Ning Chen turned his head and looked at Zisu. “Your master and Tao Xiuwu know one another?”
Zisu lowered her voice. “I am not certain either… But I heard the name Tao Xiuwu from my master a long time ago.”
“Years ago my master was roaming the four seas, and he helped Tao Xiuwu. That half prescription for the Nine Yang Decoction for Nourishing the Source that I have was a gift from Tao Xiuwu to my master.”
“My master once said that Tao Xiuwu and the Elder Lingxuzi of the Daoist school are the same kind of man… Perhaps he understands the breathing arts.”
Ning Chen’s eyes lit slightly.
“But he does not seem to know you.”
Zisu was speechless. “When my master met Tao Xiuwu, my master was not yet my master… I only heard about all this later.”
Ning Chen’s gaze flickered. “Are you certain the man your master helped was this Tao Xiuwu, and not somebody else of the same name?”
Zisu said quietly, “Ask and we will know, won’t we? If it is, we stay. If it is not, we go.”
Ning Chen inclined his head slightly, turned back to Tao Xiuwu and asked, “Does the venerable Tao know Shang Lu, the Physician Immortal?”
Tao Xiuwu was startled. “What is he to you?”
From Tao Xiuwu’s reaction, Ning Chen had his answer.
“So you do know the Elder Shang Lu.” Ning Chen stepped aside and pointed at Zisu. “Her name is Zisu. She is my woman, and she is the Elder Shang Lu’s only disciple.”
Shock filled Tao Xiuwu’s face. He came forward a few steps and looked Zisu over.
Zisu made a graceful bow. “Zisu greets the venerable Tao.”
The shock on Tao Xiuwu’s face turned to excitement. “Good. Very good… I never thought he had left a successor behind him.”
“Years ago your master saved this old man’s life… Did your master ever speak of me to you?”
Zisu nodded. “The old gentleman spoke of you often.”
Tao Xiuwu suddenly burst out laughing.
“You little thing, picking out nothing but the pleasant things to say… It is possible your master mentioned me. But he most certainly did not mention me often.”
“Because he thought nothing of me at all. He saved me only because he was a physician, and saving the dying and healing the injured was his calling.”
Zisu was a little embarrassed. Her master had mentioned Tao Xiuwu exactly once.
If her memory had not been good, she would very likely have forgotten the name long ago.
Tao Xiuwu said, “That master of yours looks easy-going, but he is proud to the bone… He was the Physician Immortal, saving the dying and healing the injured, carrying the gourd to relieve the world. And I was an assassin who could not show his face in daylight.”
“One saves men and one kills them. They are opposites by nature.”
“A great pity. The last news this old man ever had of him was bad news.”
“Still, this old man has kept the debt for his life in his heart all along… And this old man has kept the promise he made to your master, too.”
Zisu asked, curious, “What promise?”
Tao Xiuwu said, “Years ago a job of mine had gone wrong and my life was hanging by a thread when I met your master… Your master said he could save me, but I would have to guarantee that I would never kill again.”
“After that, this old man lived shut away in Half Moon Manor, and has never killed a man since.”
Ning Chen said with a cold laugh, “You may not kill men, but you have trained up a whole crowd of people to kill them for you.”
Tao Xiuwu said, “Assassins are men too. They have to earn their living and eat, do they not? So you cannot go.”
Ning Chen narrowed his eyes. “Meaning what?”
Tao Xiuwu gave a chuckle. “Because you are the light that shines on the Ghost-Shadow Sect.”
Ning Chen’s forehead filled with question marks. He had not understood.
“I’m not Ultraman. Where would I get any light from?”
This time it was Tao Xiuwu’s turn not to understand. What was an Ultraman?
Gu Su spoke up at the right moment. “Master, Ning Chen… let us go somewhere else and talk.”
Tao Xiuwu looked at Ning Chen.
This time Ning Chen did not hesitate. He nodded and agreed… To refuse again would only make him look afraid.
The party came to an open pavilion.
The weather was turning hot now, and Quanzhou has spring in all four seasons to begin with.
A light breeze came through carrying the scent of flowers, and the pavilion was comfortable enough.
Tao Xiuwu sent everyone else away and kept only Gu Su.
“Ning Chen, how did you and Qizhi come to know one another? I heard something of it from Siyu, but he was not clear about it.”
Ning Chen said, “We were cellmates, I suppose. I had done something wrong at the time and was shut in the same cell with him.”
“Only I get along well with people, and the men of the Inspectorate looked after me nicely and kept me fed and watered… He had a harder time of it. He had killed the whole household of the magistrate of Zhenyuan County, so he was a serious criminal of the court, and going hungry was an ordinary thing for him.”
“I shared my food with him, and little by little there was nothing we did not talk about, and we became the closest of friends… He taught me Bonebreaker and the Thirteen Ghost-Shadow Blades.”
Tao Xiuwu asked, “Did he know at the time that you were Minister Ning’s son?”
Ning Chen ran it over quickly in his head and said, “He did.”
“Then he also knew you were on very good terms with the men of the Inspectorate?”
Ning Chen narrowed his eyes and gave a slight nod. “The men of the Inspectorate looked after me and fed me well every day. He was not blind. It was there in front of him.”
Tao Xiuwu and Gu Su exchanged a look.
Gu Su said, “Then there is no mistake. Ning Chen is the man Younger Brother left to us.”
Tao Xiuwu gave a slight nod.
Ning Chen asked, curious, “What does that mean, I am the man he left to you?”
Tao Xiuwu did not answer Ning Chen’s question head-on. Instead he asked, “What sort of man do you think Qizhi was?”
“A man of chivalry and honor to the bone. One of the great men of this age.”
Tao Xiuwu and Gu Su looked at each other and smiled, and there was comfort in the smile.
Gu Su said, “To be judged so by the Great Xuan’s Idle Marquis — if Younger Brother Tao knows of it down there, he will be very glad.”
Ning Chen said flatly, “I only said what is true. I once wrote two lines of verse for him.”
Tao Xiuwu asked quickly, “Which two lines?”
Ning Chen said,
生當作人傑， 死亦為鬼雄。
Living, be a hero among men; dead, be a hero among ghosts.
“Fine verse. Fine verse…” Gu Su was visibly moved. “Master, is that not exactly what Younger Brother pursued all his life?”
“Ning Chen, this old man thanks you on Younger Brother’s behalf… Worthy of the Great Xuan’s immortal of poetry. Those two lines are enough to let Younger Brother close his eyes in peace.”
Gu Su rose to his feet and bowed low toward Ning Chen.
The corner of Ning Chen’s mouth twitched. Every time he heard somebody praise him as the Great Xuan’s immortal of poetry, he curled his toes into the floor with embarrassment.
Because every poem of his was freeloaded.
Li the Immortal of Poetry, Du the Sage of Poetry, Bai the Demon of Poetry… I am not freeloading off your poems on purpose. The truth is I cannot write, so do not hold it against me.
You gentlemen recite a fine verse. All I can do is dribble a fine mess. Ning Chen made his apologies silently.
Tao Xiuwu bowed his head slightly. “This old man thanks you for Qizhi too.”
Ning Chen waved a hand. “There’s no need. I wrote the poem for him and it has nothing to do with you… It was purely that I respected the man’s character and his nature, and that I was grateful for the gift of the art.”
Tao Xiuwu gave a slight nod. “You said earlier that before he died Qizhi asked you to shelter the Ghost-Shadow Sect?”
I made that up, Ning Chen said inwardly.
“That’s right. He did ask me.” Ning Chen said it without a blush or a flutter. “What did you mean just now, that he chose me?”
Gu Su asked with a smile, “Do you think there is any difference between us and Younger Brother Tao?”
Ning Chen looked at them, mockery all over his face. Is there a difference? Do you two really not have the first idea?
Tao Qizhi was a man of chivalry and honor to the bone, one of the great men of this age… and in your lot there is no telling the men from the beasts. You tell me whether there is a difference.
Ning Chen said nothing, but his expression had said all of it.
Tao Xiuwu and Gu Su were both embarrassed, and regretted having asked the question… So an expression can do that much damage.
(End of Chapter 392)