Eighteen Whips of Huyan

Eighteen Whips of Huyan

Contents

Eighteen Whips of Huyan (simplified: 呼延十八鞭, traditional: 呼延十八鞭, pinyin: Hūyán Shíbā Biān) is the iron whip style of Zhou Weixin’s school, named after the Northern Song general Huyan Zan. Though it is called eighteen whips, only seventeen moves have been handed down; the last relies on neili alone.

In Mandarin Duck Blades

Zhou Weixin’s shifu told him that the eighteenth move is called Breaking Ten Spears with One Whip, after the time Huyan Zan, surrounded by the enemy, shattered ten spears with a single steel whip. It depends not on technique but on neili, and in Zhou’s day only his shibo, Zhuo Tianxiong, had the cultivation for it.1

When Zhou attacks the disguised Zhuo with Sweeping Across an Army, Zhuo answers with the same move, using a sheathed dao in place of a whip, and stops Zhou’s sixteen-pound whip dead in mid-air. Zhuo’s neili then throws the whip from Zhou’s hand, splitting the skin between his thumb and forefinger, in a move the narrator calls Iron Whip Flying in One Direction, a jab at Zhou’s epithet, the Iron Whip that Quells All Directions. Zhuo asks whether Zhou has learnt the last move, and Zhou recognises his shibo.1

Fighting Yuan Guannan, Zhuo uses the style’s moves with his iron staff.2 He later parries the Wedded Blades Style with a steel whip drawn from his waist.3

Moves

  • Sweeping Across an Army (横扫千军 — héngsǎo qiānjūn)

  • Iron Whip Flying in One Direction (铁鞭飞一方 — tiěbiān fēi yī fāng)

  • Breaking Ten Spears with One Whip (一鞭断十枪 — yī biān duàn shí qiāng), the lost eighteenth move

Practitioners

Behind the scenes

In the earlier edition, the disarming move is Iron Whip Flying in Eight Directions (铁鞭飞八方), echoing Zhou’s epithet 铁鞭镇八方. The third edition changes it to 一方, “one direction”, turning the name into mockery. See Mandarin Duck Blades third edition changes.

See also

Footnotes

  1. See Part 7. ↩ ↩2

  2. See Part 8. ↩

  3. See Part 11. ↩

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