The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 20 – Part 4

Xiaozhao took out her handkerchief and reached towards his forehead to wipe away the sweat. The moment the cloth touched his temple, her arm jerked violently and she pitched backwards, nearly falling. She stumbled back several steps. Zhang Wuji rose to his feet and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. He did not understand what had just happened, nor did he know that he had already mastered the fifth level of the heart-method.¹

The Great Shift heart-method was in truth a supremely subtle art of directing force and applying strength. Its fundamental principle lay in releasing the latent power stored within every person. The potential within each human body is vast indeed, yet ordinarily it cannot be called forth. In moments of emergency such as a fire, a wretch too feeble to truss a chicken will often find himself bearing a weight of a thousand jin.² After Zhang Wuji had perfected the Nine Yang Divine Art,³ the force stored within him surpassed that of any man alive. Only, without guidance from a great master and without learning any lofty martial arts, that force could not be unleashed. Now that he had taken up the Great Shift heart-method, the latent power within him was like a mountain flood pent in a valley, awaiting only the channel to direct its flow. The moment the floodgates opened, it surged forth beyond all restraining. To practise the Nine Yang Divine Art was to gather the mountain flood, and that was the difficult part. The Great Shift was merely the cutting of a channel to let it out: know the method and the work is done.

The reason this heart-method was so hard to practise, so hard to complete, and so easy to end in Qi Deviation⁴ at the slightest misstep, was that the method of directing force was incomplex and subtle beyond measure, while the practitioner lacked the mighty neili⁵ to match it. It was like bidding a child of eight or nine to wield a chain-hammer weighing a hundred jin. The more exquisite and profound the hammer-technique, the harder the iron hammer was to control as it flew, and the more certain he was to smash his own head until it bled and his brains burst out. But if the one wielding the hammer were a man of great strength, then all would be well. Those who had attempted this heart-method in times past failed precisely because their neili was insufficient: they forced themselves to cultivate what lay beyond their power, and so their will outstripped their strength.

In bygone days, each zhangmen⁶ of the Ming Order⁷ understood this crux full well. Yet having assumed the office of zhangmen, each was naturally a man of unyielding resolve who would not admit defeat. Taking to heart the saying Sincerity unbroken splits open gold and stone,⁸ they toiled away with single-minded diligence, striving their utmost to master the art. They did not know that human strength has its limits. Bent on proving that man’s will may overcome Heaven,⁹ they usually ended their days in bitter regret. The reason Zhang Wuji could complete the art in half a day, while men of far greater wisdom, far deeper martial cultivation than his had spent decades of bitter toil without success, lay in a single distinction: in one case neili was more than sufficient, in the other it fell short. It was likewise a stroke of fortune that he had first perfected the Nine Yang Divine Art before attempting the Great Shift, so that everything followed in due order. Had the sequence been reversed, he would have struggled to master even the first level.

After reaching the fifth level, Zhang Wuji found that every fibre of his body answered to his will: what he wished to release, he released; what he wished to recall, he recalled, all obeying the motion of his thought. Every bone and limb in him was suffused with a comfort beyond description. He forgot the stone door at once and proceeded to the sixth level of the heart-method. The shallower first and second levels of the Great Shift were akin to the art of deflecting a thousand liang with four liang;¹⁰ but at the higher levels the principle was reversed, becoming instead deflecting four liang with a thousand liang, using nearly a thousand liang of mighty neili to shift an opponent’s trifling force. It seemed like using a cattle-knife to slaughter a chicken, yet precisely because a cattle-knife was employed, the slaughter was child’s play.

After more than a shichen,¹¹ he had reached the seventh level. The subtleties of the seventh level’s heart-method were several times deeper than the sixth, and he could not fathom them all at once. Fortunately he was well versed in the medical arts and the principles of the meridians;¹² wherever the text grew opaque, he cross-referenced it against medical theory and more often than not the meaning opened before him at once. Past the halfway mark, however, his qi and blood began to churn and his heartbeat quickened. He steadied his mind and began again from the start, only to meet the same obstruction. Since first beginning the art at its lowest level, he had never encountered anything like it.

He skipped the passage and continued. Once more the method flowed smoothly, until a few sentences in he met the same resistance. From that point on, obstacles came one after another, all the way to the end of the text. In all, nineteen passages he could not complete.

Zhang Wuji reflected for a long while. Then he laid the sheepskin upon the stone, bowed low with the utmost reverence, and kowtowed several times, saying, This disciple Zhang Wuji has chanced upon the sacred heart-method of the Ming Order while seeking a way out of this trap. He had no intention of prying into your Order’s secret manual. Once he has escaped from danger, he shall devote this divine art to the service of your Order, lest he prove unworthy of the kindness of your successive zhangmen in preserving his life. Xiaozhao knelt beside him and kowtowed in turn, murmuring her own prayer: Successive zhangmen of the Order, look down and bless this young gentleman as he restores the Ming Order and magnifies the renown of your ancestors.

Zhang Wuji rose and said, “I am no disciple of the Ming Order. Following my Grand Shifu’s teaching, I shall never take membership in the Order. But having read the late zhangmen’s testament, I know the Order’s principles to be bright and upright. I shall do my utmost to set right the misunderstanding with the great schools and entreat both sides to lay down their strife.”

Xiaozhao said, “Young gentleman Zhang,¹³ you said there are nineteen passages you could not complete. Why not rest a while, gather your strength, and finish them all?”

Zhang Wuji replied, “Today I have completed the seventh level of the Great Shift heart-method. Though I left nineteen passages untried, which is no small imperfection, still, as your song has it: The sun at its zenith begins to wane; the moon at full begins to ebb. Even Heaven and Earth are not made whole. How can I be insatiable and grasp at more than my due? What merit or blessing have I, that I should be worthy of the Ming Order’s divine art? To leave nineteen passages uncompleted, that rather is the proper way.”

Xiaozhao said, “The young gentleman speaks well.” She took the sheepskin and asked him to point out the nineteen passages he had not practised. She murmured them silently to herself several times, committing them to memory. Zhang Wuji asked with a smile, “Why memorise them?” A flush rose in Xiaozhao’s cheeks. “I thought, if even the young gentleman could not master them, I would see for myself how difficult they are. Perhaps someday I could recite them back to you, and you could try again then…” Zhang Wuji heard the tenderness that had gathered unbidden in her words, and was deeply moved.

Yet Zhang Wuji’s nature was never to press any matter beyond its due limit, to draw back when he had gone far enough, which answered precisely to the saying, Know what is enough, and you suffer no disgrace.¹⁴ The great master who first devised the Great Shift heart-method possessed neili indeed, yet not to the pitch of the Nine Yang Divine Art, and so could practise only as far as the sixth level. What he set down of the seventh level he could no longer cultivate himself. He could only exercise his wit and imagination, striving after every variation. The nineteen passages Zhang Wuji could not complete were precisely those the great master had conceived in empty speculation and conceived wrongly: plausible in appearance, yet wrong in truth, already led astray. Had Zhang Wuji harboured a heart bent on perfection, refusing to stop until every passage was flawless, then at the final crisis he would have fallen into Qi Deviation, ending in madness or feeble-mindedness, or paralysis of every limb, or even the severing of his own meridians and death.

The two of them moved sand and stone and buried the remains of Yang Dingtian¹⁵ and his wife. Then they walked to the stone door.

This time Zhang Wuji pressed only his right hand against the edge of the door. Following the Great Shift heart-method he had just practised, he directed a faint stir of force. The stone door groaned and trembled. He added a little more strength, and the door swung slowly open.

Xiaozhao was overjoyed. She leapt to her feet, clapping her hands and cheering, while the iron chains upon her wrists and ankles clattered and rang. Zhang Wuji said, “Let me try to break your chains again.” Xiaozhao laughed, “This time they’ll surely snap!” Zhang Wuji grasped the chain between her hands and pulled, directing his strength to tear it apart. The links stretched gradually longer, yet they would not break.

Xiaozhao cried out, “Oh no! The longer you pull, the longer they grow. I’ll be in even worse case!” Zhang Wuji shook his head. “These chains are truly uncanny. I fear you could draw them out to ten-odd zhang¹⁶ and still they would not snap.” It happened that an earlier zhangmen of the Ming Order had obtained a strange meteorite fallen from the sky. The metal it contained differed from any iron known in the world. The cunning smiths of the Sharp Metal Banner¹⁷ tried in vain to cast weapons from it, and so forged it instead into these chains. Seeing Xiaozhao crestfallen, Zhang Wuji comforted her, “Set your mind at ease. I give you my word I’ll break these chains. We’ve been trapped inside this mountain and found our way out. Are we to be defeated by a pair of paltry iron chains?”

He wished to find Yuanzhen¹⁸ and settle the reckoning. He turned and pushed again at the two boulders weighing a thousand jin each. But even with his newfound divine art, he was not omnipotent. The boulders stirred faintly beneath his hands. They would not budge open. Shaking his head, he walked out with Xiaozhao through the stone door on the far side. He turned and pushed the door shut behind him. The door, when one looked close, was no true door at all but a great natural rock, mounted upon an iron sphere at its base to serve as a pivot. The long years had rusted the sphere, and so the rock had grown hard to move. He thought how, when the Ming Order first built this secret passage, countless hands must have laboured through long years, devoting untold effort and care.

Holding the secret passage map, he followed its course. Though the tunnels branched many times, he emerged from the mountain without difficulty.

They stepped out into a blaze of light. For a moment neither could open their eyes. After a while they blinked them cautiously open, and saw snow upon the ground on every side. Sunlight striking the snow reflected back, doubling the brightness.

Xiaozhao blew out the wooden stick in her hand. She dug a small hole in the snow and buried the stick within it, saying, “Little stick, little stick, thank you for lighting the way for the young gentleman and me out of the cave. Without you, we should have been utterly lost.”

Zhang Wuji laughed aloud, his spirits lifting. He thought, The world is full of the thankless and treacherous, yet this young girl shows such gratitude even to a wooden stick. She must be a person of kindness and good faith. He turned his head and glanced at her. The bright reflection from the snow fell upon her face, making her skin seem to shimmer, soft and lovely as jade. He could not help but exclaim, “Xiaozhao, you are beautiful, truly beautiful!”

Xiaozhao said, delighted, “Young gentleman Zhang, you are not teasing me?” Zhang Wuji said, “Stop hunching your back and limping. You look far better this way.” Xiaozhao said, “If you tell me not to, then I won’t. Even if my mistress would kill me for it, I still won’t.”

Zhang Wuji said, “Nonsense! What reason would she have to kill you?” He looked at her again. Her skin was strangely fair, her nose higher than that of most Chinese girls, and in her eyes there lingered a hint of the sea’s blue. “You are from the Western Regions, are you not? You have a different kind of beauty from the girls of the Central Plains.” Xiaozhao’s delicate brows drew together faintly. “I would rather be like the girls of your Central Plains.”

Footnotes

1. 心法 – xīnfǎ. Heart-method: a martial or meditative technique transmitted mind to mind, rather than through external form. ↩

2. 斤 – jīn. A unit of weight, roughly 590 grams in the Ming dynasty, about a third more than an English pound. ↩

3. 九阳神功 – Jiǔyáng Shéngōng. The Nine Yang Divine Art. An supreme neigong manual, said to have been inscribed in the Diamond Sutra by a Daoist monk who once debated with the Shaolin patriarch Bodhidharma. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 走火入魔 – zǒuhuǒrùmó. Qi Deviation. A catastrophic failure of internal cultivation, in which the practitioner’s qi runs amok through the meridians, leading to madness, paralysis, or death. ↩

5. 内力 – nèilì. Internal force. The kinetic manifestation of qi, cultivated through neigong and deployed in martial technique. ↩

6. 掌门 – zhǎngmén. The head of a martial school or Order. Lit. one who holds the gate. ↩

7. 明教 – Míng Jiào. The Ming Order, also called the Ming Cult in older translations. A heterodox martial Order descended from Persian Manichaeism, its teaching centred upon the struggle between light and darkness. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 精诚所至，金石为开 – jīngchéng suǒ zhì, jīnshí wèi kāi. An ancient proverb: Where sincerity reaches, gold and stone are opened. That is, unwavering resolve can overcome any obstacle. ↩

9. 人定胜天 – rén dìng shèng tiān. Man’s will may overcome Heaven. A proverb asserting that human determination can prevail against fate or natural forces. ↩

10. 两 – liǎng. A unit of weight, one-sixteenth of a jin, and the unit in which silver was reckoned. Never tael, which is a Portuguese corruption of Malay tahil. ↩

11. 时辰 – shíchén. A traditional division of the day into twelve two-hour periods. ↩

12. 经脉 – jīngmài. The meridians, the channels through which qi circulates within the body. ↩

13. 公子 – gōngzǐ. Young gentleman. A polite form of address to a man of good family or bearing. ↩

14. 知足不辱 – zhī zú bù rǔ. Know what is enough, and you suffer no disgrace. A Daoist maxim from the Daodejing, Chapter 44. ↩

15. 阳顶天 – Yáng Dǐngtiān. The former zhangmen of the Ming Order, who vanished in the secret passage beneath Bright Peak. His epithet was Master of Bright Peak. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 丈 – zhàng. A unit of length equal to ten chi, roughly ten feet or three metres. ↩

17. 锐金旗 – Ruìjīn Qí. The Sharp Metal Banner, one of the five great Banners of the Ming Order, responsible for weaponry and metalwork. ↩

18. 圆真 – Yuánzhēn. The dharma name of Cheng Kun, the villain who slew Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu and brought disaster upon the Xuanming Elders. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩