The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 16 – Part 6

Her shoulders rose and fell, her slender waist swaying like the wings of a moth, pitiable to behold. Zhang Wuji said in a low voice, “Miss, who has wronged you? When the wound in my leg has healed, I shall go and take your revenge for you.”

The girl could not stop weeping at once. After a while she said, “No one has wronged me. It is my fate that is bitter from birth. I am at fault myself. I think of someone always, and cannot let him go.”

Zhang Wuji nodded. “A young man, is it? He treated you very cruelly, did he?”

“Yes!” The girl’s voice broke. “He is very handsome, but proud beyond measure. I wanted him to follow me, to stay by my side all his life, and he would not. That in itself I could bear. But then he cursed me and struck me, and set his hounds on me till I was covered in blood.”

Zhang Wuji was angry. “The man is a brute. Miss, have nothing more to do with him.”

The girl wept. “But… but I cannot let him go. He fled far from me, and I have searched everywhere and cannot find him.”

Zhang Wuji thought, These matters of the heart cannot be forced. The girl’s looks were plain, but she was plainly one who loved wholly and without reserve. Her odd temper was the product of grief and bitter disappointment. He had not imagined the man could be so heartless towards her. He said gently, “Miss, do not grieve so. There are good men enough in the world. Why cling to one who has no conscience?”

The girl drew a long sigh and stared into the distance, lost in thought. Zhang Wuji knew she could not forget the man she loved. He said, “That man only cursed you and struck you. Yet what I have suffered is ten times worse than what you have.”

The girl said, “How so? Did a beautiful girl deceive you?”

“Not deliberately,” Zhang Wuji said. “It was my own stupidity. I saw she was beautiful, and I stared at her like a fool. How could I be worthy of her? I never harboured any hope. But she and her father laid a secret plot to destroy me, and the suffering they brought upon me was beyond words.” He pulled back his sleeve and pointed to the mass of scars on his arm. “These bite marks were all made by the vicious hounds she kept.”

The girl flew into a fury at the sight of the scars. “Was it that wretched Zhu Jiuzhen who did this to you?”

Zhang Wuji was startled. “How do you know?”

“That wretched girl is famed for keeping vicious hounds. Everyone within several hundred li¹ knows it.”

Zhang Wuji nodded. “It was Miss Zhu Jiuzhen. But the wounds healed long ago. I feel no pain now. I am still alive, and I need harbour no hatred towards her.”

The girl stared at him for a long while. His expression was calm and mild, unhurried and at ease. She found this strange, and asked, “What is your name? Why have you come here?”

Zhang Wuji thought, Ever since I came to the Central Plains, everyone has tried to force from me the whereabouts of my sworn father. Threats, deceptions, every trick under heaven. I have suffered enough for it. From now on, Zhang Wuji is dead. No one will ever learn where the Golden-Maned Lion King,² Xie Xun, is hidden. Even if I meet someone ten times more cunning than Zhu Changling,³ I shall not fall into his traps and betray my sworn father without meaning to. He needed a name, and Hu Qingniu⁴ came to mind at once. He said casually, “My name is Ah Niu.”

The girl gave a faint smile. “And your surname?”

Zhang Wuji thought, I cannot say Zhang or Yin or Xie. The initial and final of Zhang and Yin together make Zeng. He said, “My surname is Zeng. May I ask the young lady’s honoured surname?”

The girl started. “I have no surname.” After a pause she said slowly, “My own father would have nothing to do with me. He would kill me if he saw me. How could I take my father’s surname? My mother was killed because of me. I cannot take her surname either. I am ugly. Call me the Ugly Girl, and that will do.”

Zhang Wuji was shocked. “You… you killed your own mother? How could that be?”

The girl sighed. “It is a long story. My own mother was my father’s first wife. She bore no children, so my father took a second mother. The second mother bore him two sons, and he doted on her. Later my mother bore me, but I was a girl. The second mother, relying on my father’s favour, oppressed my mother constantly. My two brothers were fierce too, and helped their own mother bully mine. All my mother could do was weep in secret. Tell me, what could I have done?”

“Your father ought to have judged the matter fairly,” Zhang Wuji said.

“That was just the trouble. My father shielded the second mother in everything. I could bear it no longer. I took a knife and killed her.”

Zhang Wuji cried out in astonishment. He had seen men of the wulin⁵ kill one another in combat, and that was ordinary enough. But that a village girl should take a knife and murder, that was beyond what he had expected.

The girl went on, “My mother saw I had brought down a terrible disaster. She protected me and we fled at once. But my two brothers pursued us, wanting to drag me back. My mother could not stop them. To save me, she cut her own throat. Was my mother’s death not my doing? If my father sees me, will he not kill me without fail?” She spoke in an even tone, without the slightest tremour of emotion.

Yet Zhang Wuji’s heart was pounding. He thought, I was unlucky enough to lose both my parents. But my father and mother were devoted to each other while they lived, and they loved me dearly. Compared with this girl’s fate, I am ten thousand times more fortunate. His sympathy for her deepened. He said gently, “Have you been away from home a long time? All this time you have been alone?”

The girl nodded.

“Where do you mean to go?”

“I do not know. The world is wide. I walk east, I walk west. So long as I do not meet my father or my brothers, it does not matter.”

Zhang Wuji felt a sudden kinship with her, the fellow feeling of those who have suffered. He said, “When my leg has healed, I will go with you to find that… that man you spoke of. I shall ask him what he truly means to you.”

The girl said, “What if he beats me and sets his hounds on me again?”

Zhang Wuji said stoutly, “If he dares to touch a single hair on your head, I shall never rest till I have settled accounts with him!”

“And if he will have nothing to say to me at all? If he refuses to speak a single word?”

Zhang Wuji was silenced. He could not force a man to love a girl his heart did not choose, however strong his own martial arts might become. After a long pause he said, “I shall do my best.”

The girl burst into loud laughter, rocking back and forth as though she had heard the most absurd joke in the world.

Zhang Wuji was bewildered. “What is so funny?”

“You?” She laughed. “You ugly monster, what are you? Will anyone listen to you? Besides, I have searched everywhere and found not a trace of him. I do not know if he is alive or dead at this moment. You will do your best? What power have you? Ha! Ha!”

Zhang Wuji had a sentence on the tip of his tongue, but her laughter flushed his face red and the words would not come. The girl saw him stammering, and stopped laughing. “What were you going to say?”

“You laughed at me. I shall not say it.”

The girl said coldly, “I have laughed. The worst that can happen is that I laugh again. Will laughter kill anyone?”

Zhang Wuji said loudly, “I spoke to you in good faith. You should not have mocked me.”

“I ask you, what were you going to say?”

Zhang Wuji said, “You are alone, with no home to return to. I am the same. My father and mother are dead. I have no brothers or sisters. I meant to say, if that wicked man still refuses to look at you, we might keep each other company. I could talk with you and drive away the gloom. But since you say I am not worthy, I naturally dare not speak of it.”

The girl was furious. “Of course you are not worthy! That man is a hundred times more handsome than you, and a hundred times cleverer. I waste my breath wrangling with a thing like you. What ill luck this is.” She kicked the fallen leg of mutton and the roast chicken in the snow, covered her face, and ran away.

Zhang Wuji was not angry at the torrent of abuse. He thought, The poor girl. She is deeply unhappy. It is no wonder.

Suddenly the girl came running back. She said fiercely, “You ugly monster, you must be resentful inside, thinking: she is so hideous, yet she looks down on me. Is that it?”

Zhang Wuji shook his head. “No. It is because your face is not very pleasant to look at that I felt drawn to you at once. If you had not become disfigued, if you still looked as you did before…”

The girl cried out. “How… how do you know I was not always like this?”

“Your face today is more swollen than when I last saw you,” Zhang Wuji said. “The skin is darker too. You cannot have been born like this.”

The girl was alarmed. “I… I have not dared to look in a mirror these past days. Are you saying I grow uglier by the day?”

Zhang Wuji said gently, “So long as a person’s heart is good, what matter whether her face is fair or ugly? My mother told me that the more beautiful a woman is, the more wicked her heart, the better she deceives. She told me to be especially wary of such women.”

The girl had no thought for what his mother had said. She demanded, “I am asking you: when you saw me last, I was not yet as ugly as this, was I?”

Zhang Wuji knew that if he answered “yes,” she would be wretched. He could only stare at her, his face full of pity and compassion. The girl read his answer in his expression before he spoke. She covered her face and wept. “You ugly monster, I hate you! I hate you!” She fled at a run, and this time she did not return.

Footnotes

1. 里 – lǐ. Approximately one-third of a mile or five hundred metres. A traditional Chinese unit of distance. ↩

2. 谢逊 – Xiè Xùn. Known in the jianghu as the Golden-Maned Lion King (金毛狮王), one of the Four Guardians of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 朱长龄 – Zhū Chánglíng. A gentleman of the wulin who attempted to deceive Zhang Wuji into revealing Xie Xun’s whereabouts. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 胡青牛 – Hú Qīngniú. Known as the Divine Doctor of the Butterfly Valley (蝶谷医仙), a physician of extraordinary skill and a senior of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. The community of martial artists and their affiliated schools, factions and individuals, distinct from the ordinary world of settled society. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩