Then an elephant charged into the hall and squashed the captain flat. At least I thought it was an elephant until I realized that it was the Ancestress, and I gaped at an incredible sight.
“Chop-chop!” yelled Henpecked Ho. “Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop!”
He had no right to be alive. Blood spurted from twenty wounds with every step that he took, but he kept right on taking them. “Save me!” the Ancestress howled, and then her five hundred pounds flattened three more soldiers who might have saved her. It was over in a few minutes.
The Ancestress ran around in circles and squashed everything in front of her, and Henpecked Ho swung his axe and whacked everything in sight, and Li Kao slipped through the carnage slitting throats, and I flailed away with my sword. Toward the end it became rather messy, because we were slipping and sliding upon pieces of the Ancestress, and there was a lot of Ancestress to go around. Then we staggered away from the last fallen soldier and knelt beside Henpecked Ho.
He lay on his back with his axe still clutched in his hands. His life was draining away in red rivulets, and his face was ashen, and his eyes strained to focus on us.
“Did I get her?” he whispered.
“Ho, you chopped that monster into a hundred pieces,” Master Li said proudly.
“I am so happy,” the gentle scholar whispered. “Now my ancestors will not be ashamed to greet me when I arrive in Hell to be judged.”
“Bright Star will be waiting for you,” I said.
“Oh no, that would be far too much to ask,” he said seriously. “The most that I dare ask of the Yama Kings is that I may be reborn as a beautiful flower, so that sometime, somewhere, a dancing girl might choose to pluck me and wear me in her hair.”
I blinked through my tears, and he patted my hand.
“Do not weep for me, Number Ten Ox. I have grown so weary of this life, and I long to return to the Great Wheel of Transmigrations.” His voice was very faint, and I leaned down to hear his last words. “Immortality is only for the gods,” he whispered. “I wonder how they can stand it.”
His eyes closed, and the axe fell to the floor, and the soul of Henpecked Ho took leave of his body.
We carried him outside to the garden. It was cold and overcast, and a tiny silver rain pattered down as I dug the grave. We gently placed the body into the hole and I recovered it with earth, and then we knelt and clasped our hands.
“Henpecked Ho, great is your joy,” said Master Li. “Now your soul has been released from the prison of your body, and you are being greeted with great honors in Hell. You have rid the world of a woman who was an abomination to men and gods alike, and surely the Yama Kings will allow you to see Bright Star again. When it is time for you to be reborn, your wish will be granted, and you will become a beautiful flower that a dancing girl will wear in her hair.”
“Henpecked Ho,” I sniffled through my tears, “I will miss you, but I know that we will meet again. Master Li will be a three-toed sloth, and Miser Shen will be a tree, and you will be a flower, and I will be a cloud, and some day we will come together in a beautiful garden. Probably very soon,” I added.
We said the prayers and sacrificed, and Li Kao stood up and stretched wearily.
“Immortality is only for the gods; I wonder how they can stand it,” he said thoughtfully. “Ox, the last words of Henpecked Ho may be significant in more ways than one.”
Master Li stood lost in thought for a moment. Then he said:
“If I were to try to count the incredible coincidences of our quest on my fingers, I would wind up with ten badly sprained digits, and I am far too old to believe in coincidences. We are being led toward something, and I strongly suspect that Henpecked Ho has also supplied the question that we must ask before we continue the quest. Only the wisest man in the world could answer it, and can it be a coincidence that we happen to know where to find the wisest man in the world?”
I stared at him stupidly.
“Miser Shen,” he explained. “Ox, it was no accident that Miser Shen told us that when he was trying to bring his little girl back to life, he learned that the wisest man in the world lives in a cave at the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains.”
“Are we going to the Omei Mountains?” I asked.
“We are indeed, and we will begin by looting this palace. The Old Man of the Mountain,” said Master Li, “does not sell his secrets cheaply.”
Rain still fell, but one corner of the sky was turning blue, and as a final tribute to Henpecked Ho I shoveled the largest pieces of the Ancestress into a wheelbarrow and trundled them to the kennels and fed them to the dogs. In the distance a rainbow formed.
26. Three Kinds of Wisdom
Should you decide to travel to the end of Bear's Path, high in the Omei Mountains, you will eventually reach a small level clearing in front of a cliff. In front of the black gaping mouth of a cave you will see a stone pillar, upon which hangs a copper gong and an iron hammer, and carved upon the pillar is a message.
HERE LIVES THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
RING AND STATE YOUR BUSINESS.
HIS SECRETS ARE NOT SOLD CHEAPLY.
IT IS PERILOUS TO WASTE HIS TIME.
I hope that you will carefully consider that last sentence. The wisest man in the world is not to be trifled with, not even by those who are so distinguished as are my readers, and I myself have no intention of ever again traveling to the end of Bear's Path. I am only Number Ten Ox, who had no business being there in the first place, but it is said that the great leaders of men have been making that journey for three thousand years and will be doing so three thousand years from now, and that one only has to look at the state of the world to prove it.
The panting mules who hauled our cartload of treasure were nearly exhausted when they plodded around the last bend in the path and arrived at the clearing in front of the cave. Li Kao read the message on the pillar, and then he lifted a goatskin flask and swallowed some wine.
“Admirable conciseness,” he said, nodding at the inscription. “Not one wasted word.” Then he picked up the iron hammer and rang the gong, and when the echoes died away he took a deep breath and yelled, “Old Man of the Mountain, come forth! I have come to purchase the Secret of Immortality!”
The echoes shouted immortality, immortality, immortality, and then they faded away into silence. For many minutes we listened to the tiny sounds of small animals, and the sighing wind, and the distant scream of an eagle, and finally we heard the faint slap of shuffling sandals. A voice that sounded like gravel scraping across iron drifted from the blackness of the cave.
“Why does everyone ask for immortality? I have so many other secrets to sell. Beautiful secrets, beastly secrets, happy secrets, horrible secrets, lovely secrets, lunatic secrets, laughing secrets, loathsome secrets…”
The man who shuffled from the cave and blinked in the bright sunlight looked like the oldest and ugliest monkey in the world. Pieces of filthy straw were tangled in his matted hair, and his beard and robe were stained with spilled food. His seamed and pitted face was even older than Li Kao's, but his eyes were jet-black and so piercing that I caught my breath and instinctively stepped backward. He dismissed me as unimportant, and looked with interest at Li Kao.
“A sage, I perceive, with a slight flaw in his character,” he said with a little snicker. “Surely a sage can think of a more interesting secret to buy from the Old Man of the Mountain? I can teach you how to turn your friends into flowers and your enemies into cockroaches. I can teach you how to transform yourself or anything else into whatever you like, or how to steal the spirits of the dead and make them your slaves, or how to control the creatures that lurk in the black bowels of the earth. I can teach you how to remove varicose veins or cure pimples, yet you come to me for the Secret of Immortality, which is so simple that it is scarcely a secret at all.”