PURITY

Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, and Argo are camping riverside when Xena wakes, sensing an intruder.  It turns out to be a monk from Chin...and somebody has cut out his tongue!  Nevertheless, he hands Xena a written message.  It's Lao Ma's words and it reads, "The hawk and the dove must be made one with the wisdom."  Xena figures that the 'wisdom' must mean Lao Ma's book.  The hawk and dove remain a mystery; a mystery which someone did not want Xena to solve.  Thus, the gang travel to Chin.  Upon entering the village, the inhabitants seem to have deserted it and there are signs of a fight.  Suddenly, as they look upon the monastery where the book is hidden, they see something crash into the building and explode.  The attack only gets worse and Xena and Gabrielle attempt to fight off the onslaught of warriors.  Enter Lao Ma's daughter!  She recognizes Xena and helps fight on her side until the baddies are gone.  Soon afterward, she explains that the weapon is called black powder and, as Xena puts it, it's more powerful than Greek fire.  She also reveals that an evil warlord named Go Kun has rediscovered the formula.  Xena feels their next move should be to retrieve Lao Ma's book of wisdom before the warlord does.  (It would only make him more dangerous.)  Finally, the gang enters a room and Xena opens a cabinet door to reveal where a book used to lay.  Someone has stolen it!  Gabby and Lao Ma's daughter leave the room to begin the new search while Xena holds up Joxer and hands him a book from a table nearby.  She tells him to sneak outside with it and put it in Argo's saddlebag without anyone else seeing.  (She'll explain later, she tells him.)  Xena later tells Joxer and Gabby to find out the ingredients of the black powder; it should be something from a cook's kitchen.  Meanwhile, Xena and Pao Ssu do some tracking.  On their hunt, Lao Ma's daughter asks Xena what brought about her devotion to her mother.  "Your mother helped me find a kind of peace that I'd never known before.  And when she died, it died with her."  But Pao Ssu felt rejected by her mother, in contrast.  And she asks Xena if she'd ever give up this child she carries.  "Not this child," she replies.  Anyway, their next move is to lose whoever is now following their trail.  In the marketplace, Joxer proves he knows his spices, Gabby proves she can haggle, and they both decide to dress like locals so that they can learn more.  Xena sends their horses in a direction that's different from their own path to mislead their trackers.  Joxer offers to trade a fine selection of exotic spices to a merchant if he'll tell him what's in the black powder.  But the merchant sounds the alarm that Joxer has this forbidden stuff and it lands Gabby and him in the Chinese prison.  Xena and Pao Ssu follow the rider's tracks into a cave where a young woman identical to Pao Ssu is reading a book and looks up.  "Hello sister," she says to Pao Ssu!  The sisters bicker and for a minute we don't know which one to trust.  But K'ao Hsin (the other sister) hands the book to Xena and that's when Xena finally reveals that she believes the army they fought wouldn't have retreated so quickly unless ordered.  "So it's you who has forged an alliance with Go Kun?" says K'ao Hsin.  Admitting her evil nature and demanding the book from Xena, Pao Ssu and Xena fight.  When Pao Ssu throws a ball of black powder at Xena's feet and steals the book, she has no idea until she's very far away that she's actually stolen the decoy.  Later, discussing the situation by campfire, Xena explains to K'ao Hsin, "We won't have to destroy Pao Ssu, she'll destroy herself."  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  Joxer thinks the gutter above him and his shackles are leaking.  Gabby, dripping with sarcasm, is in no mood and tells him that this Chinese water-torture's whole point is to drive him crazy.  She then uses her foot to reach into his pantleg to retrieve the bit of black powder he still has on him.  This, of course, goes wrong at first.  But Gabby manages to blow the lock off of her shackles and they both go free.  Elsewhere, Xena and K'ao Hsin are just walking through a wooded area when she has flashbacks of the dogs pursuing her in her 'evil Xena' days.  It was where she first met Lao Ma and, looking troubled, Xena is brought to express what Lao Ma meant to her.  "There are people you meet who move in and out of your life like ghosts.  And after they're gone you find that they've left a part of themselves with you.  It's as if in some small way that their spirit helps define who you are and what you want to bring to the world....  Your mother taught me compassion.  It's a lesson that I want to pass onto this child."  Later, inside, Xena breathes in the scent of the old fabric and remembers yet again.  "It must've been beautiful," says K'ao Hsin.  "Yes," replies Xena.  "I was cornered here and your mother hid me in her bath underwater.  She gave me her breath to keep me alive," Xena recalls.  "She died in this palace didn't she?"  "That's right," says Xena bitterly.  They decide to study the book there, in the presence of her spirit.  Meanwhile, Joxer and Gabby are finding their way through the woods when they run across Pao Ssu, whom they still believe to be a friend!  They follow her only to be tied up and gagged and surrounded by black powder.  Xena runs outside to find this: Joxer tied up to her right and Gabby to her left, a line of black powder connecting them, and Pao Ssu in the middle with a torch.  Hoping for peace, K'ao Hsin hands Pao Ssu the book againt Xena's objections, but Pao Ssu drops the torch anyway.  Xena runs first to Gabrielle and stomps out the fire, then throws her chakram at Joxer's bonds.  Later, Joxer discovers the missing ingredient to the black powder.  Later still, Xena is in Chinese garb and walks in on K'ao Hsin crying from doubt and fear.  Xena encourages her that her compassion is a strength and not a weakness.  It is then that K'ao Hsin realizes that the hawk and the dove are the two of them.  If they focus together, they won't need the book.  In a vision, they both realize that Lao Ma gave up her daughters to protect them from their brother, Ming Tien.  Meanwhile, Pao Ssu is gaining power while Joxer and Gabby make weapons from the powder.  They create a diversion with explosives and drive out Pao Ssu's army.  But when Xena and K'ao Hsin find Pau Ssu alone in the camp, they find she doesn't need her army.  Nevertheless, they are ready to repel her powers.  Joxer and Gabby are found by the army, elsewhere, though.  And they must put up a fight of their own.  Pao Ssu seems almost ready to surrender as she is told about her mother's anguish in giving up her daughters.  But she resists and is killed by bombs.  Xena and K'ao Hsin walk out of the fire, themselves and the book intact.