The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 14: The Wolf on the Road

On the road, one meets the wolf of Zhongshan¹

The two children walked for most of the day before they finally left the Butterfly Valley. Yang Buhui had small feet and short strides, and could go no further. They rested for a good while before pressing on again, walking a stretch, then resting again. That first evening they found no inn or homestead, and as darkness fell they were still stumbling through wilderness and barren hills. Wolves howled and owls shrieked on every side, frightening Yang Buhui so that she could not stop crying in alarm. Zhang Wuji was himself deeply afraid, but when he spotted a cave beside the path he pulled Yang Buhui inside and hid with her, holding her close in his arms and pressing his hands over her ears so she could not hear the cries of the hungry beasts.

That night the two children, starving and terrified, endured a night of misery. The next morning they picked some wild fruit from the mountainside and ate it, then followed the mountain path a little further, resting from time to time. Around midday, Yang Buhui suddenly let out a piercing scream and pointed at a large tree beside the road. Zhang Wuji looked and saw two desiccated corpses hanging and swaying from its branches. He was so frightened that he grabbed her hand and turned to flee in a blind panic.

The two of them stumbled and lurched, and had not run ten paces before their feet caught on stones and they fell together. Zhang Wuji plucked up the courage to look back, and what he saw shocked him even more. He cried out without thinking, “Mister Hu!” One of the dried corpses hanging from the tree had been turned by the wind so that its face was visible, and it was indeed Hu Qingniu. The other corpse had long hair streaming down its back. It was a woman, and from her clothing it was clearly Hu Qingniu’s wife, Wang Nangu. The mountain breeze stirred her body and her long hair, making them sway and tremble, the whole scene the more eerie and cold.

Zhang Wuji steadied himself for some time, telling himself: “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid!” Slowly he got to his feet and approached step by step. Sure enough, the two corpses suspended in mid-air were Hu Qingniu and his wife. On each of their cheeks a golden gleam shone, and embedded in the flesh was a tiny golden flower apiece. Zhang Wuji understood at once: “So they had not escaped Golden Flower Granny’s deadly hand after all.”

He noticed a mule cart smashed to pieces in a mountain stream, and a mule drowned in the water.

Tears streamed down Zhang Wuji’s face as he stood there, dazed. He untied the ropes and lowered the bodies of Hu Qingniu and his wife from the great tree. Suddenly there was a sharp slap, and a book fell out from inside Wang Nangu’s robe. He picked it up and saw that it was a handwritten manuscript, the title page bearing the five characters: “Wang Nangu’s Treatise on Poisons”.² Turning the pages, he found them covered in minute regular script, densely written with accounts of the properties, applications, and antidotes for every manner of poison. Besides toxic substances and poisonous plants, living creatures such as venomous snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and poison spiders, together with all manner of strange and unusual fish, insects, birds, beasts, flowers, trees, stones, and earth, were all recorded in exhaustive detail. Zhang Wuji tucked the book into his robe, laid the bodies of Hu Qingniu and his wife side by side, gathered stones and earth, and hastily piled a rough grave. He knelt and bowed several times, then took Yang Buhui’s hand and set out to find their way forward.

After they had walked several li they reached a proper road, and before long arrived at a small market town. Zhang Wuji wanted to buy some food, but to his dismay every house in the town stood empty. There was not a single soul to be seen. With no alternative they pressed on, only to find that all the paddy fields along the way had cracked and split with drought, overgrown with thorns and withered grass, a desolate scene stretching in every direction. Zhang Wuji’s heart was heavy with anxiety, and Yang Buhui, though able to bear her hunger without crying, could only struggle onward with the last of her strength. She was already as good a child as could be expected. What plans could she possibly make?

After a while they came upon several corpses lying beside the road, their bellies shrivelled, their cheeks sunken. One glance told them these people had starved to death. The further they walked, the more such starved bodies they saw. Zhang Wuji was filled with dread: “Is there nothing at all to eat? Are we going to starve to death like this too?”

Towards evening they reached a stretch of woodland, and saw wisps of white smoke rising among the trees. Zhang Wuji was overjoyed. Since leaving the Butterfly Valley they had seen no sign of habitation, and he strode quickly towards the smoke. Drawing near, he saw two ragged men crouching beside a pot of steaming, boiling water, feeding wood into the fire beneath it. Hearing their footsteps, the two men turned, and when they saw Zhang Wuji and Yang Buhui their faces lit up with delight. They leapt to their feet at the same moment, and one of them beckoned: “Little ones, excellent! Come here, come quickly. Where are the grown-ups with you? Where have they gone?” Zhang Wuji replied, “There are only the two of us, no grown-ups with us.” The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing, saying in unison: “Lucky, just what we need!” Zhang Wuji, half-starved, craned his neck to peer into the pot to see what was cooking, but all he saw was green grass churning and tumbling in the boiling water. One of the men suddenly grabbed Yang Buhui and said with a grim smile, “This little goat is nice and plump, nice and tender. We’ll have a good meal tonight, won’t that be fine.” The other man said, “Quite right. Keep the boy for tomorrow.”

Zhang Wuji was struck with horror. “What are you doing? Let my sister go at once!”

The man took no notice at all. With a rip of cloth, he tore Yang Buhui’s garment, then reached into his boot and drew out a broad-bladed knife, saying with a grin: “It’s been a long time since we had such a fat, tender little goat.” He carried Yang Buhui to one side, as if about to slaughter her on the spot. The other man followed behind with an earthenware bowl, saying: “It’d be a waste to spill the goat’s blood. Let’s boil up a pot of blood broth, that’d go down nicely!”

Zhang Wuji was so terrified his very soul seemed to fly away. Seeing that they were not joking, that they truly meant to slaughter Yang Buhui, he shouted, “Do you mean to eat people? Have you no fear of so outraging heaven and decency?” The man holding the earthenware bowl laughed, “I haven’t had a grain of rice in three months. If I don’t eat people, should I eat cows and sheep instead?” Fearing that Zhang Wuji might run away, he came over and reached out to grab him by the neck.

Zhang Wuji twisted aside to dodge, sweeping his left hand to deflect while his right palm struck with a sharp crack, landing squarely on the vital point at the man’s back. He had received the secret formulas of the martial arts from Xie Xun the Golden-Haired Lion King, and from his father had learned the Wudang Long Fist.³ In the years since, though he had devoted himself to medicine and not practised his martial arts, everything he had ever studied or seen was of the highest order. A palm strike delivered with his full strength was not easily withstood even by a martial artist of many years’ training. How much less could an ordinary village man bear it?

The man grunted, fell face-down on the ground, and could not move at all.

Zhang Wuji immediately sprang to Yang Buhui’s side. The other man roared, “I’ll kill you first!” He raised his knife and drove it towards Zhang Wuji’s chest. Zhang Wuji employed the “Wild Goose Wing” stance of the Wudang Long Fist, launching his right foot in a flying kick that struck the man’s wrist squarely. The knife flew from his grasp. Zhang Wuji followed at once with the Mandarin Duck Continuous Kick,⁴ left and right, striking the man squarely on the jaw. The man had opened his mouth to shout, and the kick drove his jaw shut with such force that he bit clean through half his own tongue. Blood gushed from his mouth and he collapsed, unconscious. Zhang Wuji hurriedly helped Yang Buhui to her feet.

Just then they heard the sound of footsteps, and several more people were walking into the wood. Yang Buhui, thoroughly frightened by everything that had happened, threw herself into Zhang Wuji’s arms at the sound of new voices. Zhang Wuji looked up and at once relaxed, calling out: “Brother Jian, Brother Xue!” There were five people in all entering the wood. One was Jian Jie of the Kongtong School, another was Xue Gongyuan of the Huashan School together with two fellow disciples of his. All four of these men had been cured of their injuries by Zhang Wuji. The last was a young man of about twenty, imposing in appearance with an unusually broad forehead. Zhang Wuji had never seen him before.

Jian Jie gave a snort and said, “Brother Zhang, you’re here too? What’s happened to these two?” He pointed at the two men lying on the ground. Zhang Wuji told them what had happened in some indignation, and concluded: “They would dare to eat living people. Is there no law left in this world?”

Jian Jie stared sideways at Yang Buhui, and suddenly a string of drool ran from the corner of his mouth. He ran his tongue over his lips, above and below, and muttered to himself, “Damn it all, five days and five nights without a grain of rice, nothing but bark and roots to gnaw on…” He eyed Yang Buhui with a hungry fire in his gaze, like a starving wolf. ’…Tender skin, fair flesh, nice and plump…’ Zhang Wuji saw the ravenous hunger blazing in his eyes, his mouth agape, teeth gleaming, his expression terrifying, and hastily drew Yang Buhui close against him.

Xue Gongyuan asked, “Where is this girl’s mother?” Zhang Wuji thought to himself, If I tell them Auntie Ji is dead, they’ll turn their wicked thoughts towards her all the more. So he said, “The nüxia Ji has gone to buy rice, she’ll be back any moment.” Yang Buhui suddenly piped up: “No, my mama’s flown up to heaven!”

When Jian Jie, Xue Gongyuan, and the others heard what the two children had said, they understood at once that Ji Xiaofu was dead. Xue Gongyuan sneered: “Buy rice? You try finding a single handful of rice within five hundred li of here, and I’ll call you a clever fellow.” Jian Jie exchanged a glance with Xue Gongyuan, and the two of them sprang up at the same instant. Jian Jie seized Zhang Wuji by both arms. Xue Gongyuan clapped his left hand over Yang Buhui’s mouth, and with his right arm scooped her up.

Zhang Wuji cried in alarm, “What are you doing?” Jian Jie laughed, “The Fengyang Prefecture is parched for a thousand li. We’re all starving past endurance. This girl isn’t any relation of yours. We’ll save you a share when we’re done.” Zhang Wuji cursed: “You call yourselves heroes and men of honour, yet you would bully a poor little orphan girl? If this gets out, how will you ever show your faces again?”

Jian Jie flew into a rage. Still holding Zhang Wuji with his left hand, he struck him twice across the face with his right fist and barked: “We’ll slaughter this little beast along with the girl. We were thinking one small goat wouldn’t be enough anyway.”

Footnotes

1. 当道时见中山狼 – Dāng dào shí jiàn Zhōngshān láng. Chapter title. Lit. “In the road one meets, at times, the wolf of Zhongshan.” In the Ming fable, a wolf saved by a scholar turns to devour him: kindness repaid with treachery. ↩

2. 王难姑毒经 – Wáng Nángū Dú Jīng. Literally Wang Nangu’s classic of poisons. Manual cataloguing poisons of every kind, their uses, and their antidotes, compiled by Wang Nangu, wife of the Divine Doctor Hu Qingniu. ↩

3. 武当长拳 – Wǔdāng Cháng Quán. Literally Wudang long fist. Foundational fist technique of the Wudang Order, deceptively simple in appearance yet containing profound principles. ↩

4. 鸳鸯连环腿 – Yuānyāng Liánhuán Tuǐ. Literally mandarin duck linked kicks. Pair of alternating kicks, one after the other without pause, named for the mandarin duck, a symbol of pairing in Chinese culture. ↩