Miao Renfeng (simplified: 苗人凤, traditional: 苗人鳳, pinyin: Miáo Rénfèng, jyutping: miu4 jan4 fung6), the Golden-Faced Buddha (金面佛, Jīnmiàn Fó), was known by the epithet He Who Has Fought All Under Heaven and Found No Equal (打遍天下无敌手). He descended from the Miao bodyguard of the Storming King Li Zicheng. He was the great rival and friend of Hu Yidao, and the father of Miao Ruolan by his wife Nan Lan. Tall, gaunt and sallow-faced, he was a man of few words.
Biography
Background
The Miao family had been at feud with the Hu family for more than a century, since the Miao, Fan and Tian bodyguards killed their sworn brother the Flying Fox. Miao Renfeng’s father taught him the Miao Family Swordplay strictly. When Miao was eleven, a flea bit him during the move “Lift the Jian, White Crane Spreads Its Wings”, and he was beaten for twitching. From then on his back always twitched before that move.
Miao’s father and Tian Guinong’s father vanished beyond the passes, and the jianghu blamed Hu Yidao. Miao half-believed it. He could never find Hu, so he spread his seven-character epithet to provoke Hu into coming south. While he was away in Lingnan, Shang Jianming of the Eight Trigrams School came to challenge him. Shang killed Miao’s two brothers, his sister and his brother’s wife.
The duel with Hu Yidao
When Hu Yidao came south with his pregnant wife, the Fan and Tian families invited Miao to stop him at Cangzhou. Hu sent a messenger to explain the four families’ secret and how the two fathers had died. The message reached Tian Guinong while Miao was out, and Tian kept it from him.
The two men fought at the Ping’an Inn for five days.
- Before the first bout: Miao promised to treat Hu’s newborn son as his own should Hu fall.
- The second day: Hu presented the head of Shang Jianming, killed overnight with a move of the Miao Family Swordplay. Miao wrapped Hu’s baby in his yellow cloth wrapper embroidered with his epithet, calling the epithet empty bragging.
- The third night: the two drank and talked martial arts until dawn. Miao said that if one of them had not been a Hu or the other a Miao, they would have been sworn friends for life.
- The fifth day: Madam Hu saw the twitch in Miao’s back, and Hu had Miao beaten. Hu stepped back and proposed that they exchange arts. With a dao borrowed from Tian’s men, Miao cut Hu’s left arm using a variation of the Hu Family Bladeworks he invented on the spot.
The dao had been poisoned. Tian Guinong had supplied the poison, and the bonesetter Yan Ji smeared it on both weapons. Hu died at once, and his wife entrusted the child to Miao and killed herself. The infant then vanished. Finding blood and a small cap by the river, Miao believed him murdered and never stopped looking for the killer. Every year he mourned Hu and his wife for five days before tablets naming them his sworn elder brother and sister-in-law. He also sought out Hu’s acquaintances in Liaodong, and so began his long friendship with Du Ximeng.
Marriage
Miao Renfeng met Nan Lan when five men murdered her father, the official Nan Rentong, for his Cold Moon Treasured Dao. Miao killed all five but was hit by poisoned needles, and Nan Lan sucked the poison from his leg. They married, and Miao loved her deeply.
He buried the Cold Moon Treasured Dao in Hu Yidao’s grave. There, drunk, he praised Madam Hu’s devotion to her husband in terms that wounded his wife, and a rift opened between them. Tian Guinong, who came to their home as Miao’s guest, won her over, and she eloped with him. Miao pursued them to the Shang Family Fort with their three-year-old daughter. When his wife would not so much as look round, he walked away. He fell gravely ill, and for three years he did not leave his house.
In Side Story of the Flying Fox
Tian Guinong blinded Miao with poison hidden in a letter demanding his daughter. Miao entrusted Ruolan to a young stranger, Hu Fei, whom he called one of the only two friends of his life. Hu Fei brought Cheng Lingsu, who healed his eyes. When Tian led a band to kill him, the blind Miao fought them off with the Hu Family Bladeworks, and Hu Fei defeated Tian.
Miao then taught Hu Fei the finer principles of the bladework. He showed him the memorial tablets and admitted that he had mistakenly wounded a good friend. He offered Hu Fei the chance to take revenge, and Hu Fei walked away.
In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain
After Nan Lan’s death, Miao went to Tian Guinong. He brought back Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao, which Tian’s disciple had secretly buried, and a dead infant that Tian’s daughter had buried. He asked how Nan Lan had died, and opened her phoenix-head pearl hairpin to show Tian the treasure map hidden inside. Then he left with her ashes. Tian killed himself that night.
Later, Du Ximeng invited Miao to Jade Brush Peak to face the Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain. The invitation was a trap: Commander Sai’s imperial guards and Du’s allies overpowered him, and Hu Fei rescued him. Miao then found his daughter half-dressed in the bed Hu Fei had left and took the young man for a seducer. He fought Hu Fei on an icy ledge, and at the end, with the ledge crumbling, Hu Fei had him at his mercy. The novel ends before Hu Fei decides whether to strike.
Personality
Miao Renfeng was taciturn, proud and upright, and quick to disown allies who fought dishonourably. Seeing that no generation of the four families had died in peace, he laid down a family rule: no Miao descendant would learn martial arts, and he would take no disciples. Even if an enemy killed him, no one would be able to avenge him, and the century-old feud might end.
Martial arts
Miao was a master of the Miao Family Swordplay. He also knew the eighteen weapons and had trained with the dao in his youth. He learnt the Hu Family Bladeworks from Hu Yidao himself, and in Side Story of the Flying Fox he wielded it better than Hu Fei. He told Hu Yidao that he might not be his match, and in the more than twenty years after their duel he met no equal until Hu Fei.