Gan Nineteenth Sister Chapter 2 – Part 5

Xian Bing smiled bitterly, “I know she hates me. Though forty years have passed, whenever I think of it, the guilt returns in full measure. I can never forget the sight of her stumbling from that tunnel, the horror of what she had become. I can never forget the look in her eyes as they met mine in that one fleeting instant. It has haunted me all my life. And to this day, I do not know whether I was wrong.”

Li Tiexin the Peerless Sword spoke through his laboured breathing. “She brought her fate upon herself through her own cruelty. You showed her mercy, Shifu. How can she hold you to blame? And after forty long years, to come seeking vengeance… it is unconscionable.”

Every man present shared the zhangmen’s view, and murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. But Xian Bing shook his head, refusing all consolation. He was the one who had lived through it. He alone had the right to judge.

“No. I was wrong.” His voice was heavy with a pain that decades had not dulled. “You must not blame her for seeking vengeance. Blame me, for not having the resolve to let her die. If I had turned a deaf ear to her pleas and cries… if I had left with the other four sworn brothers after setting the fires, and never heard her cries at all… but I could not abandon what I still felt for her.

“None of you are women,” he continued, “and so none of you can understand the mind of a woman, least of all a woman of such transcendent beauty. To such a woman, her beauty may be dearer to her than life itself. That I saved her only after her beauty was destroyed—that, in her eyes, was itself an act of the gravest folly. And beyond that…”

He gave a bitter half-smile. “If what Shui Hongshao said in the tunnel was true, that her love for me was genuine, then my betrayal, in her eyes, was twofold—faithlessness and cruelty in one. What a woman cannot abide, above all else, is a man’s deception and heartlessness. I had the misfortune to commit both of these unpardonable sins in a single act. And so, as long as Shui Hongshao draws breath, she will never let me rest. The tragedy is that it is not I suffer this alone. It is that all of you, and the heritage of the Yueyang School, several centuries of unbroken tradition suffer as well.”

His voice cracked. Tears streamed freely down his aged face.

Li Tiexin coughed softly. His appearance had worsened terribly. His face, presumably from the prolonged sealing of his acupoints, had turned the livid colour of stewed liver. His chest heaved violently with each breath.

“Shifu!” He was gasping now, each word an effort. “Three hundred years of our school’s legacy… cannot end like this. You must find a way… to deliver us from this calamity. Your disciple… your disciple… I fear…”

Xian Bing had been so consumed by the telling of his bitter past that he had not noticed the change in Li Tiexin. Now, with a sudden shock of awareness, he lurched forward and seized his disciple’s wrist.

“Do not speak!” He commanded, his voice sharp with alarm.

Beneath his fingers, the pulse hammered with terrifying force, wild and erratic. The skin was cold as ice. The man was in mortal crisis. In desperation, Xian Bing tried to channel his own neili¹ into Li Tiexin’s body to replenish his failing vitality, but it was too late. Even as he pressed, Li Tiexin’s jaw wrenched open and a jet of bright blood shot from his mouth like an arrow. His body slumped sideways, collapsing in upon itself.

Everyone surged forward in alarm. Xian Bing cried out and pressed his left palm to the crown of Li Tiexin’s skull. Under the infusion of his true qi, Li Tiexin’s body convulsed once, violently, and his eyes flew open, a brief, agonised flicker of revival. But the poison had gone too deep. There was no saving him now.

Dark, purplish blood began to seep from all seven apertures. His bulging eyes seemed on the very point of bursting from their sockets, and from the pupils themselves, drops of black-purple blood welled and fell. The sight was enough to make the steadiest man’s flesh crawl, and to send a chill rising from the very depths of the heart.

“Beloved… disciple…” Xian Bing’s voice was a shattered cry. “You must not die… it’s shifu who brought harm upon you…”

He had meant to bolster Li Tiexin’s failing vitality with his own true qi, but he had not anticipated he had achieved the opposite, accelerating the end. To watch his most beloved successor, the most promising zhangmen the school had ever known, in the throes of death’s final agony, it broke Xian Bing utterly.

“Beloved disciple…” he cried, his voice raw and ragged. “You cannot die… you cannot—”

The word “die” had scarcely left his lips when Li Tiexin loosed a single, tremendous roar. His foot lashed out and sent an incense burner crashing to the floor.His towering frame went rigid in an instant and he fell back, stiff as a board, and lay utterly still. Everyone cried out and pressed close. Li Tiexin’s brows were drawn up, his eyes stretched wide, his face the colour of black ink. He was dead.

In that same instant, Xian Bing the Lone Gull let out a cry of inconsolable grief, and his entire body toppled backward. Yin Jianping, who had been standing at his side, threw himself forward.

“The Patriarch has fainted!” he cried.

In the face of this earthshaking calamity, every disciple of the Yueyang School, young and old, stood paralysed with shock. Yin Jianping, heedless of all else, gathered Xian Bing’s limp form in his arms and laid him upon the stone table in the inner chamber. Xie Shan, Duan Nanxi, Kong Song, and the seven disciples crowded around.

Xie Shan stamped his foot, tears coursing down his cheeks. “What are we to do? What are we to do?”

Duan Nanxi summoned his neili into both palms and pressed them sharply against the Qihai acupoints² at the old man’s flanks. Xian Bing’s body jolted as though struck by a thunderbolt, then his eyes snapped open. He coughed violently, expelling a mouthful of thick phlegm, and a flush of colour rose briefly in his hollow cheeks.

Xie Shan choked out the words. “Shixiong³… what has happened to you?”

Xian Bing slowly closed his eyes. Two lines of tears traced their way down from the corners.

Kong Song the Cloud-Grasping Hand spoke through his own grief. “Old Patriarch, I beg you—think of the school. Take care of yourself.”

The younger disciples, having witnessed catastrophe upon catastrophe, were shattered beyond all composure. As the first shock began to ebb, grief took its place, and one by one they broke down weeping. Through the chorus of sobs, Xian Bing slowly opened his eyes. The extremity of his anguish appeared to have brought on some manner of seizure: his face seemed distorted, the muscles from one eye downward pulling crookedly to one side.

In a halting, broken voice, he spoke. “The Yueyang School… is finished. I am… done for.”

The words struck like a thunderclap. No one could speak. The yellow-clad disciple Yin Jianping listened with close attention. He stepped forward and pressed his fingers to Xian Bing’s wrist. Under the infusion of his neili, the old man seemed to rally slightly.

Yin Jianping spoke through his tears. “Old Patriarch… tell us. What is the Yueyang School to do now?”

Xian Bing’s twisted face was a mask of desolation. He shook his head slowly. “When the nest is overturned… can any egg remain unbroken?⁴ The Yueyang School is finished. Save yourselves… flee, all of you.”

Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm cried out through his tears. “No! Better to be shattered jade than an unbroken tile!⁵ We fight them!”

“It would be useless.” Xian Bing gave a desolate smile. “If the one who has come is truly the disciple of Shui… Shui Hongshao… then the consequences are beyond imagining. I fear that in the days to come, the entire wulin⁶ will suffer for it.”

Yin Jianping listened with close attention. He was grieved, but his grief did not show plainly on his face. He was shaken, but he had not lost his reason.

“Old Patriarch,” Yin Jianping said, his voice low and steady. “Is there truly no one in all the world who can stand against this Shui Hongshao?”

“It would be… difficult.” Xian Bing shook his head feebly. “Too difficult. I will not say there is no one… but to my knowledge, no such person exists. Child… put the thought from your mind. All of you…”

His eyes moved from the three Hall Elders to the seven disciples. Upon his twisted features there settled a look of ashen finality.

“Listen to me. Forget all of this.” His voice was a fading murmur. “Flee… while you still can. If you wait… it will be too late.”

A shadow fell across every face.

Xian Bing the Lone Gull gasped for breath and made as if to sit upright. Yin Jianping moved at once, easing him up and bracing the old man’s back against his own body. He could feel that Xian Bing’s robes were soaked through with perspiration, a sign that his true qi had already begun to dissipate. For a man who had spent a lifetime cultivating his neili, the scattering of one’s true qi was the prelude to death. In plain terms, the old patriarch’s fate was sealed.

The discovery shook Yin Jianping to the core, yet outwardly he grew only more composed. He understood that Xian Bing’s sudden desire to sit up must mean he had something vital to impart. To reveal the old man’s condition now would only breed chaos and hasten the end. And so Yin Jianping said nothing.

Xian Bing’s eyes settled upon the three Hall Elders, then drifted, one by one, across the faces of the seven disciples. He studied each face in silence, lingering upon each for a long moment, as though searching with desperate urgency for something he could not name. Then, as he looked, his tears began to fall once more.

Xie Shan the Hunyuan Palm seemed to read something ominous in the old man’s gaze. He leaned forward in alarm. “Shixiong—have you instructions for us?”

Xian Bing’s voice trembled. “No… no… my eyes are playing tricks. My eyes are failing me. It cannot be… it cannot be…”

A chill of dread passed through the room.

Xie Shan felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Shixiong—what did you see?”

Xian Bing was trembling from head to foot, his glazed, wandering eyes moving ceaselessly from face to face with mounting agitation. He looked, for all the world, like a man who had seen a ghost.

“No… no… I was mistaken,” he said, over and over. “My eyes are failing… my eyes are failing…”

Then his gaze fell upon Yin Jianping, who stood behind him.

The effect was immediate. The wild terror drained from his features, and a sudden stillness settled over him.

“Ah,” he breathed, letting out a long, slow exhalation. “Jianping… come… come around to the front. Let me… look at you properly.”

Yin Jianping paused for a heartbeat. He knew there must be a reason. He answered softly and moved to face the old man directly. Their faces were very close. After a moment of astonished scrutiny, Xian Bing’s eyes filled with an unmistakable, overwhelming joy. A radiance so utterly at odds with the terror that had gripped him only moments before that every man in the room stared in bewilderment. The young man before him had a face of quiet resolve. Black hair, thick and dark. Deep-set eyes, steady and penetrating. In a room where every other soul had been shaken to pieces, he alone had maintained his composure. Yet these, it seemed, were not what Xian Bing was searching for.

The old man’s unsteady gaze fixed upon the broad, prominent space between his brows,⁷ and then traced the line of his brows, sweeping, distinguished brows that seemed to take wing. At this, the joy on Xian Bing’s face blazed brighter still. With a trembling hand, he reached out and gripped the shoulder of this disciple whom, until now, he had scarcely thought worthy of notice. His breathing had grown even more laboured.

Footnotes

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

2. 气海俞 – qìhǎi shù. Literally sea of qi transport point. Acupoints on the lower back at the flanks, used in emergency resuscitation to stimulate the flow of vital energy. Pressing them forcefully can revive a person from shock or unconsciousness. ↩

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

4. 覆巢之下，岂有完卵 – fùcháo zhī xià, qǐ yǒu wán luǎn. Literally beneath an overturned nest, how can there be an unbroken egg? A classical idiom meaning that when a great house falls, none who belong to it can hope to escape destruction. Originally attributed to the philosopher Kong Rong’s young sons before their execution. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 宁为玉碎，不为瓦全 – nìng wéi yù suì, bù wéi wǎ quán. Literally better to be shattered jade than an intact tile. A classical expression of the resolve to die with honour rather than survive in disgrace. ↩

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

7. 印堂 – yìntáng. Literally seal hall. The acupoint located between the eyebrows, considered an important energy centre in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts cultivation. Often associated with intuition and spiritual perception. ↩