The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 14 – Part 4

Zhang Wuji took the basket and said, “I hope every one of you succeeds in your mission, drives the Tartars out utterly, and lets all the people under heaven have rice to eat and meat to eat.” Zhu Yuanzhang, Xu Da, Tang He, Deng Yu, Hua Yun, the Wu brothers and the rest clapped their hands in approval, crying, “Well said, Brother Zhang. We shall meet again.” Each brandished his weapon and strode out of the temple.

Zhang Wuji thought to himself, They are off to kill Tartars. Were I not carrying this little girl, I would go with them. There are only seven of them. If they are outnumbered and cannot prevail, the Tartars and estate retainers at Squire Zhang’s manor will surely come hunting them down. This temple is no longer safe to stay in. He carried a basket of beef and left the temple with Yang Buhui.

They travelled four or five li¹ through the darkness, when suddenly a great red glow surged into the sky from the north. The fire was fierce, and Zhang Wuji knew that Zhu Yuanzhang, Xu Da and the rest had succeeded and were burning Squire Zhang’s estate. His heart lifted with joy. That night they slept among the hills and mountains, and at dawn set off westward once more.

Zhang Wuji had no idea where Sitting and Forgetting Peak² lay, but he knew Kunlun Mountain³ was to the west, so he headed straight in that direction. The hardships of wind and weather, of hunger and cold, that the two children endured along the way are beyond telling. Fortunately Yang Buhui’s parents were both renowned martial artists, and she had been born with a sturdy constitution. The little girl marched great distances and did not fall ill. When a slight chill did take hold, Zhang Wuji gathered herbs and cured her on the spot. Yet each day, walking and resting by turns, they covered no more than twenty or thirty li at most. It was only after fifteen or sixteen days that they reached the borders of Henan.⁴

In Henan there was little difference from Anhui. Famine reigned everywhere, and the roads were strewn with the starved dead. Zhang Wuji fashioned a bow and arrows and shot birds and beasts, so they ate one day and went hungry the next, and he and Yang Buhui made their slow way west. Luckily they met no Mongol soldiers on the road, nor did they encounter any figures of the jianghu.⁵ As for the common thugs and ruffians who tried their luck, none of them were a match for Zhang Wuji.

One day he fell into conversation with an old man they met on the road and mentioned that he was bound for Sitting and Forgetting Peak on Kunlun Mountain. The old man’s eyes went wide with astonishment, and he said, “Young fellow, Kunlun Mountain is hundreds of thousands of li from here. I’ve heard that in days gone by only the Monk of Tang went there, on his pilgrimage for the scriptures. You two babes are out of your minds. Where do you live? Go home at once!”

Zhang Wuji’s spirits sank at the news. He thought, Kunlun Mountain is so far away. I will never make it. I shall have to go to Mount Wudang⁶ and see Grand Shifu instead. But then another thought occurred to him: I have accepted a solemn trust. However far the road, how can I shrink from it halfway? My life is short. If I do not deliver Buhui to her mother before I die, I shall have failed Aunt Ji. He said no more to the old man, but took Yang Buhui’s hand and walked on.

They travelled on for more than twenty days, and by now the two children were ragged and haggard from head to foot. What troubled Zhang Wuji most was that Yang Buhui kept clamouring for her mother, and when her mother did not come flying down from the sky, she would cry for hours on end. Zhang Wuji tried every means to comfort and distract her, telling her they were heading west to find her mother, telling her stories, pulling faces to make her laugh through her tears.

That day they passed Zhumadian,⁷ and it was now late summer edging into early autumn. The north wind blew cold at morning and evening, and the two children could not stop shivering. Zhang Wuji took off his own tattered outer robe and put it on Yang Buhui. She said, “Wuji gege, aren’t you cold yourself?” He said, “I’m not cold. I’m burning up.” He jumped up and down several times to prove it. Yang Buhui said, “You’re so good to me! You’re cold yourself, but you gave me your robe.” The little girl had spoken like a grown-up, and Zhang Wuji could not help but start.

Just then he heard the clatter of weapons clashing from behind a hillside, followed by the sound of footsteps, and a woman’s voice cried, “You wretch! You’ve been struck by my poisoned Sangmen Nail.⁸ The faster you run, the quicker it takes hold!”

Zhang Wuji pulled Yang Buhui down into the grass beside the road. A burly man of thirty or so came sprinting into view, and thirty-odd feet behind him a woman wielding twin dao gave chase. The man’s steps were stumbling and wild. Suddenly his legs gave way and he rolled to the ground. The woman ran up to him and cried, “You’ll die at this girl’s hands in the end!” The man leapt up without warning and struck out with his right palm. There was a dull thud as it caught the woman full in the chest. The blow was forceful, and she toppled backwards, her twin dao flying far from her grasp.

The man reached over his shoulder and tore the Sangmen Nail from his own back. “Hand over the antidote,” he growled. The woman laughed coldly. “My shifu sent us out to catch you. He gave us poisoned hidden weapons, but no antidote. Since I’ve fallen into your hands, I accept my fate. But don’t think you’ll survive either.” The man pressed the tip of his dao against her throat with his left hand and searched through her pockets with his right, but found no antidote. Enraged, he snatched up the poisoned Sangmen Nail and hurled it with all his might. It struck the woman in the shoulder, and he barked, “Taste your own poisoned Sangmen Nail, you Kunlun School…” He did not finish. The poison in the iron nail flared in his back, and he collapsed to the ground, limp. The woman tried to rise, but she vomited a mouthful of blood and sank back. She pulled the Sangmen Nail from her shoulder and flung it to the earth.

A man and a woman lay on the grass beside the road, breathing heavily, gasping for air. Ever since his attempt to treat Jian Jie and Xue Gongyuan had rebounded upon him, Zhang Wuji had harboured a deep mistrust of the wulin.⁹ He crouched hidden and watched, not daring to show himself.

After a while the man heaved a long sigh and said, “I, Su Xizhi,¹⁰ am to die today at Zhumadian, and I still do not know how I have offended your Kunlun School. I shall not close my eyes in death. You have chased me for over a thousand li, bent on killing me. What for? Miss Zhan, have mercy and tell me.” There was no more hostility in his words.

The woman, Zhan Chun,¹¹ knew the potency of her shimen’s poisoned Sangmen Nail. Seeing that they would die together, she had resigned herself to it, and said in a low voice, “Who told you to spy on my shifu while he practised his swordsmanship? This Kunlun Two Powers Swordplay¹² — unless it is taught by the old master himself, even our own disciples who steal a glance are punished by having their eyes gouged out. And you were an outsider.” Su Xizhi cried, “Damn it all. I deserve to die, I deserve to die!” Zhan Chun flared up. “You’re at death’s door and still insulting my shifu?”

Su Xizhi said, “What if I am? Isn’t it unjust? I was passing White Bull Mountain and happened to see your shifu wielding his jian. It looked interesting, so I watched for a while. You’re telling me I could have learned your swordsmanship from a single glance? If I truly had such talent, how could a handful of Kunlun disciples have done anything to me? Miss Zhan, let me tell you, your shifu, the Master of the Iron Zither,¹³ is too miserly with his arts. I haven’t learned a single move of the Kunlun Two Powers Swordplay. But even if I had, that’s no capital offence.” Zhan Chun said nothing, but in her heart she too blamed her shifu for making a mountain out of a molehill. He had spotted Su Xizhi watching his swordplay and sent six disciples on a pursuit of a thousand li, and now they had come to this, both of them ruined. The man had no reason to lie now. If he said he had not learned the swordplay, it must be true.

Su Xizhi went on, “He gave you poisoned hidden weapons but no antidote. Is that the custom in the wulin? Damn…” Zhan Chun said softly, “Brother Su, I have brought you to ruin, and I regret it deeply. At least I am dying at your side. It is fate, that is all. Only, I grieve for your wife and children at home.” Su Xizhi sighed. “My wife died two years ago. She left me two children, a boy and a girl, six and four. Tomorrow they will be orphans, without father or mother.” Zhan Chun said, “Who else is in your household? Is there someone to care for the children?” Su Xizhi said, “My sister-in-law has them now. She has a fierce temper and a sharp tongue, but she has always been somewhat deferential to me. Alas! Those two little ones will know hardship from now on.” Zhan Chun whispered, “This is all my doing.”

Su Xizhi shook his head. “That is not your fault either. You were under strict orders from your shimen. You had to obey. It is not as though you bore me any personal grudge. In truth, once I was struck by your poisoned hidden weapon, I might simply have died. Why did I have to strike you with my palm and wound you with the nail in turn? If I had told you the truth, with your kind heart you would surely have found a way to look after my two poor children.” Zhan Chun smiled bitterly. “I am the one who killed you. How can you call me kind?” Su Xizhi said, “I do not blame you. Truly, I do not.” The two of them had just been fighting for their lives, and now, each knowing the other was close to death, a tenderness for the living world stirred in both their hearts.

Zhang Wuji, listening, thought, This man and woman do not seem evil at heart, and the man surnamed Su has two children at home. He remembered his own and Yang Buhui’s sorrow as orphans, and stepped out from the grass. “Miss Zhan, what poison is on your Sangmen Nail?”

Su Xizhi and Zhan Chun were startled to see a boy and a girl emerge from the grass, and more astonished still at Zhang Wuji’s question. Zhang Wuji said, “I have some knowledge of medicine. The two of you may not be beyond saving.” Zhan Chun said, “I do not know what poison it is, but the wound itches unbearably. My shifu said that once struck by a Sangmen Nail, one has only four shichen¹⁴ to live.” Zhang Wuji said, “Let me see the wounds.”

The two of them looked at him, so young, in rags, filthy from head to foot, for all the world a little beggar boy. How could they believe he could treat poison? Su Xizhi snapped, “We are at death’s door. Boy, stop wasting our time and go away.” He knew his end was near, and his temper had grown fierce.

Zhang Wuji ignored him. He picked up the Sangmen Nail from the ground and held it to his nose. A faint orchid fragrance reached his nostrils. In recent days, whenever he had leisure on the road, he had been reading the Book of Poison¹⁵ left behind by Wang Nangu, and he now understood most of the world’s strange poisons and venoms. At the first whiff of that scent, he knew the Sangmen Nail was coated with the venom of the Qingtuoluo flower.¹⁶ The Book of Poison stated that the flower’s juice had a rank, foul smell of its own, and was in itself harmless; one could drink a bowl of it with no ill effect. But once it mixed with blood, it became virulently poisonous, and the stench transformed into a delicate fragrance. He said, “This is the venom of the Qingtuoluo flower.”

Zhan Chun did not know what poison coated the Sangmen Nail, but she knew the strange flower grew in her shifu’s garden. She cried in surprise, “How do you know that?” The Qingtuoluo flower was a rare poison-bloom from the Western Regions, never found in the Central Plains.¹⁷ Zhang Wuji nodded. “I know.” He took Yang Buhui’s hand. “Let us go.”

Zhan Chun said hastily, “Young xia, if you know the cure, I beg you to save our lives.” Zhang Wuji had meant to help them, but the thought came back to him of Jian Jie and Xue Gongyuan and the hideous look in their eyes when they meant to eat human flesh. And Su Xizhi had been rude to him. He hesitated. Su Xizhi said, “Young sir, I was blind to your skill. Please forgive me.”

Zhang Wuji said, “Very well. I will try.” He took out his golden needles and pierced Zhan Chun’s acupoints¹⁸ at the chest, the armpit, and the shoulders on either side, first easing the pain of the palm wound to her chest. He said, “The Qingtuoluo flower’s venom activates on contact with blood, but the stomach is unaffected. First, suck each other’s wounds with your mouths until there is not the tiniest clot of poisoned blood remaining.”

Su Xizhi and Zhan Chun were both embarrassed, but their lives were at stake, and the wounds lay on back and shoulder where neither could reach alone. They took turns sucking the poisoned blood from each other’s wounds. Zhang Wuji gathered three kinds of herbs from the hillside, chewed them to a pulp and applied them to the wounds. “These three herbs will keep the poison from rising for now, but they cannot cure it. We must reach the next market town and find a pharmacy. I will compound a remedy there.” The wounds had been maddeningly itchy, but the poultice brought cool relief, and the numbness in their limbs began to ease. The two thanked him profusely. Each broke off a branch to use as a walking stick and set off at a slow pace. Zhan Chun asked about Zhang Wuji’s lineage and training, but he did not wish to say, and told her only that he had known medicine since he was small.

Footnotes

1. 里 – lǐ. A unit of distance, approximately one-third of a mile or 500 metres. ↩

2. 坐忘峰 – Zuòwàng Fēng. Literally Sitting and Forgetting Peak. A peak on Kunlun Mountain, the abode of He Taichong, the Master of the Iron Zither. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 昆仑山 – Kūnlún Shān. The Kunlun Mountains, a vast mountain range in western China, held in mythology and martial legend as a place of immense power. ↩

4. 河南 – Hénán. A province of central China, south of the Yellow River. ↩

5. 江湖 – jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. The itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach, holding not only martial artists but the trades that travel with them. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 武当山 – Wǔdāng Shān. Mount Wudang, the sacred Daoist mountain in Hubei province, seat of the Wudang Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 驻马店 – Zhùmǎdiàn. A town in southern Henan province. ↩

8. 丧门钉 – Sāngmén Dīng. Literally Death-Gate Nail. A long iron nail used as an 暗器 (hidden weapon), often poisoned. The name evokes the 丧门 (Death-Gate) star, an ill-omened asterism in Chinese astrology. ↩

9. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally the martial forest. The community of martial artists and their world, with its own codes and hierarchies. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 苏习之 – Sū Xízhī. A wandering martial artist. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 詹春 – Zhān Chūn. A disciple of the Kunlun School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 昆仑两仪剑 – Kūnlún Liǎngyí Jiàn. The Kunlun Two Powers Swordplay. A sword technique of the Kunlun School, based on the principles of the Two Powers (yin and yang). Also known as the Two Powers Swordplay. ↩

13. 铁琴先生 – Tiěqín Xiānshēng. The Master of the Iron Zither, the epithet of He Taichong, zhangmen of the Kunlun School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 时辰 – shíchén. A unit of time; the day was divided into twelve shichen, each approximately two hours. ↩

15. 毒经 – Dú Jīng. The Book of Poison, a treatise on poisons and their antidotes written by Wang Nangu. ↩

16. 青陀罗花 – Qīngtuóluó Huā. The Qingtuoluo flower, a rare and poisonous bloom from the Western Regions. Its juice is foul-smelling but harmless unless it mixes with blood, when it becomes virulently toxic and the stench turns to fragrance. ↩

17. 中原 – Zhōngyuán. The Central Plains, the heartland of Chinese civilisation around the lower Yellow River. ↩

18. 穴位 – xuéwèi. Acupoints, the points on the body’s meridian system where qi can be accessed or disrupted. ↩