Murong Jingyue (simplified and traditional: 慕容景岳, pinyin: Mùróng Jǐngyuè, jyutping: mou6 jung4 ging2 ngok6) was the eldest disciple of Great Master Wuchen, the King of Venoms. A scholar by training, he spent years feuding with his fellow disciples Jiang Tieshan and Xue Que. After Wuchen’s death he submitted to his shifu’s old enemy Shi Wanchen, took Xue Que as his wife, and died with her by the Seven-Heart Begonia candle that Cheng Lingsu left behind her (SIDE ch. 9, 10, 18, 20).
Biography
The feud
Murong Jingyue was a tall, thin man who looked like a village schoolmaster, and he had been a xiucai before he took up the poisoner’s art (SIDE ch. 9, 20). He had copied out his shifu’s medical texts, and his handwriting was spare and upright (SIDE ch. 9, 10). His shimei Xue Que was in love with him and poisoned his wife. In revenge he secretly poisoned Xue Que, leaving her hunchbacked and lame, while their shifu was away gathering herbs in Tibet. Jiang Tieshan married her, and Murong, finding that he missed her after all, began pursuing her again. The three quarrelled for years, and Jiang and Xue walled themselves up in the iron Medicine King Manor partly to keep him out (SIDE ch. 10). Their feuding was what led Wuchen to take Cheng Lingsu as his last disciple (SIDE ch. 10).
Dongting Lake
When Hu Fei and Zhong Zhaowen came to White Horse Temple asking for the King of Venoms, Murong was the scholar digging herbs on a hillside who would not answer them. Suspicious of the blue flowers they carried, he followed them, and Cheng Lingsu caught him and packed him, unconscious, into a basket that Hu Fei carried without knowing it (SIDE ch. 9, 10). She forged a letter in his hand to bring Jiang Tieshan and Xue Que to a wood at midnight, and when the basket was opened the three fought with poison smoke and hidden weapons until their shifu’s last message appeared in the dark. Learning that Wuchen was dead, Murong asked only for his book and attacked Cheng Lingsu; the Seven-Heart Begonia in her candle brought him down (SIDE ch. 9). She left him, unconscious, with Jiang Tieshan and enough of the plant’s pollen to cure him, advising Jiang to make peace with him (SIDE ch. 10).
Shi Wanchen
After Wuchen’s death, Shi Wanchen came back to the Central Plains bent on killing Wuchen’s disciples. Captured, Murong begged for his life and offered to become Shi’s disciple and lead him to the Divine Treatise of the Medicine King (药王神篇), which had passed to Cheng Lingsu. At his prompting Shi killed Jiang Tieshan, and Jiang’s son died of Murong’s Peach Blossom Miasma pellets. Xue Que became Shi’s disciple too, and Murong’s wife (SIDE ch. 20). At Fuk’anggan’s Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven Murong introduced Shi as the King of Venoms and Xue Que as his wife, and treated two men poisoned by Shi’s flick (SIDE ch. 18).
Death
Murong, Xue Que and Shi Wanchen lay in wait for Cheng Lingsu and Hu Fei at a Medicine King temple outside Beijing. Cheng Lingsu saw through the ambush, and holding her shifu’s book she led Shi into testing Jade Silkworm Poison Gu, Crane Crown Red and Peacock Gall together on Murong’s palm. Murong tried to refuse and, as the poisons were flicked onto him, decided he would rather submit to his shimei than suffer under his new shifu; the book called the mixture incurable, and Xue Que cut off his left arm at the shoulder to save his life (SIDE ch. 20). Cheng Lingsu reproached them both for betraying their shifu and causing Jiang Tieshan’s death, and offered three Life-Renewing Pills of Creation, each worth three years of life. Xue Que took them and used the moment to seize Cheng Lingsu. Murong tried to block Hu Fei, who struck him in the chest with a palm, and the three fled (SIDE ch. 20).
That night they came back for the book. Murong sneered that Cheng Lingsu had died sucking poison from her lover’s hand. When Shi lit the half-burnt candle she had left, Murong and Xue Que sank slowly to their knees, faces fixed in strange half-smiles, and died of the Seven-Heart Begonia in it (SIDE ch. 20). Hu Fei buried the two of them together (SIDE ch. 20).
Personality
Murong was vindictive and self-serving: he crippled the woman who had killed his wife, then courted her again, and he gave up his shifu for his life the moment Shi Wanchen caught him (SIDE ch. 10, 20). Shi found his martial arts ordinary and his poisons far below his shifu’s (SIDE ch. 20). The narrative calls him utterly spineless and notes the scholar’s sophistry with which he argued his case; Cheng Lingsu answered it with irony (SIDE ch. 20).
Relationships
- King of Venoms (First shifu): Great Master Wuchen, whom he abandoned after his death (SIDE ch. 10, 20).
- Shi Wanchen (Second shifu): He submitted to him to save his life; Shi later used him as a test subject for poison (SIDE ch. 20).
- Xue Que (Shimei, later wife): She poisoned his first wife and he crippled her; they later married and died together (SIDE ch. 10, 18, 20).
- Jiang Tieshan (Shidi): Xue Que’s first husband, killed by Shi Wanchen at Murong’s instigation (SIDE ch. 10, 20).
- Cheng Lingsu (Shimei): Heir to their shifu’s book, and the author of his death (SIDE ch. 9, 20).
Martial arts
Murong’s own hidden weapon was the bone-piercing nail, which he cast himself (SIDE ch. 9, 10). His signature poison was made from the Peach Blossom Miasma of the Yunnan–Guizhou border, which he gathered and made into poison pellets; Jiang Tieshan and Xue Que had worked out an antidote over their years of feuding (SIDE ch. 20).