The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 16 – Part 9

The village girl was supremely pleased with herself. She laughed aloud, “You ugly brute! You...” Then suddenly her breath caught short and she fainted. Zhang Wuji had seen their six foes depart in different directions and at once withdrawn his hands, releasing her ankles. The flood of Nine Yang zhenqi¹ that had filled the village girl's body drained away in an instant, leaving her as though utterly spent, without strength to move a single limb. Alarmed, Zhang Wuji understood at once. He pressed his thumbs gently against the Sizhukong² acupoints at the outer ends of her brows and channelled a trace of neili³ into them. Only then did the village girl slowly regain consciousness.

She opened her eyes and found herself lying in Zhang Wuji’s arms, with him grinning down at her. A flush of shame rose in her cheeks. She leapt up at once and glared at him, half-laughing, half-scolding. Then suddenly she reached out, seized his left ear, and twisted hard. “You ugly brute, you lied to me! You have formidable martial arts, so why didn’t you tell me?”

Zhang Wuji cried out in pain, “Ow! What are you doing?”

The village girl laughed. “Who told you to lie?”

“When did I lie to you?” he protested. “You didn’t tell me you knew martial arts, and I didn’t tell you I knew mine.”

“Very well, I’ll let you off this time.” She released his ear. “Just now you lent me a hand when I needed it. That counts as making up for your past offences, so I won’t pursue the matter further. Can your legs walk yet?”

“Not yet.”

The village girl sighed. “At least kindness gets its reward in the end. If I hadn’t been thinking of you and come back to see you once more, you wouldn’t have been able to save me.” She paused, then added, “Had I known your skill was far beyond mine, I wouldn’t have bothered going to kill that ghost of a girl, Zhu Jiuzhen,⁴ on your behalf.”

Zhang Wuji’s face darkened. “I never asked you to kill her in the first place.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” The village girl put on an exaggerated air of concern. “So you still can’t forget that beautiful girl after all. It’s my fault, I’ve wronged your beloved.”

“Miss Zhu is not my beloved,” Zhang Wuji said. “However beautiful she may be, she’s nothing to do with me.”

The village girl looked at him in surprise. “Well now, that’s odd. She treated you so cruelly, and I’m offering to kill her and ease your mind, isn’t that a good thing?”

Zhang Wuji said mildly, “Many people have harmed me. If I were to kill them all one by one for revenge, I’d never finish. Besides, some who mean to harm me are rather pitiable themselves. Take Miss Zhu, for instance. She lives in dread all day long, terrified her cousin won’t care for her, worried he’ll marry Miss Wu instead. What pleasure is there in living like that?”

The village girl flared up. “Are you mocking me?”

Zhang Wuji was taken aback. He had not meant to offend by speaking of Zhu Jiuzhen. “No, no,” he said hastily. “I meant that each person has their own unhappiness. If someone wrongs you and you go and kill them, that’s not right.”

The village girl sneered. “If learning martial arts isn’t for killing people, then what’s the point of learning it?”

Zhang Wuji considered this. “When your martial arts are well learned, you can defend yourself when evil men come to harm you.”

“Admirable, admirable!” The village girl’s tone was thick with irony. “So you’re an upright gentleman, a paragon of virtue!”

Zhang Wuji gazed at her blankly. There was something about this girl’s manner and expression that struck him as indescribably familiar, indescribably dear.

The village girl tilted her chin up. “What are you looking at?”

“My mother used to laugh at my father for being a soft-hearted do-gooder, a scholar with too tender a heart. The way she spoke, the look she had, it was just like you now.”

The village girl’s face flushed. “Pah! Taking advantage of me again, comparing me to your mother, I suppose you’re just like your father then!” Yet though her words were sharp, her eyes held a smile.

Zhang Wuji was alarmed. “Heaven above, if I meant to take advantage of you, may Heaven strike me down and the earth swallow me whole!”

The village girl laughed. “A word of mockery is nothing so grave. Must you swear oaths about it?”

At that moment a clear whistle rang out from the northeast, bright and long-drawn, a woman’s voice. From nearby another whistle answered, and it was Ding Minjun,⁵ who had not yet gone far. She halted at once.

The village girl’s expression changed. She said in a low voice, “The Emei Order⁶ has sent more people.”

Footnotes

1. 九阳真气 – Jiǔyáng Zhēnqì. A powerful form of zhenqi cultivated through the Nine Yang Manual. ↩

2. 丝竹空 – sīzhúkōng. An acupoint at the outer end of the eyebrow, so named for its resemblance to silk and bamboo. ↩

3. 内力 – nèilì. Internal force, the kinetic manifestation of qi cultivated through neigong. ↩

4. 朱九真 – Zhū Jiǔzhēn. Her name meaning “Ninefold Truth”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 丁敏君 – Dīng Mǐnjūn. Her name meaning “Sensitive and Refined”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 峨嵋派 – Éméi Pài. The Emei Order, one of the leading righteous factions of the wulin, based on Mount Emei. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩