Baby Snake's grandmother was so diligently asking for alms in the northern provinces that two of the local governors died suddenly of volvulus and thus had no possibility to discuss in details the plan of their conspiracy. Cai the Baby Snake did not know his father; there were hardly more than three persons in the whole Empire who'd seen the face of Cai the Big Ears, for he covered it with a hood even visiting his wife; Baby Snake himself also happened to do some things of the kind not meant for telling in taverns.
They were not meant to be told anywhere at all.
Judge Bao, thanks to his post, was one of the few who were let into the mystery of the Cai family; he liked to repeat from time to time the words of an ancient treatise:
– There are five ways to use scouts: most common are the local scouts, sometimes you find inner scouts as well as reverse scouts, there exist also scouts of death and scouts of life. The latter are appreciated above all.
Then he always used to add:
– The scouts of life are those who return with reports.
Cai the Baby Snake was a scout of life.
When he came to this world gliding out of his mother's womb his granny who was believed to be (and really was) an experienced midwife took the crying baby in her hands, slapped his little bottom as red as a monkey's, looked at him and announced, touching the "dengchu" point with her fat finger:
– He's Baby Snake!
– Are you sure, mother-in-law? – asked the woman weary of childbirth.
The granny simply laughed and lighting up her pipe went to rinse the linen. Everything had been quiet in the northern provinces for about eight years, so there was no necessity for the old woman to go there asking alms.
They washed the baby with cold infusions of Hangzhou chrysantemum, unripe ounaby fruits, lizard cheeks and many other components the complete list of which would have surprised very much even a highly experienced physician if by chance the latter could have seen it. Cai’s mother ceased to feed him with her milk when he was still very small; after that the child was fed twice in twenty four hours, at dawn and after sunset. They massaged his tiny body many times and covered it with thin needles like a hedgehog: the granny Cai was skilful in the art of wielding the needles giving life or death on her choice; the baby was always tightly swaddled and his cradle rocked in such a way that it would often hit the walls of the room: the baby, frightened and shaking, had to roll himself into a ball to endure the shock. Later on still more powerful methods and measures were introduced. Being one year old Baby Snake looked like a five-month baby, in his sixth year he seemed younger by half, in the eleventh year people thought he was seven, and the family had to leave their house in order to avoid gossip and to move to Ningo where they settled in a uninhabited place out of town...
Now Baby Snake Cai, the scout of life, the one who must return, was forty-two years old.
His biography included about two dozens of tasks successfully fulfilled and about fifteen persons who had been a bit too zealous during their last existence and died because they had underestimated the naive young boy.
Cai the Baby Snake hoped sincerely that their next reincarnation would be more lucky.
But last winter the scout of life had suffered from a hard fit threatening with paralysis; he understood that it was time to "put off old skin".
You can cheat the Time for some period but not for ever. He knew it perfectly well. He also knew that one must pay for everything. If you should not take measures in time, if you'd not come to your senses and look around you and feel the acute necessity to return to the natural way of life then your skin would loose the youthful elasticity and in a year become aged and flabby, the stiffened muscles would not obey your will, your teeth, healthy and white, would be spoiled and fall out, the joints would grow stiff and the former boy would swiftly become and old man today.
And tomorrow he would die.
The Time can not be cheated but you can pay your debts with percent. His suffering body was once more pierced with steel and bone needles arousing inner currents and clearing the clogged ways; once more Baby Snake had to go in for exhaustive training, to endure severe pains in his changing flesh crying at nights and trying in vain to sleep a little; once more the secret ointments covered his face and hands; he was subject to alternating massages and herbal embrocations... The baby snake was gradually becoming a grown-up snake.
But all of a sudden he had to put on his old skin again.
Because the great teacher Sunzi whose sayings should be constantly quoted by anybody who wants to deserve the name of a strategist, had also said the following:
– All five kinds of scouts must be active but we are not allowed to know their ways. This is a mystery not to be revealed.
But there's also another saying of his:
– You can get knowledge about your enemy only by inquiring other people.
Judge Bao the Dragon Seal repeated these wise words to Baby Snake Cai before sending him to Shaolin monastery, supplied with three genuine recommendations given by three highly esteemed persons.
Judge Bao was seeing the arms marked with the signs of tiger and dragon in his night dreams.
It seemed to judge Bao that these horrible dead images were able to creep away like beasts of prey and invade all Empire; may be they have already done it.
And Cai worked a miracle: in less than two months he has put on the skin he had almost cast away and went to Henan, to the famous monastery at the Song mountain.
The only person to know the real price of his deed was his mother who had already become so old that the strangers believed her to be the grandmother or even the great-grandmother of the rosy-cheeked youth still bearing his childish name.
But she provided her son with the most necessary things; small bottles and flasks of ointments containing gelatin made of donkey skin, a leather case with a set of needles, three small bags of yanchundan, "pills prolonging youth", and wormwood tubes for cauterization lay hidden in Baby Snake's sack. Without using all this the seemingly young man would live about a week – in fact, four days would be enough if such were the will of the Prince Yanlo – and then he wouldn't simply become old.
He'd die wishing he were a real baby snake falling down to a cauldron full of boiling water.
But the scouts of life are obliged to go and return.
Even if there is no way back he is to go and return.
And it is just the same even though the great teacher Sunzi whose sayings should be constantly quoted by anybody who wants to deserve the name of a strategist had not uttered any sayings on this subject.
It was about noon on the next day when the back door of the monastery opened to let the candidates in, and Cai the Baby Snake entered the inner yard...