The Rich Man's Gate Part 2

A Side Tale: Zhu Menshang

In truth Zhu Menshang was not of the wiped-out blood, and the scar had not come to him so; he said it only to make Yang Yan let down his guard.

His father used to say: to heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart.

His teacher used to say it too: to heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart.

Putting the two men's words together, he came to understand it as well: to heal, you must reach into the heart.

Zhu Menshang's birth name was written with the character for "merchant," and from childhood he had run cons at his father's heels. In every county town his father would "gather the crowd"—trade cant for drawing a ring of onlookers. The patter the boy knew by heart: that the family had grown rich without conscience, that a hereditary curse cut every man down by forty, that they had sought every famous physician in vain until a holy monk taught his father the healing art and lifted the curse; and that, charged by his teacher, he now practiced three years of charity to lay up merit—giving his skill free, the medicines to be paid for. That said, the show would begin: he would ask who in the crowd was ailing and treat them on the spot. Boils and ulcers, sprains and breaks, eyes clouded with heat, toothache and earache and piles—nothing he could not cure at a touch.

The trade had its own uncommon arts—the three-foot needle, plucking a tumor out by hand, cupping off poison, and the rest—all of them sleight and sham, all of which the boy mastered young.

In the rivers and lakes, this manner of fraud dressed as doctoring was called "working the big stake," and it was a con of the highest difficulty. First, the cheat must look and dress the part of a man of substance, so people believed him a somebody; he had to know his basic pharmacology cold, with the Compendium of Materia Medica, the Systematic Classic of Acupuncture, the Supplement to the Thousand Golden Remedies, and the Rhymed Formularies all by heart. And the work had to be done "with fire," not "with water"—that is, you had to spend money: stay at the grand inns, look the part in every particular, talk like an authority. Only then would they trust you.

As for the curing itself, it leaned on a few crude bits of surgery paired with the "topping" formulas—treating the symptom, never the root, and bluffing it through.

His father said: to heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart; grasp a man's heart, and the sickness is cured. Dress neatly, for instance, and they'll credit you the more; carry yourself loftily, and they'll credit you the more still. Everyone has a little awe of the unfamiliar, and even if a man at the show suspects something's wrong, he'll seldom call it out in front of all those eyes. Take the three-foot needle: even if the mark feels the needle hasn't truly gone in, he dares not stir then and there, for fear the needle should snap inside and pierce his heart. With that fear on him, you needn't worry about being exposed. Or take the boils and sores—those need long care in any case; ease the symptom now and they think you've struck the mark, and by the time, three or five months on, they find they haven't healed, you're long over the hills and far away. As for sprains and breaks—a turned ankle, a beating, a bruise or a fracture—some mend in three days, some take half a year to ease at all. If a fellow's foot takes seven days to heal, you say it was your miracle pill that did it; with any other doctor, wouldn't it have taken two or three months? There's no way to prove otherwise—no one can lay a hand on you. That is what "to heal, you must reach into the heart" comes down to.

His father charged him too to know the "fire-water flue"—to use cant questions to sort rich from poor. The rich were "fire-marks," the poor "water-marks"; if a man had money, work him harder, and if he was poor, don't waste your time.

But his father had his principles, and he often told the boy: this trade is luring folk in for a consultation, treating some harmless little complaint, and turning a profit on the medicine. Yet there were two "posts" you must never cure. One was the "life-and-death post," the other the "ruin post."

The "life-and-death post" was this: when you saw that a man's illness, left to drag, would kill him—that he must not lose his life by tarrying with you—then to take his money was to take his life. That was the life-and-death post.

The "ruin post" was much the same. You leave a man some margin; you don't dig out the very silver set by for his coffin. To do so is to sever a man's last root—that is the ruin post.

To take either kind of money was to court disaster, for if it "burst the drum"—if the patient saw through you and came to settle accounts—he would hunt you a thousand li. Meet one of these cases, and you had only to say: "Medicine can't cure a man marked for death; a doctor saves only those fate allows. Take this pill. If it heals you, well and good; if not, don't come back." With any knotty, obscure complaint, even the right remedy may fail, and no one can say for certain; tell a man his disease is beyond you, and you can slip clear in good time.

His father taught him, besides, the ways of keeping his skin. Adrift in the rivers and lakes, if danger found him he should run first to a brothel, then to a gambling house, then to a tavern.

Take the brothel: of the Nine Great Houses, all but Shaolin had brothels within their domains. Most were run directly by the local gangs, and behind each stood some powerful patron. It is a house of business, a place to turn a profit—who wants bloodshed when men come to take their pleasure? And if it came to killing, what client could spend his coin in peace? Brothels now keep their bouncers, the better the house the more of them, and once you're inside, your enemy can do nothing; bide your moment and slip away. Then the gambling house, same logic. Suppose you've drawn a winning hand and someone behind you starts a brawl and overturns the table—the round's void, the next is dealt afresh—won't you draw your blade and cut at the troublemaker? The house's good name suffers too. Step into a gambling den, and there'll be men to save your life. Last, the tavern. The so-called heroes of the world are nothing but common men who've been granted a Hero's Warrant; and ever since Old Beggar Peng of the Beggars' Sect's Jiangxi headquarters sheathed his blade and retired, the very word "hero" all but vanished from the earth. But men in their cups love to boast, and the tavern is the boasting-place of the world—every man swearing himself a hero of dauntless chivalry and matchless skill, just back from breaking some band of bandits or running down a pack of horse-thieves, or having bested this swordsman or that. Cry murder in a tavern, and who has the face to play the coward? Wine makes men bold; let one man rise and shout the trouble down, and you've room to flee. So it's in taverns that bold fellows show themselves. Only the tavern has its drawback: should someone corner you and put you to the question, you'll not get away. In our trade, a "feud" is only a matter of turning a profit; pay it off and most things settle, and as long as your life's intact there's a road ahead.

Brothel, gambling house, tavern—the cheats call them the "Three Treasured Grounds," good for gathering a crowd and good for going to ground. And in the Fujian-Jiangxi-Zhejiang country especially, the three provinces handed to the Beggars' Sect after the Kunlun Council, the Sect—lowborn itself—knew these trades best and ran them best, in number and in quality both; they were a great wellspring of its income. Taverns aside, the finest brothels and gambling houses are all in those three provinces, and many a martial-world man of means, on business or pleasure, never passes through without doing his trade there—even the lay monks of Shaolin Temple have been known to come on purpose to lie with a courtesan.

Trailing his father into brothel and gambling house through several escapes, the boy came to grasp these truths. Father and son roamed the rivers and lakes, never lingering more than three to five months in any one place, eating and dressing on the best. Hawthorn cut with cassia-seed, rolled into pills, sold for ten cash—the water-mark's price; but to a fire-mark, a single "Heavenly King Heart-Saving Pill" to quench the heart's fire might fetch a tael of silver. It was a free and easy life, full of the sights and ways of distant places—pleasant past words. If it had one fault, it was that he made no friends.

In the boy's twelfth year, he and his father came to Tongren in Guizhou—Qingcheng Sect country. They put up at the best inn in the place, the Fushun, and set about their "doctoring."

Winter was coming on, the weather turning cold, and fewer people passed through the market; the "crowd" would not gather as it should. The boy noticed a young Miao lad in thin clothes sitting at the mouth of an alley, watching his father work. When father and son moved off, the boy moved off too; and the next day, when the father came again, the boy came after him again.

This lad was perhaps a year or two older than himself—gaunt and small, maybe from hard living, shorter even than he was. The boy judged him a water-mark, who only stood and watched his father's tricks.

But conning, too, runs on luck. The same patter, the same sleight to "gather the crowd," and yet each occasion falls out differently. A crowd may come, but you still need them to ask questions—the more they ask, the better you can show your stuff. Many onlookers and no exchange—warm at the edges, cold at the heart—and you've a fine show but no profit to take. Sometimes two or three step up, you work a trick, an answering murmur runs through them, and the crowd packs thicker and thicker.

This time the elder Zhu had run into ill fortune. The crowd was large, but they only gawked; none sought a cure, none asked a thing, and after a while they melted away. That worried him. Working the big stake takes fire; he had first to show himself rich, so people would believe he was no money-grubber, and so the inn he kept, his food and dress and trappings, all wore an air of wealth—and it had been long since his last opening. At this rate, half a month more and he'd be facing famine.

There was nothing for it but to brazen on. On the fourth day the crowd came again, and the Miao lad lurked at the corner. The elder Zhu treated a few cases of chest-tightness and cough and chill, then called out, "Three years of charity, not a coin taken—who else would come and be cured?" Silence in the ring; no one spoke.

It looked like another lost day. The elder Zhu sighed and made to pack up and seek his living elsewhere. Then, all at once, the Miao lad came squinting into the ring with his left eye screwed shut and called out loud: "I've gone blind in one eye. Doctor—can you cure it?" Guizhou is mingled Han and Miao country, so a Miao child was nothing strange; what was strange was that the boy had been watching for days, sharp-eyed as a thief—when had he gone blind? Suspecting a setup, afraid the lad had come to "burst the drum" on them, the boy tugged his father's sleeve in warning and whispered, "It's not an exposure, is it?"

The elder Zhu was puzzled too, and went carefully. He drew back the lad's left eyelid and saw the eye red and swollen, threaded all through with blood. The lad gripped his hand and wailed, "Save me, holy physician! I'm young yet—blind in this eye, I'll not live!"—and as he said it, his finger gave a little dig, as if signing a code.

Now the elder Zhu had the measure of it. "I can't promise to cure this," he said only, "but I'll try." He took medicine from his chest, dabbed it on the lad's eye, and sent him to rest off to one side.

The onlookers, seeing a blind lad turn up out of nowhere, grew curious and stayed put, while the elder Zhu held forth again on physic and pharmacy. After perhaps a small half-hour the lad asked, "Doctor—can I open my eye now?"

"Try it," the elder Zhu nodded.

The lad opened his eye, every thread of blood gone, and cried out, "Healed—healed! I can see! Thank you, holy physician, thank you!"—and dropped to his knees, knocking his head on the ground. The crowd broke into cheers, marveling, full of admiration.

The boy was both startled and at a loss. His father's craft he knew; the lad's condition he understood. What he did not understand was why the lad had helped his father—and how the eye had truly been cured.

The crowd, hearing by his speech and look that the lad was a local, were sure he could be no confederate of the doctor's. A physician who could give a blind man back his sight—that was a holy physician indeed. The ring caught fire; the elder Zhu launched into the Compendium of Materia Medica and sang out the Rhymed Formularies, and dazzled them all. From that day their trade in the place was truly opened.

When the crowd had thinned, the elder Zhu said to the Miao lad, "To root this out you'll need long treatment. I'm at the Fushun Inn—come with me." And the lad came. On the way, the boy asked, "How was it with your eye? Swollen up red like that?" The lad murmured, "I packed it with sand—of course it went red and swollen. The doctor put drops in, I rested a while, and it came right." Understanding dawned, and the boy clapped his hands and cried it clever, feeling he had met a friend too late in life.

In the inn room, the elder Zhu split the day's takings three ways and gave one share to the Miao lad. "I'm obliged to you, brother, for your good turn—you've kept my son and me from starving. From here on, whatever we make in Tongren, a share is yours."

But the Miao lad would not take it. He knelt and knocked his head on the floor. "I want no money. I beg you, teacher—give me a craft to live by!"

This lad, it turned out, was surnamed Luo, named Xiao, single character. Orphaned of both parents, he had scraped along on a little savings and odd day-labor, and his days were bitter. Watching by the roadside those few days, he had seen through the elder Zhu's sleight; he did not give it away, but blinded himself with sand and lent his hand that once, hoping only to win a trade to live by, that he might never again go hungry and cold.

The elder Zhu was unwilling at first; then he thought again. The boy could see through the mechanism—so he was clever. He had ridden the wind and caught the current—so he had a deft touch. He had blinded himself with sand—so he was quick-witted. And knowing it for a fraud, he had not exposed it—so he was prime material for the trade. The elder Zhu nodded. "I'll take you on, then."

Luo Xiao was Zhu Menshang's first friend, and a brother to him. Three years older, he was called "Senior Brother," and he treated Zhu Menshang as his own younger kin; the two were close as hand and foot, romping and rambling together. When Zhu Menshang got up to mischief, Luo Xiao took the blame; whatever good there was to eat or enjoy, he saved a share for the boy. When Zhu Menshang overstepped and did wrong, Luo Xiao put on his elder's airs and dressed him down; and he served the elder Zhu like a true father, warm and solicitous, caring for him in every particular, until they were a family.

Then the three left Tongren and went conning through Guizhou, and three swift years went by. Luo Xiao learned every one of the elder Zhu's methods, the sham formulas among them. By now he was eighteen. One day the elder Zhu called him over and said, "You're a clever one. It's barely three years since we met in Tongren, master and pupil, and already you've learned my whole craft; I've nothing left to teach you. With your skill, you can well keep yourself. Go and make your own way."

Luo Xiao knocked his head. "I'd stay a few years more at my teacher's side and wait on him."

The elder Zhu laughed. "Working the big stake takes fire. Keep you by me and the profit won't grow, but the cost will. You don't expect your teacher to find you a wife and raise your children too? Off you go and make your own living."

"If teacher wished to earn," Luo Xiao said, "the three of us could keep thirty fed. I've often seen you let a mark go by, take the long way round, hand the money back."

"This trade is only scraping a bowl of rice," said the elder Zhu. "Burst a drum and it's worse trouble than it's worth. Only—remember the three things I told you."

"I remember," Luo Xiao said. "To heal, you must reach into the heart—weigh and ponder, read the smallest sign, and the patient will hold you for an immortal and buy his medicine meek as a lamb."

"And the other two?"

"Don't take the life-and-death money. Don't covet the ruin money."

The elder Zhu nodded. "Keep those three in your heart. Now go."

And indeed the elder Zhu gave Luo Xiao five taels of silver for capital. Seeing his brother go, Zhu Menshang could hardly bear it. "Take good care of teacher," Luo Xiao said. "If I come up in the world, I'll be back to keep him in comfort."

Zhu Menshang's eyes reddened. "Keep well, Senior Brother," was all he said.

And Luo Xiao went.

After that Zhu Menshang went on roving north and south at his father's side, cheating for their living. So another two years and more went by, until one day, come to Quanzhou in Fujian—Beggars' Sect ground—while they were at their medicine, a man came reeling down the main street as if running for his life.

The three came face to face, and Zhu Menshang cried out in astonishment, "Senior Brother?"

It was Luo Xiao. He was in a wretched state, and the sight of the elder Zhu was like a straw to a drowning man. "Teacher—save me!" he shouted.

The elder Zhu, suspecting nothing, sprang forward to him. He had only just got him on his feet, before he could learn the why of it, when a burly man of thirty-five or six—angry-browed, his beard a tangle, his face a slab of cruel flesh—came up behind with a headsman's saber in his hand. The man moved with terrible speed; his skill must have been very high. Luo Xiao scrambled to flee. The elder Zhu made to bar the man's way, and the man suddenly roared, "You're his teacher?!" While the elder Zhu hesitated, the saber rose and fell and clove him in two.

"Father!" Zhu Menshang screamed. The man's head turned. Luo Xiao, knowing he had brought down ruin, cried, "Run!"—and spun and bolted.

But the big man was faster still. With a single bound he cleared Luo Xiao's head, and before he had touched the ground his saber swept level, and Luo Xiao's head went rolling from his shoulders.

Zhu Menshang turned and ran. The street, seeing murder done, dissolved into chaos, and though the killer's lightness-skill was good, the crush of the crowd hemmed him in and lost him sight of the boy.

Slipping round a corner in the confusion, Zhu Menshang looked up to find the signboard of the Wanhua House before his eyes. He plunged inside as if come whoring, but his face was wild with fright; he chose a girl at random, went into a room, and when the girl made to greet him, dived under the bed and lay there shaking without cease.

He hid in the brothel three days, not daring to go out and see his father and brother buried, his mind a blank chaos, knowing nothing of what had passed, wishing only that he might wake and find it all a dream.

After three days the brothel came to settle the reckoning, and Zhu Menshang found he had not a coin. On Beggars' Sect property, how was he to wriggle out of paying? They gave him a thrashing that left him bruised head to foot and spitting black blood, stripped off his clothes, and flung him out into the street.

His father's and brother's bodies were long gone past finding. He dared not go to the Beggars' Sect to demand an inquiry, and penniless, in such a state, he could no longer work the big stake; there was nothing for it but to beg his way along, taking each day as it came. Bred to ease and plenty, how was he to stomach those cold scraps and leavings? Robbed all at once of every prop, he knew not where to turn, and with no money for medicine his hurts would not heal, so that now and again he coughed blood.

Winter had set in, and a great snow swept down. He could find no place to shelter, and after much wandering came on a ruined temple. Frozen numb through and through, sure his end had come, he passed out.

When he woke again he was in a rundown inn, a thin quilt over him. Only a small thin quilt—but a room to keep off the wind and snow was enough to ward the cold, and it seemed to him he had never in his life lain under so soft and warm a covering.

There was another in the room: an old monk of perhaps sixty, his face a net of wrinkles, kindly and mild.

"You're awake?" The old monk turned to look at him.

Before Zhu Menshang could answer, the monk came to him and asked, "Have you family, benefactor?"

Zhu Menshang thought of that day's horror—he did not even know why his father had been killed. He shook his head; that was answer enough.

The old monk patted his shoulder. "Then—shall this poor monk be your kin for a while?"

Zhu Menshang wept, and leaning into the old monk's arms he sobbed aloud.

......

The old monk was of Shaolin Temple, one of its Proper Monks, and his dharma name was Juezheng.

The first time he heard the name, Zhu Menshang doubled over laughing. Juezheng—"perceives the fatal illness." A fine name for the trade. And when he learned the monk was a healing monk who wandered the land dispensing physic, he laughed till he rolled on the ground.

"A man named Fatal-Illness handing out cures," Zhu Menshang said, "—who'd dare come to him? You'll never reel in a mark, never cure a post."

Juezheng said gravely, "A dharma name is only a name—a mere designation. And this poor monk doesn't heal for money."

"Heal what, without money?"

"This poor monk earns merit," said Juezheng. "If I save but a single life, the merit is past all measure."

Reared from infancy in fraud, Zhu Menshang half believed and half doubted the monk's words; but he was a man who repaid a kindness, and grateful for his rescued life—and with nowhere else to go—seeing the monk old, he carried his medicine-bag along the road and bore his baggage, by way of repaying so great a debt.

Juezheng's one fault, if it must be told, was that he prattled. Every matter great and small, every diagnosis, every meal and lodging—not one but he must fuss and chatter over. Let Zhu Menshang drop two grains of rice and the monk would spy it, pluck them up and eat them as a matter of course, and lecture half the day besides on cherishing food. He never scolded, only urged and urged. With patients it was the same—every charge laid on, every caution repeated, what to eat more of, what to avoid, over and over.

But Juezheng's healing was the very opposite of the elder Zhu's: it was the real thing. He excelled at acupuncture and could resolve all manner of knotty cases; meeting a poor patient he would even dip into his own purse to buy the medicine, and live himself on what alms brought him.

Where with his father there had been food and fine clothes to spare, now—far from plenty—two days in three were hungry days. Zhu Menshang had no taste for such hardship, but the memory of that brief vagabond stretch had put the fear in him; he thought of going back to the con, yet could not bear to leave the old monk to wind and rain with no one at his side.

Perhaps it was that, apart from Juezheng and his father, in all his years of wandering he had no other friend or kin. He was used to the company of family and could not, for the moment, stand alone.

And perhaps, more than that, in keeping the monk company he felt as if he kept his father company. The same roving the rivers and lakes, the same nowhere to call home, the same dispensing of medicine along the road—only one was true and one was false.

They had not traveled long together before Juezheng saw that Zhu Menshang knew physic. Zhu Menshang told him of his father's trade, and the monk shook his head. "To cheat men of their money, to play the false physician for gain—of all callings that one most wounds your hidden virtue; you must not do it again. Since you have a foundation, this poor monk will take you as his disciple. Learn the healer's art and you can live by it. What do you say?"

Zhu Menshang of course assented at once—but Juezheng had two conditions. The first: that when his training was done, Zhu Menshang should practice charity, healing and dispensing medicine, three years. Zhu Menshang said healing he could manage, but giving away medicine was hard—he was no monk, he could not beg alms from door to door. Juezheng allowed there was reason in that, and asked only three years of free healing, to lay up merit for the dead father. The second condition Juezheng put thus: "Your father died by another's hand—a feud you cannot share the sky with—and this poor monk cannot be generous with what is not his to give; I will not ask you to lay down your vengeance. But if one day you meet the man, you must let him go once."

Zhu Menshang fell silent a while. In all this time, whenever he thought of that day he ground his teeth—only, it had come so sudden he had never seen the killer's face clearly, had no thread to trace, and felt only that calamity had fallen from heaven.

But how could such a feud go unavenged? He knew Juezheng for a merciful old man—and a prattling one—and traveling with him meant a steady stream of high-minded talk; refuse, and his ears would never get their peace. Besides, he truly did wish to learn the healer's art.

Having cheated men from boyhood, he thought now: 'I'll give my word; the day I meet my enemy and take my revenge, teacher can do nothing to me.' The matter settled in his mind, he asked first, "And if I meet him a second time?"—knowing that to agree too quickly would only rouse the monk's suspicion, so he asked of a second meeting on purpose.

"After the second time," said Juezheng, "whenever you meet him again, only think of your teacher before you take your revenge."

Juezheng's medicine was truly of the first rank, and Zhu Menshang, who had picked up sundry folk-remedies from his father, often debated them with him and so improved the more. Ordinary doctors scorned to keep company with a cheat, holding such men base, and would share nothing; Juezheng had no such prejudice. And indeed there is pharmacology even in the folk-remedies, healing craft hidden in the "topping" formulas; with his good foundation Zhu Menshang learned with great speed. Beyond this, Juezheng taught him martial arts as well—though the rules of his order forbade him to pass on the Upper Hall Martial Arts.

Juezheng often said, too: "To heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart."

This "into the heart" carried two senses. First: a patient with a shameful, secret ailment will surely conceal it, and you must put yourself in his place to discern the disease that shows no symptom. In questioning him you must be warm and solicitous, probing in detail, the better to know the root of his trouble—that is attentiveness of mind. Second: the patient is poor, unable perhaps to seek care, unable perhaps to buy medicine, and you must hold to "another's drowning is my own," measuring his lot by your own heart—if I were as poor and sick and broken as he, what then? Think so, and you can suffer in another's suffering, ail in another's ailment—that is goodness of heart.

Take another's sickness for your own, and you can tend the sick as your own kin. These two together are what it means that "to heal, you must reach into the heart."

Zhu Menshang only thought: 'The selfsame words, and on my father's lips and my teacher's they mean two wholly different things.'

In idle hours Zhu Menshang gave himself to the lore of the needle. He wove the martial arts Juezheng had taught him together with the acupuncturist's craft and worked out a needle-fighting art of his own.

Juezheng reminded him that to bring his martial skill to its full he would still need an inner-energy discipline, and asked whether he might not take the tonsure and enter the order—for once within the temple, deeper arts could be passed to him.

This near drove Zhu Menshang to despair. Bred to rich fare, he had as a youth gone with his father into the brothels too; these few years with Juezheng he had eaten lean perforce, and it was bitter past bearing—now and then he would slip off for a little meat and a little wine, and Juezheng, catching him, would prattle a whole day without end over it. To turn monk now for the sake of a martial art—that was out of all question. As for the inner-energy discipline, for revenge's sake it was a necessity; but that he could come to in good time, and not throw away a lifetime's happiness in a moment's haste.

Seeing that the boy's mind was unsettled, Juezheng only urged him now and again, like a fly buzzing, till he wore Zhu Menshang to a thread—and yet, in the wearing, ground out his patience too.

Time slipped by; five more years passed in a blink. Zhu Menshang had reached two-and-twenty, and Juezheng was seventy. The monk did nothing but heal and dispense medicine and chant his sutras morning and night, and kept no money by him; Zhu Menshang could not bear to watch it, and would often urge him to set a little aside against need. Juezheng would not, and only prattled at Zhu Menshang in turn for setting too much store by silver. Zhu Menshang had long since graduated in the healer's art; only worry over his teacher's health kept him from traveling far.

That year they came to Shaanxi—Huashan Sect country—and Juezheng at last fell ill. Aged as he was, what began as a mere chill soon turned to a wheezing affliction. To cure it was, for such a master and pupil, the work of a moment; the trouble was that Juezheng, having just given away the last of his medicine, hadn't a coin. The inn, fearing he might die in the room, turned them out, and Zhu Menshang carried the old monk on his back through the night, finding shelter at last only in a ruined temple beyond the town.

Zhu Menshang fetched straw to make a bed and piled all their baggage and clothing over Juezheng, but the monk coughed on without cease. There was nothing for it but to go into the town and beg. Only—first, he had not taken the tonsure; second, he needed money to buy medicine—and however he begged and pleaded, a day brought in but a few coppers, not enough to fill his own belly, let alone buy physic. He set up to heal for hire, but had no name, and in his rags they took him for a wandering peddler of nostrums; no one came near. Anxious and bitter both, he thought: my teacher has healed and physicked all his life, has saved hundreds upon hundreds—and today not one soul will put out a hand to help him!

Several days dragged on; Juezheng grew worse, and plainly there was no waiting longer. Zhu Menshang set his teeth, made up his mind, and said to the monk, "Teacher—today I'll bring your medicine back, come what may!"

He carried every last thing he owned, his medical instruments with them, into the town and pawned the lot for two mace of silver, bought a respectable suit of clothes, then went to an apothecary for a few coppers' worth of clove and hawthorn and other cheap simples, rolled them into pills, and went to the market—calling out loud, working his patter, plying his tricks to "gather the crowd."

He spun a tale—waylaid by bandits, forced against his will to sell off a secret family physic—and ran through the arts his father had taught him, and at once a press of people gathered. This time he had true skill, and true and false were mingled; with a round of fine talk he cheated them clean up into the clouds and turned a few coppers' worth of pills into living silver—two whole taels.

'Mother's curse—what kind of world is this?' Zhu Menshang raged inwardly. 'A true bodhisattva, they let die for want of aid; a false immortal, they worship as a god!'

With the money in hand he hurried to the apothecary, bought the medicine, and rushed back to the ruined temple to decoct it for Juezheng. The monk had sunk half into a stupor, but the scent of the brew roused him; in a last flaring of strength he sat up and asked, "Where did you get the money for this?"

"The apothecary saw how poorly I was placed and let me have it on credit," Zhu Menshang said. "It's to be paid back."

Juezheng sighed. "This decoction must cost several mace of silver—what apothecary gives such credit? Don't deceive your teacher. You cheated it, didn't you?"

"How would I dare cheat teacher? The medicine was truly had on credit." He had his story ready, and could conjure proof at a word—naming the shop, the proprietor, the twists and turns of the bargaining—telling it all so vividly it lived.

But Juezheng had long known this disciple's tongue could spin gold from air; however Zhu Menshang talked himself hoarse, the monk simply would not believe him, and only sighed. "If I die here, that is my fated span run out. But to swallow medicine got by fraud is to sow a karmic cause. I'll not commit such a fault at the very point of death. This medicine I will not drink."

Zhu Menshang pleaded with him living and dead, swearing he had begged the medicine himself, that even were it cheated the karma was his own to bear—but Juezheng would not be moved. Zhu Menshang thought: 'If you won't drink, then when the decoction's ready I'll pour it down you. Hate me for it if you will.'

When the brew had cooled, Zhu Menshang carried it to the monk's side. "Teacher—take your medicine." Juezheng made no answer. Thinking he sulked, Zhu Menshang bent and said, "Teacher, the medicine was truly begged—don't be cross." He reached out and gave him a push, and felt no response at all. A tremor went through him; he put out a hand to feel for the breath at the nostrils—and found that Juezheng had passed into stillness.

Zhu Menshang was racked with remorse, and weeping clung to the body, not knowing whether he had killed his teacher by delaying his cure or by angering him with the cheated money. He gave Juezheng's body to the flames. A man like his teacher, he thought, ought surely to yield a few sarira from the fire—but there were none; only a jar of ashes. It cast him down, and he no longer knew whether the Buddha-dharma his teacher had served all his life was true or false.

He carried the ashes to Shaolin. There they told him Juezheng had been an outside monk, and Shaolin Temple did not receive the ashes of any below the rank of hall-monk. He did not know Juezheng's native place, and the temple did not know it either; so he went out to Buddha City beyond the walls and, at the Nameless Temple, found a place set aside for the masterless dead, and there laid him to rest. 'Teacher won't mind this,' he thought.

After that the world stretched vast and empty, and he knew not where to turn. He bethought him of the man who had killed his father that year; the headsman's saber should be a thread. He traced it, following the trail all the way to Jiangxi—back into Beggars' Sect domain—and learned at last that it came of a line of the Five Tigers Gate-Breaking Saber Peng Family, a gang under the Beggars' Sect; even now Young Beggar Peng of the Jiangxi headquarters was a distant kinsman of theirs.

The Five Tigers Gate-Breaking Saber Peng Family was the foremost house within the Beggars' Sect's bounds, a great and branching clan with many of its own blood and more disciples still, spread through the three provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi. The newly seated chief, Peng Qianqi, went by the byname "Stinking Wolf"—sly, vicious, and notorious. Ever since Xu Cangyue, chief of the Beggars' Sect, had become Alliance Leader and gone to Kunlun Palace, it had been left to Young Beggar Peng of the Jiangxi headquarters and the acting chief Xu Fangge to hold him down and keep him from his evils.

Zhu Menshang went about in disguise, inquiring here and there. Meeting a poor man, he would always treat him without fee—keeping his teacher's charge—but a man must live, and meeting a rich one he must cheat, which he did by the whole bag of tricks his father had handed down; nor did that quite break his teacher's word either. By now he had true skill; a few months among them and all men acknowledged his doctoring and honored his benevolent heart.

One day a woman came to him, saying her husband had taken ill, and begged him to come and treat him. He followed her to a tumbledown thatched hut, and on stepping through the door saw a headsman's saber—the Peng Family's weapon, no rare thing there.

But the patient on the bed, wasted to skin and bone with sickness though he was—that face of cruel flesh, Zhu Menshang knew it at a glance.

A gift from heaven: a touch of the wrong medicine, and he could take his enemy's life! "May I ask your husband's name?" Zhu Menshang said.

"My man is surnamed Peng—Peng Tiancheng," the woman answered. "He's that one with a little name in the martial world, the Soul-Chasing Saber; the last Peng Family chief was his father's cousin."

"A direct branch of the Pengs, and a name of his own—how has he come to such straits?" Zhu Menshang asked.

The woman sighed. "He had a younger sister—the two of them clung together from childhood, he loved her past his own life. Some years back she fell sick of a foul disease, and he was taken in by a wandering quack, pawned the whole estate, borrowed everywhere besides; only when the quack ran off did he learn he'd been cheated. He called in another doctor then, but was told the season for treatment was past, that not even the gods could save her. He took out a hero's warrant and hunted that quack, and after a year and more ran him down in Quanzhou and had his revenge—took the quack's teacher with him too, though one disciple slipped away, and who knows where he's working his harm now. After that my man fell into a black melancholy and a sickness he's never risen from. Doctor—can you cure him?"

So Senior Brother, in the end, had not heeded their father's charge: he had dug out a life-and-death post, and worse, gouged a man's ruin post besides. A flood of feeling rose in Zhu Menshang, and he went to Peng Tiancheng's bedside. Peng Tiancheng said weakly, "Go, doctor. We can't pay for a doctor."

"I heal and dispense medicine and take no fee," said Zhu Menshang.

At those words Peng Tiancheng jerked upright and dealt him a blow that set his head ringing and his eyes swimming. The woman rushed to stop it. "Get out!" Peng Tiancheng cursed. "Get out, or I'll cut you down!"—and struggled up to reach for his saber, while the woman only wept and held him back.

Zhu Menshang said evenly, "I'll go at once. Only there's one thing I'd say to you. Six years ago, in Donghua township in Quanzhou, Fujian, you killed two men—one beheaded, one cut through at the waist. Is that not so?"

Peng Tiancheng's eyes went wide. "And what if I did?" he managed, between fits of coughing.

"That day I too was in the township," said Zhu Menshang. "When you did the killing, I saw a youth hiding from you, fleeing all the way to the Wanhua House."

Peng Tiancheng's eyes blazed. "You know where he fled? Who was he?"

"Who he was, I don't know. I know only that three days later, having no money to pay his reckoning, he was beaten out of the Wanhua House spitting black blood, and stripped of his clothes. I meant to save him—but his hurts were too grave, he couldn't outlast the cold, and so he died."

Peng Tiancheng's eyes stretched wider. "Is this the truth?" he said, his voice shaking.

Zhu Menshang nodded. "If you don't believe me—well, a lad hiding himself away in a brothel, there must have been something behind it; ask at the Wanhua House and you'll surely learn something. Your enemy's whole house is wiped out; your great feud is paid. Your sister, if she knows it in the world below, can surely rest content. There's only one thing more to fear for now—and that's you, her brother."

Peng Tiancheng burst into great laughter. "Thank you—thank you, doctor!" He clutched Zhu Menshang tight, and the tears came pouring down, and he wept as if his very heart and bowels were breaking.

Zhu Menshang wrote out a prescription, left some silver, and went from Peng Tiancheng's house.

He had promised his teacher: if he met his enemy, he would let him go once.

He hoped only that in this life there would never be a second time.

His father had said: to heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart.

His teacher had said: to heal a sickness, you must reach into the heart.

Putting the two men's words together, he understood the saying now.

To heal, you must reach into the heart.

After that Zhu Menshang changed the character of his name—keeping the same sound but writing it now with the word for an untimely death—and wherever he came he would say: "My forebears grew rich without conscience; a hereditary curse cut us down by forty; we sought every famous physician in vain, until a holy monk taught me the healing art and lifted the curse, and so, charged by my teacher, I practice three years of charity to do good and lay up merit..."

It was no lie, he thought. Looked at squarely, every word of it was true.

He held no hero's warrant, yet he ranged the length of the rivers and lakes, healing and dispensing medicine, and cheating the rich. Three years went by and then three more, three more and then three more, three years over and three years again...