowed his gaze. “Alone it is peeping. Together it is but an audience. Why chatter so much?”

Qinyan struggled like one struck by lightning, but the man’s arms held fast. He pressed her neck with urgent kisses. She wrenched free a sickle and slashed, cutting his arm.

He loosed her, and she leveled the blade, its cold light sharp as frost. “Think you I dare not kill you?”

The man’s voice was steady. “You dare. Of course you dare. Did you not already once, eight years ago?”

They held each other’s gaze in grim silence, until at last he turned and left. Gongsun Bai and I crept back to our chamber as though nothing had passed, until Qinyan came to summon us to breakfast.

Uneasy, we sat at table. The twins had gone to school. She laid out thin porridge and small dishes, then suddenly asked, “Enjoyed the play you watched last night?”

A chill ran down my spine; Gongsun Bai choked on his porridge.

“That man was Zhao Jin,” she said coldly. “Three months ago he sought me out, demanding my children.”

I ventured, “To what end?”

Her lips curled in bitter scorn. “To restore them to the Zhao clan.”

For years he had married concubines, yet no heirs were born. Discovering his wife and twins alive, he pressed his claim. He did not seize by force, but came with words, visits, even stolen kisses. Qinyan, hounded beyond endurance, resolved upon murder.

“I will never let my children return. I lived seven years in that place—years worse than death. If they try to take them, I will burn with them.”

Despair filled the room. I saw in her eyes the will to give all, even life, for her children.

My chance had come.

I stepped forth. “I can aid you—if you will pay the price.”

The Art of Causality. All things are bound by cause and effect. Find the cause, and the effect unravels.

I set incense in a brazier. Pale violet smoke arose, curling through the air, weaving countless unseen chains.

“I had not thought you knew illusions,” Gongsun Bai said with surprise.

Illusion was a branch of the immortal arts, practiced only by those of poor roots. Few in Yichuan commanded it, and those who did were bound to courts. That a wandering cultivator like me should wield it was rare indeed.

“A trick to make a living,” I answered. Then turned to Qinyan. “Will you let me try?”

She gazed at the smoke. Her fingers passed through emptiness. “What do you want?”

“Your remaining years,” I said. “You saw true—I will not live long. I seek one willing to share their span. But I will not take all. Three years only.”

She laughed. “If you can help me, take them all. But you know no martial arts—how will you kill them?”

I touched the violet smoke. “This incense reveals the chains of cause and effect. If I see theirs, I shall know their weakness, and end them without sound. If that does not sate you, I can drive them mad, make them live in torment.”

Qinyan nodded. “I believe you. What must I do?”

“Sleep.”

My fingers brushed her cheek. Her eyes closed, and she fell into slumber. From the brazier, a blue thread of smoke coiled upward—the chain of causality itself.

For the first time, the art succeeded. My heart leapt. I thrust my hand within. Each time, memories of Qinyan flared in my mind.

Within the mist, I beheld a youth of splendid mien, bearing a great blade upon his back, standing proud beneath heaven. Before him stood a bridal sedan, bright in scarlet. With the hilt of his sword he lifted the curtain. “Let me see, what beauty claims the title of First Under Heaven.”

Then the vision shifted. Another youth, robed in silver, beneath a canopy of stars and fireflies, whispered softly to a maiden: “Qinyan, I will wed you—but only as concubine.”