Flower Stealing Master

Li Si’s brow furrowed. He had been looking forward to the killing, and he gave a reluctant nod. “Fine.”

Satisfied, Zhang San turned to his men with a pleasant wave. “Take them below. See that this young lady is well looked after — if so much as a hair on her head goes missing, you’ll answer to me.”

“Yes, sir!” Several men stepped forward to take Qi Fang away.

Qi Fang’s face changed. She was on the verge of fighting back when Song Qingshu gave her a small shake of his head. “A wise man doesn’t fight the odds in front of him. Go with them for now.” From the way Zhang San and Li Si had been talking, Qi Fang was being set aside for some honoured guest on the island — which meant she would be safe enough in the short term.

Zhang San chuckled at her. “No need to fret, little lady. Your husband there is being very sensible about this. Once you meet our honoured guest, I guarantee you won’t want to leave.”

Qi Fang had always been a woman of propriety and was ill-equipped to take such remarks in stride. Had Song Qingshu not signalled her to hold back, she might well have gone down fighting. But these past days together had given her a feel for his way of doing things — if he said this, he had a plan. She hesitated, then relented, and let herself be led away. Just before she disappeared from view, she turned and held his gaze for a long, quiet moment.

Zhang San caught the look and smiled at Song Qingshu. “You two are devoted, aren’t you. Don’t worry — once your wife has kept that gentleman happy for a few days, I guarantee you’ll both spend the rest of your lives very comfortably indeed.”

“We would be in his lordship’s debt.” Song Qingshu’s gift for performance had been honed over years — within moments he had conjured a perfectly convincing portrait of a craven, spineless opportunist.

“Naturally.” A flicker of contempt crossed Zhang San’s smiling eyes, but since the man was making himself so small, there was little point in bullying him further. He nodded. “Sharp fellow, aren’t you. When we get back to the island, you can take up some light work — serving tea, running errands. Keep your nose clean and you’ll live very comfortably.”

“I am deeply grateful for your lordship’s favour.” Inwardly, Song Qingshu was laughing coldly. Just wait until my power returns. I’ll turn the Isle of Heroes upside down. There were two reasons he was holding himself in check beyond the matter of his suppressed cultivation — the more important one was the opportunity this presented. He intended to use it to see the Isle of Heroes from the inside.

The isle had always been the most impenetrable mystery in the martial world. Even the intelligence networks of the Qing court and the Jin Dynasty could barely find a trace of it. This was a rare chance. Going there himself, he would finally learn its secrets.

Zhang San went cheerfully back to directing the looting of the merchant vessel. Anyone who resisted was cut down on the spot; women were taken captive to a person; the men who surrendered were bound and strung together in a line, herded onto the Isle of Heroes’ ship like livestock.

Thanks to the conversation with Zhang San, Song Qingshu was spared the stifling hold where the other men were kept. He was locked in a cabin on deck instead — three meals a day, nothing lavish, but nothing missing either. Unexpectedly civilised.

‘I hope that honoured guest on the isle doesn’t have a taste for men,’ Song Qingshu thought with an odd expression — then shook his head. Even if he did, Song Qingshu was currently wearing Sixi’s plain face. No one with any standards would be that desperate.

He turned it over a while longer, and piecing it together with what Zhang San and Li Si had said, he arrived at the answer. The guest had a particular fondness for married women — and Song Qingshu’s presence served to make the conquest feel all the more complete.

‘A kindred spirit, it seems…’ Song Qingshu’s expression turned peculiar, and he found his curiosity about this mysterious guest beginning to stir.

Unfortunately, he had too little to go on to venture a guess at the man’s identity. He set it aside and turned instead to driving the poison out whenever he could. Without Qi Fang’s remedy to suppress the toxin, his inner energy refused to circulate freely, and after several attempts he found the results negligible.

‘A pity. They’ve got Qi Fang wrapped up like a rare treasure — getting anything from her seems out of the question for now.’ From what he’d observed over these past few days, the Isle of Heroes’ people were keeping her like a cherished guest, so she was in no immediate danger.

‘Well. The road always finds a way around the mountain.’ Song Qingshu was an optimist by nature and refused to sink into gloom. Since he couldn’t purge the poison, he turned his attention to the route they were travelling instead.

Over his days of observation, the Isle of Heroes’ vessel moved like a ghost — threading through canal and river, slipping past the patrols of Li Kexiu’s forces and the Southern Song navy alike, until it reached open sea and turned east. Tracking a course across open ocean was no simple matter, and Song Qingshu could only manage a rough estimate of their heading by the stars overhead.

‘A pity I’ve forgotten all my geography. A sextant would have been tremendously useful right now.’ Time passed quickly amid his various frustrations, and ten days later, the ship finally reached its destination.

Song Qingshu looked up. Rising before him was a tall stone mountain thick with trees, lush green all the way to the summit. ‘So this is the legendary Isle of Heroes.’

The great ship rounded to the sheltered southern shore and made for the beach — a broad stretch of sand where more than forty vessels of varying sizes lay at anchor beneath the eastern cliffs. Song Qingshu’s eyes moved over them thoughtfully. ‘Plenty of boats here. Once I’ve gotten Qi Fang out, one small vessel slipped quietly away shouldn’t be hard to manage.’

After docking, the captured women were led away weeping. The male captives were marched off to some unknown destination. Song Qingshu was taken further inland and locked in a chamber near the island’s centre — and Zhang San, Li Si, and the rest of the Isle’s people promptly vanished from sight.

He could not go on sitting idle. Out at sea, Qi Fang had been in no real danger — but now that they were on the Isle of Heroes, she would almost certainly be delivered to that peculiar guest before long.

And without Qi Fang’s remedy these past days at sea, the Heavenly Devil Flower’s poison had been driven back not at all.

“Food’s here~”

He was still turning the problem over when a man in a short yellow jacket rapped on his door, shoved a bowl of rice through the opening without ceremony, and turned to leave.

“Stay a moment, fellow traveller!” Song Qingshu called after him — invoking the old catchphrase of Shen Gongbao. [G: 道友请留步 — “Fellow Traveller, please stay your steps” is the signature line of Shen Gongbao 申公豹, the scheming antagonist of the classic mythological novel Investiture of the Gods 《封神演义》. He uses it constantly to stop passers-by and spin them into his intrigues. It has become a well-known comic catchphrase in Chinese culture, used whenever someone is about to talk their way into something.]

“What?” The man in yellow turned back, plainly irritated.

“Open the door.”

Song Qingshu’s eyes deepened, and his voice seemed to carry an almost irresistible gravity.

“As you… wish…”

The moment the door swung open, Song Qingshu sealed the man’s acupoints in a flash, placed Sixi’s disguise mask over his face, bundled him into the cell, and exhaled a long, quiet breath. The yellow-jacketed man had been no ordinary fighter — had he not been entirely off his guard, the Soul Capture Technique might well have failed in Song Qingshu’s current condition.

He pulled on the man’s outer jacket, kept his head low, and stepped out onto the path that led to Qi Fang.

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