The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 12 Part 6

Zhang Wuji[^zhangwuji] turned his head, and saw the speaker was the bald old man of the Kongtong School,[^kongtongpai] the Sacred Hand Sangharama, Jian Jie.[^jianjie] There was not a hair upon his head. At first Zhang Wuji had taken it for a natural baldness. Only later had he learned that someone had smeared a fierce poison upon him, so that the hair had rotted away at the roots, and the poison still ate its way inward. Within a few days, it was to be feared, it would reach the brain, and then he must fall into raving madness. His hands had been bound with iron chains by his companions, that he might not reach up and claw at his scalp. Else, with the itching past all bearing, he would long since have torn it open to the bone.

Hu Qingniu¹ said carelessly, “Whether I can cure it or no, in short I will not cure you. You have seven or eight days of life left. Hurry home, and you may yet see your family and children one more time. What use is there in loitering here to jabber?”

The itching of Jian Jie’s scalp was more than he could bear. Unable to endure it, he rubbed and knocked his head against the wall, so that the iron chains at his hands rang out in a wild jangling, and gasped, “Mister Hu, that owner of the golden flower will come seeking you sooner or later, and you can no more live than we. If all of us join hands to meet the strong foe together, is that not better than for you to cower in your room and await death with your hands tied?” Hu Qingniu said, “If you could have beaten him, you would have killed him already! What use to me are fifteen good-for-nothing helpers the more?”

Jian Jie pleaded a while, and Hu Qingniu paid him no more heed. Then Jian Jie flew into a fury and roared, “Very well, I am a dead man either way, and I will put a torch to your dog-kennel. White blade in, red blade out. I’ll do for you, you thieving quack, and we shall all go to our deaths together!”

At this a man came in from without, the one who had earlier spat up blood. He reached into his robe and drew out an Emei spike² of steel, set it against Jian Jie’s breast, and said coldly, “You give offence to Elder Hu. I, of the surname Xue, will be the first to take issue with you. You would have white blade in and red blade out? Good, I will give you that much first.” Jian Jie’s martial arts were above this man Xue’s by nature, but with his hands bound in the iron chains he had no way to ward the blow, and could only glare with his round, bulging eyes and pant for breath.

The man Xue said aloud, “Elder Hu, this junior, Xue Gongyuan,³ a disciple of Mister Xianyu⁴ of Huashan,⁵ kowtows to you, venerable sir!” And so saying he knelt, and knocked his head to the ground several resounding times. On the instant a thread of hope sprang up in Jian Jie’s heart: Hu Qingniu will not eat the hard approach. This lad kowtows and pleads soft. Perhaps it will serve. His great courtesy performed, Xue Gongyuan said further, “That Elder Hu should have an honoured illness is our own want of fortune. But here is a young brother of high medical skill. I beg Elder Hu to grant him leave to treat us. The vile poisons and strange wounds we carry, save for a disciple of the Butterfly Valley Healing Sage, there is not another soul in all the world who can cure them.”

Hu Qingniu said coldly, “This child is named Zhang Wuji, a disciple of the Wudang Order,⁶ son of the Silver Hook Iron Brush, Zhang Cuishan,⁷ Zhang the Fifth Xia, and a second-generation disciple of Zhang Sanfeng.⁸ I, Hu Qingniu, am a man of the Ming Order,⁹ the very scum your great orthodox schools disdain. What bond have I with a scion of houses so lofty? He is poisoned with a yin-cold venom, and begged me to treat him, but I have sworn a solemn oath: unless a man be of the Ming Order, I will treat no one’s wounds nor cure any poison. This Zhang lad will not join my Ming Order. How then am I to save his life?”

Xue Gongyuan’s heart went half-cold. Earlier he had heard Zhang Wuji call himself a patient who had been refused, and had not quite credited it, but now, hearing Hu Qingniu speak so, it was true after all. And he heard Hu Qingniu go on, “You lot squat in my house and will not leave. Hmph, hmph, do you think it will move me to a kindly heart? Ask this child how long he has squatted in my house.” Xue Gongyuan and Jian Jie both looked to Zhang Wuji, who held up two fingers, and then held them up again. Xue Gongyuan said, “Twenty days?” Zhang Wuji said, “A full two years and two months.” Jian Jie and Xue Gongyuan stared at each other, and both let out a long breath.

Hu Qingniu said, “Though he squat here another ten years, I still cannot save his life. Within the year the yin-poison knotted in his viscera and bowels will break out in full force. Come what may, he will not live past this day next year. I, Hu Qingniu, once swore a solemn oath before the Ming Venerable:¹⁰ that though it were the very parents who bore me, or my own flesh-and-blood children, so long as they were not disciples of the Ming Order, I might not use the art of medicine to save their lives.”

Jian Jie and Xue Gongyuan hung their heads in dejection and were about to go, when Hu Qingniu said suddenly, “This Wudang youth understands a little medicine too. His Wudang principles fall far short of my Ming Order’s, but at least they will not quite kill a man outright. Whether his Wudang chooses to save or to let the dying die, that has no bearing upon the Ming Order or upon me, Hu Qingniu.”

Xue Gongyuan gave a start. Catching the drift of his words, that he would have Zhang Wuji act, he said hurriedly, “Elder Hu, if this young Xia Zhang will lend a hand to save us, then we have hope of our lives.” Hu Qingniu said, “Whether he saves you or no, what the devil is it to me? Wuji, mark me: within the house of Hu Qingniu, you may not idly ply the healing art. Only beyond my door can I not have the ordering of you.” Xue Gongyuan and Jian Jie had felt their hopes rise, and now at these words were dumbfounded again, not seeing at all what he was about.

But Zhang Wuji understood on the instant. “Mister Hu is ill,” he said. “You must not trouble him overmuch. Come out with me, if you please.” The three came into the hall. “Gentlemen,” said Zhang Wuji, “I am young and slight of learning, and your hurts are strange in the extreme. Whether they can be cured I honestly cannot promise. If you will trust me, then let me try my utmost, and let life and death rest each with the will of heaven.”

Just now the wounds of every one of them, itching, aching, sore, or numb, were a misery past all bearing. Had they been given arsenic to drink, so it eased the anguish of the moment, they would have swallowed it down as a sweet. Hearing Zhang Wuji’s words, one and all rejoiced and gave their consent.

Zhang Wuji said, “Mister Hu forbids me to act within his house, lest I kill a man and so injure the good name of the Healing Sage. I beg you will all come outside.” But at this the company hung back once more. Seeing that he was no more than fourteen or fifteen, and that his skill must after all be limited, they had felt within the “Healing Sage’s” house that there was something to lean upon, but to be treated out of doors, if he bungled and heaped hurt upon hurt, they would suffer to no purpose.

Then Jian Jie cried loudly, “My scalp itches me to death. young brother, treat me first, I beg you.” And so saying he dragged the clanking iron chains out at the door. Zhang Wuji pondered a while, then went to the storeroom and picked out a dozen and more drugs, arisaema, siler, dahurian angelica, gastrodia, notopterygium, typhonium, ophicalcite, and the rest, and bade the page-boy pound them in the medicine-mortar, blend them with hot wine into a paste, and carry it out to lay upon Jian Jie’s bald pate. The moment the medicine touched his head, Jian Jie let out a fearful shriek of pain and leapt into the air, crying without cease, “The pain, oh the pain, it is the death of me. Heh, but the pain is better. It is far easier to bear than that numbing itch.” His teeth chattered and ground together, and he ran wild back and forth upon the grass, calling out, “The pain is good. Damn it all, this lad has some skill after all! No, Young Xia Zhang, I of the surname Jian must thank you properly.”

Seeing Jian Jie’s scalp-itch relieved on the instant, the company pressed one after another upon Zhang Wuji for treatment. Now there was one man clutching his belly and rolling ceaselessly upon the ground, crying out aloud. He had been forced to swallow thirty and more live leeches, and the leeches, come into his stomach, had not died, but had fastened upon the walls of stomach and gut and sucked his blood. Zhang Wuji recalled a passage in the medical books: leeches, meeting honey, dissolve away into water. There was flower-honey in plenty in Butterfly Valley,¹¹ and he bade the page-boy fetch a great bowl of it, and had the man drink it down.

So he laboured on until daybreak. Ji Xiaofu¹² and her daughter Yang Buhui¹³ woke and came out, and saw Zhang Wuji, the sweat standing on his brow, hard at work treating the hurts of each in turn. Ji Xiaofu set to helping him, binding wounds, handing him his medicines. Only Yang Buhui, without a care in the world, went chasing butterflies at play, her mouth full of dried apricots and honeyed dates.

He laboured on until past midday before he had, at a first pass, put the outer hurts of each in some order: staunching the bleeding of those who bled, dulling the pain of those in pain. But every man’s hurt was strange and tangled, and to set the outer injury alone to rights was to treat the branch, and not the root. Zhang Wuji went to his room and slept several shichen,¹⁴ and in his dreams he heard a great moaning break out beyond the door, and sprang up to find that, though a few had mended somewhat, the greater part had on the contrary taken a turn for the worse. At his wits’ end, he could only go and lay it before Hu Qingniu.

Hu Qingniu said coldly, “These men are not of my Ming Order. Live or die, it is no concern of mine.” Then a flash of wit came to Zhang Wuji, and he said, “Suppose there were a disciple of the Ming Order, with no outer wound, but within whose belly the stagnant blood was swollen and blocked, his face red and puffed, and he faint and near to death. How, then, would you treat him, Mister Hu?” Hu Qingniu said, “Were he a disciple of the Ming Order, I would use pangolin scale, tail of Chinese angelica, safflower, raw rehmannia, Chinese clematis, dragon’s blood, peach kernel, rhubarb, frankincense, and myrrh, boiled up in water and wine with a little child’s urine added, and once he had taken it, he would purge out the stagnant blood.”

Zhang Wuji said again, “And suppose a disciple of the Ming Order had molten lead poured into his left ear and quicksilver into his right, and raw lacquer smeared over his eyes, in agony beyond bearing and unable to see, then what?” Hu Qingniu flew into a rage. “Who dares work such harm upon a disciple of my Ming Order?” Zhang Wuji said, “That person is indeed a vicious one, but I think one must first cure the Ming Order disciple’s ears and eyes, and then, at leisure, question him as to the enemy’s name and whereabouts.” Hu Qingniu turned it over a moment, and said, “If the man were a disciple of the Ming Order, I would pour quicksilver into his left ear, and the lump of lead, dissolving in the quicksilver, would flow out along with it. Then I would run a gold needle deep into the right ear, and the quicksilver would cling to the needle and be slowly drawn out. As for the raw lacquer on the eyes, one might try laying on the pounded juice of a crab, and it may resolve it.”

In just this fashion Zhang Wuji laid each intractable case before Hu Qingniu, framing it as the injury of a Ming Order disciple, and asked his counsel. Hu Qingniu of course saw well enough what he was about, yet taught him the cures all the same. But those men’s hurts were in truth too strange, and when Zhang Wuji had applied the methods, some would not answer, whereupon Hu Qingniu would bend his whole mind to it and devise some other way.

So five or six days went by, and the hurts of each mended day by day. Ji Xiaofu’s inner injury proved, after all, to be a poisoning. Once Zhang Wuji had diagnosed it clear, he gave her raw dragon-bone, sappanwood, mole-cricket, flying-squirrel droppings, caper-spurge seed, and clamshell powder, to draw out the poison and dissolve the stasis, and feeling her pulse again, he found it fine and slow, the hurt growing lighter by degrees.

By now the company had built a cool shed of rushes outside the hut, and, with straw spread on the ground, lay down upon the earth. Ji Xiaofu had a small thatched hut of her own, several dozen feet off, that she shared with her daughter, one that Zhang Wuji had had them all build together. The fourteen men had been, at first, bold rovers who ranged the lakes and seas, but now, with their lives in Zhang Wuji’s hands, not one of them dared cross the youth’s word in the least. Wearisome as all this labour was, Zhang Wuji learned from Hu Qingniu no small store of marvellous prescriptions and methods, and came besides to grasp the principle that strange illnesses must be met with strange cures, and one must not be bound by set rules, so that, it may be said, he gained greatly by it.

Footnotes

1. 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. ↩

2. 峨眉刺 – éméi cì. Literally Emei piercer. Distinctive weapon consisting of a thin spike with a ring in the centre that rotates around the wielder’s finger, allowing rapid thrusting and spinning attacks. Named after Mount Emei. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 薛公远 – Xuē Gōngyuǎn. Disciple of the Huashan School under Xianyu Tong. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 鲜于通 – Xiānyú Tōng. Zhangmen of the Huashan School, styled the Divine Strategist (神机子) for his cunning. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 华山派 – Huàshān Pài. Huashan School, a martial school based upon Mount Hua, one of China’s Five Sacred Mountains. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 武当派 – Wǔdāng Pài. Wudang Order, the Daoist martial order founded by Zhang Sanfeng; 派 renders as “Order” for its religious character. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 张翠山 – Zhāng Cuìshān. His name meaning “Verdant Mountain.” Fifth disciple of Zhang Sanfeng and member of the Seven Xias of Wudang, styled Zhang the Fifth Xia. His epithet is the Silver Hook Iron Brush. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 张三丰 – Zhāng Sānfēng. His name meaning “Three Peaks.” Legendary founder of the Wudang Order and creator of taijiquan; Zhang Wuji’s grandshifu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 明教 – Míngjiào. 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. ↩

10. 明尊 – Míngzūn. Ming Venerable, the Lord of Light revered by the Ming Order, whose worship descends from Manichaeism. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 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. ↩

12. 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. ↩

13. 杨不悔 – Yáng Bùhuǐ. Her name meaning “No Regret.” Daughter of Ji Xiaofu and Yang Xiao. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 时辰 – shíchen. A traditional Chinese time unit; one twelfth of a day, equal to two modern hours. ↩