Gan Nineteenth Sister Chapter 2 – Part 1

A strange man, and stranger still his ways.

The figure repeated his earlier motion, bending forward at the waist like a crooked prawn.

The hour was growing late. The remote location of Yueyang School¹ meant that there were no idle bystanders drawn to the commotion. Every witness present watched in tense silence as the zhangmen² prepared to enter the circle himself. Hearts hammered. Not a soul among them could predict what would come of this clash.

Li Tiexin³ faced the sedan and stood outside the circle for a while. He did not rush in. Instead, he shifted his weight and moved to a different angle, then stopped again. The living-corpse in red turned to track his movement. Li Tiexin paced slowly onward, circling to a third position behind the sedan. Divining his intent, the red-robed man pivoted to face him once more.

In that instant, Li Tiexin sliced into the circle.

He entered with his body turned sideways, and in a single stride he had already penetrated three feet past the boundary. Then his frame spun sharply, sliding to a new angle, and he cut another three feet inward, his footwork dazzlingly swift but far from effortless. Understanding dawned upon the three elders watching from beyond the circle. They were certain their zhangmen’s spiralling advance bore purpose, and they could guess his intent for doing so. He was tracing the rotating air currents to slip inward.

Although the three elders stood outside the circle, they could sense the treacherous forces roiling within. They surmised that a formidable crushing pressure was emnating outwards, hence the zhangmen had adopted such a method of lateral entry, cutting inward layer by layer. Li Tiexin’s approach was markedly superior to the late Elder Peng’s. His spinning form moved faster with greater urgency, transiting between advance and retreat graceful as a startled swan in flight.

The man in red within the circle had grown visibly tense at Li Tiexin’s spiralling approach, though he maintained his air of superiority. His head tracked Li Tiexin’s movements ceaselessly, his eagle-like gaze sharp with vigilance and ferocity, poised to strike at an opening.

Li Tiexin whirled like a meteor. In the space of a few heartbeats he had cut another layer deeper, and now no more than five feet stood between him and the sedan. His movements suddenly slowed, as though he faced a wall of resistance. An immense, invisible force pressing outward with crushing intensity.

Li Tiexin came to an abrupt halt. Swifth as the wind in motion, firm like a mountain in stillness. The bearing of a true master.

Even those who understood nothing of the arcane forces at work could now perceive something. They saw a faint mist in the air around the sedan, swirling slowly outward in all directions.

Li Tiexin stood engulfed within that mist. Then, in a single breath, a gale erupted inside the circle, a violent storm-like blast with the sedan as its epicentre. Those standing outside could not feel its full fury, but the signs were plain enough. First, they saw the snow on the ground heaving and buckling outwards in circular waves expanding from the sedan. Then, they noticed Li Tiexin’s robes streaming back behind him, his long hair whipping from his skull like an arrow loosed from the bow. Besides that, a cold of unimaginable ferocity was spreading through the circle, clearly visible from the rime that appeared on Li Tiexin’s brows and hair. In the span of a single heartbeat, a thin crust of frost had crystallised across his eyebrows and his hair.

Gradually, even his face. And then his hands seemed to freeze over.

Resisting with his profound cultivation, Li Tiexin caused the thin ice that formed upon his skin to melt almost as quickly as it appeared, running down his face in droplets. To someone oblivious to the situation, he might have appeared to be sweating, but before these beads of moisture could reach the ground, they froze again, scattering across the snow as tiny pellets of ice that tinkled like pearls on stone.

In that moment, Li Tiexin must have been suffering beyond all reckoning. One had only to witness the repeated, violent shudders that wracked his frame to know it.

The three Hall Elders and the six young disciples outside the circle felt a swell of despair and grief. And yet, the poise of a true master displayed a reality that few men could fathom, let alone endure.

Just as those outside the circle were overcome with despair, the figure of Li Tiexin that had appeared to be frozen solid suddenly erupted into motion. He hurled himself toward the sedan like a flash of lightning. In the same heartbeat, the living-corpse in red launched himself at Li Tiexin with equal speed.

Sword moved like a dragon, and the bamboo rod flickered like ten thousand green scales along the dragon’s flank.

In the span of a single, dazzling moment, a rapid-fire cascade of ringing impacts filled the air. The two had exchanged at least ten blows.

Then, beneath the cascading tide of qi from Li Tiexin’s sword, the man in red was driven sharply to the left. In an instant, the arrogance and contempt had been wiped from his face, replaced by profound astonishment and admiration. Perhaps he had never imagined that the Yueyang School could harbour a zhangmen of such calibre. Whatever his expectations, he had tasted the man’s prowess.

With a shriek like a hunting owl, the man in red coiled and his gaunt frame shot forward in a single serpentine motion as he hurled himself at Li Tiexin once more. The bamboo crop became a sky of flickering emerald, sweeping down upon Li Tiexin from every conceivable angle like a canopy engulfing heaven and earth.

Li Tiexin had been wary of this uncanny attendant from the very beginning. Now the man has proven to be far more formidable than he had imagined. The toughest opponent Li Tiexin had ever faced in all his years. If he wished to reach the sedan curtain and confront the master within, he would first have to overcome this devastatingly powerful servant. If the servant was this strong, then one could well imagine the master’s abilities. There was no room left for hesitation. In truth, Li Tiexin’s hatred for this red-clad attendant burned no less fiercely than for the master within the carriage.

This second exchange was even more ferocious than the first.

A torrent of green and silver coalesced into a maelstrom of fury.

The sword-light spread like a sea, and surging sword-qi crashed upon the enemy like waves upon a cliff. The man in red appeared to be engulfed by this sea of blades. White radiance devoured the green shadow, and green shadow lashed back against the white light.

It was a vivid scene! Like a spinning top whipped into a blur of motion, white light wheeling on the outside, green shadow whirling at the core, and all else lost in chaos. Snow spiralled up from the ground in the shrieking vortex, thickening the air with a blinding, dreamlike haze.

Those watching from beyond the circle felt their chests constrict. They could scarcely breathe!

Suddenly, the green shadow inside the white ring erupted outward, bursting free like a serpent leaping from a wave.

The man in red, his face twisted in a snarl, drove a palm at Li Tiexin with a savage howl. Li Tiexin took the blow full on, and his massive frame lurched violently. But even as he staggered, the Jade Dragon Sword⁴ whipped upward from below in a reverse arc, and with perfect, unmistakable clarity it carved a line of blood across the red-robed man’s right cheek.

The wound was shallow, but it was enough to stagger the red-clad man’s nerve.

In the biting cold of the sword’s wake, the man in red stumbled back three paces. Before he could recover and launch a killing strike of his own, Li Tiexin’s body pivoted with explosive force and drove straight for the sedan. His sword out and caught the heavy curtain, and with a sharp ripping sound he flicked it open.

This was the moment, one that every soul outside the circle had yearned for. In the instant the curtain swept upward, a flash of brightness seemed to dazzle their eyes.

In their minds, the murderous demon who sat within that sedan must be some creature of surpassing ugliness and horror. The reality could not have been more different.

The person within was not ugly, but bore utmost beauty. Breathakingly beautiful.

Long hair cascaded loose about her shoulders, and her brows were subtly traced.

A pair of lucid, limpid eyes, held a captivating blend of intelligence and grace. Lips, red thin and faintly curved, and a single tiny vermillion mole upon her left cheek that lent her face an exquisite charm.

In short, it was a face that every eye that beheld it would adore. And yet, in that very first glance from her bestowed an overwhelming sense of icy coldness. Visceral awe and dread.

She sat in the sedan with perfect composure, as though nothing in the world were amiss. A single sprig of red plum blossom⁵ was tucked at an angle above her temple, enhancing her enchanting beauty. A long cloak of lake-blue draped her slender, willowy frame. She was no more than twenty years of age, still a maiden.

Those outside the circle stood thunderstruck.

Those inside were no less stunned.

Footnotes

1. 岳阳门 – Yuèyáng Mén. Literally sunny peak gate. Yueyang carries a deep sense of scholarly-official duty and concern for the nation as a result of Northern Song statesman Fan Zhongyan’s essay Record of Yueyang Tower. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 掌门 – zhǎngmén. The head or leader of a martial arts faction. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 李铁心 – Lǐ Tiěxīn. His name meaning “Iron Heart”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 玉龙剑 – Yùlóng Jiàn. Literally jade dragon sword. ↩

5. 红梅 – hóngméi. Red plum blossom, a flower celebrated in Chinese culture as a symbol of resilience, elegance, and beauty that thrives in the harshest winter cold. Its presence in Gan Shijiu Mei’s hair underscores her nature: exquisite yet deadly. ↩