The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 12 Part 8

Ji Xiaofu¹ went on, “The old woman gained the top of the stairs, and coughed hard again. The little girl said, 'Granny, will you take a pill?' The old woman nodded, and the girl brought out a porcelain phial and shook a pill from it, and the old woman slowly chewed it and swallowed it down, and murmured several times, 'Amitabha, Amitabha.'² Her old eyes half open and half shut, she muttered, 'Only fifteen. Mm, ask them, have the folk of the Wudang Order³ and the Kunlun School⁴ come?'

“When she had come up the stairs, none of us had marked her, but hearing those two sentences of a sudden, a few sharp-eared friends of the jianghu⁵ turned their heads together, and then, seeing so decrepit and poor an old body, all reckoned they had heard amiss. The little girl said aloud, ‘Here, my granny asks you, have any come of the Wudang Order and the Kunlun School?’ Everyone was struck dumb, and none answered. After a moment, Kongtong’s⁶ Jian Jie said, ‘Little girl, what did you say?’ The girl said, ‘My granny asks: “Why do I not see any disciples of the Wudang Order and the Kunlun School?”’ Jian Jie barked, ‘Who are you two?’ The old woman bent double and fell to coughing again.

“All at once a gust of hard force drove at my breast. Whence it came I could not tell, but it was swift beyond compare. I threw up my palm in haste to ward it, and on the instant my chest was stopped up, qi and blood surging in me, and I could not keep my feet, but sat down hard upon the boards and spat up several mouthfuls of blood. I was at a loss what to do, but I saw the old woman’s form go drifting to and fro, pressing a palm here and dealing a fist there, with a cough or two between, and in a moment she had struck down every one of the other fourteen upon that upper floor. Her strokes came without warning. Her body was swift, and the force of her heavy, and we fifteen could not answer with so much as half a move, each of us with an acupoint sealed, or the inner organs shaken by her force. The old woman raised her left hand again and again, and the golden flowers⁷ flew out one after another from her string of prayer-beads, each striking home upon one of the fifteen. Then she turned, and, leaning on the little girl, said, ‘Amitabha!’, and tottered away down the stairs. We heard her staff tap the ground, tap-tap, slowly receding, with now and then a cough or two drifting up from below.”

By the time Ji Xiaofu had reached this point, Yang Buhui⁸ had finished weaving a flower-crown, and came over smiling. “Ma, this flower-crown is for you to wear.” And she set it upon her mother’s head.

Ji Xiaofu gave a smile, and went on, “At that time, on the upper floor, the fifteen of us all lay limp upon the boards, some yet able to moan a little, some already gasping for breath…” Yang Buhui cried out in fright, “Ma, are you talking about that wicked granny? Don’t tell it, don’t tell it, I’m frightened.” Ji Xiaofu said, “Good child, go and pick more flowers, and weave a flower-crown for Wuji gege.” Yang Buhui looked at Zhang Wuji⁹ and asked, “What colour do you like?” Zhang Wuji said, “Red, mm, and some white too, and the bigger the better.” Yang Buhui spread her two hands wide. “This big?” Zhang Wuji said, “Good, just this big.” Laughing and clapping, Yang Buhui went off.

Ji Xiaofu continued, “In my daze I saw a dozen people come over, the wineshop’s serving boys, its manager, its cooks, and the rest, and they carried us into the kitchen. Bu’er by then was frightened into loud weeping, and kept close by my side. The manager held a list in his hand, and, pointing at Jian Jie, said, ‘Smear this ointment on his head.’ And a serving boy smeared upon Jian Jie’s head an ointment made ready beforehand. The manager looked at his list and, pointing at one man, said, ‘Cut off his right hand, and join it to his left arm.’ Two cooks took up sharp blades and did as he said. When the manager came to me, he ordered them to cut three blade-strokes into my left shoulder and left arm, and shatter the bone of my arm, and then forced me to drink down a bowl of sweet medicine-water. I knew well it must hold some deadly poison, but at that time I could only submit to their handling, and how was I to resist?

“When they had worked upon us fifteen with every manner of outlandish and cruel torment, the manager said, ‘Each of you has now taken a wound past all curing, and not one of you can live beyond ten days or a fortnight. The owner of the golden flower says: “Her venerable self had at the first no quarrel and no grudge with you, but seeing you so piteous a sight, she takes great pity, and points you to one road of life. Hasten to Butterfly Valley¹⁰ by the shore of Nüshan Lake,¹¹ and beg a man called the Butterfly Valley Healing Sage, Hu Qingniu,¹² to treat you. If he is willing to lift a hand, then each of you has yet hope of life, and if not, there is no one in the world can save you. This Hu Qingniu has another byname besides, Sees Death, Saves None, and unless you plead with him to the death, he will by no means act. And say to Hu Qingniu that the owner of the golden flower will be along presently to seek him out, and bid him see to his funeral affairs betimes!”’ When he had done, he set out the road for us in full detail, and so we all came here.”

Zhang Wuji was more amazed the more he heard. “Aunt Ji,” he said, “by this account, then, the manager and the cooks and the serving boys of the Linhuai Pavilion are all of them that wicked granny’s people?” Ji Xiaofu said, “It would seem those men are all under her hand, and the manager worked these cruel torments on us by the list the wicked granny had written out. To this very day I do not in the least understand it. Why should that wicked granny do so strange a thing? If she had a feud with us, to take our lives was no more than a lift of the hand. And if she meant us to suffer the more, tormenting us so cruelly with these venomous devices, why then point us to Mister Hu for our cure? And she said she would soon come to settle scores with Mister Hu. Could it be that to torment us with these thousand outlandish devices was to put Mister Hu’s medical art to the test?”

Zhang Wuji pondered a while, and said, “This Golden Flower Granny,¹³ since she means to make trouble for Mister Hu, ought by rights to have him heal you all, that you might join hands and stand together against the strong foe. Otherwise, he says he will not treat, and yet why teach me every manner of rescue, that answers so well when it is used? That is to say, he does not save you openly, but by my hand saves you in secret. And yet, having taught me to heal you, at dead of night he steals in to lay his poison, so that you are neither dead nor alive. It is strange in the very extreme.”

The two of them talked it over a long while, but could make out no shred of reason in it. By now Yang Buhui had woven a great flower-crown, and set it upon Zhang Wuji’s head.

“Aunt Ji,” said Zhang Wuji, “from now on, unless it is a soup or a medicine that I have brought you with my own hands, you must on no account take it. And at night keep a weapon by you, and guard against harm. For the present you cannot yet leave, but wait until I have made you up a few more doses, and once your inner injury is out of danger, take Sister Buhui and flee betimes.” Ji Xiaofu nodded, and said, “Child, this man Hu’s designs are so past all fathoming. For you to live with him is no safe plan. Better we go away together.” Zhang Wuji said, “Mm, he has always been quite good to me. He said at first that once he had cured the yin-poison in me he would put me to death, but since he cannot cure it, of course he will not act to harm me. Truly it would be safest to go now, but as to how Aunt Ji’s inner injury is to be treated, there are still a few points I am unsure of, and I must ask Mister Hu once more.” Ji Xiaofu said, “Since he poisons me in secret, the methods he has taught you may too be wrong on purpose.” Zhang Wuji said, “It is not so. The methods Mister Hu has taught me all answer as though by a god’s own hand. The right and wrong of this I can tell apart. And it is just there that the strangeness lies. I had thought at first that the owner of the golden flower means to make trouble for Mister Hu, and that he is ill, and I cannot leave him in his hour of peril. But Mister Hu, it seems, is only feigning sickness.”

That night Zhang Wuji kept his eyes open and did not sleep, and at the third watch, sure enough, he heard Hu Qingniu again come quietly from his room and go to Ji Xiaofu’s hut to lay his poison. Three days passed thus. Ji Xiaofu, taking no more of the poison, mended fast, but Jian Jie, Xue Gongyuan, and the rest healed and then relapsed, back and forth, and a few of the hot-tempered ones already grumbled aloud, saying Zhang Wuji’s medicine was too poor a thing. Zhang Wuji paid them no heed. He meant, once this night was past, to slip away with Ji Xiaofu and her daughter. His own yin-poison was past curing, and he would not go back to Mount Wudang¹⁴ either, and so spare his grandshifu and his shibo and shishu their grief, but would find some lonely, out-of-the-way place, and quietly there die.

That night, as he lay down, Zhang Wuji thought how he must leave at first light next morning, and how, odd as Hu Qingniu was, he had after all used him not ill, for had it not been for his treatment, how should the boy have lived to this day? In these two years and more he had received, besides, no small store of the healing art from him, and having passed this time together, he felt a certain melancholy at the parting. So he went to Hu Qingniu’s door and greeted him with a few words, and remembering that the Golden Flower Granny would come sooner or later, and not knowing how he would meet her, he could not help fearing for him, and said, “Mister Hu, you have lived so long in Butterfly Valley. Are you not weary of it? Why not go somewhere else for a while, and take your pleasure?”

Hu Qingniu was taken aback. “I am ill. How am I to travel?” Zhang Wuji said, “Harness up a mule-cart, and off you can go. Only cover the cart’s door and windows over with cloth, close and airtight, and it is done. If you are willing to go abroad, I will go along with you.” Hu Qingniu sighed. “Child, you have a kind heart. Wide as the world is, the pity of it is that everywhere is just the same. These days, how is your chest? Does the cold surge up in your dantian?”¹⁵ Zhang Wuji said, “The cold grows worse day by day, but there is no medicine for it in any case, so let it take its course.”

Hu Qingniu paused a moment, then said, “I shall write you out a prescription to save your life. Use five drugs: danggui, yuanzhi, raw dihuang, duhuo, and fangfeng, and at the second watch take them urgently, with chuanshanjia for the guiding drug.” Zhang Wuji started, thinking that these five drugs had no bearing whatever upon his complaint, and that their natures were in no small part at war with one another, and that to use chuanshanjia as a guide made no sense at all. He asked, “Mister Hu, in what measures?” Hu Qingniu said angrily, “The heavier the better. I have told you. Now be off with you, quickly!”

In all these years, discoursing with Zhang Wuji of medicine and its properties, Hu Qingniu had treated him as half a pupil and half a friend, and, for all the great gap in their years, had always been courteous with him, and to be berated now, of a sudden, so mercilessly, Zhang Wuji could not, on hearing it, but go back to his room in a heat of anger. I urge you in kindness to go abroad and shun disaster, he thought, and for no cause I get this humiliation, and this baffling prescription flung at me besides. Do you take me for one so easily gulled? He lay down on his bed, and turning over in his mind Hu Qingniu’s rude words of a moment before, felt them past all reason, and just as he was drifting drowsily toward sleep, a thought came to him of a sudden. Danggui, yuanzhi… where is there any “the heavier the better”? Could it be… could it be that when he says danggui, he means dāng guī,“you ought to be going home”?

Once he had lit upon the notion that danggui might mean “you ought to go home,” the rest followed: Yuanzhi, “far-set will”, bids me set my will on distant parts, to soar off and away. Shengdi and duhuo need no fathoming: they say that only so is there a way to live, only so can I live on alone. And fangfeng?. Mm, it says I must guard against the leaking of any word. And “at the second watch take them urgently, with chuanshanjia for the guiding drug”, chuanshanjia, the “mountain-piercing scale,” bids me pierce through the mountain and flee, not go by the great road through the valley, and flee, moreover, in haste at the second watch.

At this his whole reading of Hu Qingniu’s ill-fitting, baffling prescription came clear on the instant, and he sprang up from his bed. Then he thought again: Mister Hu must know that some great calamity is upon us, and so has bidden me in kindness to flee at once, but the enemy has not yet come. Why, then, does he not tell me plainly, but set me this riddle? Had I not been able to puzzle it out, would it not have spoilt all? The second watch is now past. I must go quickly. And he supposed that Mister Hu must have some trouble he could not speak of, and that this was why, all these days, he had never left, and that perhaps he had already, in secret, laid some clever contrivance to meet the great foe. But though Hu Qingniu had bidden him “guard against the wind” and “live on alone,” Aunt Ji and her daughter could not be left unsaved.

He stole quietly from his room and made for Ji Xiaofu’s hut. There he saw Ji Xiaofu lying on the straw, but another person besides, stooped and bent over her. It was the middle of the month, and the moonlight came slanting in through the gaps in the hut, and Zhang Wuji saw that the figure wore a square kerchief and a blue gown, with a dark cloth over the face. It was Hu Qingniu. In that breath a thousand doubts came surging up in his heart.

He saw Hu Qingniu’s left hand pinch Ji Xiaofu’s cheek, forcing her mouth open, while the right hand brought out a pill to feed between her lips. Seeing how dire the moment was, Zhang Wuji leapt out in haste, crying, “Mister Hu, you must not harm her… “

The figure started and turned its head, and let go its hold. And with a heavy thud a palm struck it full in the back, Ji Xiaofu’s. The body slumped down soft, and the dark cloth over the face flipped half aside.

Zhang Wuji looked, and could not hold back a cry of shock. For this was not Hu Qingniu at all: with fine brows and a powdered face, it was a middle-aged woman.

Footnotes

1. 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. ↩

2. 阿弥陀佛 – Āmítuófó. Buddhist invocation meaning “Homage to Amitabha Buddha,” commonly used as a greeting or expression of piety. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 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. ↩

4. 昆仑派 – Kūnlún Pài. Kunlun School, a major martial arts school based in the Kunlun Mountains of the northwest. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 江湖 – jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. Itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach, holding not only martial artists but the trades that travel with them, including pedlars, physicians, fortune-tellers, entertainers, boatmen, beggars, outlaws and the like. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 崆峒派 – Kōngtóng Pài. Kongtong School, a martial school based in the Kongtong Mountains of the northwest. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 金花 – jīnhuā. “golden flower”: a plum blossom cast in gold and thrown as a hidden weapon, the mark of the mysterious enemy who wounded these fifteen fighters. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

9. 张无忌 – Zhāng Wújì. His name meaning “Without Envy” or “No Misgivings.” Son of Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu, and the protagonist of the tale. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 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. ↩

11. 女山湖 – Nǚshān Hú. Nüshan Lake, in what is now northern Anhui Province. ↩

12. 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. ↩

13. 金花婆婆 – Jīnhuā Pópo. Golden Flower Granny, the mysterious hunchbacked old woman whose plum-blossom golden flowers strike from her prayer-beads. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 武当山 – Wǔdāng Shān. Sacred Daoist mountain in Hubei Province, later home to the Wudang Order founded by Zhang Sanfeng. See Wikipedia. ↩

15. 丹田 – dāntián. Literally dantian. Energy centre located three finger-widths below the navel, where qi is cultivated and stored. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩