Ren Feiyan

Ren Feiyan

Contents

Ren Feiyan (simplified: 任飞燕, traditional: 任飛燕, pinyin: Rén Fēiyàn, jyutping: jam6 fei1 jin3) is the wife of Lin Yulong, a sharpshooter with the slingshot and a cunning fighter with the dao. She and her husband quarrel and fight constantly, and though an old monk taught them the Wedded Blades Style, they never use it as one; instead they teach it to Yuan Guannan and Xiao Zhonghui.

Biography

The quarrelling couple

Ren first appears chasing her husband through a forest with an infant on her back, firing her slingshot after him. When the Four Xias of Taiyue step in, she hits Chang Changfeng on the nose, chest and arm, Gai Yiming on the forehead and Hua Jianying in a front tooth, and knocks Xiaoyaozi’s pipe from his hand with the Turning Horseback Shot.1 At the Fen’an Inn in Guanshui, she fights Lin in their room and, when he leaps out with their son, chases him to a graveyard. When Xiao Zhonghui wounds him, Ren turns on her with the reckless Yaksha Probing the Sea.2

Ren tells Xiao Zhonghui that husband and wife who never quarrel are no couple at all. While she binds her husband’s leg, Xiao Zhonghui takes the child; Ren slaps Lin for not saying so and sets off after her. In a forest, her pellets throw Zhou Weixin from his horse and knock the whip from his hand, and the couple hold him at dao-point.3 Noticing his grip on his bundle, Ren demands to know what it is, and he blurts out the name of the Mandarin Duck Blades. Zhuo Tianxiong breaks both their dao and seals their acupoints.4 Frozen, the couple bicker until they are spitting at each other, and once Yuan Guannan frees them, they chase Xiao Zhonghui to the Purple Bamboo Convent.5

Teaching the style

In the convent, Ren teaches Xiao Zhonghui her half of the Wedded Blades Style’s first twelve moves. When Zhuo returns, she abandons the first move, which should guard her husband, for the second, and Zhuo seals them both. She demands to know why she must always follow his lead, then calls out the move names as the younger pair drive Zhuo off.6

At Xiao Banhe’s birthday, she teaches Xiao Zhonghui the remaining sixty moves, and teases the Four Xias with a tale of the Blue-Blood Golden Toad, which comes out only at midnight to absorb the moon’s essence. When Yuan Guannan finds his mother, she explains to her bewildered husband what has happened.7 At the Zhongtiao Mountains, she silences his boasting by stuffing his mouth with venison.8

Martial arts abilities

Ren’s slingshot is fast and accurate enough to knock a pipe from a man’s hand over her shoulder at a run.1 With the dao she lacks her husband’s strength, but her bladework is the more cunning: she slides her blade along an opponent’s towards the fingers.3 She knows her half of the Wedded Blades Style well enough to teach it.6

Behind the scenes

Portrayals

  • 1982 film Lovers’ Blades — Wen Hsueh-erh

See also

Footnotes

  1. See Part 2. ↩ ↩2

  2. See Part 5. ↩

  3. See Part 6. ↩ ↩2

  4. See Part 7. ↩

  5. See Part 8. ↩

  6. See Part 9. ↩ ↩2

  7. See Part 10. ↩

  8. See Part 12. ↩

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