Bi Di

Bi Di is a Daoist of the Tianxuan Sect. He shares the sect with its leader, Bi Yuan, and calls him Senior Brother. He keeps to a corner of a Pangzhen tavern and talks in circles: the one who watches the fish is watched by them in turn, and the fish, asking only for food and water, lives at ease.

He calls himself a poor Daoist and reads scripture loosely. Master Bihai once gave him a scroll, annotated line by line in the master's own hand, with a few pages of Bi Di's own notes tucked between.

When Soul brings him the Tianxuan Bronze Sword that Bi Yuan left behind, he calls it an old relic and an ill-omened thing. But Soul's Chi, he says, is not like other men's; in such hands the sword might turn calamity into a force that wards off evil.

He sends Soul to an abandoned smithy in Pangzhen's backstreets for Bronze Essence to temper the blade's soul. When the work is done he says his senior brother may finally rest easy, and hands over Bihai's scroll so the relic the master left can be tempered in turn.

He already knew how Bi Yuan ended. Soul had stood in the Village of Lu while Bi Yuan and two masters held their minds against a dark art to the last, and it was Soul who saw them to their rest. Bi Di hears it out, says that life and death are fated as night follows day, that his senior brother held to the Mandate and died without regret — and thanks Soul for it.