The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 13 Part 7

Zhang Wuji,¹ shaken with horror and grief, lay flat in the tall grass behind the hut and dared not stir.

Just then Yang Buhui,² with two giggling peals of laughter, threw herself onto Zhang Wuji’s back. “Caught you, caught you!” she laughed. Racing about the fields, she had seen Zhang Wuji lying hidden in the grass and, fancying he was playing hide-and-seek with her, had rushed to catch him. Zhang Wuji reached back and gathered her in, one hand covering her mouth, and whispered at her ear, “Make no sound. Do not let the wicked ones see us.” Seeing his face ashen and full of terror, Yang Buhui gave a start.

Miejue Shitai³ came hurrying down from the high slope and said to Minjun, “Go and kill that spawn of sin. Leave no root of calamity behind.” Ding Minjun,⁴ though secretly glad to see her shifu strike Ji Xiaofu⁵ dead with so heavy a hand, could not help her own fear as well. At her shifu’s command she quickly borrowed her shimei Bei Jinyi’s⁶ long jian, took it in hand, and went to seek out Yang Buhui.

Holding Yang Buhui, Zhang Wuji shrank down into the tall grass and dared not draw even a full breath.

Ding Minjun searched back and forth, but found no trace of the little girl, and just as she meant to hunt more closely, Miejue Shitai fell to scolding: “Useless thing, you cannot even find one small child.”

Bei Jinyi had ordinarily been on good terms with Ji Xiaofu. Seeing her die so wretchedly beneath her shifu’s palm, and now bidden to hunt down and kill the orphaned girl she had left behind, she could not bear it. “I think that child seems to have fled out of the valley,” she said. She knew her shifu was hasty of temper, and that if the search beyond the valley came to nothing, she would never have the patience to turn back and look again. Alone in the world, the little girl might not live in any case, but that was still better than to see her run through by Ding Minjun’s jian before her very eyes. “Why did you not say so sooner?” said Miejue Shitai heavily, and shot her a savage look before leading the way out of the valley. Ding Minjun and Bei Jinyi followed after.

Yang Buhui did not yet know that great disaster had befallen her mother. Her round, wide eyes rolled about, wearing a questioning look. Zhang Wuji, lying with his ear to the ground, listened until the three of them had gone further and further off, then sprang up, took Yang Buhui by the hand, and ran for the high slope. “Wuji gege,” laughed Yang Buhui, “have the wicked ones gone? We are going up the hill to play, aren’t we?”

Zhang Wuji did not answer, but pulled her straight up to Ji Xiaofu. Only when she came close did Yang Buhui see her mother lying on the ground. She started violently and cried out, “Mama! Mama!” She threw herself upon her.

Zhang Wuji felt for Ji Xiaofu’s breath: it was faint in the extreme, and he saw that her skull had been shattered to fragments by that single palm of Miejue Shitai’s. Even were Hu Qingniu⁷ to come at once, there would be little hope of saving her. Ji Xiaofu opened her eyes a little. Seeing Zhang Wuji and her daughter, her lips moved slightly as if to speak, but not the least sound would come, and two great tears rolled from her eyes. Zhang Wuji took gold needles from his breast and drove them hard into her Shenting, Yintang, Chengqi, and other acupoints,⁸ so that for a while she should not feel the fierce pain in her head.

Ji Xiaofu’s spirit rallied a little. “I beg you… beg you…” she said in a low voice, “take her to her father… I would not… would not harm her father…” Her left hand reached to her own breast, as if to take something out, and then her head fell suddenly to one side, and her breath ceased, and she was dead.

Yang Buhui clung to her mother’s body and only wept, crying without pause, “Mama, Mama, does it hurt? Does it hurt very much?” Ji Xiaofu’s body grew cold by degrees, and still the child asked on and on. She did not understand why her mother did not move at all, nor why she would not answer her.

Zhang Wuji’s heart was grieved already, and recalling how, when his own parents met their cruel end, he too had wept and wailed thus over their bodies, he could not hold back, and his tears gushed like a spring. When the two of them had wept a while, Zhang Wuji thought: Auntie Ji, at her death, begged me to take little sister Buhui to her father. Mm, her father is named Yang Xiao,⁹ the Left Messenger of the Brightness¹⁰ in the Ming Order,¹¹ who dwells on some Zuowang Peak¹² in the Kunlun Mountains.¹³ I must, without fail, take her there. But he did not know that the Kunlun Mountains lay ten thousand li¹⁴ away in the farthest west. How were two children ever to get there? Remembering that Ji Xiaofu, as her breath failed, had reached to her breast to take something out, he felt at her neck, and found a silk cord hung there, and upon it a small, blackened iron token, inlaid in gold thread with the shape of a flame.

Zhang Wuji did not know what it was either. He took it off and hung it about Yang Buhui’s neck. Fetching an iron spade from the hut, he dug a pit and buried Ji Xiaofu. By now Yang Buhui had worn herself out with weeping and fallen into a deep sleep. When she woke, it cost Zhang Wuji no end of words before he could trick her into believing that her mother had flown up to heaven, and would come down from the sky to meet her again only after a very, very long time.

Zhang Wuji threw together some plain food, and the two of them ate. Then, worn out utterly, he lay down on the couch and slept. Waking the next day, he made up two small bundles, took the dozen-odd liang¹⁵ of silver Hu Qingniu had left him, and led Yang Buhui to bow a few times before her mother’s grave. Then the two children left Butterfly Valley.¹⁶

Footnotes

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

2. 杨不悔 – Yáng Bùhuǐ. Her name meaning “No Regret.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 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. ↩

4. 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. ↩

5. 纪晓芙 – Jì Xiǎofú. Her name meaning “Dawn Hibiscus.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

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

8. 神庭穴 (Shéntíng), 印堂穴 (Yìntáng), and 承泣穴 (Chéngqì) are acupoints on the head and face, needled here to ease the pain. ↩

9. 杨逍 – Yáng Xiāo. His name meaning “Free and Unfettered.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 光明左使者 – Guāngmíng Zuǒ Shǐzhě. Left Messenger of the Brightness, one of the two foremost emissaries of the Ming Order. ↩

11. 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. ↩

12. 坐忘峰 – Zuòwàng Fēng. Zuowang Peak in the Kunlun Mountains, where Yang Xiao dwells in seclusion; 坐忘 (“sitting in forgetfulness”) is a Daoist meditative term drawn from the Zhuangzi. ↩

13. 昆仑山 – Kūnlún Shān. Kunlun Mountains, a great range in western China. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

15. 两 – liǎng. Unit of weight for precious metals, approximately 37.5 grams. Used as currency denomination in ancient China. ↩

16. 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. ↩