Sasha carried the tray forward, and the whispering in the hall swelled.
Every minister craned his neck, yet Li Fei took her time, drawing back the silk cloth slowly.
On the tray lay a short length of jade-green root and stem.
"That is..."
"A tree root?"
"Could this be another thing out of the immortal realm?"
The ministers murmured and put their heads together, guessing at what lay on the tray. With Xu Yuzhong's example fresh before them, none dared pass judgment now or belittle Li Fei's gift. They waited meekly for what would follow.
Then an old man, hair and beard entirely white, recognized the thing for what it was, and said in startled disbelief:
"That is... the root of the Longevity Fruit."
The words set the hall buzzing. Some eyes went hot with greed, some voices sighed, and some men pressed their chests in genuine pain:
"The elixir of immortality? One bite of which adds thirty years to a man's life?!"
"Such a divine thing, and only the root fibers are left? A waste, a criminal waste!"
"Wait — if she has brought it out here, then..."
Li Fei's face had gone grave, and she sighed. "When your servant was slaying demons and exorcising evil in Luyuan County, I happened upon the lords of the Demon Suppression Bureau closing in on that Death-Devouring Demon King. Every one of the demon-suppressing envoys was fearless and skilled in arms, but the demon king was cunning past all reckoning. Not content with sending his hordes to butcher Luyuan County and force Hero Nie into a rescue, he laid ambushes past counting, ghouls and specters swarming those fine men of the Bureau. They fought to the last and never gave ground, but two fists cannot beat four hands, and they died with their faces turned toward their sovereign. Your servant strained every nerve to save them and missed by a hair's breadth. All that was left to me was to kill that Thousand-Year Tree Demon and avenge them."
Having enjoyed the Soul-Burial Spirit-Nourishing Grand Array to the last drop, Li Fei had used Fireball to burn away every corpse and every trace, and the cavern itself had been brought down bodily by Abyssal Lava. With no one left alive to contradict her, she could tell it exactly as she pleased.
She wiped the corner of one eye and went on in a heavy voice: "Afterward, in the Tree Demon's lair, your servant found this length of Longevity Fruit root. I kept it safe and carried it to Lin'an to present to Your Majesty."
"Martyrs, every one of them..." Zhao Bing sighed long and turned to the eunuch at his side. "Set up a tablet for them in the Hall of Martial Valor. And see that their families are generously provided for."
"As you command." The eunuch knelt and bowed his head.
"But their sacrifice was not in vain!"
Li Fei's voice rose sharply, and she spoke each word like a hammer stroke. "They went willingly into that demon lair — not only to discharge their duty, but to bring back the Longevity Fruit and offer it for Your Majesty's birthday! Your servant could not save their lives, but she can complete their dying wish!"
"Oh?"
Zhao Bing's eyes blazed with a light past describing. "Minister Li... do you mean you have some way to bring this root back to life, to make it bear fruit again?"
"More than that!"
Li Fei lifted her head, a smile curving her lips.
"Today is the Longevity Festival. Your servant must therefore present the Son of Heaven with a gift of ten thousand years — may Your Majesty's span equal Heaven's own, and may this realm of the Great Song endure a thousand autumns and ten thousand generations, its glory never fading!"
"The thing is flatly impossible!"
"Immortality? Does she truly imagine herself one of the immortals?"
"Your Majesty, this woman deludes the multitude with demonic talk. She deserves death!"
The moment Li Fei finished speaking the ministers lost all restraint, cries of alarm breaking out one after another.
Even Nie Yunyi turned his head, brows knotting.
Can you really do it? Do you really intend to let this worthless ruler keep his grip on the Great Song?
But Zhao Bing had no attention to spare for his ministers. He shot to his feet, his voice unsteady.
"Minister Li... do you speak in earnest?!"
Through all the ages, how many great sovereigns and enlightened rulers had poured out the wealth of nations in pursuit of the art of eternal life, only to fade quietly away and become dry bones in a burial mound?
And now this unfathomable immortal maiden said she could grant him immortality.
Zhao dared not believe it, lest the hope shatter and leave him broken by the fall. Yet remembering all the marvels Li Fei had already shown, his heart hammered like something gone mad.
Immortality — immortality!
"How would your servant dare deceive her sovereign in his own hall?"
Li Fei stepped forward and called out clearly, "I beg Your Majesty to lend me one handful of the Great Song's soil!"
"A handful? Minister Li might take the soil of a whole commandery and be welcome to it!"
Before the lure of deathlessness, Zhao Bing, who had always shown the world the face of a mild and cultivated gentleman, lost his composure entirely. Red-eyed, he roared at the guards beside him, "Did you not hear Minister Li? Go — go now!"
A Heaven Realm guard sprang away and was out of the hall in a heartbeat. He returned in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea and knelt before the Emperor, holding up a double handful of damp earth.
Plainly he had taken it from beneath one of the trees planted within the palace grounds; nothing else could have been so quick.
"Minister..."
Zhao Bing looked at Li Fei with something close to dread — a sovereign of the realm, and his eyes held the anxiety of a man afraid to lose what he has not yet gained.
Li Fei smiled faintly, took up the Longevity Fruit root, stepped forward and pressed it casually into the soil. Then she produced a small vase of white jade porcelain.
She drew the stopper, and vigorous life spilled out into the air, clearing every head in the hall. Li Fei tilted the mouth of the vase by degrees, and a crystalline thread of nectar fell drop by drop onto the green root.
In an instant a tender shoot broke the surface, a jade-green stalk thrust up through the earth in Flourishing Growth, flowers opened and fell, and six heavy fruits hung ripe, filling the hall with fragrance.
"Im-impossible!"
"Sorcery — this must be sorcery!"
"Does such a divine power exist in this world?"
"Hssss—"
The scene defied belief, and the assembled civil and military officials were struck half out of their wits.
Even Perfected Ge of the Mountain-Moving Sect rose abruptly to his feet and said, wavering, "Can it be that up above there truly is..."
And through the hall's collective indrawn breath, the flourishing leaves began to tremble.
There was no wind in the hall. It was the guard's hands that shook.
He knelt on one knee, the soil cupped in both palms, sweat falling like rain, as though even a Heaven Realm body could not bear the weight of those few small fruits. Hands that were normally steady as bedrock, that could split a gnat in half with a saber stroke, would not stop trembling.
It was hardly his fault. A living miracle, the elixir of immortality the Emperor had dreamed of all his life, rested in his hands this moment; the smallest slip and heads would roll and blood would run in rivers.
Zhao Bing closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, opened them again — and then came down from the dragon throne altogether. He walked shaking to the miraculous plant, stroked a Longevity Fruit with the greatest care, and murmured:
"It grows in the deep forests. Most of its fruits are white; green ones are rare. To eat one extends life by half a cycle of sixty years and preserves youth undimmed; eaten long, it lightens the body and raises a man to immortality. Yet the Longevity Fruit is by nature hard to find, and though one obtain a fruit or two, how shall one ever eat one's fill?"
For that moment his gaze wandered, while his breathing came faster and faster.
Down the long corridor of the ages, let a woman be a beauty without equal, flesh of ice and bones of jade — scoured by the river of years she ends as a painted skull, bare bone under rotting skin. Let a man be a peerless prodigy, a conqueror of his age — set before the blade of passing seasons, he can only stretch out his neck for the stroke.
But now eternal life seemed a mere step away, within arm's reach.
"Borrow the soil of the Great Song, draw down the water of the immortal realm, and let immortal and mortal be joined as one — and it will bear an enlightened sovereign who never perishes, a dynasty that never falls!"
Li Fei's mouth curved, and her voice rang out to the rafters. "Your servant wishes Your Majesty ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand times ten thousand years!"
At her second speech every man in the hall came back to himself, and the scorching stares turned on her were nearly enough to melt her where she stood.
The Longevity Fruit was a wonder of the age, certainly — but comb through the histories and one could at least turn up a few medicines that lengthened a man's years.
The white jade vase in Li Fei's hand, however, ripened the elixir of immortality in the blink of an eye. That was a treasure with no equal anywhere.
Consider: even if a man swallowed all six Longevity Fruits himself, that was no more than a hundred and eighty added years. To those with shallow cultivation bases that amounted to living a whole second life, and in any other age it would have been the supreme medicine of the world. But if the immortal water in that white jade vase could ripen Longevity Fruit more than once...
"Minister Li."
Zhao Bing's voice had gone slightly hoarse. "This Longevity Fruit is a marvel beyond question — but ten thousand years is surely putting it rather high..."
Li Fei smiled and gave the white jade vase a little shake.
"This is a treasure of an Immortal Venerable, bestowed on me by the Supreme and Most Virtuous Great Celestial Sovereign Who Governs All Immortals, Bai Mengtian. It is called the Heaven-Grasping Vase."
"One need only gather the dawn dew from lily blossoms and pour it inside, and the Heaven-Grasping Vase draws down the essence of sun and moon of its own accord to brew Creation Dew."
"And Creation Dew has the power to seize the creative work of heaven and earth. It can ripen every spirit medicine in the world!"
She paused, and added with weight behind every syllable:
"The Heaven-Grasping Vase brews one flask of Creation Dew every three years, and each flask can ripen the Longevity Fruit three times. Your servant tried it once a few days ago; the yield was a little poorer, but it still bore five fruits."
The hall fell utterly silent, and then, one by one, the ministers began doing sums.
One flask of Creation Dew every three years. Each flask ripening the Longevity Fruit three times. Each ripening bearing five or six fruits. Each fruit worth thirty years of mortal life.
What did that mean?
At the very lowest estimate, with this Heaven-Grasping Vase, at least five Longevity Fruits could be produced every year on average. A hundred and fifty years of added life, every year.
Distribute it properly and at least a hundred and fifty people could live forever because of it...
With that, the officials' breathing turned heavy, and a bottomless greed and hunger filled their eyes.
For an instant they seemed to see a boundless flood surging endlessly at Li Fei's feet, swallowing every living thing of past and present, while the little vase in her hand became a great ark that could carry those aboard across the sea of reincarnation to the far shore of immortality...
And there were only a hundred-odd berths.
At the thought, these high ministers and great officers held their breath and clenched their fists, faces shifting between light and shadow, every one of them poised to make his move — courtesy, restraint and modesty flung aside without a backward glance.
Li Fei surveyed them with a smile, swirling the nearly empty little vase. Since she had already decided to throw this bottle out as bait, she was not about to let anyone else profit by it: she had ripened a crop of Longevity Fruit in advance and quietly pocketed five of them for herself.
Counting Lilith's turn, today in the Golden Throne Hall made the third ripening, and there was not much Water of Nature left in the vase. Handing it over cost her nothing worth grieving over.
As for the lie about the Heaven-Grasping Vase...
[Bottle]
[Description: A bottle used to hold Water of Nature. Material unknown.]
This bottle was the container for Water of Nature that Miss System had given her — and if even Miss System listed its material as unknown, then nothing on the Demon-Sealing Continent stood the slightest chance of uncovering its secrets. So she spun her three-year lie with a perfectly easy mind.
Three years was not long, but Li Fei believed that in three years she would have force enough at her command to crush anyone who dreamed of rising against her.
"Your Majesty, your servant would speak."
The old minister who had first recognized the Longevity Fruit came tottering forward, stiff with age. "Your servant has worn out his head over the classics for decades, and even in his dotage has never dared to slacken..."
So the old wretch is already scrambling to beg the medicine off His Majesty!
Cold snorts rose all around, and hostile stares stabbed like knives into that white-haired old man.
His name was Qu Hao. He had been Grand Tutor to the late Emperor and was tutor to the reigning Son of Heaven as well, and he had poured his lifeblood into supporting Zhao Bing. He held little real power, but his learning spanned the ages and probed heaven and man alike; among the civil officials his prestige stood second only to Chancellor Liu's, and even His Majesty greeted him with the courtesies due a teacher.
Who would have thought that this old fellow, so apparently full of a scholar's iron backbone, would prove so unable to withstand temptation — that at the sight of the elixir of immortality he would rush out first, unable to wait his turn?
"But, Your Majesty — your servant can learn no more! In Bei Commandery there is a rising talent whose essays burn with such fire that your servant long ago learned them by heart backward, and still grasps only their sense and never their spirit. Ten years ago Top Scholar Ji possessed the gift to order heaven and earth, and your servant, with his old dim eyes, denounced him as a heretic who spurned the classics. By the time I understood my error, the harm was already past mending..."
Qu Hao's withered, stooped frame shook, and tears stood in his old eyes. "Even if the Longevity Fruit could make this body young again, your servant's soul has already grown old. No amount of the elixir of immortality can bring that back..."
"Lord Qu, what are you driving at?" some minister demanded, sensing that this was going badly.
"Your servant begs Your Majesty to grant the enchantress death!"
His wasted knees struck the floor with a crash, and Qu Hao knocked his head against the stone again and again. "Birth and age, sickness and death, the new supplanting the old — this is the Way of Heaven! If the altars of state fall into the hands of a pack of people who never age and never die... then the Great Song has no future at all!"
Zhao Bing's expression drifted, and he sighed lightly. "Teacher goes too far, raising alarms out of nothing..."
"Every age brings forth its own talents, and each leads the world for centuries! But if the wave in front takes root where it lies, how shall the wave behind carry on? Your Majesty! Grant the enchantress death, and let your servant remonstrate with his life!"
Every word out of Qu Hao wept blood as he drove his forehead into the ground, and scarlet spattered across the floor of the Golden Throne Hall, a sight to freeze the eye.
"Your servant remonstrates with his life!"
"Your servant remonstrates with his life!"
Two more civil officials came forward and knelt beside Qu Hao, striking their heads down hard, the dull thuds loud enough to deafen.
A short while ago, when Lu Qianfan's faction had been baying for Li Fei's death, these three had held their tongues. Now everything had reversed: they spilled their blood on the floor of the Golden Throne Hall while the crowd led by Lu Qianfan's adopted son Xu Yuzhong had gone eerily quiet — plainly with designs on the elixir of immortality.
"Gentlemen, rise."
Zhao, always so mild and generous, had gone cold in the voice, with a shadow of impatience beneath it.
"Your Majesty! The people come first, the altars of state after them, the ruler last of all! This enchantress means to leave the Great Song without posterity!"
Blood and tears ran together down Qu Hao's face as he shouted himself hoarse.
Something like pity flickered through Zhao Bing's eyes, and then he flicked his sleeve.
"Since Teacher is far advanced in years, We permit you all to go home and rest in your old age."
For one moment the three ministers knelt frozen where they were.
Scalding blood streamed down their faces. Their hearts turned to ice.
So long as one works the channels at the top, anyone who tries to bar my road is a mantis raising its arms against a chariot.
Watching what few loyal men the Great Song had left go ashen, Li Fei laughed silently to herself.
Death is the great terror. Even an ant knows to scrabble for life — how much more a sovereign, exalted, all-powerful, sated with every splendor the world affords? Set against a monarch's personal immortality, the sacred bond of teacher and student and the rise or fall of the state alike could stand aside and wait.
And yet at the same moment she sighed softly, stepped forward to help the old man up, and tore a strip from her sleeve to bind his wound.
"Elder, your health matters most."
"A state on the verge of ruin breeds monsters on every side! Late Emperor — your servant comes to join you."
Qu Hao ignored her entirely. He laughed once, horribly, staggered to his feet, and hurled himself with all the strength he had left, head-first, at a pillar.
Li Fei caught his shoulder in one hand, wearing still the kind-browed, gentle face of a Bodhisattva.
"Elder, if you are displeased with me, why not keep a useful body whole and go on watching me? I do not agree with your views, but I will protect your life and defend your right to voice them... and of course, one day you will discover that I was right."
Now that is what a subject ought to look like!
Zhao Bing, whose ministers pinned his head down and nagged him about producing an heir day in and day out, nodded in open admiration.
Clearly, set beside this imperial physician — matchlessly beautiful, sweet-spoken, an admirer of his calligraphy, who had selflessly offered up Dragon Blood Rice, who could cure the Empress's chronic illness, who supported his feelings for Lu Qianfan, who understood the immortal art of bestowing life, and who could now make the dream of immortality real — every other official in the court was incompetent and pedantic. Qu Hao above all: however fathomless his learning, he was also the fiercest of the lot when it came to nagging about heirs.
Qu Hao turned his head, looked at that sweet, guileless smiling face, and felt as though he had been dropped into an ice pit. He shut his eyes in despair.
Demons slaughtered the people beyond the borders; Lu Qianfan poisoned the court within. The Great Song had already been tottering, and as tutor to the crown prince and to the Emperor himself, he knew Zhao Bing had no power to turn the tide. His only hope had been the next generation.
The wish of his later years, in truth, had been that His Majesty would name a crown prince early, so that in whatever time remained to him he might strain every nerve to raise that prince into an enlightened sovereign — one who would sharpen the weapons and feed the horses, set the court in order, hold back the flood as it broke and prop up the great house as it leaned.
He had never imagined that before the demon plague was quelled, before Lu Qianfan had fallen, there would come an enchantress still more skilled at playing on men's hearts, with an endless supply of tricks besides...
"Your old servant takes his leave."
Years of obsession collapsed into a single heavy sigh, and Qu Hao turned away with all the spirit gone out of him and walked out of the hall, one foot dragging deeper than the other, leaving nothing behind but the sight of an old back and wild, loosened hair.
Li Fei watched him go before turning back, smiling brightly.
"Your Majesty... why not taste the Longevity Fruit first?"
"Very well."
Zhao Bing plucked a fruit with barely concealed eagerness and was about to put it to his lips when someone cut in.
"Your Majesty, wait!"
Xu Yuzhong's tone was all righteous conviction. "This woman's origins are unknown, and her purposes may well be otherwise than they appear. She has conjured that fruit by heaven knows what sorcery — how can Your Majesty eat it without care? Your servant is willing to test the ground for Your Majesty by—"
"Lord Xu, if you're going to eat something, you had better eat that lump of gold first," Li Fei said quietly.
The hair stood up all over Xu Yuzhong's body, because he found the Emperor and the Empress both looking at him with distinctly unfriendly faces — one of them gripping a Longevity Fruit, the other clutching a bar of gold.
I only wanted a taste of the Longevity Fruit! I wasn't going to swallow gold and kill myself! And you, the Empress of an entire realm — surely you can't be short of that little scrap of gold?
Xu Yuzhong had a grievance he could not speak, and his face turned a sickly green.
"Xu Yuzhong, Xu Yuzhong — in front of Us you had best put those petty schemes away."
Zhao Bing laughed the reproach off and put the fruit into his mouth without a moment's hesitation.
The first mouthful of flesh went down sweet and fragrant, dissolving into juice and flowing into his stomach before he could chew.
Then a cool, spreading ease ran from his dantian out through his four limbs and every bone. Zhao Bing felt all hundred and eight thousand pores of his body open at once; from crown to sole there was no place in him that was not clear and open, and vigor leapt and surged inside him as though he had woken up twenty years old again.
He let his eyelids fall and savored the life burgeoning in him, and only after a long while opened his eyes again, the spirit in them blazing. His voice was solemn.
"Minister Li, you have been most thoughtful."
"Since you serve Us with such perfect sincerity, We shall not treat you shabbily... Tell Us, what is it that you desire?"
He was addressing Li Fei, but his gaze kept sliding, deliberately or otherwise, toward the Heaven-Grasping Vase.
Li Fei smiled faintly, and drew the dagger at the end of the scroll. "However vast the powers of this Heaven-Grasping Vase, in the end it can only make a handful of people immortal. It cannot hold the altars of state secure."
"But — since immortal dew poured on Song soil can bring forth the fruit of eternal life, then surely a mighty ruler of the mortal world and a servant of the immortal realm, working together in perfect faith, can also cultivate the fruit of the state itself, and prolong the golden age of the Great Song."
"Unworthy though your servant is, she asks leave to take up arms for the realm and bind every ghoul and specter under heaven!"
So that was it.
Zhao Bing sighed inwardly and found himself caught between two impossible choices.
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