The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 13 Part 1

No regret that Zhongzi should leap my wall.¹

Zhang Wuji,² seeing that it was a woman, was struck with astonishment. “You… who are you?” he asked. The woman had taken the full weight of an Emei Order³ strike to the back. The pain had blanched her face white, and she could not get out a word.

Ji Xiaofu⁴ asked too, “Who are you? Why have you come to harm me, again and again?” Still the woman did not answer. Ji Xiaofu drew her jian⁵ and held its point at the woman’s breast.

“I shall go and look in on Mister Hu,” said Zhang Wuji. He was afraid that Hu Qingniu⁶ had already fallen to the woman’s venomous hand, and he reckoned that she must belong to the party of the wicked Golden Flower Granny.⁷ He hurried to the door of Hu Qingniu’s bedchamber, shoved it open with a bang, and called, “Sir! Sir! Are you well?” But no answer came. In a rush of alarm he groped over the table for flint and steel, lit a candle, and saw that the bedding had been thrown back, yet of Hu Qingniu there was no sign.

Zhang Wuji had feared he would find Hu Qingniu’s corpse sprawled on the floor, already dead by the woman’s hand. Seeing no one in the room, he felt a little easier. If the master has been carried off by the enemy, he thought, then perhaps his life is not yet in danger. He was about to give chase when he suddenly heard heavy breathing from beneath the bed. Bending down and lifting the candle, he saw Hu Qingniu lying bound hand and foot under the bed. Overjoyed, Zhang Wuji quickly pulled him out. A great walnut had been stuffed into his mouth, which was why he could not speak.

Zhang Wuji took the walnut from his mouth and set about untying the ropes at his hands and feet.

“How did you come here?” Hu Qingniu asked at once.

“A woman I did not know came to lay poison,” said Zhang Wuji. “Auntie Ji has already subdued her. Sir, you are not hurt?”

“Never mind untying me first,” said Hu Qingniu. “Bring that woman to me, quickly, quickly, or it will be too late.”

“Why?” asked Zhang Wuji, puzzled.

“Bring her here at once. No, first fetch three Bezoar and Dragon’s Blood Pills⁸ and get her to swallow them. They are in the third drawer. Hurry!” He urged the boy on without pause, his face taut with dread.

Zhang Wuji knew the Bezoar and Dragon’s Blood Pills for a wondrous antidote: Hu Qingniu compounded them with no small number of rare medicines, and a single pill sufficed to break the fiercest poison. Yet here he was, bidding the boy give the woman three at once. Could she have taken a poison of some overwhelming dose?

Seeing Hu Qingniu so altered, so frantic, he dared ask no more. He took the pills and ran into Ji Xiaofu’s thatched shed. “Swallow these, quickly!” he said to the woman.

“Get away,” the woman cursed. “Who wants kindness from a little thief like you?” She had caught the scent of the pills and knew them at once for an antidote.

“It is Mister Hu who bids you take them!” said Zhang Wuji.

“Away, away!” said the woman again, but Ji Xiaofu had struck her down, and her voice was very faint.

Zhang Wuji did not understand what Hu Qingniu intended. He guessed that, while binding Hu Qingniu, the woman-thief had been caught by one of his poisoned darts, and that Hu Qingniu wished to keep her alive to question her about the enemy. So he forced the three pills into her mouth, and said to Ji Xiaofu, “Let us take her to Mister Hu and let him decide what to do with her.” Ji Xiaofu sealed the woman’s acupoints, and she and Zhang Wuji each took her by an arm and carried her into Hu Qingniu’s bedchamber.

Hu Qingniu still lay on the floor. Seeing the woman brought in, he asked hurriedly, “Has she taken the medicine?”

“She has,” said Zhang Wuji.

“Very good, very good!” said Hu Qingniu, much comforted. Zhang Wuji then cut through the ropes that bound him.

The moment his hands and feet were free, Hu Qingniu went to the woman, turned back her eyelids to read the colour of the blood within, and felt her pulse. “You… how have you come by an external wound as well? Who struck you?” His voice held both alarm and tenderness.

The woman pursed her lips, gave a snort, and said, “Ask that fine disciple of yours.”

Hu Qingniu turned. “Was it you who struck her?” he demanded of Zhang Wuji.

“She was about to… “ The words were scarcely half spoken when Hu Qingniu, smack, smack, dealt him two heavy slaps across the face.

The two blows were exceedingly heavy, and came so far beyond Zhang Wuji’s expectation that, wholly unguarded, he did not dodge at all. Golden stars whirled before his eyes and he nearly swooned. Ji Xiaofu thrust out her jian. “What are you doing?” she cried.

Hu Qingniu paid no heed at all to the keen blade glinting green before him. “How does your chest feel?” he asked the woman. “Is there any pain in your belly?” His manner was solicitous beyond measure, utterly unlike the man who at other times would watch death come and lift no hand to help. The woman, though, was cold, and would scarcely acknowledge him. Hu Qingniu released her acupoints, kneaded her hands and feet, took up several medicines and fed them to her with all his attention, then gathered her up and laid her on the bed, gently drawing the quilt over her and carefully tucking the gaps about her neck. Such tenderness, such care, how could this be the manner of a man dealing with an enemy? Zhang Wuji, rubbing his high-swollen cheeks, grew more bewildered the longer he watched.

Affection brimmed over Hu Qingniu’s face. He gazed at the woman a long moment, then said softly, “This time you have poison and injury both. If I can heal you, will we two give up our contests for ever?”

The woman smiled. “A trifling hurt like this is nothing. But the poison I have taken, how could you know it? If you truly cure me, I shall submit to you. Only I fear the Medicine Immortal’s⁹ skill may not, after all, match the Poison Immortal’s.”¹⁰ And she gave a faint smile, her face full of coquettish charm.

Little though Zhang Wuji understood of the love between man and woman, even he could see that the two of them were bound in deep and clinging affection.

“Ten years ago,” said Hu Qingniu, “I told you the Medicine Immortal could never match the Poison Immortal, and you would not believe it. Aiya, anything at all may be made a contest, but how can you so abuse your own body? This once I truly hope the Medicine Immortal proves the greater. Otherwise I shall not live on alone.”

The woman laughed softly. “Had I poisoned some other person, you would still have yielded to me, feigning that your skill fell short of mine. Hee hee, now that I have poisoned myself, you have no choice but to bring out every last trick you own.”

Hu Qingniu smoothed her hair and sighed. “I am truly worried sick. Say no more now. Close your eyes and rest. If you secretly circulate your neili¹¹ to ruin yourself, that would be no fair contest.”

The woman smiled. “Victory and defeat must be decided in the open and above board. I would never stoop so low.” With that she closed her eyes, the sweet smile still at the corners of her mouth.

The exchange left Ji Xiaofu and Zhang Wuji dumbstruck. Hu Qingniu turned and made Zhang Wuji a deep bow. “Little brother, in a moment of desperation I gave you great offence. I beg your pardon.”

“I do not understand the least bit of it,” Zhang Wuji said, still resentful. “I have no idea what you are about.”

Hu Qingniu raised his palm and, smack, smack, slapped himself hard twice across the face. “Little brother, I owe you a great debt: you saved my life. It was only out of care for my wife’s health that I offended you just now. I am sorry indeed.”

“She… she is your wife?” asked Zhang Wuji, startled.

“She is indeed my wife,” said Hu Qingniu with a nod. “If your anger is not yet spent, strike me two more slaps. Otherwise I shall kowtow to beg your forgiveness. That you saved my life would be little enough, but my wife’s life, too, you have saved.”

Hu Qingniu was ordinarily a grave and dignified man, and Zhang Wuji held him in some awe. To see him now slapping his own face showed how sincere his apology was. Hearing, too, that the woman was his wife, the boy felt the anger drain wholly from his breast. “I could not presume to accept your kowtow,” he said. “I am your disciple. That you struck me twice is nothing. Only I truly cannot make sense of it all.”

Hu Qingniu bade Ji Xiaofu and Zhang Wuji be seated. “Since matters have come to this, it is no longer convenient to keep the truth from you. My wife’s surname is Wang, her given name Nangu. She and I were shixiong and shimei of the same school. When the two of us were learning our arts under our shifu, besides practising the martial arts, I gave myself to the way of medicine, while she studied the arts of poison. She held that the reason a person learns martial arts is to kill. Poison too is for killing, and so the martial arts and poison-craft complete one another. Master the arts of poison, and one’s fighting power is more than doubled. But medicine cures the sick and saves lives, and runs counter to the way of martial arts. I admired my wife’s words from my heart. Her insight is ten times keener than mine, yet what one’s nature loves cannot be forced. Through my own stupid stubbornness I would not heed her good counsel, and so failed the tender care she bore me.

“Different though our studies were, our feeling for each other was good, and our shifu made the match and joined us as husband and wife. In time we each made a name of our own upon the jianghu. Some called me the Medicine Immortal, and my wife the Poison Immortal. Her craft with poison was marvellous beyond method, not merely without equal in the world, but the indigo that outdoes the plant it came from, far outstripping our shifu. To study poison, to lay poison, and yet earn the word ‘Immortal’, that shows how her gifts transcend the common run. It was my own thoughtlessness: several times she laid a slow poison in a man, and when the victim came to me for a cure, I muddleheadedly healed him. At the time I even preened myself on it, never knowing how faithless and disloyal the act was to my beloved wife, truly heartless and fickle. To call me ‘wolf-hearted and dog-lunged’ would not be too harsh. And yet a wolf’s heart and a dog’s lungs are still things of flesh and blood, with feeling and nature in them. I was simply ‘lower than a beast,’ ‘worse than the birds and brutes,’ repaying my beloved wife’s kindness with spite and answering her grace with a grudge, the worst of all wicked men under heaven. For the Medicine Immortal to heal those the Poison Immortal had struck down went against my wife’s very purpose, and did it not also mean I fancied the Medicine Immortal the greater? Most damnable of all: in my heart of hearts, I did indeed fancy the Medicine Immortal greater than the Poison Immortal!” He sighed again and again, sunk in an abyss of self-reproach.

Ji Xiaofu and Zhang Wuji could only shake their heads inwardly. Neither thought much of his reasoning.

Footnotes

1. 不悔仲子逾我墙 – Bùhuǐ zhòngzǐ yú wǒ qiáng. Chapter title adapts a line from “Jiang Zhongzi” (将仲子) in the Classic of Poetry, in which a girl frets that her suitor Zhongzi has climbed over her wall. Here it puns on the name of Yang Buhui (不悔, “no regret”) and foreshadows Ji Xiaofu’s own tale. ↩

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

3. 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. ↩

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

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

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

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

8. 牛黄血竭丹 – Niúhuáng Xuèjié Dān. Bezoar and Dragon’s Blood Pills, a potent antidote compounded by Hu Qingniu. 牛黄 is ox bezoar, 血竭 the resin known as dragon’s blood, and 丹 an elixir pill. ↩

9. 医仙 – yīxiān. Medicine Immortal, Hu Qingniu’s epithet, honouring his all-but-miraculous skill in healing. ↩

10. 毒仙 – dúxiān. Poison Immortal, Wang Nangu’s epithet, honouring her unrivalled mastery of poisons. ↩

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. ↩