The Vermilion Bird Altar had fallen. Altar Master Xiong Qianjin had been torn apart alive by furious villagers, but a good many captives remained, and whether they lived or died was for Mu Qingyan to decide. You Guanyue stood at the left of the altar master's throne, head high and chest out, and ordered his men to bring the prisoners up one by one for the Young Lord's judgment.
The first to be dragged up was the Left Deputy Altar Master, Zhang Xun, trussed hand and foot. He gave Mu Qingyan, seated above him, a coquettish smile, so lush and overpowering that even You Guanyue, who had fought this wretch openly and in secret for years, had to admit the man's looks were exceptional.
Mu Qingyan did not so much as lift an eyelid. "Crooked mouth, squinting eyes. Kill him."
You Guanyue was stunned.
Next came the badly wounded Right Deputy Altar Master, Li Zhang. He had always known how to read people and attend to detail. The moment he saw Mu Qingyan, he offered to hand over Xiong Qianjin's hidden vault with both hands, and to persuade the master of the neighboring Azure Dragon Altar to surrender.
Mu Qingyan raised a finger. "Doesn't know when to bow. Kill him."
"?" thought You Guanyue.
Then came Xiong Qianjin's trusted men, one after another.
"Shifty eyes, sneaky face. Kill him."
"Two-faced. Kill him."
"Can't tell one grain from another. Kill him."
"Hands and feet that never work. Kill him..."
"Wait, wait!" You Guanyue couldn't listen any longer. "He's one of Xiong Qianjin's best fighters. How could his hands and feet not work?"
"Oh," said Mu Qingyan. "Then break his limbs before you kill him."
"..." You Guanyue was dazed. "No, Young Lord, you can't mean to kill all of them?"
"Why not?" Mu Qingyan seemed even more puzzled than he was. "You screened them earlier, didn't you? The ones left are all repeat offenders against the Sect's rules, with blood debts piled high."
You Guanyue smiled awkwardly. "A great altar like the Vermilion Bird needs people to keep it running, inside and out."
"Don't I have all of you? I think Wang Tianfeng will do well. A few years of seasoning and he can stand on his own."
You Guanyue was pleased at first and ventured, carefully, "Thank you, Young Lord, for trusting us. Still, it would be better to keep a few of the old hands, since their skills are good..."
"Keep them for what?" Mu Qingyan cut him off. "So they can go on being hated by the people around here, or so they can waver and plot with Nie Zhe in secret?"
You Guanyue paused. "You have a point, Young Lord. But if they're all killed, what becomes of the Vermilion Bird Altar? And if the Six Sects of Beichen attack now, what then?"
"Disband the Vermilion Bird Altar for now."
"Young Lord!" You Guanyue was horrified.
Mu Qingyan waved a hand, and Lian Shisan led his men off to deal with the rest.
You Guanyue followed Mu Qingyan into the empty rear hall, uneasy. "Young Lord, I asked too much. I should obey your orders without question, as Brother Shisan does..."
Mu Qingyan raised a hand to stop him.
He walked to the window. "Last night, around the time we stormed the Vermilion Bird Palace, I told you to leave one corner in the northeast open, so the weak-willed among the followers could run. You advised me then: 'When surrounding an army, leave a gap; behind the gap, set a block. We should send some men to ambush that corner and cut them down along the way.' I refused."
"This time I didn't come with an overwhelming army, and I never had any prestige in the Sect before. If people bolt at the sight of such a small force at their gates, what need is there to wipe them out? Later, as Xiong Qianjin's decline became plain, more of those who sensed trouble slipped away. The ones who stayed to the very end, whether captured or killed, were die-hards for Nie Zhe and Xiong Qianjin. What good is keeping them?"
Light came into You Guanyue's eyes. "So the Young Lord had already sifted the Vermilion Bird Altar's followers. How shortsighted I am."
Mu Qingyan nodded. "Thanks to Nie Zhe, the Six Sects of Beichen are jumping at shadows right now. Their leaders are either busy purging their own ranks or still recovering. For at least half a year they won't provoke us lightly. Even if someone launches a sneak attack, we hold this place if we can, and pull our people out if we can't. It isn't only the Vermilion Bird Altar. Azure Dragon, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise are the same."
You Guanyue thought it over for a moment and smiled. "The Young Lord means to sweep out the old and set up the new."
Mu Qingyan turned his head. "You were old enough to remember when Nie Hengcheng died. Is the Li Sect under Nie Hengcheng the same as the Li Sect under Nie Zhe now?"
You Guanyue laughed. "How can a firefly compare to the bright moon?" The words were out before he could stop them, so he added, "If even Nie Hengcheng reached such heights, the Divine Sect must have been mightier still when the Mus were its leaders."
Mu Qingyan smiled. "You needn't patch it up. Nie Hengcheng wronged the Mus, but he never wronged the Sect. In the decades he ran it, he made it prosper. My great-grandfather and grandfather fell short of him in many ways."
You Guanyue was secretly delighted. This new lord was young, but he planned like a master strategist, left nothing unforeseen, and, rarest of all, had a generous mind.
A few days later, though, he would add the qualifier "when he attends to proper business" to that judgment. The maddening thing was that this lord spent most of his effort on anything but proper business.
Mu Qingyan looked out the window at the distant mountains. "The Sect did not come into being because of the Hanhai Mountains and these halls and pavilions. It was generations of far-sighted leaders and loyal followers who built what the Sect is today. As long as we stand united, from top to bottom, there is much we can achieve."
You Guanyue was a very clever man, and now at last he understood Mu Qingyan's resolve. He bowed his head, beaming, and said sincerely, "I understand, Young Lord. Your vision and ability are the greatest I have seen. From now on I will follow your orders and never harbor doubts..."
"That isn't necessary either." Mu Qingyan sounded tired, his tone somewhat listless. "Shisan has been upright and stubborn since he was small, with nothing else on his mind. He does whatever I tell him. You are careful and capable, and since Elder Qiu passed away you have had no one to lean on in the Sect, so of course you think more when things come up. That isn't a fault in you. But you had better go now."
You Guanyue was taken aback.
Mu Qingyan looked back. "Your smile is uglier than a ghost's right now."
You Guanyue froze. Finally realizing what he looked like, he clapped a hand over his face, swollen like a pig's head, and fled.
After he left, Lian Shisan came out of the shadows and pursed his lips. "That man talks too much. The Young Lord must have used up all his patience for the month. In a few days you'll shut yourself in a room and not say a word, and Uncle will start worrying again."
"The main business isn't finished, so I won't shut myself in." Mu Qingyan gazed listlessly out the window, half of his handsome face touched by the faint light of dawn. "You Guanyue is a bit of a bother, but clever people are never easy to win over. Elder Qiu was awe-inspiring in his day, with countless disciples. Now only You Guanyue, Wang Tianfeng, and a few others still make offerings to him in secret."
"By the way," he asked suddenly, "has Uncle come back?"
"He came back a few days ago. He's already gone back to Fleeting Splendor."
Mu Qingyan lowered his lashes, betraying nothing. "Did Uncle leave anything?"
"The usual," said Lian Shisan. "Telling the Young Lord to be careful."
Mu Qingyan turned around, displeased. "You should learn from You Guanyue and use your brain more, instead of diving into a pit and not climbing out. I already know he's nagging as usual. I'm asking whether he left anything new!"
Lian Shisan thought hard. "...Oh, right. Uncle said, 'Wontons should be wrapped and eaten fresh. If you leave them too long after wrapping, they lose their flavor, and the one who eats them gets angry.' What does that mean?"
Mu Qingyan's eyes shifted. A faint, delighted air slowly spread around him, like a bud opening in a corner no one knew about.
Had You Guanyue been there, he would certainly have noticed. Lian Shisan noticed nothing and asked blankly, "One of the four main altars, the Vermilion Bird, has fallen. What will Nie Zhe do about it?"
"He'll certainly respond. As for how," Mu Qingyan smiled, "I can roughly guess."
...
You Guanyue howled silently at the mirror for half the night, then set his broken nose with a grimace and had his personal maid fetch the most precious salve to smear on his face. Master and maid worked at it together for hours, but the face in the mirror was still a horror to look at.
The maid cried bitterly. You Guanyue snapped, "What are you crying for! Stop it! From now on I can at least decide for myself who I sleep with. Isn't that a good thing?! Get out of here and eat. If you starve, who's going to wait on this young master?"
He had meant to hide in his room for a few days and show himself only after his face had recovered a little. But Nie Zhe would not let him hide his ugliness. One after another, he sent two women to Mu Qingyan, and the worrywart Young Master You had no choice but to appear.
The first woman was about seventeen or eighteen, with almond eyes, peach-blossom cheeks, and a waist that a single hand could span. When she lifted her head, her beauty was startling. She knelt timidly before Mu Qingyan, not daring to speak, a truly pitiful sight.
"You are Qiu Cuilan?" You Guanyue asked, his face stiff.
The woman answered timidly, "...Yes."
"You say you're Elder Qiu's granddaughter?"
"Yes."
"What did Nie Zhe send you here to do?"
Tears welled in Qiu Cuilan's eyes. "He told me to come and serve Young Lord Mu."
At this, Mu Qingyan seemed overcome with amusement. He rested his slender fingers against his forehead and laughed without stopping. "...What a clumsy imitation. Someone should show Nie Hengcheng what Nie Zhe has amounted to."
You Guanyue understood Nie Zhe's scheme perfectly well, but he was still torn. Elder Qiu had been hot-tempered and fierce as fire, yet fiercely protective of everyone under his wing, and he had taught them martial arts with real care. After You Guanyue fell into the hands of slavers, the years under Elder Qiu were the only ones in which he had felt safe. He felt a certain fondness for the old man.
"Young Lord, what do you think...?" he said hesitantly.
"Kill her," said Mu Qingyan.
"??" You Guanyue stared. "Young Lord!"
Qiu Cuilan was frozen with fright on the spot.
"Elder Qiu never had a granddaughter. He had only a daughter by his late wife, and she married far away long ago." Mu Qingyan seemed entirely unconcerned.
You Guanyue hurried to explain. "No, no, Elder Qiu did have a grandchild. She was born to a maid he took as a concubine late in life."
Mu Qingyan sighed. "You see? Losing your integrity in old age is worse than an old courtesan reforming. At that age, what was he doing taking concubines? Lacking in virtue. Still, kill her. Elder Qiu's son never married, so where would a daughter come from?"
You Guanyue nearly choked. So he did know Elder Qiu had a son!
"Don't, don't, don't! Elder Qiu's son never married, but he had several maids he doted on. After Elder Qiu died, the son drifted in a daze for two years and then died drunk. A few months later one of his maids gave birth to a posthumous child, which the current Tianji Elder, Hu Fengge, sent people to adopt."
"Is that so," Mu Qingyan said lightly. "She looks nothing like Elder Qiu. She must be someone Nie Zhe sent to impersonate her and pry out secrets. Just in case, kill her anyway."
"Young Lord." You Guanyue was helpless. "I saw her from a distance once. This woman really is Qiu Cuilan."
"Fine, fine." Mu Qingyan seemed not to care either way. He lifted a hand toward the young woman kneeling on the floor.
Qiu Cuilan, shaking with fright, crawled forward and knelt beside his seat.
Mu Qingyan propped his cheek on his left hand and smiled at her, casually. In that instant he was dazzling, like pearl and jade. "I like clever girls. Are you clever?"
She seemed a little entranced and nodded blankly. "...Cuilan is willing to learn to be clever for the Young Lord."
Mu Qingyan smiled. "Being clever is good. I'll be direct. I am about to attack the White Tiger Altar, then Azure Dragon and Black Tortoise, then the Palace of Ultimate Bliss. I will kill Nie Zhe and take back the leadership of the Sect. So don't be in a hurry to place your bet. Watch for a few more days. Understand?"
Qiu Cuilan bowed down and kowtowed, bewildered.
After the woman was led away, You Guanyue found himself hesitating. "Young Lord, she was raised by Nie Zhe, after all. Even if we can't kill her for Elder Qiu's sake, we should at least send her far away, so she doesn't ruin the main plan."
Mu Qingyan chuckled. "The real Qiu Cuilan died at the age of five. When I first entered the Sect, more than a year ago, Nie Zhe scrambled to find a beautiful girl of about the right age to pass as Qiu Cuilan. Before he could finish training her and release her, I escaped from the Sect, and she never got to be used."
"So that's how it was!" You Guanyue was horrified. "In that case we can't keep her. We must get rid of her at once!"
"No hurry." Mu Qingyan smiled. "She's pretty, and she acts well. A person Nie Zhe trained with such care shouldn't be wasted."
You Guanyue was both shocked and impressed. He thought Mu Qingyan unfathomable and dared not ask more.
The next day, Nie Zhe sent a second woman. You Guanyue almost smashed his mirror in anger. Honey traps, one after another, with no end in sight! He stormed out of his room, determined to vet the new fox spirit for the young lord.
This time, however, it was not a charming girl but an exceedingly beautiful middle-aged woman, with a name that made hearts tremble: Sun Ruoshui. More than twenty years ago, she had been one of the beauties Nie Hengcheng sent to Mu Zhengming, and the only one who succeeded in the end.
Mu Qingyan's birth mother.
You Guanyue didn't dare say a word now. He wished he had never left his room.
Sun Ruoshui's background was no secret among the Sect's upper ranks.
In his youth, Mu Zhengming had had an old scholar as his first teacher, who soon left the Hanhai Mountains to live in seclusion far away and vanished after a plague. To control Mu Zhengming, Nie Hengcheng went through great trouble to find the last surviving young relative of that old teacher. After several years of training, she was sent to Mu Zhengming's side.
Mu Zhengming was then young and hot-blooded, and he cherished the memory of his first teacher, so naturally he treated Sun Ruoshui with special regard. Moreover, she was a jade-like beauty, rare in all the world. A young man and a young woman, together day and night, were soon married, and five or six months later Mu Qingyan was born.
Elder Qiu burst out cursing in fury, while Nie Hengcheng was extraordinarily pleased.
What no one expected was that Sun Ruoshui's heart belonged not to Mu Zhengming but to Nie Zhe, the childhood sweetheart she had grown up with.
In Nie Hengcheng's eyes, Sun Ruoshui was only a handy tool. The woman his nephew married properly was Li Ruxin, daughter of his sworn brother who had died young. Before an uncle whose word was final, Nie Zhe did not dare so much as open his mouth.
After that, Elder Qiu died under murky circumstances, and Mu Zhengming was strangely gravely wounded and vanished. A few months later Nie Hengcheng died at the hands of Cai Pingshu. Zhao Tianba and Han Yisu rallied their men for a frenzied revenge, and soon met utter ruin on the banks of the Qingluo River.
This chain of chaos, with blood flowing like a sea and corpses strewn everywhere, fulfilled Sun Ruoshui's wish. She left her son, not yet a year old, with a nanny and moved to Nie Zhe's side, impatient to be there. Nie Zhe, fearing gossip, did not dare get close to her, but as long as she could often see the man she loved, Sun Ruoshui was happy.
Later, Mu Zhengming appeared and took away their five-year-old son, and left her a letter of divorce. She formally married Nie Zhe as a co-wife and lived in the honor of the (acting) sect leader's lady, with crowds attending her, wonderfully.
Strangely, though, once the two became husband and wife, they got along less well than before. Nie Zhe now and then barked at Sun Ruoshui and treated her coldly.
Sun Ruoshui, though now middle-aged, was still beautiful.
She wept and told how she had missed her son, how Nie Zhe had stopped her from seeing him, how her heart had broken, how hard life had been for her since Mu Qingyan fell out with Nie Zhe more than a year ago, and how she had come now in the hope of turning swords into plowshares, and so on and so forth...
Mu Qingyan seemed to have turned into a cold salt sculpture, quietly listening to the lies this woman told that no one believed.
"Maybe kill her too," he said, his expression indifferent.
You Guanyue didn't dare say a word and could only laugh foolishly.
Sun Ruoshui was horrified. "You, you rebellious son, how can you..."
A sharp-eyed maid at her side stepped forward to smooth things over. "Madam, don't be alarmed. The young master is only joking. Blood is thicker than water. He came out of your own belly, so how could he... Ah!"
A piercing scream, a floor slick with warm, thick blood. The maid lay dead on the spot, a sword wound running from her left shoulder to her right waist, deep to the bone, her entrails spilling out. Sun Ruoshui collapsed on the floor, close to losing control of herself.
Mu Qingyan laid his long sword, bright as a silver moon, on the table and crouched in front of Sun Ruoshui. He spoke slowly. "Don't start with the loving mother and dutiful son routine. You and I both know exactly what the other is. You are not fit to be anyone's mother. I tolerate you, and I will support you until you die, not because you gave birth to me, but because I promised Father."
"So don't force me to break that promise and kill. In our Sect, killing kin is no taboo. Do you understand?"
Sun Ruoshui nodded in terror.
Mu Qingyan turned his head. "Guanyue, do you have Soul-Scattering Needles on you? Give her a few jabs. We move again tomorrow, and she can't be allowed to ruin things."
You Guanyue felt as if he had been pardoned. He hurried to say that he did, he did, he did, and that if he didn't, he could grind an iron pestle into a needle overnight!
That night, Mu Qingyan had a dream, the kind he had not had in a long time.
Before the age of five, he did not know his own name, or who he was.
The other children in the crowded compound all had fathers and mothers. Even those whose parents had died somewhere far away at least knew who they were. Only he did not know, as if he lived in a haze. Yet he understood things early, and that unknowing bewilderment terrified him.
No one spoke to him. He was not allowed to take a single step out of the broken hut. The bedding was hard, the walls cold, and he was fed one day and left hungry the next. No matter how he shouted, no one answered. Sometimes he crouched to watch ants in a crack in the ground, and even envied them.
On sunny days, he stretched his small hand, covered in chilblains, out between the window bars, trying to catch a thread of warmth.
It was useless.
He grew to the age of five in ignorance, able only to babble a few words, skin and bones, pale and sickly, hardly looking like a person.
"Oh dear, what a sin. Keeping him like this, it would be better to just kill him," an old woman who passed by now and then liked to mutter.
"Hush, old woman. Is this something we can talk about?" her husband scolded in a low voice. "He's a Mu descendant, after all. Killing him would look bad, and raising him properly might make trouble later. Keeping him like this is best. He'll be useless when he grows up!"
"Sigh, his own mother eats and drinks well, wears silk and satin, and never even asks whether her son lives or dies. How heartless!"
"People are ungrateful wolves by nature. She just counts on being pretty to fool men!"
Five-year-old Mu Qingyan did not understand what any of this meant, but he remembered it clearly.
His memory had always been good.
He remembered an evening of fine, dripping rain, the sky blue-black, puddles plinking. His matted hair was infested with lice that bit him until he was sore and itching, and he scratched wildly with his gnawed-off nails until his scalp was crusted with scabs.
But the small, thin child did not cry, because he knew no one would be there for him.
Then a tall man pushed open the door of the broken hut and gently took him into his arms.
The man looked at him closely, called him "Yan," and stroked his skinny hands and feet, his eyes full of pain for him.
From then on he had a father, and he had a name.
Father bathed him, shaved his head, and fed him. Father rubbed every chilblain with medicinal juice and taught him to speak, to write, and to practice martial arts.
Father also led him through all kinds of books, in pursuit of the learning in ancient texts. As the sun rose and set, he came to feel the lovely sensation of inner force moving through his meridians. Father hoped he would carry himself with grace and speak with courtesy, lofty as the mountains and vast as the sea, that he would appreciate the wonder of the scenery of heaven and earth and feel the smooth turning of the seasons.
Most important, Father told him: "Yan is the smartest and most sensible child in the world. I am very glad to have such a son."
Whenever he thought of the past, what Mu Qingyan felt most was not joy but grief for his father, and a lingering terror of what had been.
A deep terror.
He often thought: what if Father had not survived his grave injury and had died alone in some cave? What if, in despair, Father had simply gone away? If no one had come for him, would he have rotted, day after day, in that broken little hut?
He revered his father above everything in the world, above his own life.
But if he had never come into this world, would Father have been much freer?
...
The next morning, he woke as though nothing had happened and calmly directed the deployment of troops, laying out for everyone the strengths and weaknesses of the Azure Dragon and White Tiger Altars.
According to plan, You Guanyue led a small force to feint at the weakest of the four altars, the White Tiger Altar. Altar Master Sima Zhi shut the palace gates and refused to come out at any cost, while frantically sending word all around for reinforcements.
Liao Tu, master of the Azure Dragon Altar, was Sima Zhi's sworn brother. On hearing the news he naturally came to the rescue, and was caught squarely by Mu Qingyan and Lian Shisan, who lay in ambush along the road with a heavy force.
A bloody melee followed, ending with Liao Tu's heart meridians shattered by a palm strike from Mu Qingyan. Lian Shisan quickly cleaned up what remained, then gathered the men and set out for the White Tiger Altar.
You Guanyue, who came out to meet them, looked puzzled. "It was noisy at the gate a moment ago, but half an hour back it all went quiet. I don't know where everyone went."
Seeing that Mu Qingyan said nothing and looked weary, he quickly ordered his men to smash open the White Tiger palace gates with a heavy stone ram. Everyone pressed in on the momentum.
Just as You Guanyue had expected, the front gate, the front palace, even the front hall were empty. They fought their way in until, at the rear hall of the White Tiger Palace, they finally heard faint sounds of fighting and an angry girl's voice:
"You scoundrels! Harming the great righteous sects is bad enough, but that's just what you demon cultists do. Now you're even harming the people under your own rule! Are you even human? Most of the people you grabbed yesterday to make corpse-puppet slaves have sons and disciples serving your demon cult! You have no public decency at all. You might as well die early and be reborn early!"
You Guanyue hadn't sorted it out yet when he noticed, with his sharp eyes, that Mu Qingyan's expression had changed completely.
He wasn't exactly beaming. He had come alive. It was like a cold ink painting that suddenly had bright, vivid color dabbed onto it. The sparse white space instantly turned into the human world, full of cooking fires.
They burst open the doors of the rear hall. In the midst of pools of blood and corpses lay White Tiger Altar Master Sima Zhi, motionless. Beside him stood a slender young girl, with two rings of White Tiger followers around her.
Lian Shisan charged in, bellowing and leading his men, capturing and disarming everyone in sight. The White Tiger followers, who had just been badly mauled by the girl, fell into even greater confusion at the sight of so many men bursting in.
The girl held an arm-blade as brilliant as sunset clouds, gold and crimson. At the noise she suddenly turned, and when she saw who had come, her face broke into a delighted smile.
You Guanyue thought this girl was like a rising sun, bright and fierce, warming people's hearts. He glanced sideways, and sure enough, Mu Qingyan had been "warmed" by the sun too. His brows and eyes were full of a smiling warmth as he slowly walked forward.
Just then a handsome young man with a long sword stepped out from one side, with a good deal of blood on him and on his blade. He came over with a cold face. "Zhaozhao, that side is cleared. Is Sima Zhi dead?"
You Guanyue felt a chill beside him. His lord's face had gone an alarming iron-blue.
The warm sun had plunged into icy water, and with a hiss, it went out.