Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain Chapter 6 – Part 1

After half a day of listening to the tale, the company were filled with admiration for the character of Hu Yidao. Baoshu alone excepted, every man among them felt a strange stirring at the news that the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain was his son. Though they knew meeting him would likely bring them no benefit, they could not help but yearn for the encounter. And they thought, The master of this place has invited warriors from far and wide to stand ready for battle, so this young man’s skill can hardly be less than his father’s.

Miao Ruolan suddenly cried in alarm, “Aiya! The helpers this place invited, and my father too, have not yet climbed the mountain. If they run into the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain at the foot, they will certainly fight. Father does not know he is Uncle Hu’s son. If he kills him with a single stroke of the jian,¹ what shall we do?”

Ping Asi gave a faint smile. “Though Miao daxia,² they say, has fought all under heaven and found no equal, to claim he could strike down Young Master Hu in a single blow, that is another matter.” The long scar across his face pulled taut with the smile, making him doubly ugly and fearsome. He went on: “Young Master Hu came up the mountain today for two reasons: first, to settle accounts with the master of this place, and second, to seek out Miao daxia for a duel of revenge. But I saw with my own eyes the bond of perfect trust between the two daxia, Hu and Miao, all those years ago. The one who truly caused Elder Master Hu’s death was someone else entirely. I urged Young Master Hu to let Miao daxia be, but he said he would put the questions to Miao daxia face to face. Later I saw Doctor Yan at the foot of the mountain. Even after twenty-odd years I recognised him at once, so I followed him up the peak, blew up the rope and destroyed the grain stores. If we all starve to death here together, at least I will have repaid the kindness Elder Master Hu showed me.”

This speech left the company exchanging glances. They thought that Baoshu, who had murdered for treasure all those years ago, fully deserved to die today. But the rest of them had nothing to do with the matter. To lose their lives here on account of it would be a grievous wrong.

Baoshu saw the looks on their faces and knew they blamed him. He rose, took the iron box with the treasured dao,³ and said in a harsh voice, “Today we must all pull together and find a way down this mountain. As for this villain —”

Before he could finish, the flutter of wings sounded and a white dove flew into the hall, settling on the table.

Miao Ruolan cried gladly, “Ah, what a lovely little dove!” She stepped forward and cupped the bird gently in both hands, stroking the feathers on its back. She saw a silk thread tied to its foot. The thread ran from the dove’s foot all the way out the door. Miao Ruolan pulled it inward, and the line proved impossibly long. She hauled in a great length and still saw no end. Curiosity taking hold, she began gathering the thread hand over hand, and it seemed to have no end at all. Tian Qingwen stepped forward to help, and the two of them reeled in several hundred feet before the line began to grow heavy. Plainly something was tied to the far end.

Steward Yu⁴ cried out in delight: “We are saved!” Everyone asked, “How?” Steward Yu said, “This white dove is raised at our manor, used to carry messages between the peak and the foot. The men below must have noticed the long rope was blown apart, and sent the dove up the peak with something tied to the silk thread to rescue us.”

When Ping Asi heard this, his face went white. With a wild roar he lunged for the thread, trying to snap it. Yin Ji stood nearby. With a shift of his body he blocked Ping Asi’s path, and a double-palmed strike sent him sprawling to the ground.

Tian Qingwen said, “Sister, be careful not to break the thread.” Miao Ruolan nodded. The silk thread, though fine, was tough beyond measure. The weight in their hands grew heavier by the moment, but the thread held. After a while Miao Ruolan seemed to be straining. Tao Zian said, “Miss Miao, rest a moment. Let me pull.” He stepped forward and took the thread from her.

Ruan Shizhong, Cao Yunqi, Liu Yuanhe and the rest had already dashed out the door to see what hung from the line.

Tao Zian and Tian Qingwen hauled for a while when suddenly cheers erupted from beyond the door and their hands went light. Everyone in the hall rushed out together. Ruan Shizhong and Cao Yunqi stood at the cliff’s edge, their hands rising and falling in frantic haste, still hauling. It turned out a thicker hemp rope was tied to the end of the silk thread. When the hemp rope had been pulled in full, it led up an even thicker cable, braided of leather and hemp together.

The company cheered as one. With seven hands and eight feet they hauled the great cable up and bound it tight around two tall pines at the cliff’s edge.

Liu Yuanhe said, “Let us go. I go first.” He seized the cable with both hands and was about to slide down. Tao Baisui barked, “Hold! Why should you go first? Who knows what mischief you will get up to below?” Liu Yuanhe snarled, “And what would you have?” Tao Baisui hesitated. He thought, Every man on this peak carries his own designs, and none trusts another. Whoever goes down first, the rest will not rest easy. Put that way, the question had no easy answer.

Cao Yunqi said, “Let the ladies go down first. We men will draw lots to decide the order.” Xiong Yuanxian said in his soft, thin voice, “How about this: the Tianlong School, the Yinma Creek Stockade,⁵ and our Pingtong Armed Escort,⁶ each sends one man down in turn. We keep watch on each other, so no one can play tricks.” Ruan Shizhong said, “That will do.” Then: “Great Master Baoshu, please return the iron box.” He stepped forward and held out his hand.

At first the company had been consumed with thoughts of life and death. Now that the great peril had passed, they turned their minds again to the treasure. Before, they had known only that the iron box was a marvel of the jianghu,⁷ but what made it marvellous and wherein its worth they had no idea. When they learned it held the military dao left by the Storming King,⁸ they knew the thing was no ordinary object. And when Ping Asi said the dao was tied to the Storming King’s great hidden treasure, every eye burned and every heart raced. Lore held that after the Storming King took Beijing, his generals, Liu Zongmin among them, had tortured the Ming imperial kinsmen and ministers, piling their treasures as high as a mountain. Soon the army was defeated, and that hoard, together with the Ming court’s accumulated store, had vanished without trace. If the iron box and the treasured dao could lead them to that treasure, what wealth in the world could compare?

Baoshu laughed coldly. “What virtue or merit has the Tianlong School, that it should keep the treasured dao all to itself? The Tianlong School has kept it these hundred years and more. Time for it to change masters.” Ruan Shizhong stared, his eyes hard with menace. Yin Ji, Cao Yunqi and Zhou Yunyang strode forward as one and took their places at his side. Baoshu threw back his head and laughed aloud. “You fellows want to fight, is that it? Years ago the Tianlong School won the treasure at the edge of the blade, and today it loses it at the edge of the blade. Fair enough, I should think.”

Ruan Shizhong and the rest were furious, longing to hurl themselves upon the old monk and cut him to pieces, but they feared his martial skill and dared not move. Under the piercing gaze of his bright eyes they stepped back instead.

For a moment all was silent beside the snowy peak. Then Qiner, Miao Ruolan’s maid, pointed down the mountain and cried, “Young Mistress, look! Someone seems to be coming up.”

The company started, thinking, How is it that we have not gone down, yet someone is coming up instead? They crowded to the cliff’s edge and looked. On the long rope a white shape was climbing with startling speed. They steadied their gaze and made out a man in white garments.

Tian Qingwen said, “Sister Miao, is that your honourable father?” Miao Ruolan shook her head. “Most likely not. My father never wears white.”

Before she had finished speaking, the man had climbed much closer. Steward Yu called out, “Sir, who might you be?” Then from midway down the peak came a long, rolling laugh, deep and resonant, setting the valley echoing. Suddenly it seemed the whole mountain was filled with laughter.

Ruan Shizhong saw Baoshu standing at the cliff’s edge, the iron box cradled in his arms, his attention fixed on the slope below. He tugged Cao Yunqi’s sleeve lightly, pointed at the centre of Baoshu’s back, and jerked his right shoulder in a shoving motion. Cao Yunqi understood: his shishu⁹ wanted him to knock the monk off the peak. He thought, However skilled this bald thief may be, how could he survive a fall from a peak a hundred thousand feet high? The iron box and the treasured dao won’t break. We can go down and find them afterwards. The two of them exchanged a nod and charged at the same instant, rushing at Baoshu’s back with all their force. Baoshu stood barely a foot from the cliff’s edge, his whole attention on the man climbing below, utterly unaware of the treachery behind him. By the time he heard the footsteps, Ruan Shizhong and Cao Yunqi were already upon him.

Baoshu had been watching the white-clad man’s climbing technique with a growing unease when, on top of that, he sensed an attack from behind. He started violently. In that instant of peril he threw himself into the Iron Plank Bridge,¹⁰ his body canting to the left. The Iron Plank Bridge is a last resort for dodging hidden weapons. When the projectile comes too fast to leap aside or duck, the body goes rigid and leans back at an angle, letting the thing pass above the face while both feet stay nailed to the ground. The higher the skill, the closer the back comes to the earth. The art lies in speed of motion and straightness of form: “feet like cast iron, body stiff as a plank, arching like a bridge.” But Baoshu’s Iron Plank Bridge was unlike the usual form: he did not lean back but tilted left, feet rooted at the cliff’s edge, body extending over empty air with more than half of him hanging beyond the peak.

Ruan Shizhong and Cao Yunqi charged into empty space where Baoshu had been standing. Certain of their strike, they were already elated. Then they felt their shoulders meet nothing at all. Ruan Shizhong’s skill was keen. He snapped into a somersault and rolled clear. Cao Yunqi could not check his stride. He shot forward and fell, plummeting off the snowy peak.

The company cried out as one. Baoshu straightened his back and said, “Amitabha. Sinful, sinful!” But cold sweat already soaked his back.

Tian Qingwen swayed and fainted backwards. Tao Zian, standing beside her, caught her in his arms.

The rest stared down at Cao Yunqi’s heavy frame falling straight into the void, every one of them crying out. He seemed certain to be dashed to pieces. Then, suddenly, the white-clad man hooked both feet around the rope, pushed off the cliff face with his left hand, and the long rope carried him swinging towards Cao Yunqi like a pendulum.

The timing and the force were perfect. The man in white reached out with his right hand and seized Cao Yunqi by the back of his robe. But Cao Yunqi’s bulk was great, and the momentum of the fall savage. They heard the rip of cloth, and he fell again. The white-clad man, feet hooked about the rope, stretched his body and his arm, and in that razor’s edge of time seized Cao Yunqi’s right ankle. Still, both of them slid down the long rope, falling fast, their figures growing smaller and smaller. They dropped several hundred feet. The plunge was so fierce that even with the white-clad man’s supreme gongfu,¹¹ the strength in his feet alone could not hold them both against the rope. It seemed he would have to let go of Cao Yunqi to save himself. In the very height of that terror, they saw his right hand whip up and fling Cao Yunqi’s body up the rope.

Cao Yunqi was barely conscious, but the moment his hands touched the rope he clutched it fast. A drowning man, even in the act of going under, will seize upon a single water-grass and hold it to the death. That is the nature of survival, and Cao Yunqi was no different. By his own skill he should not have been able to grip the rope against the strain of two men falling. But in extremity, his strength somehow multiplied many times over. The rope swung out and bore them both in a long arc to the left.

The white-clad man twisted at the waist and flipped his body over, and his left hand, too, now gripped the rope. He said a few words in Cao Yunqi’s ear and patted his back. Cao Yunqi, still shaken to the core, heard his words and set at once to hauling himself up the rope, hand over hand.

The company on the cliff’s edge had watched that hair’s-breadth rescue, and their tongues hung speechless. When Cao Yunqi reached the top, Yin Ji and Zhou Yunyang seized his arms and hauled him over the edge. “Who is that man in white?” they asked together. Cao Yunqi panted a few breaths and said, “That hero told me to come up and report. He said — he said the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Hu Fei, has arrived.”

Struck dumb by the white-clad man’s bearing, the company stood frozen. Then someone, no one knew who, gave a startled cry and bolted for the manor.

The rest needed no second prompting. They surged for the gate in a mob. Tao Baisui, Liu Yuanhe and Ruan Shizhong jammed the doorway together, shouldering and shoving, each man first through. Cao Yunqi stopped to help Tian Qingwen, and in the rush traded blows with Tao Zian. In a single moment of chaos the doorway emptied. Steward Yu and Qiner, helping Miao Ruolan along, came last and were nearly shut out.

Yin Ji saw Xiong Yuanxian close the gate and immediately seized the great bolt, sliding it home across both doors. Tao Baisui, fearing it would not hold, fetched a bracing beam and wedged it tight.

By then Tian Qingwen had come round. “The Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain has no quarrel with us. Why should we fear him?” Ruan Shizhong shot her a dark look. “No quarrel? Hmph. Your father was his father’s deadliest enemy. Do you suppose he will let you go?” Liu Yuanhe added, “And that wretch Ping Asi, where has he slunk off to?”

Footnotes

1. 剑 – jiàn. A double-edged straight sword, one of the four major weapons of Chinese martial arts. ↩

2. 苗大侠 – Miáo dàxiá. Miao daxia; 大侠 is a title of respect for a renowned martial artist, placed after the surname. ↩

3. 宝刀 – bǎodāo. A treasured dao; here, Li Zicheng’s military dao. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 于管家 – Yú Guǎnjiā. Steward Yu, the head steward of Du Ximeng’s Jade Brush Peak Manor. ↩

5. 饮马川山寨 – Yǐnmǎ Chuān Shānzhài. The Yinma Creek Stockade, a martial arts stronghold. ↩

6. 平通镖局 – Píngtōng Biāojú. The Pingtong Armed Escort, led by Xiong Yuanxian. ↩

7. 江湖 – jiānghú. Lit. rivers and lakes. The itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach. ↩

8. 闯王 – Chuǎng Wáng. The Storming King, title of Li Zicheng (1606–1645), who led the rebellion that overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644. ↩

9. 师叔 – shīshū. Martial uncle; the junior fellow-student of one’s shifu. ↩

10. 铁板桥 – Tiěbǎnqiáo. Lit. Iron Plank Bridge. An evasive technique in which the body is held rigid at an angle, feet planted, to dodge a passing attack. ↩

11. 功夫 – gōngfu. Martial skill cultivated through long training. ↩