The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 17 – Part 5

One of the female disciples picked up the two dead white pigeons from the ground and withdrew a slip of paper from the small tube on each bird's leg. She presented them to Jingxuan. Jingxuan opened them, read, and said, “Shifu, the demonic cult knows we are marching on Bright Peak. This message is a summons for help to the Tianying Order.”¹ She examined the other slip. “Identical. Pity one pigeon got away.”

Miejue Shitai said coldly, “What is there to pity? Let all the demons gather together, and we can wipe them out in a single stroke. Would that not be satisfying? It saves us running all over the place hunting for them.”

Jingxuan said, “Yes.”

Zhang Wuji heard the words “summons for help to the Tianying Order” and his heart leapt. The zhangmen of the Tianying Order is my grandfather. I wonder if the old man will come? Pah, you old nun, so proud and so sure of yourself, you might not be a match for my grandfather. He had meant to seize the chance to rescue Zhu’er and flee, but now the thought of seeing his grandfather burned so hot within him that he no longer wished to go.

Jingxuan turned to the four white-robed men and demanded, “What reinforcements have you summoned? How did you learn of our six factions’ plan to march on the demonic cult?”²

The four white-robed men flung their heads back in a bitter laugh, then all four threw themselves to the ground at once. They did not move again. The company started in alarm. Two male disciples bent to examine them. Each man’s face wore a ghastly, uncanny smile. All four were dead. The disciples cried out, “Shijie,³ all four are dead!”

Jingxuan said angrily, “The heretics have taken poison. The drug is powerful and takes effect swiftly.”

Jingxu said, “Search the bodies.”

Four male disciples answered, “Yes,” and reached for the dead men’s pockets.

Zhou Zhiruo suddenly spoke, “Shixiong,⁴ be careful. Watch for poisoned objects in the bags.”

The four male disciples paused. They took their weapons and prodded the pockets open. Inside, something squirmed. Each man’s pocket held two venomous little snakes. Had any of them thrust in a hand, they would have been bitten at once. The disciples’ faces went pale. Every one of them cursed the Ming Order’s followers for their cruelty.

Miejue Shitai said coldly, “We have marched from the Central Plains to the Western Regions. Today is our first encounter with the demonic cult’s people. These four are nothing but nameless underlings, and already they are this treacherous and venomous. What then of the cult’s leaders?” She gave a snort and added, “Jingxu is no longer young, yet she acts with such carelessness. She is not even as attentive as Zhiruo.”

Jingxu flushed crimson and bowed to accept the reproof.

Zhang Wuji’s mind, however, was fixed on the six words Jingxuan had spoken: “six factions march on the demonic cult.” Six factions? Six factions? Is my Wudang Order among them?

At the second shichen,⁵ the sound of camel bells came from afar, a faint, rhythmic tinkling. The company had already lain down to sleep, but at the sound they all woke at once. The bells came first from the southwest, yet in moments they shifted from south to north, then rang out to the northwest. Then the sound swung east, and the bells appeared in the northeast. Now east, now west, the bells moved like a ghost. The company exchanged bewildered glances. No matter how fast a camel might run, it could not be here and there in the same moment. Yet the sound was plainly not several people standing in different quarters, ringing one after another. After a while the bells faded from near to far, growing ever lighter, until suddenly they crashed from the southeast, as if the camel had flown past like a bird. The Emei disciples had never been in the great desert before. The bells rang so uncannily that each of them was secretly afraid.

Miejue Shitai called out in a clear voice, “Whoever the high master may be, please show yourself. This playing at spirits and phantoms, what sort of conduct is it?” Her voice carried far across the sands.

After she spoke, the bells ceased, as though their owner feared her and dared not continue the sport.

The next day passed in peace. That evening, at the second shichen, the camel bells sounded again. Now far, now near, now east, now west. Miejue Shitai rebuked them once more, but this time the bells paid her no heed at all. Sometimes soft, sometimes loud, at moments the camel seemed to charge close in fury, then abruptly vanish into silence. The noise left everyone with a splitting headache.

Zhang Wuji and Zhu’er exchanged a smile. They did not understand how the bells could ring so strangely, but they knew it must be the work of a master of the Ming Order. To plague the Emei company so, leaving them helpless and their nerves in tatters. It was rather amusing.

Miejue Shitai waved her hand, and the disciples lay down and feigned sleep, taking no further notice of the bells. The bells rang on for a while, playing a hundred tricks, but the Emei party ignored them. As if finding the sport tedious, the bells suddenly crashed several times from due north and then fell silent. It seemed Miejue Shitai’s principle of “see the strange and take no notice, and the strange defeats itself” had proved effective after all.

Next morning, as the company packed their clothes and blankets and prepared to move, two male disciples cried out in surprise at the same moment. Beside them lay a figure, face down, snoring loudly. From head to foot the man was wrapped in a filthy blanket, not a scrap of flesh showing. His backside was thrust high in the air, and his snores were thunderous.

The rest of the Emei party woke at once. Last night they had taken turns keeping watch, yet someone had slipped in among them without a sound? What sort of skill did Miejue Shitai possess? Even the stirring of wind, the fall of a petal or leaf, escaped her senses. How had this stranger appeared among them, unnoticed until this very moment? Shocked and ashamed, two of the party drew their jian and approached the figure. “Who are you? What trick is this?”

The man snored on, paying them no heed. A male disciple thrust out his jian and flipped back the blanket. Beneath it lay a man in a white robe striped with blue. His face was pressed into the sand, and he slept soundly.

Jingxu knew that a man who dared such a thing must be no trivial foe. She stepped forward. “Who are you, sir? What brings you here?”

The snores grew louder, like thunder rolling. Jingxu, enraged by the insult, swung her fly-whisk and brought it down hard on the man’s upturned backside. A sudden whoosh, and Jingxu’s fly-whisk, none could tell how, flew straight up into the air, soaring more than a hundred feet. Everyone looked up of their own accord.

Miejue Shitai cried, “Jingxu, look out!”

Before the words had finished, the man in the blue-striped robe was already thirty-odd feet away, running at full speed. Jingxu was cradled in his arms. Jingxuan and an elder female disciple, Su Mengqing, each drew a weapon and gave chase. But the man’s speed defied belief. Though both women unleashed their qinggong,⁶ they could not close the gap at all. Miejue Shitai gave a clear whistle and set off in pursuit, the Heavenly Jian in her hand.

The Emei zhangmen’s skill was indeed beyond the ordinary. In moments she overtook both Jingxuan and Su Mengqing. A flash of green light, and she thrust her jian at the man’s back. But he ran too fast. The thrust missed by a foot. Though he carried Jingxu in his arms, his speed was no less than Miejue Shitai’s own. He seemed to take pleasure in displaying his skill, for instead of fleeing far, he ran in tight circles around the company. Miejue Shitai thrust several times in succession, but never once reached him. Then came a crack, and Jingxu’s fly-whisk finally fell to the ground.

Jingxuan and Su Mengqing stopped as well. The company held their breath and watched the chase some several hundred feet away. Though this was desert, the two runners kicked up no dust or sand. The Emei disciples saw that Jingxu hung limp in the man’s arms, as still as a corpse, and their hearts grew cold. Some wished to intercept him, but how could their shifu, with all her renown, fail to subdue the man herself and need her disciples’ help? The shame of such a thing, if it became known in the jianghu…⁷ Each of them fretted in silence, and none dared move. They could only hope their shifu would gain that single step and drive her jian into the stranger’s back.

In moments the man and Miejue Shitai had completed three great circuits. Each time it seemed she need only stretch one step further and her jian-tip would find its mark. Yet always that one step eluded her. The man had started first, and Miejue Shitai had closed from behind, but he carried a person in his arms, a hundred-odd jin⁸ of extra weight. In this contest of qinggong the two were matched, and yet Miejue Shitai was the loser by a hair.

On the fourth circuit, the man suddenly spun and flung Jingxu towards Miejue Shitai with both hands. A gale of wind struck her face. The force of the throw was irresistible. She gathered her qi into her feet and employed the Thousand-Catty Drop,⁹ settling her weight to receive Jingxu gently.

The man laughed long and loud. “Six great factions marching on Bright Peak, it will not be so easy, I fear!” With that he sprinted north. When he had first chased with Miejue Shitai, his feet had left the sand undisturbed. Now he kicked up a spray of yellow sand that boiled and rolled north behind him, fierce and mighty as a great yellow dragon several hundred feet long. In moments his back was lost to sight.

The Emei disciples rushed to their shifu’s side. Miejue Shitai’s face was ashen. She did not speak.

Su Mengqing suddenly gave a cry. “Jingxu shijie…”

Jingxu’s face was the colour of yellow wax. At her throat was a wound. She was dead. The flesh around the wound was torn and ragged, yet the teeth-marks were plain. The stranger had bitten her to death.

All the female disciples wept. Miejue Shitai roared, “What are you crying for? Bury her.”

The weeping stopped at once. They buried Jingxu’s body where she lay and raised a mound.

Jingxuan bowed. “Shifu, who was that man? We should remember him well, so that we may avenge our shimei.”¹⁰

Miejue Shitai said coldly, “That man sucked the blood from a person’s neck. He is cruel and merciless. He must be one of the Ming Order’s Four Guardian Kings — the Green-Winged Bat King.¹¹ I have long heard his qinggong is without equal under heaven. The name does not lie. He is far my superior.”

Zhang Wuji had felt no small hatred for Miejue Shitai, but now he saw her suffer a grave blow and still not a trace of composure slip. She had praised the enemy before her own disciples and admitted she was outmatched, a true grandmaster’s bearing. He could not help but feel a stir of respect.

Ding Minjun said through gritted teeth, “He dared not fight shifu hand to hand. He just ran away. What sort of hero is that?”

Footnotes

1. 天鹰教 – Tiānyīng Jiào. The Tianying Order, meaning “Heavenly Eagle Order.” A martial order led by Yin Tianzheng, allied with the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 明教 – Míng Jiào. The Ming Order. The orthodox schools derisively call it the demonic cult (魔教). See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 师姐 – shījiě. Female senior fellow disciple of the same shimen. Shī means teacher. Jiě means older sister. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 师兄 – shīxiōng. Male senior fellow disciple of the same shimen. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 时辰 – shíchén. A two-hour period; the traditional Chinese day is divided into twelve shichen. ↩

6. 轻功 – qīnggōng. Lightness skill. The martial art of movement, enabling practitioners to scale walls, cross distances with extraordinary speed, and lighten their steps. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 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. ↩

8. 斤 – jīn. A unit of weight, approximately 590 grams in the Ming dynasty. ↩

9. 千斤坠 – qiān jīn zhuì. Literally Thousand-Catty Drop. A neigong technique in which the practitioner channels qi into the feet and roots the body to the ground, making it immovable against thrown objects or forceful blows. ↩

10. 师妹 – shīmèi. Female junior fellow disciple of the same shimen. Shī means teacher. Mèi means younger sister. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 青翼蝠王 – Qīngyì Fú Wáng. The Green Winged Bat King, one of the four Guardian Kings of the Ming Order. His true name is Wei Yixiao (韦一笑). He is famed for his peerless qinggong and for the habit of draining his victims’ blood. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩