“Master Li, forgive my impertinence, but if the pursuit of wisdom leads to the Old Man of the Mountain I cannot help but think that men would be better off if they stayed stupid,” I said.
“Ah, but there is more than one kind of wisdom,” said Master Li. “There is wisdom to take, and there is wisdom to give, and there is the wisdom of Heaven that is inscrutable to man.” He tilted his flask to his lips. “In this case, Heaven is becoming scrutable,” he said when he came up for air.
To my astonishment I saw that Master Li was as happy as a small boy with a large puppy.
“Henpecked Ho gave us a third of the solution to this weird quest, and now the Old Man of the Mountain has made it two-thirds,” he said with satisfaction. He pointed down to the riverbank, where the boy had been joined by his friends. “What are those children doing?”
I gazed down and shrugged. “Playing games,” I said.
“Children's games!” Master Li chortled happily. “Rituals, riddles, and nonsense rhymes!” Then, to my astonishment, he jumped to his feet, waved his wine flask toward Heaven, and bellowed, “August Personage of Jade, you have the guts of a first-class burglar!”
I nervously awaited a bolt of lightning, but none came.
“Come along, Ox, we must hurry back toward your village to collect the third piece of the puzzle,” said Master Li, and he started down the mountainside at a trot.
The Old Man of the Mountain had blown us to the very edge of civilization, and we found ourselves trudging through a very strange landscape. Flat cracked earth stretched toward distant mountains with fantastic shapes, like deformed mushrooms, and a cold wind sighed across twelve hundred miles of empty steppes. Once in a while we would reach a desolate plain where endless mounds of dirt were laid out with almost geometric precision, and on top of each mound a gopher stood on its hind legs and watched us pass with bright wondering eyes. Once an enormous army of rats raced toward us, but when they swept around and past us, I saw that they were not rats but roots, the famous rolling roots of the peng plant, which were being blown by the wind toward some unimaginable destiny at the outer edge of the world.
Gradually the bare mountains acquired scattered trees, and we reached valleys that had touches of green, and finally the landscape turned into the one I knew so well. Then we climbed a hill and I saw the outline of Dragon's Pillow, hazy in the distance, and I was greatly relieved when Master Li said that it was our destination. I could not have borne the eyes of the parents if we went on to Ku-fu with no ginseng for the children.
We reached the wall as soft purple shadows were creeping like cats across the green valley, and the birds began to sing the last songs of the day while we climbed the ancient stones to the Eye of the Dragon. Li Kao sat down upon the floor of the watchtower and uncovered a bowl of rice that he had bought in the last village. For a few moments he ate in silence, and then he said:
“Ox, mysteries cease to be mysteries when they are viewed from the proper angle. In this case we must find the proper angle by recalling a comment that was made by the Duke of Ch'in not once but twice. ‘You seek the right root, but for the wrong reason.’ Doesn't that suggest that we might have unwittingly wandered into a completely different quest when we started after the Great Root of Power? We can assume that the duke thought that we might be trying to do something else, and the idea scared him half to death. What sort of a quest could terrify a tyrant as mighty as the Duke of Ch'in?”
He ate some more rice and watched the shadows climb the wall, and he pointed a chopstick at the songbirds.
“Let's begin by assuming that Henpecked Ho's story was factual, in the sense of history that over the centuries has been cloaked in the conventional trappings of myth,” said Master Li. “There really was a minor deity called the Princess of Birds, although not necessarily as described in the story, and she really did wear a crown that was decorated with three feathers from the Kings of Birds. We would have to be as blind as neo-Confucians not to guess what happened,” he said. “The Duke of Ch'in went to the Old Man of the Mountain for the Secret of Immortality, and he learned that he must begin by stealing something that belonged to a deity. He tricked and murdered Jade Pearl's handmaidens, captured her, and stole her crown. Then the Old Man of the Mountain removed his heart, which is why the jovial fellow laughs at axes and fatal dosages of poison. It's been the same duke all along, of course. The tyrant who burned the books of China has been squatting in the Castle of the Labyrinth ever since, concealed behind the mask of a snarling tiger.”
My heart was sick as I thought of the duke and his playmates, such as the Hand That No One Sees. He had paid the wisest man in the world for more than heart surgery. The Duke of Ch'in had also bought the secrets of reading minds and of controlling the creatures who lurk in the dark bowels of the earth. What chance would we have against a pupil of the Old Man of the Mountain?
“Jade Pearl had something that was almost as valuable as her crown,” Master Li continued. “She had a godmother. Surely a fellow as greedy as the duke would not miss the fact that the Queen of Ginseng had to be the most valuable plant on the face of the earth, and with Jade Pearl as his captive, he would probably have been able to capture her godmother as well. Now I will make one more assumption: The Great Root of Power is the Queen of Ginseng, and that is why two quests are intertwined.”
Li Kao gazed thoughtfully up at Heaven.
“Ox, the Heaven of the Chinese is superior to all others because nothing is absolute except the rule of law. The supreme deity is bound by the rules of the Imperial Book of Etiquette, and if he breaks those rules, he will be abruptly replaced. Thus the Heavenly Master of the First Origin gave way to the August Personage of Jade, and the Heavenly Master of the Dawn of Jade of the Golden Door stands ready in the wings to ascend to the throne the moment the August Personage of Jade gets too big for his sandals. When the emperor's pet goddess lost her crown and failed to return to the Star Shepherd she passed from the protection of Heaven, and the Imperial Book of Etiquette does not allow for excuses. What could the emperor do? Direct intervention would cost him his throne, so if he did anything it would have to be very sneaky indeed.”
Master Li bent over and laughed until the tears flowed.
“I can just see his Heavenly Majesty sitting there with that damned nursemaid of a book on his lap!” he chortled. “I can see his eyes scanning the earth, and I can see him sit bolt upright when two splendid fellows named Li Kao and Number Ten Ox set forth to find the Great Root of Power. ‘What's wrong with trying to help the poor children of the humble village of Ku-fu?’ he says reasonably. ‘After all, things like that are the reason for my existence!’ So Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub pop up to tell us that the duke has the root—and if they uncover a tablet that tells the story of Jade Pearl? ‘Accidents will happen,’ sighs the August Personage of Jade. Fang and Ma pop up again to help us escape from a tower, along with Miser Shen—and if Shen tells us about the Old Man of the Mountain? ‘Accidents will happen,’ sighs the August Personage of Jade. The Bamboo Dragonfly heads straight toward the Cavern of Bells, and after we get a good look at the painting of the Peddler we are reunited with Henpecked Ho, who has deciphered the story of the Princess of Birds. ‘Accidents,’ the emperor sighs, ‘will happen, and after all, I'm only trying to help them find the root that might save the children of Ku-fu.’ So far, so good, but now let's take a look at something truly sneaky, which should not be difficult to do because we're sitting on it.”