Hu Yidao (simplified: 胡一刀, traditional: 胡一刀, pinyin: Hú Yīdāo, jyutping: wu4 jat1 dou1), known as the Liaodong daxia (辽东大侠), was the father of Hu Fei. He descended from the Flying Fox (飞天狐狸, Fēitiān Húli), the Hu bodyguard of the Storming King Li Zicheng. He was killed in the Qianlong reign, after a five-day duel with Miao Renfeng at an inn near Cangzhou. His story is told on Jade Brush Peak in Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, first falsely by Baoshu, then by Miao Ruolan and Ping Asi. Side Story of the Flying Fox recalls him through Miao Renfeng.
Biography
Background
The Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian families had been enemies for more than a century. The feud began when the Miao, Fan and Tian bodyguards killed the Flying Fox. They did not know that he had faked Li Zicheng’s death to save him. The Hu family kept this secret, along with the fist and blade manual written by Hu Yidao’s great-great-grandfather.
Hu Yidao lived beyond the passes, in Liaodong. He was dark-faced and heavily bearded, and wore his hair unbraided. He explained his name himself: whenever he met someone doing evil, he killed him with one stroke of the dao, yi dao. At the inn he was called Elder Master Hu. He insisted instead on being called “Big Brother Hu”, saying he had been born poor.
Miao Renfeng’s father and Tian Guinong’s father had vanished beyond the passes, and the jianghu blamed Hu Yidao. Miao Renfeng could not find him. Instead Miao spread his epithet, He Who Has Fought All Under Heaven and Found No Equal, to provoke Hu into coming south. Hu Yidao ignored the provocation and searched for the two missing men himself, knowing that only the truth could clear his name.
Marriage
His search led him to the treasure cave near Jade Brush Peak. Inside he found the bodies of Miao’s father and Tian’s father. There he met the woman who became Madam Hu, cousin of Manor Master Du Ximeng, who had raised her. She was a better fighter than Du, and she followed Hu into the cave and fought him. They came to admire each other, and he proposed. She told him he could have the treasure or her, but not both, because taking it would wrong her cousin. Hu Yidao laughed that a hundred thousand treasures were not worth her. He sealed an account of his choice inside the cave and left the treasure where it lay.
The duel at Cangzhou
Madam Hu came from Jiangnan. Late in her pregnancy she grew homesick, and Hu Yidao escorted her south. At Tangguan Village, men sent by the Miao, Fan and Tian families barred the road, and one of them kicked at his pregnant wife. Hu wounded seven of them without killing any. When Guild Chief Fan and Tian Guinong confronted his carriage outside a small town in rural Cangzhou, Hu disarmed them with thrown coins without leaving the carriage. The couple stopped at the town’s Ping’an Inn, where she gave birth to Hu Fei. The same day he gave a hundred taels to the inn’s kitchen boy, Ping Asi, whose family a moneylender was ruining.
Hu Yidao sent the bonesetter Yan Ji, who later became the monk Baoshu, to tell Miao Renfeng three things:
- the secret behind the four families’ feud;
- how Miao’s father and Tian’s father had died;
- the secret hidden in Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao.
Miao was out. Tian Guinong received the message, paid Yan Ji thirty taels to keep quiet, and never passed it on.
The duel lasted five days, and the two men’s respect for each other grew daily.
- Before the first bout: Miao asked Madam Hu to deal with Shang Jianming of the Eight Trigrams School, who had killed his two brothers, his sister and his brother’s wife. Hu asked Miao to look after his son should he fall, and Miao promised to treat the boy as his own.
- After the first day: Hu rode through the night to Wuding in Shandong, nearly three hundred li each way, riding five horses to death. He killed Shang Jianming with “Soaring-Palm Su Qin Bearing Jian”, a move of the Miao Family Swordplay he had picked up in the day’s fighting. At the end of the second day he gave Miao the head.
- The third night: Miao stayed at the inn, and the two drank and talked martial arts until dawn. Each taught the other the core of his family’s art.
Death
On the fifth day Madam Hu spotted a flaw: Miao’s back twitched before “Lift the Jian, White Crane Spreads Its Wings”. On her signal Hu Yidao seized the initiative with the “Eight Directions Hidden Dao Stance” and had Miao at his mercy. Instead of striking, he stepped back. He proposed that they swap arts and weapons, so that neither family’s reputation would suffer whoever won. Hu took the jian and the Miao Family Swordplay; Miao took the dao borrowed from Tian’s men and the Hu Family Bladeworks.
Miao cut Hu’s left arm with “Sand Gull Skimming the Waves”, a variation he invented on the spot, and Hu kicked him to the ground. The wound was slight, but the dao had been poisoned. Tian Guinong had supplied a Tianlong School poison through Tao Baisui. Yan Ji, who bore Miao a grudge for a punch and wanted Hu’s iron box, smeared it on both men’s weapons. Hu Yidao died within moments. Madam Hu entrusted the child to Miao and cut her throat with the same dao.
Baoshu’s account on Jade Brush Peak, twenty-seven years later, claimed that Hu had lost and killed himself. Miao Ruolan and Ping Asi exposed it as a lie.
Personality
Hu Yidao looked fierce, but he was generous and warm. He showered the inn’s staff with silver, called the kitchen boy Ping Asi “little brother”, and told him that in heaven’s eyes all men are equal. He feared the duel only for the sake of his wife and newborn son. He refused to count as a victory an advantage won with his wife’s help.
Martial arts
Hu Yidao was a master of the Hu Family Bladeworks, which used every part of the dao for attack and defence. He learnt the Miao Family Swordplay from Miao in the course of the duel, well enough to kill Shang Jianming with it. His coin-throwing and acupoint strikes are shown at the Ping’an Inn.
Legacy
Hu Yidao left the iron box and the fist and blade manual for his son. The manual lost its first two pages to Yan Ji. Ping Asi saved the infant and raised him, and Hu Fei learnt his father’s art from the manual. Miao Renfeng mourned Hu and his wife every year before tablets naming them his sworn elder brother and sister-in-law. In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Miao buries the Cold Moon Treasured Dao in Hu’s grave, believing no one else was fit to use it. The feud passed to the next generation: Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain ends with Hu Fei and Miao Renfeng locked in a duel whose outcome is left open.