The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 13 Part 5

The Golden Flower Granny¹ suddenly put out two fingers, gave the scabbard a light pinch from the outside, and let go at once, laughing. “Scrap bronze and rotten iron, and you bring it out to frighten people?” Ding Minjun’s² fury blazed the fiercer, and she made to draw the jian³ from its sheath. To her astonishment, pull as she might, the jian would not come out. Ah Li⁴ laughed. “Scrap bronze and rotten iron, and gone rusty too!”

Ding Minjun heaved again, and still could not draw it, and only then did she understand that when the Golden Flower Granny had pinched the scabbard just now, so seemingly careless, she had secretly worked her neili⁵ and crimped the scabbard inward, so that it gripped the blade fast. Draw it Ding could not, yet to give up rankled. Her face flushed crimson, and she cut a most sorry figure.

Miejue Shitai⁶ stepped slowly forward, gripped the jian-hilt between three fingers, and gave it a light shake. The scabbard split at once in two, and the blade sprang free. “This jian is no keen edge or treasured blade,” she said, “but neither is it scrap bronze and rotten iron. Golden Flower Granny, why, instead of taking your ease upon Spirit Snake Island,⁷ have you come to the Central Plains⁸ to stir up trouble?”

Seeing the way she had shaken the jian free and split the scabbard with three fingers, the Golden Flower Granny felt a chill of respect, and thought to herself, This thieving nun’s fame is very great. She has some real skill after all. Wreathing her face in smiles, she said, “My husband is dead, and alone on the island I was moped and bored, so I came out to wander here and there, to see whether I might find some agreeable monk or priest to take home for company.” By pointedly saying “monk or priest” she meant, of course, to jibe at the other for being a nun who yet wandered the world at large.

Miejue Shitai’s pair of drooping brows drooped lower still. Raising her long jian aslant, she said in a deep, low voice, “Show your weapon!”

In all their years under her, Ding Minjun, Ji Xiaofu,⁹ and the rest had never seen their shifu cross hands with anyone, and Ji Xiaofu in particular, knowing how weird and unfathomable was the Golden Flower Granny’s skill, was the more anxious.

Zhang Wuji’s¹⁰ arm was still gripped by Ah Li, and his upper body grew ever more numb. “Let go of me, quickly!” he cried. “Why do you hold on to me?” Seeing that Ji Xiaofu beside them looked ready to intervene, that if she did not release him, Ji would surely step in, and then she would have to let go in any case, Ah Li flung him from her with a shove and loosed his arm. “See whether you can escape,” she said coldly.

The Golden Flower Granny smiled faintly. “In her day the swordplay of the Emei Order’s¹¹ Guo Xiang nüxia¹² shook the whole world with its fame, exalted indeed. But who knows how much of it is left, handed down to the disciples of disciples?” “Even were but a tenth left,” said Miejue Shitai grimly, “it would suffice to sweep away demons and outsiders.”

The Golden Flower Granny fixed her eyes, without a blink, on the point of the long jian in her opponent’s hand. Then all at once she raised the staff in her hand and jabbed swiftly at the blade. Miejue Shitai’s jian quivered and stabbed at her shoulder. Amid her coughing the Golden Flower Granny swept the staff across. Miejue Shitai followed her jian, gliding like a flash of lightning behind her foe. Her footing not yet set, the jian-stroke arrived first. Yet the Golden Flower Granny did not turn. Reversing the staff, she smote backhand at the blade. Three or four moves passed, and each inwardly praised the other’s skill. Then came a ringing clang: the long jian in Miejue Shitai’s hand had snapped in two, for where jian had met staff, the jian was shivered by the staff.

All the onlookers, save Ah Li, were struck with alarm. The staff in the Golden Flower Granny’s hand was a drab, blackish grey, wholly unremarkable, seemingly neither gold nor iron. That it could shatter a keen jian must be by virtue of her deep and abundant neili. But the Golden Flower Granny, having just crossed weapons with Miejue Shitai, knew that the jian had broken by the sharpness of the staff as a weapon, and not because her own power had prevailed. This staff was a rare product of the sea-bed beside Spirit Snake Island, called Coral Gold,¹³ several strange metals blended with coral, and formed over millions of years in the deep sea. It shears iron as one cuts bean-curd and strikes stone as one taps cotton. Let a blade be never so keen, and it snaps at a touch.

The Golden Flower Granny did not press her attack, but only propped her staff on the ground and coughed, a hand at her breast. The three Emei disciples, Ji Xiaofu, Ding Minjun, and Bei Jinyi,¹⁴ fearing their shifu hurt, all rushed to Miejue Shitai’s side to attend her.

Ah Li turned her palm and once more seized Zhang Wuji’s wrist. “I told you that you could not escape, did I not?” she laughed. This too caught him unprepared. The pulse-gate was clamped, and again half his body went weak. Twice now he had fallen for the little girl’s tricks, and in shame and rage, in fret and fury, he flew his right foot at her waist. Ah Li bore down with her fingers, and Zhang Wuji’s foot had kicked out but six inches before it could rise no further. “Will you let go or not?” he cried angrily. “I will not,” laughed Ah Li, “and what can you do about it?”

Zhang Wuji suddenly ducked his head and bit hard at the back of her hand. A sharp pain shot through Ah Li’s hand. She gave a sharp cry and loosed her right hand, while the five clawed fingers of her left raked at Zhang Wuji’s face. He sprang back in haste, but too slow. The nail of her middle finger sank into the flesh and drew a bloody weal down his right cheek. The back of Ah Li’s right hand was a smear of blood and torn flesh, so hard had Zhang Wuji’s bite been. The pain nearly brought her to tears.

While the two children scuffled off to one side, the Golden Flower Granny did not so much as turn her eyes. She gave them not a single glance.

Miejue Shitai cast away the broken half of the jian. “That was my disciple’s weapon,” she said, “never fit to withstand a master’s stroke.” So saying, she loosed her back-bundle and drew out an ancient jian some four feet long.

At a single glance the Golden Flower Granny saw a faint sheen of green vapour rising from the scabbard. Undrawn though the blade was, one could already guess its rare quality. On the scabbard, inlaid in gold thread, were two characters: Yitian, “Heaven-Reliant.” She started violently and blurted out, “The Heavenly Jian!”¹⁵

Miejue Shitai nodded. “Indeed, it is the Heavenly Jian.”

Through the Golden Flower Granny’s mind flashed at once the six lines handed down through the wulin:¹⁶ “Supreme in the wulin, the Dragon-Slaying Dao. Commanding all beneath heaven, none dares disobey. Heavenly Jian undrawn, who can contend?”¹⁷ “So the Heavenly Jian has fallen into the hands of the Emei Order,” she murmured.

“Take my stroke!” cried Miejue Shitai. Gripping the hilt, without so much as removing the scabbard, she jabbed jian and sheath together at the Golden Flower Granny’s chest. The Golden Flower Granny raised her staff to parry. Miejue Shitai’s wrist trembled slightly, and the scabbard met the staff. There came a soft, tearing hiss, as of thick paper rent apart: the Golden Flower Granny’s Coral Gold staff, that marvel from over the seas, that treasure among weapons, had snapped in two.

The Golden Flower Granny was greatly shaken. Even sheathed, she thought, the Heavenly Jian is already so fearsome. Its fame is no idle word. She gazed at the treasured jian a long while, then said, “Miejue Shitai, I pray you let me see the look of the blade.”

Miejue Shitai shook her head in refusal. “Once this jian leaves its sheath,” she said coldly, “it does not return to it without drinking blood.”

The two of them looked sternly at each other, and for a long while neither spoke.

By now the Golden Flower Granny knew that the nun’s power was in truth no less than her own. As to the marvel of her techniques, that she could not yet make out. But the woman being zhangmen¹⁸ of the Emei Order was surely no ordinary figure, and with “the foremost treasured jian under heaven” in her hand besides, the Golden Flower Granny would by no means come off well. She coughed lightly twice, turned, took Ah Li by the hand, and drifted away.

Ah Li looked back and called, “Zhang Wuji! Zhang Wuji!” The cry grew fainter with the distance, until at last it faded away.

Ding Minjun, Ji Xiaofu, and Bei Jinyi, seeing their shifu victorious and the powerful foe withdrawn, were overjoyed beyond measure. “Shifu,” said Ding Minjun, “that old woman, did she not have eyes and yet fail to know Mount Tai?¹⁹ To dare cross hands with your venerable self was to court her own suffering indeed.”

“Hereafter, in your travels upon the jianghu,”²⁰ said Miejue Shitai gravely, “the moment you hear her cough, flee far and avoid her at once.” In her jian-stroke just now, though she had sheared through her opponent’s staff, the jian had carried the Emei Nine Yang Skill²¹ she had cultivated thirty years, yet that divine force, striking the Golden Flower Granny’s body, was as though it fell into a boundless ocean and vanished without trace, stirring her garments but a single time and not driving her back so much as a step. To think of it now still chilled her heart. And she felt too that, deep though the Golden Flower Granny’s neili cultivation ran, her thews were hale and vigorous, as of one in the prime of life, in no way those of a doddering, worn-out old woman, and the reason of it passed all fathoming.

Footnotes

1. 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. ↩

2. 丁敏君 – Dīng Mǐnjūn. Shijie of Ji Xiaofu in the Emei Order, 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. ↩

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

4. 阿离 – Ā Lí. Young girl, companion to the Golden Flower Granny upon Spirit Snake Island. Prefix 阿 (Ā) marks familiar address. ↩

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

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

7. 灵蛇岛 – Língshé Dǎo. Spirit Snake Island, in the East Sea; the stronghold of the Golden Flower Granny. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 中原 – Zhōngyuán. Literally “Central Plains,” the heartland of Chinese civilisation along the Yellow River valley. Historically refers to the cultural and political centre of China. See Wikipedia. ↩

9. 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. ↩

10. 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. ↩

11. 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. ↩

12. 郭襄 – Guō Xiāng. Younger daughter of Guo Jing and Huang Rong, known as the Little Eastern Heretic; founder of the Emei Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 珊瑚金 – shānhú jīn. Coral Gold; a rare substance from the sea-bed near Spirit Snake Island, several strange metals fused with coral over ages, able to shear the keenest blade. ↩

14. 贝锦仪 – Bèi Jǐnyí. Disciple of the Emei Order, junior to Ji Xiaofu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 倚天剑 – Yǐtiān Jiàn. Heavenly Jian; the name’s literal sense is “heaven-reliant”, preserving 倚 (yǐ, to lean upon). One of the two supreme weapons of the jianghu, forged with the Dragon-Slaying Dao from meteoric iron, and the title weapon of the novel (rendered “Heavenly Sword” in the book’s title). See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 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. ↩

17. 武林至尊，宝刀屠龙。号令天下，莫敢不从。倚天不出，谁与争锋 – wǔlín zhìzūn, bǎodāo túlóng. Hàolìng tiānxià, mò gǎn bù cóng. Yǐtiān bù chū, shuí yǔ zhēngfēng. Verse the whole wulin knows, and the one that names both weapons: “Supreme in the wulin, the Dragon-Slaying Dao. Commanding all beneath heaven, none dares disobey. Heavenly Jian undrawn, who can contend?” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 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. ↩

19. 泰山 – Tài Shān. Mount Tai, foremost of the Five Sacred Mountains. “To have eyes yet fail to know Mount Tai” is an idiom for failing to recognise a great personage. ↩

20. 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. ↩

21. 峨嵋九阳功 – Éméi Jiǔyáng Gōng. Emei Nine Yang Skill, a branch of the Nine Yang cultivation derived from the partial inscription left on the Shaolin cassock. One of three sibling arts, alongside Wudang and Shaolin Nine Yang. ↩