Li Zicheng's Treasured Dao

Li Zicheng's Treasured Dao

Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao (simplified: 闯王军刀, traditional: 闖王軍刀, pinyin: Chuǎngwáng Jūndāo, jyutping: cong2 wong4 gwan1 dou1) was one of the campaign daos of the Storming King, Li Zicheng. Its scabbard bore his army order, and the carving on it was the key to finding Li Zicheng’s Treasure. For more than a hundred years it was the treasured heirloom (镇门之宝) of the Tianlong School, held by the Tian family. In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain it lay in the iron box fought over on Jade Brush Peak. In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Tian Guinong fought with the Tianlong School’s treasured dao, there called the Tianlong Treasured Dao (天龙宝刀).

Description

The dao was short. Its cowhide scabbard was edged with copper and iron and green with verdigris and rust, so that it looked like an ordinary old dao (ch. 3). Drawn, the dao gave off a blue-green light and a chill that went to the bone, and it cut iron like mud (ch. 8). Cao Yunqi had seen his shifu, Tian Guinong, shear through the weapons of many fighters with it (ch. 3).

One face of the scabbard was carved with fourteen characters in black: 杀一人如杀我父，淫一人如淫我母, “to kill one person is to kill my father; to violate one woman is to violate my mother”. Baoshu identified them as the army order of Li Zicheng (ch. 3). The other face bore the four characters 奉天倡义 (Fèngtiān Chàngyì, “Heaven’s Mandate, Righteous Cause”), filled in with cinnabar, from Li Zicheng’s title of Grand Marshal (奉天倡义大元帅). Beside them was a carving of two dragons contending for a pearl, and the pearl was a ruby (ch. 3). The carving was crude, as though scratched in haste; the two dragons, one large and one small, looked more like a pair of caterpillars than dragons (ch. 8).

History

The Storming King’s dao

When Li Zicheng withdrew from Beijing, he had the treasure seized there hidden in the Manchus’ homeland, drew a map of the site, and placed the key to reading the map in this dao (ch. 5). Besieged on Jiugong Mountain, he raised the dao to cut his own throat, but his bodyguard, the Flying Fox (飞天狐狸), stopped him and faked his death so that he could escape. Li Zicheng gave the map and the dao to the Flying Fox (ch. 5).

Years later, the Flying Fox’s three sworn brothers, who believed he had betrayed their master, attacked him at a drinking party on Lake Dian. Before dying by his own hand, he told them, “The Great King’s dao is of great consequence. He… the old lord is at Shimen Gorge…” The dao he had used to cut his throat bore the fourteen-character order (ch. 3). His son then defeated the three and took the dao (ch. 3); map and dao had passed briefly into the brothers’ hands before the son took them (ch. 5).

The Tianlong School’s heirloom

Over the following century the dao and the map changed hands many times. In the end the dao was held by the Tian family of the Tianlong School and the map was handed down in the Miao family. Neither family knew that the two together led to the treasure; the Hu family knew the secret but had neither the dao nor the map (ch. 5).

Early in the Yongzheng reign, the Miao, Fan and Tian families quarrelled over who should keep the dao. When two brothers of the Hu family wounded more than ten of their men, the Tian family called in fighters from across the jianghu and killed the Hu brothers. The heroes of north and south then swore a covenant at Luoyang: the Tian family of the Tianlong School would keep the dao, and if Hu descendants caused trouble again, the Tian family would use it to summon the jianghu. Anyone who saw the dao was to set aside even the most urgent business and answer the call (ch. 3).

The covenant was gradually forgotten, but the Tianlong School’s zhangmen continued to prize the dao above everything. After the school divided, the Northern and Southern Branches kept it in turn for ten years each (ch. 3). Baoshu had heard that an outgoing zhangmen told his successor the dao’s origin at the handover (ch. 3). When a branch’s term ended, it handed over the school’s jian manual, its genealogy and the dao; the handover began with bows before the tablets of the Storming King, the school’s founder and its past zhangmen (ch. 7).

When Hu Yidao sent Yan Ji to Miao Renfeng, the third matter of his message was the secret hidden in the dao. Tian Guinong received the message instead and kept it to himself (ch. 5, 7). He later went to Beijing and offered to present the treasure to the emperor through the commander of the imperial guard, Saihetu, telling him that the dao, which the Tianlong School held, was one of the two clues and the Miao family’s map the other (ch. 7).

Stolen from Tian Guinong

The Northern Branch’s term ended on the day Tian Guinong closed his gates and sealed his jian. He should have handed the dao to Yin Ji of the Southern Branch, but he delayed. That night he found the dao missing from the iron box: Zhou Yunyang had stolen it and buried it in a graveyard (ch. 7). Miao Renfeng, who had seen the burial, dug it up and brought it to Tian Guinong along with the body of Tian Qingwen’s dead infant, then left him. Tian Guinong laid the dao on his bed and killed himself (ch. 7). Tao Zian, coming to return the empty box, found the body, snatched up the dao and fled beyond the passes with his father (ch. 7).

The treasure hunt on Jade Brush Peak

The Taos buried the box with the dao inside and came back to dig it up, which led to the fight in the snow (ch. 1). On Jade Brush Peak, Baoshu seized the box, and Zhou Yunyang opened it to show the dao (ch. 3). The claimants argued over it: Tao Baisui said Tian Guinong had given it to his son, Liu Yuanhe said Tian Guinong had given only the empty box, Yin Ji said it now belonged to the Southern Branch, and Ruan Shizhong said that without the handover ceremony it still belonged to the Northern Branch (ch. 8).

After Liu Yuanhe took the map from Miao Ruolan’s hairpin, Baoshu drew the dao. Cao Yunqi snatched it and ran, but Baoshu struck his shoulder with an iron prayer bead and took it back (ch. 8). From the edge of the peak, Tian Qingwen saw that two ridges below had the lie of the carved dragons, with a round hill where the ruby sat. Zheng Sanniang noticed that the ruby had been set back to front. Baoshu prised it out with a dagger, and in the hollow beneath lay a carved arrow pointing north-north-east to a small circle, which led him to the entrance of the treasure cave (ch. 8).

In Side Story of the Flying Fox

Side Story of the Flying Fox does not connect the Tianlong School’s treasured dao with Li Zicheng. At the Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven held by Fuk’anggan, Tian Guinong fought with a jian in his right hand and drew a dao from under his robe with his left. It was about a chi shorter than an ordinary dao, and its light shifted like gemstone, glass, clear water or ice. With it he cut through Li Tingbao’s iron staff. When challengers mocked him for relying on it, he answered that it was the Tianlong School’s hereditary heirloom and that as zhangmen he was entitled to use it (SIDE ch. 18).

At the same assembly Hu Fei, disguised as a zhangmen of the Huaquan School, wounded Tian Guinong’s left shoulder and, as Tian drew the dao, broke three of his fingers with the Nine-Turn Bone-Breaking Method and took it from him. Hu Fei used the dao to cut Feng Tiannan’s gilded staff into pieces, and when Feng Tiannan fled, threw it after him and killed him (SIDE ch. 19). In the confusion Hu Fei left the dao behind, and Tian Guinong picked it up again. He later used it against Hu Fei at Hu Yidao’s grave, cutting through Hu Fei’s dao and wounding his back. When Hu Fei dug up the Cold Moon Treasured Dao from the grave, the two treasured daos met with a ringing note and neither was damaged (SIDE ch. 20).

Behind the scenes

In a note appended to chapter 3 of Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Jin Yong wrote that Li Zicheng’s army was well disciplined when he first rose, which is why the novel carves his order on the dao. Its discipline later decayed; Jin Yong said he described that mainly in Sword Stained with Royal Blood (ch. 3).

See also

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