Gan Nineteenth Sister Chapter 2 – Part 3

Li Tiexin’s¹ eyes tracked the sedan until it was gone. Then the Jade Dragon Sword slipped from his fingers and fell into the snow.

Kong Song² the Cloud-Grasping Hand³ who stood closest, rushed forward and caught him before he could collapse. Xie Shan⁴ the Hunyuan Palm⁵ and Duan Nanxi⁶ the Eight Drunken Immortals⁷ pressed close, their faces stricken, and saw that Li Tiexin’s complexion had darkened still further.

Kong Song the Cloud-Grasping Hand cried in alarm, “Zhangmen! How do you feel?”

Li Tiexin was fighting, with every shred of will he possessed, against the savage cold that had invaded his body. His entire frame trembled violently, his jaw clenched, his eyes bulging with the effort of containing the agony within. A proud man all his life, he would not show weakness before his own people, not even in the hour of his death.

He gave a curt snort and muttered, “For now… it’s nothing. I can bear it!”

The dark-robed sword-bearer at his side bent down to pick up the Jade Dragon Sword and place it back in its scabbard. However, the moment his hand touched the blade, a jolt like a lightning bolt shot through his fingers. By the time he managed to sheathe the sword, he could bear no more and his legs gave way beneath him, crashing to his knees in the snow. The others stared in horror. The face of Li Tiexin’s young sword-bearer was contorted, his brows drawn up and his eyes stretched wide. His skin had already turned a mottled black. Then, with a roar, he pitched forward onto his face and lay still, blood welling from all seven apertures. Dead.

Two dark-robed disciples cried out and started forward.

“Stop!” Li Tiexin barked.

They halted at once.

Li Tiexin’s bloodshot, bulging eyes swept across each of the bodies that lay before him. A thin, ghastly smile flickered across his face.

“For now, do not touch… the dead. The bodies… may carry traces of potent poison. We will return to deal with them… and discuss…”

Hearing these words, a fresh wave of dread through every heart present.

Li Tiexin spoke slowly, “While I do not yet know… what manner of poison the enemy employed. Its virulence… is beyond anything I have ever encountered… Allow me… allow me…”

He paused, gasping, before he continued, “… Allow me to seek counsel from my honoured shifu⁸ in his meditation pagoda⁹… then await his judgment.”

He gestured toward the Jade Dragon Sword where it lay, sheathed, upon the ground.

A disciple stepped forward to take it, then froze, remembering the poison, and looked back at the zhangmen.¹⁰

Li Tiexin gave a bitter smile. “The blade is sheathed. It is… safe now.”

However,the disciple still picked it up with exaggerated care.

Having witnessed such monumental devastation visited upon their school, every man among them was shaken to the marrow. A dread beyond all reckoning pressed down upon them, and they moved with a leaden, stunned slowness, as though they had each been drained of some vital essence and remade as lesser men.

Night fell. Snow flew.

Each of them chewed upon the shadow of death, drifting like souls unmoored from the living world…

By lamplight, Xian Bing¹¹ the Lone Gull¹² was examining the Jade Dragon Sword in his hand.

With his left palm laid flat upon the scabbard, his right hand gripped the hilt with the web of his thumb pressed tight against the sword’s white-bronze locket. He drew the blade with slow, deliberate care.

Though a man past eighty, he did not look his age. His silver hair was gathered beneath a band of dark blue satin, four fingers wide, set with a clasp of deep green jade at its centre. His brows were long and sweeping, still touched with the fierce grandeur of a spirit that had once soared. His eyes were deep-set and penetrating, held within them the fullness of long experience and a quiet measure of sorrow.

He had a pale, beardless face that looked like it belonged to a refined scholar. He wore a plain grey robe that draped his tall, spare frame, and upon his pale, slender hands he kept long, immaculate fingernails, each one sheathed in an ornate cap of filigreed bamboo. From crown to sole, the man was the embodiment of the phrase “untouched by a single mote of dust”.[^buranqianchen]

He sat with serene composure upon a broad rush cushion. On either side of him stood an antique lamp, their wicks steeped in pine-nut oil, casting a soft, greenish glow.

Li Tiexin the Peerless Sword, the zhangmen of Yueyang School, sat facing him, though sitting was hardly the word to describe him. To say he was leaning on or even lying down would be more fitting. Upon the broad seat of a redwood armchair,¹³ heaped with thick quilted cushions, Li Tiexin sprawled half-reclined, his body seemingly stripped of all its bones. His legs rested upon a low stool, and at each knee, a slender silver needle had been inserted upon the Calf’s Nose acupoints¹⁴ and moxa cones¹⁵ smouldered at the needle ends, wafting thin wisps of smoke into the silence.

The three Hall Elders, the six disciples, and a young man in yellow who attended the old master, ten people in all, sat or stood about the room. Not one of them uttered a sound. Every face was as cold as though glazed with frost. Together they filled the old man’s elixir chamber¹⁶ to bursting, and if their faces were frozen, their heart felt heavier still, as if crushed by a leaden weight.

The sword gleamed, trembling faintly in the pale green glow of the lamps. The old man raised his left hand and waved it gently outward, again and again, blowing softly upon the blade. The shock of what he was sensing within him had drawn a fine sheen of perspiration across his pallid cheeks.

“Poison,” he murmured. “Such formidable potency!”

He held the sword further away. His silver brows twitched rapidly, and when he spoke again his voice was thick with dread. “The assailant used the staggering power of the internal art of the Phantom Sand¹⁷ technique to infuse the blade with the poison.”

“Phantom Sand?” Li Tiexin echoed, his voice hollow and distant. “I have never heard of such an art.”

Xian Bing the Lone Gull regarded him with dull, listless eyes and said miserably, “Of course you have not. Even I know it only by rumour. Once mastered, it allows one to kill at a hundred paces through neili¹⁸ alone, destroying the victim’s vitality and spirit without leaving a mark!”

Every person in the room listened in frozen silence, too horrified to speak.

Xian Bing turned his attention back to the blade, a bitter smile upon his lips. “As for the fingerprints in the steel, they reveal that this woman has also mastered the Five-Finger Lantern,¹⁹ a finger technique of equally terrifying power.”

“Five-Finger… Lantern?” Li Tiexin murmured.

Xian Bing nodded. “To my knowledge, no one in the wulin²⁰ today possesses such finger strength… Oh…”

He seemed to be struck by a sudden, terrible thought. The colour drained from his face.

“It cannot be… her… it cannot…” He was muttering to himself now, his eyes gone vacant and staring. Then his gaze snapped to Li Tiexin. “The red-clad man surnamed Ruan—what were his exact words?”

Li Tiexin’s complexion had taken on a feverish flush, but it was an unnatural red tinged with black, and his breathing had grown markedly more laboured. The old man started slightly and reached over to withdraw one of the silver needles from Li Tiexin’s left knee. Li Tiexin grunted, and a film of cold sweat broke across his brow.

“Where does it trouble you?” Xian Bing asked, his voice sharp with concern.

Li Tiexin was using every last reserve of the Blood Shroud²¹ to hold the invading poison at bay. The moxibustion needles seemed to be giving him little relief, yet still he bore it with stubborn, unyielding resolve.

With a low grunt, he spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s fine… Your disciple can still bear it… The man in red bade me tell you, Shifu, that they have come to collect on a debt from forty years ago.”

Xian Bing froze.

For a long, long time he simply stared into the distance, his eyes blank and unseeing, and did not speak a single word. The silence pressed down upon every soul in the room, heavier with each passing breath.

At long last, Xian Bing seemed to gather his thoughts. He gave a slow nod. “Then there can be no mistake… It is her! Shui Hongshao²² the Cinnabar Phoenix!”²³

In an instant his face went the colour of earth, and his tongue would not obey him. The name of Shui Hongshao the Cinnabar Phoenix had pierced him like a sword thrust to the heart.

Memories surged like a tide, and as he recalled the agonising events of forty years ago, the former zhangmen of the Yueyang School could not suppress a shudder.

The inner chambers were deathly still. Under the shadow of this sudden, formidable enemy, every person present felt as if half their sould had already departed, surviving in a waking dream of scattered spirits. So many pairs of eyes, and not a single one still held the keen spark it had possessed that morning. Only dullness. Only despair.

Xian Bing the Lone Gull seemed to bring his wandering soul back to reality.

“Xie shidi²⁴,” he said, turning to Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm at his side. His voice was barely a murmur. “You remember this person, surely? Shui Hongshao the Cinnabar Phoenix…”

Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm shuddered violently and bowed. “I would not dare forget, patriarch…”

“Then tell me… could it be this woman?”

“Well…” Xie Shan replied, a chill running down his spine. “I cannot say for certain, patriarch. Now that you mention it, there is… some resemblance. But this woman—is she still… alive?”

Xian Bing’s said bleakly, “If I, a fool, have not yet died, why should she not still walk the mortal realm?”

Another Hall Elder, Duan Nanxi the Eight Drunken Immortals of the Splendour Hall, could contain himself no longer and stepped forward to interrupt. “Old Patriarch… do you speak of the demoness from decades ago who perished at Mount Fenghuang… Shui Hongshao?”

Xian Bing the Lone Gull looked at him and said with a bitter smile, “Master Duan… you know of her too?”

Duan Nanxi said, “How could I not, patriarch…? If my memory serves, I recall you joined forces with six comrades, and the seven of you burnt that demoness on Mount Fenghuang? How could she…?”

Xian Bing heaved out a long sigh. “Your memory is sound, Master Duan. It is remarkable that you recall this matter so clearly…”

Duan Nanxi started. “Then, it is true that Shui Hongshao the Cinnabar Phoenix perished in the fire?”

Xian Bing shook his head wearily. “That was a lie.”

Footnotes

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

2. 孔松 – Kǒng Sōng. His name meaning “Pine”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 摩云手 – móyúnshǒu. ↩

4. 谢山 – Xiè Shān. His name meaning “Mountain of Gratitude”. ↩

5. 混元掌 – Húnyuán Zhǎng. Literally primordial palm. Hunyuan is the chaotic origin energy representing the undifferentiated unity of pre-creation. ↩

6. 段南溪 – Duàn Nánxī. His name meaning “Southern Creek”. ↩

7. 醉八仙 – Zuì Bāxiān. Literally eight drunken immortals. Referencing the Eight Immortals of Daoist legend. ↩

8. 师父 – shīfù. Master-teacher. The one who has formally accepted a student and imparted their martial arts teachings. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 坐塔 – zuò tǎ. Refers to a retired monk or martial arts elder who has withdrawn from activec life and taken up residence in a pagoda. ↩

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

11. 冼冰 – Xiǎn Bīng. His name meaning “Cleansing Ice”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 一鸥子 – Yīōuzi. A name evoking solitary mastery, in the manner of Daoist recluses. ↩

13. 太师椅 – tàishī yǐ. Literally Grand Preceptor’s chair. A large, high-backed armchair of traditional Chinese design, associated with persons of authority and seniority. See Wikipedia. ↩

14. 犊鼻 – dúbí. Literally calf’s nose. An acupoint located just below the kneecap, used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat conditions affecting the legs, joints, and circulation. Applying moxibustion here suggests an attempt to drive out the invasive cold from Li Tiexin’s lower body. ↩

15. 灸 – jiǔ. Moxibustion. A traditional Chinese medical treatment in which dried mugwort (艾草) is burned near the skin at specific acupoints to stimulate circulation and drive out cold or stagnation. See Wikipedia. ↩

16. 丹房 – dānfáng. Literally elixir room. The inner sanctum or private chambers of a martial arts compound, often used for cultivation, meditation, or storing important items. ↩

17. 含沙射影 – hánshā shèyǐng. Literally holding sand and shooting at shadows. The name derives from a legendary venomous creature, the yu (蜮), said to spit sand at the shadows of its prey, causing illness or death. See Wikipedia. ↩

18. 内力 – nèilì. Inner power, the energy cultivated through neigong practice. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 五指灯 – wǔzhǐ dēng. Literally five-finger lantern. ↩

20. 武林 – wǔlín. The martial arts community; the world of martial arts practitioners. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 血罩 – xuèzhào. ↩

22. 水红芍 – Shuǐ Hóngshāo. Her name meaning “Water Red Peony”. ↩

23. 丹凤 – Dānfèng. ↩

24. 师弟 – shīdì. Male junior. Both of them were apprentice to the same master. Shī means teacher. Dì means younger brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩