The Cold Moon Treasured Dao (simplified: 冷月宝刀, traditional: 冷月寶刀, pinyin: Lěngyuè Bǎodāo, jyutping: laang5 jyut6 bou2 dou1) was a curved treasured dao that brought Miao Renfeng and his wife Nan Lan together, and whose burial at Hu Yidao’s grave began the breach between them (SIDE ch. 2, 20). Hu Fei found it there years later and used it to rout Tian Guinong (SIDE ch. 20).
Description
The dao was a curved blade about three chi long in a dark, plain-looking scabbard. Drawn even half a chi, it gave off a cold blue-green light, and fully drawn its gleam dazzled the onlookers. Its hilt was inlaid in gold and silver thread with a crescent moon (SIDE ch. 2). It cut through the weapons of Tian Guinong’s men as if they were nothing, and matched Tian Guinong’s own treasured dao blow for blow without either dao taking a mark (SIDE ch. 20).
History
Nan Rentong’s dao
Nan Lan’s father, Nan Rentong (南仁通), an official in Jiangnan, obtained the dao when he captured a great outlaw of the rivers and lakes, who died in prison. Posted to the capital, he meant to present it to a powerful official to advance himself (SIDE ch. 2). Five men who knew of the dao followed him north in disguise, one as an inn attendant, others as a porter, a carter and a pot-mender. At an inn on the road near Cangzhou they goaded Nan Rentong into drawing it so that they could be sure of it, and the next day they killed him in the snow and fell to disputing the dao and his daughter (SIDE ch. 2).
Miao Renfeng’s dao
Miao Renfeng, who had seen the dao at the inn, stepped in to save Nan Lan, and all five men died in the fight, one of them killed when the dao fell from Nan Lan’s hands; Miao himself was struck in the legs by two of Jiang Tiaohou’s poisoned needles (SIDE ch. 2). Unable to stand, Miao then sat in a chair with the Cold Moon Treasured Dao and fought the three Zhong brothers of Ebei, the “Dread of Ghosts” (Zhong Zhaowen and his brothers), using the Hu Family Bladeworks that Hu Yidao had taught him (SIDE ch. 2).
After their marriage, Miao took his wife to Hu Yidao’s grave near Cangzhou and buried the dao in the earth before it, thinking that no one in the world but Hu Yidao was worthy to wield it, and that had Hu lived he would have given it to him with both hands. There, drinking before the grave, he told his wife at length of his duel with Hu Yidao and of Madam Hu’s devotion to her husband, and her face changed. Their marriage began to break down from the day he buried the dao (SIDE ch. 2, 20). No one but the two of them knew where the dao lay (SIDE ch. 20).
In Hu Fei’s hands
Years later, Hu Fei, cornered at his parents’ grave near Cangzhou by Tian Guinong and his men, was digging a hole to bury Cheng Lingsu’s ashes when his fingers struck the dao. Nan Lan, who was at the graveyard, had told him only that there was a treasured dao and that the matter concerned his father and Miao Renfeng. Hu Fei drew it, cut through the weapons of three of Tian’s men and took the arms off two, and with the Hu Family Bladeworks wounded Tian Guinong in arm and leg until Tian fled (SIDE ch. 20). For years afterwards no one could work out where Hu Fei’s dao had come from, and it was from this that his name “Flying Fox” spread through the jianghu (SIDE ch. 20). Hu Fei put the dao back in the pit to keep his father company and buried Cheng Lingsu’s ashes with it (SIDE ch. 20).
See also
- Side Story of the Flying Fox items
- Miao Renfeng — who buried it
- Nan Lan — whose father owned it
- Hu Yidao — in whose grave it lay
- Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao — another treasured dao in the Hu and Miao story