Once her sister had fallen asleep, Xiaoqing hurried to carry her back to Sheshan before she could revert to her true form.
Xiaoqing had no sooner carried her sister back into the cave than Bai Ruxue turned into an enormous white python.
Xiaoqing likewise took her true form and settled down beside her sister.
Just as Xiaoqing was drifting off, she jerked her snake head up.
She had heard something stirring outside the cave.
Xiaoqing took human form and went out.
Fuchen, elder of the Tianxuan Sect, stood at the cave mouth and bowed to her. "I greet Miss Xiaoqing."
"Might I ask what brings you here, Daoist Priestess?" Xiaoqing returned the bow.
"Miss Xiaoqing, your sister cannot simply lie in this cave as she is."
Fuchen shook her head.
"For this hibernation of Miss Bai's, when she sheds her skin she will likely give off no small amount of demonic qi. It will draw any number of demon beasts hoping to devour your sister's flesh and blood, and if other cultivators happen past and see that demonic qi surging into the sky, they too will come to subdue the demon and root out evil."
Xiaoqing's brows knitted. "Then what does the Daoist Priestess suggest?"
"I must ask Miss Xiaoqing to forgive this poor Daoist for meddling."
Fuchen swept out a hand, and in an instant eight formation flags flew forth, stabbing down around the cave mouth like meteors and sinking into the earth.
"These are Sky-Veiling Flags. They will mask demonic qi and keep others from divining anything, and they also gather a measure of spirit qi, so that your sister's transformation goes the more smoothly."
Then Fuchen crooked her fingers, and a boulder flew down from the mountaintop and slammed against the cave mouth, sealing it completely. "From today your sister sleeps within. Until she wakes, on no account move this boulder, or the formation will fail."
"Why does the Daoist Priestess help my sister so?" Xiaoqing asked.
As far as Xiaoqing could tell, her sister and this woman had no ties at all; from what her sister had said, Fuchen had merely given her a bowl of water to drink.
As for whether she harbored some scheme, some design to harm the two of them — that was even less likely.
Their realms were so far apart that harming Xiaoqing and her sister would be as easy for her as pinching an ant to death.
Fuchen lifted her head, a flicker of remembrance crossing her eyes. "Because I too want to know whether, after her, any of the snake clan can still become a dragon."
Xiaoqing: "..."
"This poor Daoist will be going. Miss Xiaoqing, you are alone here — take good care of yourself. And if Xiao Mo returns, there is no need to hide from him or to deceive him. Xiao Mo has long known that Miss Bai and you are of the demon race."
The moment Fuchen's words landed, Xiaoqing's eyes trembled, brimming with disbelief...
So Brother Xiao... he knew all along?
"Daoist Priestess Fuchen!" Just as Fuchen was about to fly from Sheshan, Xiaoqing called out. "In this life, are my sister and Brother Xiao truly never to meet again?"
Fuchen paused slightly in the air, but spoke not a word, and vanished straight into the horizon.
Fuchen shrank the earth to inches; half an hour later, having covered who knew how many ten thousand li, she arrived at a mountain peak.
"Master, you're back." A girl disciple saw her master return and came over happily.
"Mm." Fuchen nodded and went into the room.
On the floor of the room an Eight Formations diagram was drawn.
Within the Eight Formations diagram lay turtle shells, phoenix feathers, and other things used for divination.
Earlier, with time on her hands, Fuchen had cast Bai Ruxue's coming tribulation, and had set off for Stone Bridge Village at once without putting any of it away.
Just as Fuchen was about to gather the things up, she noticed that the copper coins and the phoenix feather in the diagram had shifted position.
"Disciple," Fuchen called toward the door.
"Master." The little girl came running in.
"Have you touched this formation?" Fuchen asked.
"No, Master." The little girl shook her head.
"Your master understands. You may go." Fuchen nodded.
"Oh-woo." The little girl left the room.
Fuchen sat beside the formation and studied the altered array.
A person's fate is not fixed and unchanging.
Divination is nothing more than taking the people and events of the present and extrapolating a single possibility.
And now the formation that divined Bai Ruxue's fate —
had changed.
Fuchen knelt formally on the floor and cast Bai Ruxue's fate anew.
Only this time she added Xiao Mo's birth horoscope to the working as well.
Half an hour later the turtle shell cracked apart; Fuchen's eyes flew open, and a thread of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.
Looking at the hexagram on the floor, Fuchen let out a soft sigh.
"Ah... why go to such lengths... Better not to meet than to meet..."
She raised her head and looked out the window; goose-feather snow was already falling thick in the sky.
"Kismet... and fate..."
On Sheshan, Xiaoqing sat on the boulder at the cave mouth, quietly keeping watch over her sister inside.
Just as Xiaoqing hugged her knees, drowsy and about to nod off, she felt a spot of cold at her neck.
Xiaoqing lifted her head and watched the snowflakes tumbling through the air.
The girl reached out a hand, and the white snow melted little by little in her palm.
"Sister... Brother Xiao... the first snow of the year... it's falling..."
After a month on the road,
Xiao Mo reached the Qi capital in the second month.
The constables who had escorted Xiao Mo to the capital had finished their task; they did not linger, but went straight back to Qingshan County to report.
Xiao Mo found an inn and took a room.
With his juren status he could lodge at an inn for next to nothing.
Other juren were staying at the inn as well; they too had come to the capital as soon as the New Year was over, saying they wanted to get familiar with the place in advance.
After resting a while, Xiao Mo took two jars of honey and set out for Mr. Zhang's residence.
"I am Xiao Mo, of Qingshan County in Xiyue Commandery, Jiangnan Province. Having had the good fortune to receive Lord Zhang's invitation, I have come to pay my respects. This is my invitation; I would be grateful if the two of you would look it over."
Xiao Mo bowed with his hands clasped and held out the card.
The gatekeepers exchanged a glance, then one stepped forward and took the card. "Please wait a moment, young master. I will go and announce you to the master."
"Thank you for your trouble."
A little more than a quarter of an hour later, a young woman in a ruqun came out and bowed slightly to Xiao Mo.
"My name is Zhang Shuijing. Young Master Xiao has come such a distance, and we failed to welcome you from afar — I hope you will forgive us. My father is waiting for you in his study; please come with me."
"Forgive the intrusion."
"You are too polite, young master."
Miss Zhang led Xiao Mo into the courtyard.
Mr. Zhang's courtyard was not large, and it held no rare flowers or plants; everything looked plain and simple.
At least on the surface, the man seemed to be one of the clean-handed, upright sort.
Miss Zhang brought Xiao Mo to the door of the study, then withdrew.
Xiao Mo knocked and stepped in, and saw an old man in high spirits walking toward him with a smile. "Hahaha! I have long heard of Young Master Xiao's scholarship, and meeting you today, I find you cut an even finer figure than I had imagined!"
"You flatter me, Lord Zhang. Please just call me by my name." Xiao Mo held out two jars of honey. "This honey was gathered and brewed by my lady back home — a small token; I hope you will not disdain it."
"Oh?" Zhang Qianzhi said in surprise. "Xiao Mo, you're married?"
"Not yet." Xiao Mo shook his head with a smile. "But once this examination is done, I'll go back and marry her. She has waited for me a long while."
"Hahaha! Good, good, good! Deep feeling and true loyalty, talent and virtue both — that suits this old man's taste!" Zhang Qianzhi clapped him on the shoulder, seeming a most forthright sort. "Come, sit."
"Then this student must beg your pardon for the informality."
Xiao Mo sat down facing Zhang Qianzhi, and Zhang Qianzhi poured him a cup of tea.
"Thank you, Lord Zhang." Xiao Mo hastily raised the cup with both hands.
"This old man is not one for twistings and turnings, so I will speak plainly." Zhang Qianzhi set down the teapot. "I am greatly interested in the Edict of Grace you wrote for the provincial examination. That Edict carries enormous weight, but there are points I do not grasp. Would you enlighten this old man?"
"This student will say all he knows and hold nothing back," Xiao Mo said.
"Good." Zhang Qianzhi nodded.
For the next full hour, Zhang Qianzhi questioned Xiao Mo on the fine points of the Edict of Grace and on his views of the present court.
Xiao Mo chiefly expounded on "breaking the whole into pieces to end the trouble for good," on "a proper name and a just cause — seizing the moral high ground," on "divide and dissolve them to lessen resistance," and on certain questions of taxation.
As for his views on the court —
Over these months Xiao Mo had spoken often with Magistrate Sun and learned a good deal about court affairs, so he could tie his answers to real circumstances rather than spout empty theory.
The more Zhang Qianzhi listened, the more he felt this young man was no ordinary sort, fit for great use.
Later Zhang Qianzhi did not only ask about the Edict of Grace; he talked of court affairs and then deliberately posed questions of his own.
It had already become an examination.
"With your talents, Xiao Mo, so long as you are not hot-tempered and reckless as this old man is, you are certain to make your mark at court." Zhang Qianzhi stroked his chin in satisfaction. "At the palace examination, before His Majesty, simply be as you are now. Our Qi has not had a scholar sweep all three examinations in a long while."
Xiao Mo was slightly startled. "This student is shallow and poorly learned. You praise me far too much."
"With your learning, there is no question of it." Zhang Qianzhi smiled; the more he looked, the more he liked this youngster, feeling that the boy had the bearing he himself had carried in his youth. "I have asked you any number of things. Is there anything you wish to ask me? Anything at all, so long as it is not a thing this old man cannot speak of."
Xiao Mo thought it over. "There are indeed a few things this student would like to ask you, Lord Zhang."
"Out with them." Zhang Qianzhi poured himself a cup of tea and set the pot down beside Xiao Mo, quite informal about it. "Want a drink, pour it yourself."
"This student... would like to ask about the official arts."
"Hm?"
Zhang Qianzhi was taken aback; he had not expected that question, but he answered in detail all the same.
"The so-called official arts rest upon the mountain-and-river fortune of the dynasty."
"Mountain-and-river fortune?" Xiao Mo pressed.
"Just so."
Zhang Qianzhi nodded.
"Mountain-and-river fortune has two aspects. First, the higher your office, the more mountain-and-river fortune you carry."
The second is the love of the common people.
The more the people love you, and the greater the number of people who love you, the more outlandish the mountain-and-river fortune upon you becomes.
At court there were cultivators, and there were also officials who could not cultivate at all.
And how did those officials protect themselves, and keep from dying by misadventure?
They relied on this mountain-and-river fortune.
But if you were stripped of office, then within half a year the mountain-and-river fortune upon you would little by little scatter away.
With mountain-and-river fortune, one could work the official arts.
The so-called official arts were, simply put, nothing more than using mountain-and-river fortune in place of a cultivator's spiritual power.
If you were a Confucian scholar, you could use mountain-and-river fortune to work Confucian techniques.
If you were a cultivator of the Military school, you could use mountain-and-river fortune to work Military-school techniques.
The ceiling of mountain-and-river fortune depended on the strength of the dynasty, and also on a person's innate talent.
Its tie to strength meant that in an ordinary human dynasty the mountain-and-river fortune was limited; even a chancellor might be, in realm, no more than a Dragon Gate realm cultivator.
Its tie to talent was this: some people had no spirit roots, could not wield spiritual power, and could not set foot on the path of cultivation — but that did not mean their "talent for cultivation" was poor.
So the stronger the talent, the different the outcome when the same measure of mountain-and-river fortune was put to use.
And our Qi is one of the three great dynasties of the human race. Rise to chancellor, and win the love of the people under heaven, and your strength could approach the Immortal realm — even ascend.
But the official arts have their limits too.
First, His Majesty cannot use the official arts; the official arts have no effect upon the common people... the official arts cannot...
Lord Zhang spoke it out word by word, and Xiao Mo listened earnestly.
Truthfully, having come to understand the official arts, Xiao Mo found something rather odd about them.
The emperor was the sovereign of the whole realm, yet could not use the official arts — wasn't that a bit much?
Wait, are the official arts just a conceit unique to the Hundred Lives Book? Do they even exist out in the real world?
So Xiao Mo mused inwardly.
Because in the real world, Xiao Mo truly had never heard the term "official arts."
The only reason he knew of them at all was through Lord Sun.
Xiao Mo decided that once he had left the Hundred Lives Book, he would look into it.
"Is there anything else you want to ask?" Zhang Qianzhi took a sip of tea.
Xiao Mo asked a few more things about officialdom.
Hearing Xiao Mo ask about officialdom, Zhang Qianzhi's interest kindled at once, and he laid it all out for him in fine detail, as though he wished to pour out everything in his breast, as though he truly had taken Xiao Mo for his own student.
In truth, when Zhang Qianzhi had named Xiao Mo xieyuan, the two had already become teacher and student.
Zhang Qianzhi himself could not have said why he liked the young man so much; he simply felt that this youth would not disappoint him once he entered court as an official.
"Lord Zhang, this student has one more request..." Just as Xiao Mo was about to leave, he spoke up after turning it over in his mind.
Lord Zhang said with great generosity, "Speak freely."
Xiao Mo bowed with his hands clasped. "This student would like to ask for a geomancy map of the rivers and waterways of Qi."
"A geomancy map of rivers and waterways?" Lord Zhang was briefly startled. He did not know what the other wanted with such a thing, but he still took several scrolls down from his bookshelf. "These charts map the great rivers of our Great Qi. Just take them with you."
"Thank you, Lord Zhang."
Xiao Mo bent and made a deep bow.
Lord Zhang gave Xiao Mo a few parting instructions, then had his daughter see Xiao Mo out of the residence.
And just as the two of them stepped through the gate, a goose-feather flake of cold snow drifted down before Xiao Mo's eyes.
Xiao Mo lifted his head: snow filled the sky, coming to rest on the eaves, on the bricks, on the treetops, and on the people below.
"It's snowing," Miss Zhang said beside him, full of delight.
"Yes..."
Xiao Mo drew his sleeves closer about him.
"It's snowing..."