For the next several days the jailer brought a generous meal at every sitting.

No matter how Ning Chen asked, the jailer wouldn’t answer him.

“Christ… they’re not putting a slow poison in the food, are they?”

Ning Chen said it to himself.

“When the Inspectorate kills a man, it doesn’t go to that much trouble.”

The prisoner in the next cell said it.

Over the last few days Ning Chen had gotten friendly with him.

His name was Tao Qizhi, and in the jianghu they called him Bonebreaker.

Tao Qizhi had been born poor and had little schooling. He had learned to fight from childhood and had knocked around the jianghu ever since.

A year ago he had passed through Zhenyuan County.

He found people there with no way to live and no door to take a complaint to.

And he saw with his own eyes the magistrate’s son take a common girl by force in the open street, and treat a human life as so much grass.

In his anger he went into the county office under cover of dark and killed the magistrate and his household, seven of them… but he left the old, the weak, the women and the children alive.

Cut the grass and leave the root, and there is trouble later.

After that he was a wanted man, and high on the court’s list.

He could fight, though, and he got clear of the Inspectorate several times.

In the end they took him all the same.

It took better than twenty of their best men to do it.

“Old Tao. Have a chicken leg.”

There was a wall between them, but it wasn’t a thick one, and a man could reach around through the gap at the edge of the bars and pass something over.

Ning Chen admired a man like that.

There was nothing he could do about any of it. The one thing he could do was share his food.

Tao Qizhi didn’t stand on ceremony. What Ning Chen passed over, he ate.

“Boy. I’m eating your food and I’ve got no way to pay you back.”

Ning Chen laughed. “There’ll be a chance… When we get down to the Hall of the King of Hell, you can fight. If the other ghosts push me around, you cover me. That’ll do.”

Tao Qizhi laughed out loud, and in the middle of laughing he went into a violent fit of coughing.

He had been tortured. He was badly hurt.

“Boy. How would it be if I passed everything I have on to you?”

Ning Chen laughed. “Pass it on how? Do you have the legendary inner force, so you can hand it to me through a wall?”

“Inner force? What is that?”

Ning Chen stared at the wall.

“It’s a kind of energy you build up by taking in the essence of heaven and earth. You can kill a man with it without touching him.”

Tao Qizhi said, “Never heard of it… What you’re describing is a little like the breathing arts, though.”

“Hm?” That got his interest. “What are the breathing arts?”

“Some of the first-rate men in the jianghu have them… Nothing as miraculous as what you’re describing. But they get the blood running strong, they double what a man can do in a fight, and they let him go on a long time without failing.”

“Is there lightness skill in the jianghu?”

Show a man that question and he is interested. There isn’t one who isn’t.

Who doesn’t dream, when he’s young, of being a hero of the jianghu?

Ning Chen remembered making himself a sword out of wood when he was small, and slinging it on his back, and setting off to walk the jianghu and cut down the strong and lift up the weak… He never got out the door. His old man beat the daylights out of him.

That was the end of the jianghu dream. The wooden sword turned into a pen, and the enemy turned into exam papers and test questions that never ran out.

Tao Qizhi asked, “What is this lightness skill?”

“Running up walls and over roofs.”

Tao Qizhi said, “That we do have.”

Ning Chen was astonished. “You actually have it?”

“I saw a master once. He took one breath, and he was as light as a swallow, and he went over a house without any trouble at all.”

“Can you do it?”

“No… I’ve learned some of the light-body work. Getting over a wall is nothing.”

Ning Chen rolled his eyes. Getting over a wall is a skill? I knew an ordinary man who got over other people’s walls all the time… One night the husband caught him and broke both his legs.

“Where do you rank in the jianghu?”

Tao Qizhi was quiet a moment. “Second tier.”

“So you’re not all that good, then.”

Complete silence from the other side.

After a while Tao Qizhi said, “Boy. I don’t want to take all of it underground with me.”

“My master had one student and it was me. If I die, Sinew-and-Bone and the Thirteen Ghost-Shadow Blades go out of the world for good.”

Ning Chen smiled without humor. “I’d like to learn. But I’m in the same place you are. Any day now they may take my head off.”

“Boy. You aren’t going to die.”

Ning Chen let out a breath. “I took the Fifth Prince hostage and beat him. You think I live through that?”

Tao Qizhi said heavily, “Boy. I’ve been going up and down this country for thirty years and I’ve seen a thing or two… The way you’re being kept, I don’t think you’re going to die.”

“I’ve never liked owing a man anything. I’ve eaten your food, so I’ll pass Sinew-and-Bone and the Thirteen Ghost-Shadow Blades to you.”

Tao Qizhi sounded so certain of it that Ning Chen began to wonder. Learning it can’t hurt. And what if I really don’t die?

Then another thought came, and he couldn’t resist. “There’s a wall between us. You can’t see me and I can’t see you. How exactly do you teach me?”

Tao Qizhi said, “I talk, you work. Learn the forms first. If you live, there’s time enough to drill them properly afterward.”

Ning Chen made a sound of agreement. Nothing else to do in here.

Tao Qizhi said, “Sinew-and-Bone. First you have to understand how a body is built, and the hundred and eight vital points on it.”

“Of the hundred and eight there are living points and dead points. Seventy-two that don’t kill. Thirty-six that do…”

As it happened, Ning Chen had studied the points himself.

In the cells, two men who had never seen each other’s faces. One teaching in earnest, one learning in earnest.

That day the Xuan Emperor called Geng Jing in.

“Geng Jing. How is Ning Chen conducting himself in there?”

I have never once seen him take this much interest in anybody. Only in Ning Chen.

In a little over ten days the Xuan Emperor had summoned him three times, and every time it was about Ning Chen.

“Reporting to Your Majesty. Ning Chen is doing very well.”

Geng Jing paused, saw a trace of a smile come onto the emperor’s face, and went on.

“He has made the acquaintance of a condemned man in there, and he is learning to fight from him.”

The Xuan Emperor looked mildly astonished. “Learning to fight?”

Geng Jing said, “The man is from the jianghu, Your Majesty. He killed the magistrate of Zhenyuan County and his household, seven of them. He can fight.”

That alarmed him, and his face darkened. “You have put Ning Chen in a cell with a condemned murderer?”

Geng Jing’s own face changed. “Reporting to Your Majesty. They are held in separate cells, with a wall between them.”

The Xuan Emperor let out a small breath and said, “Ah.”

Then his brows drew together slightly. “The boy can’t even behave himself in a cell. Taking lessons from a condemned man. That is exactly like him.”

“Geng Jing. Have somebody keep an eye on it. Don’t let that man hurt Ning Chen.”

Geng Jing bent forward. “Your subject obeys the imperial command.”

“The boy is living far too comfortably in there. From today, halve his food.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Then the Xuan Emperor waved a hand. “No. Leave it. The boy is undernourished and thin as a rail. He needs building up.”

Something began to work in Geng Jing. This Ning Chen isn’t His Majesty’s illegitimate son, is he?

There’s no other way to make sense of it. Why else would he be this good to the boy?

“Geng Jing. The boy is not to be too comfortable… Do this. Arrange something. Put a fright into him. But don’t actually hurt him.”

(End of Chapter 34)