Chapter 16: The Sword Cannot Harm
The Changle Marquis only sat holding her cup, listening with a cool and noncommittal expression.
When the banquet finally concluded, Fang Xun hurried forward to continue his attentions. "This subordinate has prepared a quiet and comfortable residence for the Marquis-"
But he got no further before the Marquis cut him off with languid ease. "No need. I have my own accommodations."
Fang Xun blinked and then witnessed something that left him speechless.
The agarwood palanquin in which the Changle Marquis had arrived rose suddenly and without warning into the air.
What followed was a sustained, rolling sequence of mechanical sounds as the internal structure of the palanquin began to unfold and expand in every direction. In the space of a breath, that vehicle which had held a single passenger transformed into a vast, sprawling mansion suspended in the sky.
The mansion's footprint was, if anything, somewhat larger than the entire county Magistrate office below it.
Surrounded by a constellation of handmaids, the Changle Marquis walked out onto the open air and stepped inside.
Then, with a resonant boom, the doors of the aerial mansion sealed shut.
Fang Xun stood below with his neck craned upward, mouth opening and closing, unable to produce a single word.
"So the palanquin can fly, then why did she bother entering the city the slow way, carried by divine beasts on the ground? That's like pulling down your trousers only to put them back on again." Li Shun, watching from a distance as the palanquin became a mansion above the Magistrate office, shook his head and thought this to himself with mild exasperation.
The arrival of the Changle Marquis had no effect whatsoever on Li Shun's daily life.
He continued to lie low according to his plan, waiting for the Lengshan Vessel's seal to dissolve and for the new region of the Fangcun space to finish opening.
County Magistrate Fang Xun, however, had fallen into a particular form of torment.
"The Marquis has not... gone out again today?" In the study of the county Magistrate office, Fang Xun asked with an air of studied carelessness.
"My lord, she has not stepped outside since the day of her arrival." County Commandant Cheng Yishu answered with careful caution, apparently sensing his superior's poor mood.
Fang Xun glanced out the window without expression.
That Changle Marquis's face, a beauty capable of overturning the world seemed to flicker before him again.
Ever since capturing Xiong Jin and earning that extraordinary merit, Fang Xun had passed his days in a state of pleased and satisfied contentment.
The full credit was not his alone, but under the machinations and goodwill of his teacher, he had been elevated ninth rank of peerage to the rank of Wudafu, and appointed to the post of Register Secretary in the Left Chancellor's Office.
Once the bureaucratic approvals cleared, he would travel to the capital to take up his position by next spring at the latest.
A single step from the mud to the clouds.
Fang Xun had, by all rights, already been entirely satisfied.
But from the moment the Changle Marquis appeared, arriving from nowhere for reasons still unclear, Fang Xun's heart which had been so steady and quiet, had begun to pound again with a violence he could not account for.
The Marquis was unmarried. He was unmarried.
If he could employ his talents to win her favor—
He knew, rationally, that the gulf between their stations was that of heaven and earth.
But, what if?
Once a thought of this nature took root, it could not be suppressed.
"Where there's a will, there's a way! I, Fang Xun, studied under a great master. In both talent and stratagems, I am no lesser man than any hero under the sky."
And when he let his imagination run to the advantages that marrying the Changle Marquis would bring, Fang Xun found his breathing coming faster than he could control.
Setting that aside for a moment, the immense prestige that the twentieth-rank Marquis title carried in Great Qian, the Changle Marquis's own network of connections, branching deep and tangled wide, would be a stroke of world-overturning fortune for any official.
The Changle Marquis was the last surviving bloodline of the old Xu Kingdom's royal house.
When the King of Xu surrendered and was folded into Great Qian, his former subjects and retainers had come with him.
Over five hundred years of accumulated history, that community had grown deep roots in the court, their reach extending into every corner of the Great Qian officialdom.
"Even if a true union proves impossible, building a genuine relationship with the Changle Marquis through this opportunity alone would be a tremendous gain. A once-in-a-thousand-years chance!" The more Fang Xun turned it over, the more hotly the flame burned in his chest.
His mind drifted back to that first meeting, to the plain wooden hairpin angled through the Marquis's hair and the faint pattern of an ancient sword-hilt carved into its surface.
"Could it be she has a fondness for this sort of thing?"
Something stirred in Fang Xun. He turned to Cheng Yishu.
"Does the county Magistrate office treasury have any swords of good quality and fine appearance?"
"Swords?" Cheng Yishu stared at him blankly.
"They can't be used for cutting or combat, only for display. Why would the treasury stock those as a matter of course?"
The answer was roughly what Fang Xun had anticipated. He started to say, "Then help me look around the county for..."
But he stopped mid-sentence, his eyes flickering. "Never mind. I'll go myself."
He pushed through the door and was gone at a rapid pace.
Watching Fang Xun's retreating back moving with the eager, undignified hurry of a man in heat, Cheng Yishu who had always performed such careful deference before his superior, slowly straightened his spine. He let out a quiet, cold snort. Something very close to contempt moved through his eyes.
...
The following day, Fang Xun manufactured a pretext to call on the Changle Marquis, and presented as his gift two fine swords he had spent the entire night scouring the county to obtain.
One had a blade as deep and translucent green as jade. The other pulsed with a cold, cutting brilliance.
The Changle Marquis sat on her couch and looked at the two swords laid before her. For a moment, her expression became distant as though she had slipped into some memory from a very long time ago.
"Do you know what a sword is?"
Fang Xun blinked, then ventured haltingly, "A kind of ceremonial implement, perhaps?"
At that answer, the Changle Marquis's beautiful eyes swept lightly across Fang Xun's face and whatever lay in that gaze was impossible to read.
After a moment, she turned away and continued in the same cool, unhurried tone. "Long ago, the Kingdom of Xu was the greatest sword-forging land in all the world. And the royal house of Xu was the greatest sword-forging family in all the world. Of the ten great named swords of the world, seven were made by their hand..."
This was the first Fang Xun had ever heard of such history. Seeing the Marquis apparently willing to share it with him, his heart leapt with quiet excitement, convinced he had found the right approach after all.
The Changle Marquis extended that wrist of cold, snow-white jade, and reached out into the air. The sword of brilliant, cutting light flew to her palm in an instant.
"A sword is not a ceremonial object."
Her previously languid tone abruptly changed, sharpening into something chill and lethal. "It is the sovereign of all weapons, a instrument of war and death."
Before the words had fully left her mouth, the cold light in her eyes ignited. The sword in her hand became a streak of pale radiance and she drove it, without ceremony, straight toward Fang Xun's chest.
Fang Xun, for his part, made no attempt to dodge. He only stared wide-eyed and let the keen blade drive into his chest without resistance.
And yet, there was no gore. No blood. No blade piercing flesh.
In the very instant the weapon entered Fang Xun's body, the sword which had been radiating lethal sharpness shattered in an instant, as fragile as spun glass, dissolving into countless brilliant motes of light.
Neither of the two people present showed any surprise at this strange sight.
After all, in Great Qian, the fact that swords cannot harm people was common knowledge universally understood.
The Changle Marquis's expression remained unmoved as she withdrew what remained, only the hilt, from Fang Xun's chest. As she did so, the scattered motes gathered back together of their own accord, and the blade reassembled itself, whole and undamaged.
"Once it was... once it was..."
The Changle Marquis gazed at the unharmed sword in her hands. A desolation so complete it could not be dissolved rose in her eyes, and she murmured to herself in a very quiet voice.
Fang Xun watched this, and something almost like genuine sympathy moved in him. He was on the verge of offering some words of comfort… But the Changle Marquis had already dismissed him.
With all his carefully prepared words still locked inside him, Fang Xun could only bow, offer his farewells, and take his leave.
When he returned, somewhat deflated, to the Magistrate office below, he found his trusted man Wu Kuang pacing back and forth outside the study door with an expression of anxious terror.
"What's happened? Stop skulking about like that, it's undignified." Fang Xun straightened his official robes and asked in a measured, unhurried voice.
Wu Kuang pressed close and dropped his voice. "My lord... Yu Niang. Yu Niang has come back."
Fang Xun's pupils contracted sharply.
And the next words out of Wu Kuang's mouth struck him like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
"And she's standing outside the Magistrate office gates with a very large belly."
...