Behind the jade pendant were a pair of bright, limpid eyes. Though Shen Mu was only eleven, he already understood a great many things. Once he had followed Granny Zhu to another village, where a woman lay on the verge of childbirth; the delivery went smoothly, and the sight of that family of three, so loving together, struck him deeply. So Shen Mu asked Granny Zhu how he himself had been born, and where his parents were. Granny Zhu could not answer, and had no choice but to tell him that he had been found — picked up — and that this jade pendant had been on him when he was found. For that reason Shen Mu treasured the pendant greatly, hoping that one day it might lead him to his parents, so that he could ask them why they had cast him off. After a long while, the boy put the pendant away, hanging it once more at his breast, his face calm; the strangeness the pendant had just shown he buried deep in his heart. Behind him, Granny Zhu too returned to her room. The next day, Lord Huo, the Blind Elder, the Lame Elder, and the Silent Smith went out hunting again, bringing back more Four Symbols Beasts whose blood was refined to nourish Shen Mu. Within a radius of several hundred li the Four Symbols Beasts had been all but wiped out by these four fiends, so that the four were forced to range farther afield to catch them. The Village Head could scarcely move about; the Alchemist was forever out gathering herbs; the Butcher was a misanthrope who flew into rages without warning; and the Deaf Elder cared for nothing but calligraphy and painting. In the ordinary run of days, the only one who could keep Shen Mu company in his training was Granny Zhu. But Granny Zhu was often away from the village as well. She was a seamstress and a midwife; the nearby villages were always calling on her to make clothes, and now and then to deliver a child. Today Granny Zhu had gone out at dawn, and the Alchemist had gone to gather herbs; the Butcher and the Deaf Elder had carried the Village Head out and set him down at the village gate as usual, one of them practicing his demon blade, the other painting. Idle and bored, Shen Mu went alone to the riverside. Ever since the milk cow had turned into a woman and been stabbed to death by the Lame Elder, his chores had grown far fewer. At the riverbank the boy drew a long breath, his chest swelling as though being inflated; his chest bulged more and more, then his qi began to circulate and his chest slowly deflated again. He did not let the breath out. Instead his qi moistened and nourished his lungs, making them extraordinarily tough, compressing the air within them from ten parts down to one. Shen Mu kept drawing breath, and still his chest did not swell, until he reached his limit; then the boy halted his steps and shot forward like an arrow loosed from the string. On the river's surface two waves parted to either side, and between them Shen Mu ran upon the water, racing away like a gale. Suddenly blade-light flared over the river. Mid-stride he drew the Slaughtering Knife, its gleam flashing, wheeling up and down like a flood dragon — the Butcher's blade art! The art was like the man: the Butcher's Slaughtering Knife was a misanthrope's art, wild and overbearing, yielding to neither heaven nor earth; the blade-light rolled and surged, crushing its way across the river's face. Then the blade-light snapped shut. Shen Mu slung the Slaughtering Knife back behind him and shifted to Lord Huo's fist art. His qi ran through both arms, gathered at his fingertips, his fingers curling into fists; his body was as the Long River rushing to the sea, bearing the torrents of the high plateau to shatter the empty sky, unending. The first stance of the Eightfold Thunder Roar: Alone to the Eastern Sea, Bearing the Spring Thunder! He struck out fist after fist, and in his mind rose the vision of a great river racing, its waves thundering, pouring into the sea; unknowingly, that same spirit entered his fists. His fist suddenly opened; palm and five fingers quivered, the air before his palm was violently compressed, then exploded, blasting the river's surface into flying spray. "Still no good. I haven't managed Palm Thunder." Shen Mu was somewhat disappointed. Even the lowest level of Lord Huo's Eightfold Thunder Roar required Palm Thunder: a fist, a palm, bursting with the thunder's roar — not only soul-shaking, but terrifying in its power. And at its higher levels it became a divine power, the command of thunder — far beyond anything he could reach now. Racing on, he took a bamboo staff from his back. Its tip jabbed and tapped, and what he wielded was no common staff art but spear art. He had learned the staff from the Blind Elder, and the Blind Elder's staff art was spear art: the great spear like a raging dragon churning the river, coiling, thrusting, piercing, flicking — every strike sending the river water tumbling after the staff. Shen Mu put the bamboo staff back and took a great iron hammer from his back, unleashing the hammer art the smith, the Silent Smith, had taught him. The hammer art was plain and clumsy, its force immense, utterly ponderous — the very opposite extreme from the swiftness of his running! After a long while he felt his qi running short, his body weary, his strength nearly spent; only then did he look around and see that he had come far from Hidden Remnant Village, a hundred and more li downstream. "Without noticing, I've run this far?" Shen Mu saw an islet in the middle of the river, the water surging past on either side. His heart stirred, and he charged straight for it. A moment later his feet found solid ground, and he stepped onto the islet. The islet was not large, like a little hill in the river's heart, no more than a li across, rising some forty zhang above the water, thick with grass and trees. In the dense woods no birdsong could be heard, only the splashing of water. Not far ahead of Shen Mu a temple hid among the trees, its broken walls showing through. Shen Mu walked up to it. The temple was ruined, long neglected, cobwebs everywhere — though it would do well enough for a rest. He stopped before the temple. One of its doors had fallen; the interior was dim, but he could still make out a great Buddha standing within, its image gilded with gold leaf that gleamed. Yet no one had come here for a very long time; much of the gold leaf had flaked away, revealing the bronze beneath, and on the bronze were written strange characters, crooked and twisting, as though formed of tadpoles. And about the Buddha's body ran thick chains, chains that bound the image fast. Shen Mu then saw that these chains stretched out from the little temple, all the way to the islet's shore, plunging into the Surging River. "How strange. Why do these chains bind this great Buddha... Blind Grandpa says that when you enter a temple you burn incense — that's the rule. I've brought no incense, so I can only rest before the temple." Shen Mu cleared his throat and bowed to the temple: "This humble one is a man of Hidden Remnant Village, his home beside the river. Passing by your honored temple, I would borrow this precious ground to rest, and I am uneasy at having disturbed its master." He hesitated, then went on reciting the words the Blind Elder had taught him: "This humble one has been weak of kidney and frail of body since childhood, his primal yang leaking away early. If there be immortal sisters in this temple, do not come to harm me." The Blind Elder was an old hand of the rivers and lakes, and Shen Mu of course believed his words without question; if the Blind Elder taught him to say it, then he said it, and surely nothing would go wrong. His prayer done, Shen Mu sat on the stone steps, took off the iron shoes on his feet, unfastened the iron weights bound to his calves, and breathed in and out, restoring his strength. All along the way he had run upon the river in iron shoes with iron weights bound to his legs; the shoes and weights had be