Gan Nineteenth Sister Chapter 2 – Part 4

Only the three Hall Elders could fully comprehend the significance of this exchange, and all three stood stunned. Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm and Xian Bing the Lone Gull were of the same lineage, fellow disciples who addressed one another shixiong¹ and shidi.² Duan Nanxi the Eight Drunken Immortals and Kong Song the Cloud-Grasping Hand shared the same grand master but not the same shifu, and therefore addressed Xian Bing as Patriarch.

In truth, Xie Shan was fifteen years younger than the retired former zhangmen, and owed half of his martial accomplishments to this shixiong’s tutelage. Though he addressed the latter as shixiong, he actually revered him more than one might a teacher. Hearing these words, Xie Shan was also struck dumb.

“Shixiong…” he murmured. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

Xian Bing the Lone Gull smiled bitterly. “You cannot be blamed for not knowing the truth. In all the world, only seven men knew what truly happened at Mount Fenghuang that fateful day…”

“The Seven Cultivators of the Wulin?”³ Duan Nanxi blurted.

Xian Bing nodded, his spirit seemingly drained. “Indeed! The Seven Cultivators of the Wulin was what the jianghu⁴ called us back then…”

“Shifu!” Li Tiexin the Peerless Sword gasped. “This matter… I have never once heard you speak of it… I beg you, enlighten us to dispel… our ignorance!”

Xian Bing snapped the Jade Dragon Sword back into its scabbard. Upon his gaunt face there appeared an expression of indescribable anguish.

“I will tell you…”

It was plain the memory caused him excruciating pain, and was one he could scarcely bring himself to speak of. Yet, forced by the circumstances at hand, he had no choice but to reveal the truth. Xian Bing heaved another long, shuddering sigh before he began in a murmur, “Men are not sages. Who among us is without fault? I am no exception!

“This affair was the gravest error of my life… Even when I look back upon it now, the pain and the regret it fills me with is beyond all bearing…

“It may be that a single moment of misplaced mercy is what has brought this calamity upon us today. The fault is mine alone, yet it is all of you who must pay the price…”

His voice broke. Tears spilled down his cheeks.

Li Tiexin the Peerless Sword spoke through his pain. “Shifu, you must not speak this way. The blame lies with your disciple’s incompetence… my inability to to protect our school has led to this fate! I have failed the trust you placed in me. I have failed every patriarch in the history of the Yueyang School…”

The speaker’s grief was moved every listener. At the thought of the impending catastrophe, every person felt a surge of sorrow. They bowed their head and wep, overcome by sadness. Within the elixir chamber, the sound of stifled sobbing rose and fell like the laments of prisoners awaiting execution. Not a shred of vitality remained. The pall of despair continued to thicken. Every person sank into fearful brooding, and the air grew oppressively still. The shadow of imminent disaster hung over them all, and when they turned their thoughts to what awaited them, the dread left them three parts numb..

“Old Patriarch.” The voice belonged to the young man in yellow who stood at Xian Bing’s side. He cleared his throat softly.

That single cough struck the room like the peal of a great bell. Every eye turned toward the youth almost in unison. And strange to say, more than half of those present found him unfamiliar, some even unable to recall his name. But that was understandable, for he was a mere disciple of the lowest generation assigned to attend upon Xian Bing’s daily needs during the old master’s seclusion.

Yin Jianping!

He had not been with the school for long, barely three months. Li Tiexin had been struck, at first sight, by the young man’s quiet composure. Though Yin Jianping was not of the Yueyang School’s direct lineage, he came from the prestigious Double Crane Hall.⁵ The Hall Elder of the Double Crane Hall wrote a letter of recommendation, thus Li Tiexin made an exception and taken him in, assigning him to serve Xian Bing in the White Pagoda⁶ for an initial period of eight months, before determining his future duties after observing him.

Under the intense gaze of every eye upon him, Yin Jianping showed not the slightest discomfort. He bowed deeply to Xian Bing. “Old Patriarch, you have not yet told us the cause of that past incident… I’m ignorant, but I believe time is precious right now. Rather than sitting here awaiting our fate, would it not be better to devise a sound strategy together?”

The words cut straight to the heart of the matter.

The sentiment was simple enough, and everyone understood the reasoning and could have said it. Yet, uttered at this very moment, it was profoundly significant.

A faint smile broke through the desolation on Xian Bing’s face. He nodded repeatedly. “Jianping… it is rare for a young man such as yourself to keep his head in the face of peril. You are right. My thoughts are in disarray, for I lived through these events and have an intimate understanding of how unavoidable and how terrible this doom truly is!”

He paused, then continued, “Forty years ago, a figure of surpassing and fearsome power appeared in the wulin. This person was the woman I have just named: Shui Hongshao the Cinnabar Phoenix!”

With a cold laugh, he told the sale in a slow, measured voice, “There are many variations of the origins of Shui Hongshao in the jianghu. Some said she hailed from Tsaidam⁷ in Qinghai.[^qinghai] Others claimed she came from the Western Kunlun.[^kunlun] In any case, the deatils are irrelevant. What was baffling was that her martial arts were bizarre and astonishing, vastly different from any known school or tradition. Most terrifying of all was her mastery of a unique and strange poison art.”

“The Seven-Pace Gut-Severing Red!” It was Duan Nanxi the Eight Drunken Immortals of the Splendour Hall who spoke.

Xian Bing glanced at him and nodded. “Indeed. The Seven-Pace Gut-Severing Red. It is not a poison wine, but a poison art of horrifying power. When combined with the Lurking Sand Shadow Strike neili technique I described earlier, its effects becomes more pronounced. A man struck by this poison will bleed from all seven apertures and die within seven paces. Hence the name. To this very day, no one in the wulin has been able to determine exactly what manner of poison it is, let alone discover a means of defend against it.”

Li Tiexin the Peerless Sword let out a sigh of lament. Every man and woman present who had witnessed the strange battle outside the gate felt the final pieces fall into place. The connection between the mysterious young woman in the sedan and the Cinnabar Phoenix of Xian Bing’s tale was now unmistakable—as was the nature of the lethal power that had slain their comrades.

The Seven-Pace Gut-Severing Red. Each of them repeated the name silently, and each felt a chill of primal horror crawl across their skin.

Xian Bing the Lone Gull, having passed through his initial panic, had now recovered something of his customary composure. His voice turned cold.

“But you would never guess,” he continued, “that the most formidable weapon Shui Hongshao possessed was not her uncanny martial arts, nor the Seven-Pace Gut-Severing Red, which no man could counter. It was…”

He trailed off, shaking his head with a sigh that seemed drawn from the depths of his soul.

From the zhangmen down, every man listened with rapt attention. The woman called the Cinnabar Phoenix had seized them all by the throat.

An expression of acute discomfort crossed Xian Bing’s face. He murmured, “…It was her beauty.”

A woman’s beauty, spoken of in any other circumstance, would carry a lightness about it. But in this room, in this hour, the word landed like a stone. No one felt lighter for hearing it. Every heart grew heavier.

Xian Bing surveyed the faces before him and sighed softly. “It was an extraordinary beauty—a beauty so overpowering that no man who looked upon her for the first time could help himself.”

The words that followed came harder. He paused, then forced himself onward. “And so, across the length and breadth of the jianghu, many men fell prey to that beauty. They sank into infatuation like men drowning in quicksand, unable to free themselves—ruining their families, destroying their lives, willingly enslaving themselves to serve as instruments of her reign of terror.

“Her face was that of an immortal, but her heart was that of a scorpion. Once she had wrung from a man everything she desired, she cast him aside without a flicker of remorse, murdering her paramours as the whim took her. She created the most horrifying trap the jianghu had ever known—a trap baited with beauty. And it was this that finally drove the Seven Cultivators of the Wulin to band together and take a stand for justice.”

The zhangmen and the three Hall Elders all knew that in his youth, their former patriarch had cut a dashing figure across the jianghu—handsome as a prince, gallant beyond measure. He had been one of the Seven Cultivators. Hearing this, the threads of the story began to come together.

Xian Bing’s expression was one of terrible, abject shame. A bitter, halting smile twisted his lips, and after a painful pause he continued. “I was young then, and reckless. My experience of the world was shallow. And I… fell under her spell. Had I not come to my senses in time, I would have become a disgrace to the Yueyang School.”

The words were carefully chosen, but every man in the room understood their meaning. Their revered former patriarch—the man who had single-handedly restored the Yueyang School to glory, whose steadfastness and authority had built its present renown—had, in his youth, been ensnared by the demoness. Seduced by her beauty. Had he not said it himself, not a soul among them would have believed it.

The story was nearing its crisis.

Xian Bing pressed on, his voice cold and flat. “I was bewitched. The chief reason was that Shui Hongshao appeared to lavish upon me a devotion that was hers alone to give. I convinced myself that she was not the monster that rumour painted her. And so I delayed, and delayed, and would not move against her. This very nearly tore the brotherhood apart—the other six could not forgive me for it.”

He sighed softly and shook his head, a man haunted by a past beyond redemption. His silver brows trembled. In his slender eyes there burned a grief that seemed, even now, unresolved—as though after all these decades, he still could not say with certainty whether the love she had professed had been true or false.

“Until the day,” he said, “when two of our brotherhood were murdered. The examination of their bodies proved beyond all doubt that they had died by the Seven-Pace Gut-Severing Red. That was the blow that finally shattered my delusion. I resolved to avenge my fallen brothers. Because I was the one closest to her, it fell to me to devise the trap and lure her into it.”

He continued, his voice steady now. “On that day at Mount Fenghuang, the five of us laid an inescapable snare. In the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the mountain, we placed tinder and kindling at every turn. The exits were sealed in advance, every one of them stopped and barricaded. Then I went in alone to lead her into the trap.”

Here Xian Bing could not suppress a long, shuddering sigh. “Shui Hongshao had it coming and brought that disaster upon herself. She was known as the most meticulous of women, yet that day she blundered grievously and fell straight into the trap we five had laid. By the time she saw the danger, she could neither advance nor retreat. Our eldest sworn brother, Shi Ziqi,⁸ gave the signal, and every man set fire to the tinder. The flames took hold in an instant, racing through the tunnels like dragons.”

Xian Bing fell silent, his eyes vacant.

Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm could not help himself. “Shixiong… if that is so, how could Shui Hongshao have possibly survived?”

Xian Bing’s bitter smile returned. His voice was ice. “You are quite right. She should not have survived. She would not have survived… had I not opened one of the tunnel exits at the last moment and let her escape.”

“Shixiong… you?” Xie Shan’s eyes went wide, his jaw slack with disbelief. “Why… why would you do such a thing? Did it not undo everything?”

Xian Bing slowly bowed his head. He raised a sleeve to his face and dabbed at the corner of his eye. Only then did those watching realise that this man, honoured by the School as its Patriarch, was weeping.

He shook his head, the ghost of a desolate smile upon his lips. “When the fire was lit, I heard her screaming in agony. She called my name, again and again, crying out that her love for me was true. I could not steel my heart against it. And so I opened the exit.”

A tremor passed through his voice. “Wretched woman—she escaped with her life, but her face… that face that could shame the moon and put the flowers to blush… was burned beyond all recognition. Her hair was consumed to ash. She came shrieking from the tunnel like a phantom, wild and terrible, and vanished. From that day forward, there was no trace of her.”

A brief, absolute silence settled over the room. At last, the full shape of the tragedy was clear.

Footnotes

1. 师兄 – shīxiōng. Male senior. Both of them were apprentice to the same master. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

3. 武林七修 – Wǔlín Qī Xiū. Literally seven cultivators of the martial forest. A legendary brotherhood of seven martial artists who banded together to confront Shui Hongshao the Cinnabar Phoenix some forty years before the events of this story. Xian Bing was one of their number. ↩

4. 江湖 – jiānghú. The world of martial arts. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 双鹤堂 – Shuānghè Táng. Literally double crane hall. One of the Yueyang School’s most distinguished affiliated branches, whose recommendation carried significant weight. ↩

6. 白塔 – Bái Tǎ. Literally white pagoda. The tower within the Yueyang School compound where the retired former zhangmen, Xian Bing, lived in seclusion. ↩

7. 达里木 – Dálǐmù. The Tsaidam Basin in Qinghai Province, a remote and inhospitable region of high-altitude desert in China’s far west. See Wikipedia. ↩

8. 石子奇 – Shí Zǐqí. His name meaning “Rare Stone” or “Wondrous Stone”. The eldest of the Seven Cultivators of the Wulin, who gave the command to ignite the tunnels beneath Mount Fenghuang. ↩