The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 13 Part 4

Young as Zhang Wuji¹ was, he had at first understood nothing of these great truths of life and death, but for the past four years he had lived day and night on the very margin of life and death, and so came, of himself and naturally, to grasp the meaning of Zhuangzi’s² words. He had not believed Zhuangzi before, but now that his days upon earth could be counted on the fingers, he could not help hoping that after death there might be some other, wondrous realm, and that he might there rue the pointless struggle to cling to life.

Now, hearing the Golden Flower Granny³ sigh “A pity” over and over, he gave a faint smile and, offhand, spoke aloud the three lines of scripture that had risen in his mind. “What does that mean?” asked the Golden Flower Granny. Zhang Wuji explained them once through and said, “These are words from the book of Zhuangzi. My father taught them to me.” The Golden Flower Granny was struck dumb on the instant.

From these few lines her thoughts had turned to her dead husband. Decades of marriage they had shared, a love beyond compare, and now, once parted by the wall of yin and yang, they would never meet again. If to live were indeed like straying in a foreign land, and death a return to one’s native soil, then her husband’s poisoning by an enemy, and Hu Qingniu’s⁴ refusal to cure him, might not be evil things after all. Native soil? Native soil? But is a return to native soil truly better than the foreign land?

The little girl standing by the Golden Flower Granny understood not a word of what Zhang Wuji had said, nor why the granny, on hearing it, had gone as though bewitched. Her lovely eyes turned from the granny to Zhang Wuji and back, roving over their two faces.

At last the Golden Flower Granny sighed and said, “The matters of the shadowy world are dim and past all knowing. Death may not be a thing to fear, yet no mortal escapes death, and this body of ours cannot in the end elude that day. Live one day more, then, and it is one day gained!”

Ever since he had seen how cruelly the Golden Flower Granny had wounded Ji Xiaofu⁵ and the other fourteen, and how Hu Qingniu and his wife dreaded her, lacking even the courage to flee, Zhang Wuji had imagined her a creature of matchless savagery, but meeting her face to face, he found it wholly otherwise. That night, under the lamp, he had glimpsed her only hurriedly and not seen clearly. Now he saw plainly that she was a kindly, gentle old woman. Her face was stiff and numb, all chicken-skin and wrinkles, showing neither joy nor anger, yet her eyes were clear and bright, quick as a young girl’s, and the warmth and kindness in them was plain to see.

The Golden Flower Granny asked again, “Child, what is your father’s honoured name?” “My father’s surname is Zhang,” said Zhang Wuji, “his name the character Cui, ‘verdant,’ above, and Shan, ‘mountain,’ below, and he is a disciple of the Wudang Order.”⁶ But he did not mention that his father had cut his own throat and died.

The Golden Flower Granny was greatly astonished. “You are the son of Zhang the Fifth Xia⁷ of Wudang? Then that villain used the Xuanming Divine Palm⁸ to wound you in order to force from you the whereabouts of Xie Xun the Golden-Haired Lion King⁹ and the Dragon-Slaying Dao?”¹⁰ “Indeed,” said Zhang Wuji. “He put me to every kind of cruel torture, but I would sooner die than tell.” “You truly know it?” said the Golden Flower Granny. “Mm, the Golden-Haired Lion King is my sworn father,” said Zhang Wuji, “and I will never let slip where he is.”

The Golden Flower Granny swept out her left hand and had both his hands clasped within her palm. There came a crackling of knuckles. The pain nearly made Zhang Wuji faint, and he felt a bone-piercing, ice-cold chill pass from his hands to his chest, a cold different from the Xuanming Divine Palm, yet no less hard to bear. “Good child, dear child,” said the Golden Flower Granny in a gentle voice, “tell where Xie Xun is, and Granny will cure your cold poison and pass to you an art unmatched under heaven.”

Tears and mucus streaming with the pain, Zhang Wuji lifted his head proudly. “My father and mother would give up their very lives rather than betray where my sworn father hides. Golden Flower Granny, do you take me for one who would sell out his parents?” The Golden Flower Granny smiled. “Very good, very good! And your father? Is he here?” Silently she worked her neili,¹¹ and the fingers about his hands, like an iron ring, tightened a further degree. “Why do you not pour quicksilver into my ears?” cried Zhang Wuji loudly. “Why not make me swallow steel needles, swallow leeches? Four years ago, when I was still a small child, I did not fear that villain’s every cruelty. Now that I am grown, am I to become more craven, not less?”

The Golden Flower Granny laughed aloud. “You fancy yourself grown, no longer a child. Haha, haha…” She laughed a while, then let go of Zhang Wuji’s hands. From wrist to fingertip they had turned wholly purple-black.

The little girl gave him a meaningful look. “Quick, thank Granny for sparing your life.” Zhang Wuji gave a snort. “If she killed me, perhaps I should be the happier for it. What is there to thank?” The little girl knit her brows and said crossly, “You will not do as you are told. Then I shall pay you no more mind.” She turned away, yet stole sidelong glances at him from the corner of her eye to see what he would do.

The Golden Flower Granny smiled. “Ah Li,¹² alone on the island with no little companion, you have been sorely lonely. Shall we carry this child off to wait upon you? Only he has such a mulish temper, so stubborn, and will scarcely obey.” The little girl arched her long brows and clapped her hands, laughing. “Splendid! Let us carry him off, then. And if he will not obey, can Granny not find a way to bring him to heel?” Hearing the two of them speak back and forth, Zhang Wuji grew frantic within. Were the Golden Flower Granny to kill him then and there, so be it, but to be carried off to some island, there to be tormented by the two of them, neither dead nor alive, would be worse than anything he could bear.

The Golden Flower Granny nodded. “Come with me. First we must go and find a certain person and see to a certain matter, and then return together to Spirit Snake Island.”¹³ “You are no good people,” said Zhang Wuji angrily, “and I will not go with you.” The Golden Flower Granny smiled. “On our Spirit Snake Island we have everything: things to eat, things to play with, such as you have never seen. Good child, come along with Granny.”

Zhang Wuji spun round of a sudden and took to his heels, but he had gone a single stride when the Golden Flower Granny was already before him. He twisted aside and darted off to the left. Again a single stride, and again the Golden Flower Granny was before him. “Child,” she said gently, “you cannot escape. Come away quietly with me.” Zhang Wuji clenched his teeth and struck a fierce palm at her. The Golden Flower Granny swayed aside, evading it, and blew a breath upon his palm. His hand, already pinched black and swollen by her, felt at that breath as if a keen blade had cut the wound afresh, and the pain made him leap into the air.

Suddenly a girl’s voice called out, “Wuji gege, what are you playing at? Let me join in!” It was Yang Buhui,¹⁴ come near, and behind her Ji Xiaofu too stepped out from the thicket. Mother and daughter had just strolled back from the fields, and coming all at once upon the Golden Flower Granny, Ji Xiaofu turned pale on the instant. Mustering her courage at last, she said in a trembling voice, “Granny, you must not ill-use a child!”

The Golden Flower Granny fixed Ji Xiaofu with a glare and sneered. “Not dead yet? Do my old-woman’s affairs need your meddling tongue as well? Come here and let me look at you. How is it you are still not dead to this day?” Ji Xiaofu came of a house of martial learning, a high disciple of a famous school, and was by nature bold enough, but now, mindful of her daughter, she dared not lightly court danger, and taking the child’s hand she retreated a step instead. “Wuji,” she said in a low voice, “come over here!”

Zhang Wuji made to go. The little girl, Ah Li, turned her palm and seized the Sanyangluo¹⁵ on his forearm. “Stay where you are. Your name is Wuji, your surname Zhang. You are Zhang Wuji, are you not?” The moment the Sanyangluo was clamped, half of Zhang Wuji’s body went numb and limp, and he could not stir. In alarm and fury he cried, “Let go! Let go of me at once!”

Suddenly a clear, crisp woman’s voice said, “Xiaofu, how can you be so spineless? If you are to go over, then go over!” Ji Xiaofu, startled and glad at once, turned and cried, “Shifu!”,¹⁶ but there was no one behind her. Looking closely, she saw at last, far off, a nun in a grey cloth robe walking slowly toward them: her shifu, the zhangmen¹⁷ of the Emei Order,¹⁸ Miejue Shitai.¹⁹ Behind her came two disciples: one her shijie²⁰ Ding Minjun,²¹ the other her shimei²² Bei Jinyi.²³

So far off was she that the Golden Flower Granny could not yet make out her features, yet her voice reached every ear as though she stood close at hand, proof enough of profound neili. Miejue Shitai’s great fame had spread far and wide. Not a soul in the wulin²⁴ but had heard of her. Only she rarely came down from her mountain, and few had ever set eyes on her. As she drew near, she proved to be about forty-four or forty-five, her features by any reckoning most fair, yet her two brows slanted downward at the ends, giving her whole face a strange, uncanny cast, with almost a touch of the hanged-ghost of the opera stage about it.

Ji Xiaofu went forward, knelt, and kowtowed. “Shifu, I trust you are well,” she said softly. “Not yet vexed to death by you, so, well enough,” said Miejue Shitai. Ji Xiaofu remained kneeling, not daring to rise. But hearing the low, cold laugh of Ding Minjun behind her shifu, she knew that Ding had already spoken no little ill of her before their shifu, and cold sweat broke out all down her back. “This granny bids you go over that she may look at you,” said Miejue Shitai icily, “and see how it is you are still not dead to this day. Go over, then, and let her look.”

“Yes,” said Ji Xiaofu. She rose, strode up to the Golden Flower Granny, and said in a ringing voice, “Golden Flower Granny, my shifu has come. Put away your bullying and your violence, all of it.” The Golden Flower Granny coughed twice, glared at Miejue Shitai, nodded, and said, “Mm, so you are the zhangmen of the Emei Order. I have struck your disciple. What do you mean to do about it?”

“Well struck,” said Miejue Shitai coldly. “Strike her again if it please you! Beat her to death, and it is no concern of mine.”

Ji Xiaofu felt as though a knife had run through her heart. “Shifu!” she cried, and two streams of hot tears ran down. She knew her shifu had ever been most fierce in shielding her own: when disciples wronged others, plainly in the wrong themselves, she would still defend them to the last with wrangling and bluster. That she should now speak such words showed clearly that she no longer counted Ji Xiaofu her disciple at all.

“I have no grievance, no feud, with the Emei Order,” said the Golden Flower Granny. “One beating was enough. Ah Li, let us go!” And slowly she began to turn away.

Ding Minjun did not know the Golden Flower Granny’s origins. Seeing her so aged and decrepit, a frame worn thin with sickness, yet so rude to her shifu, Ding was seized with fury. She sprang forward, barred the way before her, and cried, “You would go off just like that, without so much as a word of apology to my shifu?” As she spoke, her right hand drew her jian²⁵ half out of the sheath, in a threatening show.

Footnotes

1. 张无忌 – Zhāng Wújì. His name meaning “Without Envy” or “No Misgivings.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 庄子·逍遥游 – Zhuāngzǐ · Xiāoyáoyóu. Literally Zhuangzi: Carefree Wandering. Opening chapter of the Zhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoist philosophy attributed to the 4th-century BCE sage Zhuang Zhou. Passage Zhang Cuishan quotes describes a vast, mysterious northern ocean at the edge of the world, an image that resonates powerfully with their predicament. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 金花婆婆 – Jīnhuā Pópo. Literally Golden Flower Granny. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 胡青牛 – Hú Qīngniú. His name meaning “Green Ox.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 纪晓芙 – Jì Xiǎofú. Her name meaning “Dawn Hibiscus.” 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. His epithet is the Silver Hook Iron Brush. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 玄冥神掌 – Xuánmíng Shén Zhǎng. Xuanming Divine Palm, a fearsome art that drives a bone-chilling yin poison into its victim. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 谢逊 – Xiè Xùn. His name meaning “Modest” or “Yielding.” His courtesy name Tuisi (退思) meaning “Retreat and Reflect.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 屠龙刀 – Túlóng Dāo. Dragon-Slaying Dao; the name’s literal sense is “dragon-slaying”. Legendary blade and the supreme weapon of the jianghu, forged with the Heavenly Jian from meteoric iron. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 内力 – nèilì. Literally internal force. Kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi; generates tangible effects such as deflecting weapons or scaling walls. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 阿离 – Ā Lí. Her name with the prefix 阿 (Ā) marking familiar address. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 灵蛇岛 – Língshé Dǎo. Literally Spirit Snake Island. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

15. 三阳络 – Sānyángluò. Acupoint on the forearm; when seized, it numbs and disables half the body. ↩

16. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher or master responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 掌门 – zhǎngmén. Literally the one who holds the gate. Head of a martial arts school or order, holding its authority and its transmission. Zhǎng means to take charge of or preside over. Mén means gate, and by extension the school itself. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 峨嵋派 – Éméi Pài. Emei Order, the Buddhist martial order founded by Guo Xiang on Mount Emei; 派 renders as “Order” for its religious character. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 灭绝师太 – Mièjué Shītài. Her dharma-name meaning “Extinction” or “Annihilation”. 师太 (shītài) is an honorific for a senior Buddhist nun. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

20. 师姐 – shījiě. Female senior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Jiě means older sister. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 丁敏君 – Dīng Mǐnjūn. Styled the Poison-Handed Wuyan (毒手无盐); 无盐 alludes to the legendary Zhong Wuyan, an ugly but virtuous woman of antiquity. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

22. 师妹 – shīmèi. Female junior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Mèi means younger sister. Used here by Hu Qingniu as an affectionate address to his wife. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

23. 贝锦仪 – Bèi Jǐnyí. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

24. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. Wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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