The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 11 Part 3

Zhang Sanfeng[^zhangsanfeng] could not help a wry laugh, thinking, if some mishap befalls Wuji,[^zhangwuji] what good would it do me to strike you dead? Yet the man spoke so plainly that his sincerity was clear, and as things stood, the poison in Wuji had struck to the very marrow. It truly was "either way it is death." At such a pass between life and death, one must seize the moment and decide, and so he said, "Then I entrust him to you. But let us have it plain between us beforehand: Mister Hu must on no account force Wuji into the order, and my Wudang Order[^wudangpai] will owe your order no debt of gratitude." He knew that the people of the demonic cult[^mojiao] went about their affairs by stealth, and that once entangled with them, a haunting spirit that would not disperse, there was no telling how many troubles might follow. Zhang Cuishan,[^zhangcuishan] brought to death and disgrace, was a living instance of it.

Chang Yuchun¹ said proudly, “Zhang Sanfeng the Perfected One² thinks far too little of us of the Ming Order.³ I shall do exactly as you bid.” Zhang Sanfeng said, “Take good care of Wuji for me, and if the yin poison within him should at last be driven out, bring him with you up Mount Wudang. There is no need for you to come as a hostage yourself.” Chang Yuchun said, “I shall do my utmost.” Zhang Sanfeng said, “This little girl I shall take up Mount Wudang, and find some place for her, but not as a hostage.”

Once ashore, Chang Yuchun dug a pit in the earth with his dao⁴ beneath a great tree, stripped the young lord Zhou’s body of every last stitch of clothing, and only then buried it, kneeling before the grave and bowing several times. For “naked burial” was a rule of the Ming Order: since each man comes into the world stark naked, so too should he leave it stark naked. Zhang Sanfeng did not understand the reason of it, and only felt that these people’s ways were at every turn steeped in the sinister and the strange.

At daybreak the next day, Zhang Sanfeng, with Zhou Zhiruo,⁵ parted from Chang Yuchun and Zhang Wuji. Since the death of his parents, Wuji had looked on Zhang Sanfeng as his own grandfather. Seeing him about to leave, his tears welled up like a spring. Zhang Sanfeng said gently, “Wuji, good child, when your illness is cured, Big Brother Chang will bring you back to Mount Wudang. A parting of a few months, there is no need to grieve.” Still Wuji’s tears flowed without cease. Zhou Zhiruo took a little handkerchief from her breast, wiped away his tears, gave him a slight smile, tucked the handkerchief into the front of his robe, and only then went ashore.

Wuji watched with his eyes as his grand shifu led Zhou Zhiruo away to the west. He saw her turn her head and wave again and again, until she passed behind a row of poplars and willows and was lost to sight. In that instant he felt only loneliness and desolation, forlorn and heartsick, and could not keep from weeping again.

Chang Yuchun frowned and said, “Brother Zhang, how old are you this year?” Zhang Wuji said, choking, “Twelve.” Chang Yuchun said, “Well now, a lad of twelve is no longer a child. Snivelling and blubbering like this, are you not ashamed? At twelve I had already taken who knows how many hundred good beatings, and never once did I let fall so much as half a tear. A true man sheds only blood, not tears. Go on weeping like a girl and I shall raise my fist to you.” Zhang Wuji said, “I wept only because I could not bear to part from my grand shifu, if someone were to hit me, I should not weep at all. Strike me if you dare. Strike me one blow today, and one day I shall pay you back ten.” Chang Yuchun was startled, then laughed aloud. “Good Brother, good Brother! Now that is a lad with backbone. You are so fierce that I dare not strike you at all.” Zhang Wuji said, “There is not a scrap of strength in my hands. Why should you not dare?” Chang Yuchun laughed, “If I strike you today, then when in time to come you have learnt your martial arts well from your grand shifu, could I withstand ten blows of the Wudang Order’s divine fist?” Zhang Wuji gave a “Ha!” of laughter, feeling that this Big Brother Chang, fierce of face though he was, spoke amusingly after all.

Chang Yuchun hired a river-boat and made straight for Hankou.⁶ On reaching Hankou he changed to a Yangtze⁷ river-boat and went east down the river. The Butterfly Valley⁸ where the Butterfly Valley Healer Hu Qingniu⁹ dwelt in seclusion lay by the shore of Lake Nvshan¹⁰ in northern Anhui.¹¹ Chang Yuchun was a man of the Huai River¹² country and knew the way well. From Hankou to Jiujiang¹³ the Yangtze flows toward the southeast. Past Jiujiang it turns to the northeast and enters the bounds of Anhui.

Two years before, Zhang Wuji had gone up this river by boat, his parents beside him then, and Yu Lianzhou¹⁴ for company besides. How merry that journey had been. Now both his parents were dead, and he went east with Chang Yuchun, wretched and forlorn, in search of a cure. Between the bitterness of the one and the joy of the other lay all the distance of heaven from earth. Fearing that Chang Yuchun would fly into a temper and scold, he did not dare, for all his sorrow, to let his tears fall. And when the cold poison flared up in him the pain was hard to bear, but he set his teeth and forced it down, until his upper and lower lips were bitten all over with wounds, while the yin-cold’s assault grew worse with every passing day.

Reaching Guabu, downstream of Jiqing, Chang Yuchun left the boat and went ashore, hired a large cart, and set off northward. Within a few days they came to Mingguang, east of Fengyang. Chang Yuchun knew that his Shibo¹⁵ Hu did not like others to learn where he lived in seclusion, and so, when they were still some twenty-odd li¹⁶ from the Butterfly Valley by Lake Nvshan, he sent the cart back, took Zhang Wuji upon his back, and strode on.

From his past experience he supposed these twenty-odd li would be behind them in the blink of an eye, but the two yin palm-blows the foreign monk had dealt him had left him no light internal injury, and he had gone barely a li or so before his whole frame ached in sinew and bone, and, gasping for breath, he could hardly set one foot before the other. Zhang Wuji was much troubled at this, and said, “Big Brother Chang, let me walk myself. Do not wear yourself out.” Chang Yuchun grew fretful, and said angrily, “On any ordinary day I could walk a hundred li of dry road at a stretch and not tire a whit. Are two palm-blows from a pair of thieving monks to leave me unable to stir a step?”

In pique he quickened his pace and pressed on by main strength. But his internal injury was grave to begin with, and forcing himself thus, restless and short of breath, he had gone only a few hundred feet before it seemed the joints of his every limb and bone were coming apart. Still unwilling to give in, he would neither set Zhang Wuji down nor sit and rest, but dragged himself forward step by step. Going so, they were very slow indeed. By nightfall they had not covered half the way, and the mountain track was rugged and grew harder to walk with every step. Dragging himself into a wood, Chang Yuchun set Zhang Wuji down and lay sprawled on his back, spread-eagled, to rest. He had in his breast some sweets and cakes for Zhang Wuji, and the two of them shared them.

After resting half a shichen,¹⁷ Chang Yuchun would press on again. Zhang Wuji urged him hard to stop, saying they should sleep the night in the wood and go on at daybreak. Chang Yuchun reflected that even if they reached it that night, to rouse his Shibo Hu in the dead of night would surely anger him, and so he consented. The two of them slept leaning against a great tree.

At midnight the cold poison flared up in Zhang Wuji again, and he shook violently without cease. Fearing to wake Chang Yuchun, he made no sound, but bore it by force. Just then he suddenly heard, far off, the clash of weapons, and voices bawling: “Where do you think you’re going?” “Block the east side, drive him into the wood!” “This time we must not let the thieving baldpate get away!” Then came the sound of footsteps, and several people came running toward the wood.

Chang Yuchun started awake, drew his single-edged dao with his right hand and caught up Zhang Wuji in his left, ready to fight and flee at once. Zhang Wuji whispered, “They seem to be after a monk.” Chang Yuchun nodded, and hiding behind the great tree, looked out. In the darkness he could dimly make out seven or eight people ringed about a single man in combat. The man they had cornered was empty-handed, his two palms whirling, keeping the foes from closing in. After a while the others gradually pressed nearer.

Before long a crescent moon slipped out from the clouds, its clear light spilling over the ground. The man beset was seen to be a tall, lean monk of some forty years, in a black monk’s robe. Those attacking him were monks and Daoists, men in secular dress, and two women besides, eight in all. Two grey-robed monks bore, the one a Chan staff, the other a precept-dao,¹⁸ and as the staff swept across and the dao hacked down, gust upon gust of wind sent the fallen leaves of the wood scattering and whirling. A Daoist held a long jian,¹⁹ swift of movement, and under the moonlight his blade flashed in arc after arc of gleaming steel. A short, small man gripped a pair of daos and rolled to and fro on the ground, attacking the black-robed monk’s lower body with Ground Tumbling Dao.²⁰ The two women were slender of figure, each with a long jian, their swordplay nimble and quick in the extreme.

In the thick of the fight one of the women turned, and half her face was lit by the moon. Zhang Wuji nearly cried out aloud: “Auntie Ji!” The woman was none other than Ji Xiaofu,²¹ the betrothed of Yin Liting.²² When Zhang Wuji first saw eight men besetting a single monk, he thought it most unfair, the many bullying the few, and hoped the monk might break out and get away, but now, having recognised Ji Xiaofu, he reasoned that a monk who was Auntie Ji’s enemy must be a bad man, and his heart went over to Ji Xiaofu’s side. On the day his parents both took their own lives, Ji Xiaofu had spoken soft words of comfort to him, and though Zhang Wuji had not taken the golden necklet she gave him, when he thought of it afterward he was very grateful for her kindness.

Zhang Wuji saw that the beset monk’s martial arts were formidable: his palm technique now fast, now slow, now feint, now true, shifting through countless changes, and when it went fast, one could not even make out the path and force of his palms. Many though Ji Xiaofu and the rest were, they long fought on without prevailing.

Suddenly one of the men shouted, “Give him the hidden shot!” One man and one Daoist leapt apart to left and right, and with a hissing sound pellets and flying knives were loosed without pause at the black-robed monk. At this the monk began to find it hard to hold out. The long-bearded Daoist with the jian shouted, “Monk Peng,²³ it is not your life we want. Why fight to the death? Hand over Bai Guishou,²⁴ and we shall all part with a smile. Would that not be excellent?”

Chang Yuchun was startled, and said in a low voice, “So this is Monk Peng?” On the river-boat Zhang Wuji had heard his parents tell his Second Shibo Yu of the dao-raising to establish prestige at Wangpan Island,²⁵ and of how the Tianying Order²⁶ had come to be at feud with the various guilds and schools. He knew that Bai Guishou was the Altar Master of the Xuanwu Altar,²⁷ the only man of the Tianying Order to come safely away from Wangpan Island, and that all these years the guilds and schools had fought the Tianying Order without cease, all to make Bai Guishou disclose the whereabouts of Xie Xun.²⁸ He wondered, Can this Monk Peng, too, be a man of my mother’s order?

Footnotes

1. 常遇春 – Cháng Yùchūn. Fighter of the Ming Order who befriended Zhang Wuji; historically a founding general of the Ming dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 真人 – zhēnrén. Literally true person. Daoist honorific title for accomplished practitioners; here referring to Zhang Sanfeng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 明教 – Míngjiào. Literally the religion of light. Also known as Manichaeism, a dualistic religion of Persian origin that became the backbone of several rebel movements in Chinese history. In the wuxia tradition, it serves as the organising force against the Mongol Yuan dynasty. ↩

4. 刀 – dāo. Curved, single-edged blade, retained in pinyin in prose. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 周芷若 – Zhōu Zhǐruò. Her name from two fragrant plants, angelica and pollia. Girl Zhang Wuji met briefly aboard a riverboat. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 汉口 – Hànkǒu. Port at the confluence of the Han River and the Yangtze, part of modern Wuhan. See Wikipedia. ↩

7. 长江 – Cháng Jiāng. Literally the Long River. Yangtze, the greatest river of China. See Wikipedia. ↩

8. 蝴蝶谷 – Húdié Gǔ. Lit. “Butterfly Valley.” The secluded valley home of Hu Qingniu, on the shore of Nüshan Lake in northern Anhui. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 胡青牛 – Hú Qīngniú. His name meaning “Green Ox.” The Butterfly Valley Healer, a physician of the Ming Order, nicknamed “Sees Death, Offers No Aid” for refusing to treat any who are not of the order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 女山湖 – Nǚshān Hú. Lake Nvshan, a lake in what is now northern Anhui Province. ↩

11. 皖 – Wǎn. Literary name for Anhui, a province in eastern China straddling the Yangtze and the Huai. See Wikipedia. ↩

12. 淮河 – Huái Hé. Huai River, a major river in central China that historically marked the boundary between northern and southern territories. During this period, it divided Song-controlled south from Mongol-controlled north. See Wikipedia. ↩

13. 九江 – Jiǔjiāng. City on the Yangtze in northern Jiangxi. See Wikipedia. ↩

14. 俞莲舟 – Yú Liánzhōu. His name meaning “Lotus Boat.” Second of the Seven Xias of Wudang. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. Shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, roughly equivalent to a third of a mile or half a kilometre. ↩

17. 时辰 – shíchén. Traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two hours; the day was divided into twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 戒刀 – jièdāo. Precept-dao, the single-edged blade carried by an itinerant Buddhist monk, so called for the vows (戒) of his order. ↩

19. 剑 – jiàn. Straight, double-edged sword, retained in pinyin in prose. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

20. 地堂刀法 – Dìtáng Dāofǎ. Ground Tumbling Dao, a fighting style fought low upon the ground, targeting an opponent’s legs and lower body. ↩

21. 纪晓芙 – Jì Xiǎofú. Her name meaning “Dawn Hibiscus.” A disciple of the Emei Order, once betrothed to Yin Liting of Wudang. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

22. 殷梨亭 – Yīn Lítíng. The sixth of the Seven Xias of Wudang, who fell in love with Ji Xiaofu. After her death, his consuming desire for revenge against Yang Xiao drove him to devise this suicidal sword technique. ↩

23. 彭莹玉 – Péng Yíngyù. “Monk Peng,” a monk of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

24. 白龟寿 – Bái Guīshòu. His name meaning “White Tortoise Longevity.” Altar Master of the Xuanwu Altar of the Tianying Order, who died shielding Monk Peng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

25. 王盘山 – Wángpán Shān. Wangpan Island, the sea island where the Tianying Order raised the Dragon-Slaying Dao to overawe the wulin some years before. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

26. 天鹰教 – Tiānyīng Jiào. Tianying Order, founded by Yin Tianzheng the White-Browed Eagle King. 教 here is the order’s own neutral name for itself; “Cult” is the orthodox schools’ derogatory register and is not the sect’s name. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

27. 玄武坛 – Xuánwǔ Tán. Literally Black Tortoise Altar. Mythological Black Tortoise was one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, representing the Water element, the direction North, and the season of winter. ↩

28. 谢逊 – Xiè Xùn. His name meaning “Modest” or “Yielding.” His courtesy name Tuisi (退思) meaning “Retreat and Reflect.” One of the Four Dharma Kings of the Ming Order, bearing the epithet the Golden-Haired Lion King. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩