“I will give all I have for that one secret,” said Master Li, and he brushed away the straw that covered the pile of loot in the cart. The Old Man of the Mountain plunged his hands into the treasure.
“Cold!” he said delightedly. “It has been years since I touched treasure as cold as this! In fact, this treasure is so cold that I will tell you the secret at once, instead of toying with you as is my usual custom.”
Li Kao bowed and offered the wine flask, and the Old Man of the Mountain drank and wiped his lips with his beard.
“You know the seamless robes of the gods? The jade girdles and golden crowns? Any of those items will do,” he said. “Simply wait until the New Year, when the gods descend to earth to make their tour of inspection, and steal a robe or a crown. So long as you possess it, you will never age, but I would advise you to hurry. I myself was well past two hundred when I stole a jade girdle, and not even the Old Man of the Mountain has learned the secret of restoring youth.”
Master Li threw back his head and laughed.
“Do you take me for an idiot? What use is it never to age when you can be extinguished in an instant by the bite of a mosquito or a slip upon the stairs? Immortality is a meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it. Old Man of the Mountain, I am beginning to suspect that you are a fraud.”
The Old Man of the Mountain winked at him, and passed the wine flask.
“You would goad me into indiscretion, my friend with the flaw in his character? Do you think that I cannot sense that in your pocket you carry a business card with the sign of a half-closed eye? Or that I would not wonder what an old fox is doing traveling with a young chicken?” He turned and crooked a finger at me. “Boy, come here,” he commanded.
The jet-black eyes burned a hole in my heart and I had no will of my own. I found myself walking toward him like a mechanical toy, and his eyes looked into my mind. What the Duke of Ch'in had done was but a feeble imitation of the Old Man of the Mountain.
“Well, I'll be the Stone Monkey!” he exclaimed. “There are those three handmaidens, and the flute and the ball and the bell, and the feathers and the crown too, although dimly perceived. So you hope to steal the Great Root of Power, do you? Boy, you are nothing but a walking corpse.”
He sniggered and released my mind, and I staggered backward and nearly fell.
“Let the chicken go ahead and get killed,” he said softly to Li Kao. “He couldn't tell a turd from a turnip, but you appear to have some common sense. Go steal something that belongs to a god, and then return with ten times this much treasure, and if it is as cold as this stuff I will sell you the Secret of Invulnerability, which, as you have correctly pointed out, gives meaning to the word immortality.”
Li Kao tilted the wine flask, and passed it back to the Old Man of the Mountain.
“But is there such a secret?” he wondered. “Anything with a heart can be killed, and though there are hundreds of peasant stories about men without hearts, I have always considered them to be allegorical fables. Quite sophisticated fables, at times, but depicting character rather than actual physiology.”
“Not one in a hundred of such stories is true, but when you hear one that is you may be sure that the wisest man in the world is involved, for I alone have found the secret,” said the Old Man of the Mountain. “You doubt it, my slightly flawed friend? Marvel at the man who rivals the gods!”
When he opened his robe I nearly fainted, because there was a hole where his heart had been. I could look right through it and see the stone pillar behind, shining in the sunlight, and the gong and the hammer, and the black gaping mouth of the cave.
“Fantastic,” Master Li said admiringly. “You are truly the wisest man in the world, and a dolt like myself must bow before your genius.”
The Old Man of the Mountain simpered with pleasure and passed the wine flask, and Li Kao bowed and drank thirstily.
“It would seem to me that your heart must still be beating somewhere,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Would it be safe to transform it into a pebble or a snowflake? A heart that is transformed is no longer a heart. A simplistic statement, but perhaps intuitively true.”
“Almost entirely true,” the Old Man of the Mountain said approvingly. “A heart cannot be transformed into a snowflake without killing it unless the entire person is also transformed into a snowflake. But a heart can be hidden. Of course the value of that depends upon how well it has been hidden, and you cannot believe the stupidity of some of the pupils that I've had. Why, one of those dolts was so mindless that he hid his heart inside the body of a lizard that was inside a cage that was on top of the head of a serpent what was on top of a tree that was guarded by lions, tigers, and scorpions! Another cretin, and may Buddha strike me if I lie, concealed his heart inside an egg that was inside a duck that was inside a basket that was inside a chest that was on an island that was in the middle of an uncharted ocean. Needless to say, both of those numbskulls were destroyed by the first half-witted heroes who came along.”
He took the flask and drank deeply, and passed it back again.
“Now you would not be so stupid,” he said. “Try to find treasure that is as cold as this stuff—a man who has no heart likes things cold, and there is nothing colder than treasure—and when you return. I will remove your heart and you will hide it well. So long as it beats, you cannot be killed, and nothing is worse than death.”
I suddenly realized that Li Kao was controlling himself with an immense effort. He was clenching and unclenching his hands, and he could no longer keep a trace of revulsion from creeping into his voice.
“Some things are far worse than death,” said Master Li.
The Old Man of the Mountain stiffened. I drew back in fear as I saw his eyes burn with cold fire.
“My secrets are not sold cheaply,” he said softly.
The Old Man of the Mountain stamped his foot, and a great crack appeared in the earth, and our poor mules brayed in terror as they plunged down into blackness with the cartload of treasure; he waved his hand, and the crack closed as though it had never been.
“It is perilous to waste my time,” he whispered.
The wisest man in the world lifted a finger to his lips and blew. The light was blacked out by a dense cloud, and wind howled, and we were scooped up and sent flying into the air, whirling around and around inside a black funnel that was thick with dirt and broken branches and small screaming animals. The cyclone whirled down the mountainside, and I tried to shield Li Kao's frail body with my own as branches buffeted me and shrieking wind deafened me. Down and down and around and around, and then the earth leaped up at us and we landed with a crash that separated me from my senses.
When I regained consciousness I saw that we had landed in soft shrubbery, but if we had been blown another ten feet we would have sailed over the side of a steep cliff. Far below I could see a river shining in the sunset, and a boy standing motionless upon the bank, and a village half-hidden by trees. Birds swooped high and low in the chilly wind that sighed down from snow-capped peaks, and somewhere a woodcutter was singing a slow sad song.
Li Kao had bandaged the bump on my head. He was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cliff, cradling his wine flask. When I gazed up at the distant mountain peaks, I seemed to hear faint laughter that was like pebbles rattling in an iron pan.