“Ning, dear, the python robe is altered. Try it and see whether it fits.”
“So soon?”
Ning Chen went into the inner room and put the python robe on.
After Yudie’s work on it, the robe fit perfectly.
Ning Chen pulled her into his arms and bit lightly at her red lips.
Zisu’s small face reddened and she turned her head away.
Ning Chen glanced at her, thinking, what is there to be shy about? Back in Mangzhou, treating me, you were bold enough.
Then something seemed to occur to Zisu. She asked, “Have you been taking Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source all this while?”
“Mm?” Ning Chen looked at her, not following. “What Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source?”
Zisu said, “The medicinal broth you have been drinking.”
“Ning, dear, it’s the Beauty’s Delight you told me about… Sister Zisu says it’s some Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source.”
Ning Chen gave a flat oh and looked at Zisu. “What is it? Is there something wrong with the medicine?”
“There is nothing wrong with the medicine. I have looked at the prescription you gave Zhirou. It isn’t complete — it’s only half a sheet… This Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source nourishes the vital energy in its first half and strengthens the body in its second.”
“What effect has it had on you, drinking it?”
Ning Chen said with a smile, “A very plain effect. Blood and breath in full supply, spirit and vigor high, lively as a dragon and a tiger… I used to manage once in a night. Now I can go all night at one stretch and not feel tired.”
Zisu’s pretty face flushed a little. “Then that half sheet is certainly the first half of the Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source.”
Ning Chen asked, curious, “And if the prescription were complete, would the effect be better still?”
Zisu nodded. “Do you know of Lingxuzi?”
Ning Chen was curious. “What is a Lingxuzi?”
Zisu had nothing to say to that. “A man. An elder of the Daoist school with deep attainment, a figure of two hundred years ago. Lingxuzi was his Daoist name.”
Ning Chen gave a flat oh. “And what are you telling me this for?”
Zisu said, “The elder Lingxuzi lived to a hundred and fifty… This Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source was the elder Lingxuzi’s own creation, and when he died the prescription was lost.”
“Holy shit… a hundred and fifty?”
Zisu nodded. “The histories record that the elder Lingxuzi was the first fighter in the world in his day… They say that with this Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source, together with the Daoist breathing arts, he trained up a kind of breath.”
“They say the elder Lingxuzi could draw one breath and cross ten-odd yards with it, as though he were flying over level ground… He would throw out a leaf at random and it was worse than a keen blade. Plucking leaves and scattering blossoms, he could take a life at fifty paces.”
Ning Chen smiled. Wasn’t this exactly the jianghu master Tao Qizhi had told him about?
By Tao Qizhi’s account, certain masters in the jianghu could draw one breath and leap a rooftop without effort.
Ning Chen shrugged and said, not much caring, “Times have changed. What jianghu master? In front of a musket, all living things are equal.”
So he draws a breath and crosses ten yards. Can he outrun a bullet?
However good the kung fu, one shot puts him down.
Zisu shrugged in imitation of him. “Well, if you don’t much care, then never mind.”
Ning Chen looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“When I was traveling with my master, I came by the other half of the prescription by chance. But since Marquis Ning is not interested, let it go.”
Ning Chen’s eyes lit up on the spot.
Zisu had just said the complete prescription had a better effect.
Breathing arts? Training up some kind of breath? All that was far too airy to lay hold of.
But if it could make his body better, he was very interested indeed.
He was going to have three women from now on… Yudie, the Ninth Princess — and Ning Chen quietly counted Zisu in too.
“Interested — who says I’m not interested? For the sake of the happy life of all of us… Miss Zisu, I beg you!”
Zisu gave a smug little snort. “All right! In view of your clearing my father’s name and giving me my freedom… I’ll decoct the medicine for you from now on.”
“But this must be kept secret. Whatever happens, don’t let an outsider learn of it… or it will bring a killing down on us.”
Ning Chen’s brows drew together. “It’s only a prescription. Is it as serious as that?”
Zisu said, “In truth it is only a prescription for strengthening the body, but people passed the error along and it grew wilder with every telling… They say the prescription can give a man eternal life, or even let him shed the body and rise an immortal.”
“After all, the elder Lingxuzi did live past a hundred and fifty… so a great many people are willing to believe a story that absurd.”
“And it is not only the jianghu. The court has been fighting over this prescription too… They say that after the elder Lingxuzi died, the jianghu was thrown into a rain of blood and a stinking wind over it, and the court had a hand in it too.”
“It was this prescription, too, that got a great many Daoists killed for nothing… and that is how the whole Daoist school fell into decline.”
This time Ning Chen understood how serious it was.
But he could not help smiling coldly. “A pack of blockheads. Where in this world is there eternal life?”
Zisu said with a smile, “There is no eternal life, no. But the Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source will certainly make your body stronger.”
“Congratulations, then. You’re in luck.”
Zisu looked at him without understanding.
Ning Chen turned the talk and passed on to Zisu what the Xuan Emperor had said.
Whether she entered the Imperial Physicians’ Bureau or opened a practice was for Zisu herself to decide.
But he could guess. Zisu would choose to open a practice.
His Majesty had been blinded by treacherous men and had put Zisu’s whole family to death in error.
But in the end it was His Majesty’s own brush that approved it. Zisu said nothing about the destruction of her clan, but in her heart she must hate the Xuan Emperor for it.
The Xuan Emperor surely understood that too. Putting Zisu into the Imperial Physicians’ Bureau had probably been said offhandedly… Keep an enemy’s daughter at his side, and wasn’t he afraid Zisu would poison him?
They talked a while longer, and then Ning Chen left the courtesans’ quarter and went back to the Ning residence.
Uncle Chai brought tea and said, “Fourth Young Master, the teacher has been found… When would you like him to come into the house and begin?”
Ning Chen took a sip of tea and asked offhandedly, “Has his background been looked into?”
“It has. His history is clean.”
Ning Chen made a sound of assent. “If there’s nothing wrong with his history, have him come in as soon as he can.”
“Yes! Fourth Young Master, these are the calling cards from the past few days.”
Ning Chen nodded and picked up one of the cards to look through it.
He was the capital’s newest man of rank now, in His Majesty’s favor and newly made a marquis… There was no shortage of men wanting to make his acquaintance.
Ning Chen saw Shen Min’s card, asking him to come and eat at his house when he had time.
Shen Min was a clever man. Of course he could guess how Ren Qifeng had come down.
Asking him to the house meant Shen Min had come over to his side completely.
Ning Chen smiled and picked up another card.
And one glance was enough to hit him like a thunderbolt. His eyes shrank to points as fine as the tip of a wheat awn.
Ning Chen snapped the card shut. “Uncle Chai, who delivered this card?”
“This… this old servant does not know. The doorkeeper takes all the cards in and hands them over to this old servant.”
“Go and call the doorkeeper here for me.”
“Yes!”
When Uncle Chai had gone out, Ning Chen opened the card in his hand again. There was one line on it: Three months apart, and the seed the gentleman left has sprouted.
One short line, and it left Ning Chen wholly stupefied, with a humming in his skull.
The thing he most feared had happened after all.
(End of Chapter 334)