The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 20 – Part 9

Kongzhi had not yet answered when a tall monk draped in a crimson kasaya¹ flashed from the ranks. The long chan staff² in his hand gleamed with golden light as he brought it crashing against the ground and bellowed, “Boy, which School claims you as its disciple? What manner of person are you, to presume to address my shifu?”

The monk’s shoulders heaved and a faint wheeze threaded his speech. It was Yuanyin,³ a Shaolin monk who years ago had marched with the Order’s punitive party up Wudang Mountain and sworn testimony that Zhang Cuishan⁴ had slain a Shaolin disciple. At the time Zhang Wuji had been consumed by grief and rage, yet he had burned every one of those men’s faces into his memory. Now, at the sight of Yuanyin, hot blood surged to his chest. His face flushed crimson and his body trembled. He said to himself over and over, Zhang Wuji, Zhang Wuji! Today’s great purpose is to mediate the feud between the six great Schools and the Ming Order. You must not let private hatred drag matters beyond recall. The Shaolin Order’s score may be settled another day.

Though his reason spoke plainly, the sight of Yuanyin brought the manner of his parents’ deaths rushing before his eyes, and tears welled until he could scarce contain them.

Yuanyin brought his chan staff crashing down once more and barked, “Boy! If you are one of the demonic cult’s fiends, stretch your neck and submit to the blade at once. Otherwise, we monks hold compassion as our guiding principle and shall not trouble you further. Be gone down the mountain!” He saw that Zhang Wuji’s attire marked him as no member of the Ming Order, and mistook the young man’s struggle to master his fury for fear, which had prompted these words.

Zhang Wuji said, “Your Order has among its number a Great Master⁵ named Yuanzhen.⁶ Pray call him forth. I have a few words to put to him.”

“Yuanzhen shixiong?”⁷ Yuanyin replied. “How is he still in a position to speak with anyone? Stand back at once. We have no leisure to squander on some wild boy. Who exactly is your shifu?”⁸ He had seen Zhang Wuji send Zong Weixia,⁹ one of the Five Elders of Kongtong, stumbling backwards with a single palm strike, and suspected the youth’s shifu was no ordinary figure, which was why he pressed the question. Otherwise, with the annihilation of the Ming Order all but accomplished, who would suffer the bother of wrangling with a youth of unknown origin?

Zhang Wuji said, “I am no member of the Ming Order or the Tianying Order, nor a disciple of any School in the Central Plains. This siege of the Ming Order by the six great Schools was in truth instigated by a schemer, and rests upon a grave misunderstanding. Young as I am, I have learnt something of the twists and turns that brought matters to this pass, and I venture to ask both sides to cease their fighting. Once the truth is laid bare, right and wrong may be judged impartially.”

The moment he fell silent, laughter erupted from the six great Schools in a cacophony of guffaws and chortles. Dozens of voices cried out in unison: “The boy’s lost his wits! Listen to him talking nonsense!” “Who does he think he is? Zhang Sanfeng the Perfected One¹⁰ of the Wudang Order? Kongwen the Divine Monk of the Shaolin Order?” “He dreamed he’d found the Dragon-Slaying Dao and become supreme in the wulin!”¹¹ “He takes us all for children of three! Ha! My sides ache!” “The six great Schools have lost so many lives, and the demonic cult owes a debt of blood as deep as the sea. Ha! He thinks a few words will send us all packing…”

Among the Emei Order, only Zhou Zhiruo knitted her brows and sat in sombre silence. The day she and Zhang Wuji had acknowledged each other, learning that he was the boy from the boat on the Han River so long ago, she had felt a stirring of old regard. Afterwards she had watched him willingly endure three palm strikes from her shifu and ride to the rescue of the Gold Banner brothers out of a sense of honour, and she had admired him greatly. Now, hearing these words that overreached his station and listening to the crowd’s derisive laughter, she could not help but feel distressed.

Zhang Wuji stood his ground, casting a proud glance about him, and said in a clear voice, “Let only Great Master Yuanzhen of the Shaolin Order step forth and exchange a few words of confrontation with me, and the villainous schemes he has contrived will be made plain to all the world.” Each word of those three sentences was pronounced distinctly, and though several hundred people were roaring with laughter, every one of them heard clearly. The gathered masters of the six great Schools felt a chill of alarm and set aside some portion of their contempt. The boy is young. How can his neili¹² be so formidable?

Yuanyin waited until the laughter died, then panted, “You cunning little wretch! You know full well that Yuanzhen shixiong can no longer face your questions, and so you call for him by name? Why do you not demand that Zhang Cuishan of the Wudang Order come forth to answer?”

The moment those last words left his mouth, Kongzhi at once barked, “Yuanyin, choose your words with care!” But many among the Huashan, Kunlun and Kongtong Schools had already burst into loud laughter. Only the Wudang party wore looks of anger and said nothing. It transpired that Yuanyin’s right eye had been blinded by Yin Susu¹³ with a silver needle on the shores of West Lake,¹⁴ and all his life he had believed it was Zhang Cuishan who had struck the blow. The resentment had festered in him ever since.

Zhang Wuji heard him slander his late father and his rage boiled beyond all restraint. He bellowed, “You dare speak the honoured name of Zhang the Fifth Xia so loosely? You… you…” Yuanyin sneered, “Zhang Cuishan chose to descend into depravity. Bewitched by a demonic woman of the cult, he earned himself a fitting punishment for his lust…”

Again and again Zhang Wuji cautioned himself: Today’s purpose is to bring both sides to peace. I must not harm a single person. But hearing this man slander his parents, how could he endure it? He sprang forward. His left hand shot out and seized Yuanyin by the small of the back, lifting him off the ground. His right hand snatched the chan staff from the monk’s grasp, swung it overhead, and was about to bring it crashing down upon his skull. Seized as he was, Yuanyin was like a chick in an eagle’s talons. He had not the slightest power to resist.

From the Shaolin ranks two monks dashed out at the same instant, their chan staffs attacking Zhang Wuji from left and right. It was a supreme tactic of martial rescue, “besiege Wei to rescue Zhao,”¹⁵ striking where the enemy must respond, and so relieving a companion fallen into peril. The two monks who rushed forward were Yuanxin and Yuanye. Zhang Wuji leapt high into the air, Yuanyin clamped under his left arm, the chan staff in his right hand. Both feet shot out and struck the staffs wielded by Yuanxin and Yuanye, and with two muffled grunts the monks toppled backwards. Fortunately both were martial artists of no small skill. Even in peril they did not lose their heads, and channelling neili into their hands they thrust upwards just in time to prevent the two gilded steel staffs, each weighing several tens of jin,¹⁶ from rebounding upon themselves.

Amid the crowd’s cries of alarm, Zhang Wuji was seen to turn in mid-air while clutching Yuanyin’s great frame, then drift lightly to the ground. Seven or eight voices from among the six great Schools cried out, “The Wudang Order’s Cloud Ladder!”¹⁷

Zhang Wuji had grown up in the company of his father, his Grand Shifu,¹⁸ and his various shibo¹⁹ and shishu.²⁰ Of the Wudang Order’s martial arts he had learned only the thirty-two postures of Wudang Long Fist, an elementary set, yet what he had seen and heard of their skills was considerable. Now, having mastered the divine art of the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth,²¹ he could draw upon the martial arts of any School or lineage. Wudang techniques he had absorbed since childhood, seeing and hearing more of them than any other, and when he acted without thought, what came naturally was the most celebrated of all the wulin’s qinggong²², the Cloud Ladder. For Yu Lianzhou or Zhang Songxi to leap aloft as he had done and turn gracefully several times in mid-air would have posed no difficulty at all, and their movements would have been far more fluid and elegant besides. But to do so while clutching a portly monk in one hand and a heavy chan staff in the other, and still remain as light as a swallow. That was quite beyond them. The Wudang xias watched in astonishment.

The Shaolin monks stood now seventy or eighty feet away. They could see that Yuanyin had been seized at a vital acupoint²³ and could not move. Zhang Wuji need only thrust up his chan staff and Yuanyin’s brains would be dashed out in an instant. To rush forward and save him in that fleeting moment was quite beyond them. The only recourse was to launch concealed weapons, but Zhang Wuji need only raise Yuanyin’s body as a shield and kill with a borrowed blade,²⁴ which would only hasten the monk’s death. Though supreme masters such as Kongzhi and Kongxing stood nearby, the turn of events had been so sudden that none had anticipated the youth possessed such skill, and he had caught them utterly off guard. He stood with clenched teeth and a face full of hatred, the chan staff raised high above his head. Some of the Shaolin monks shut their eyes and could not bear to watch. Others prepared to rush forward together and avenge Yuanyin.

But Zhang Wuji’s upraised arm did not fall. He seemed to wrestle with a grave inner doubt, unable to decide. Then his expression softened by degrees, and slowly he set Yuanyin down.

For in that instant he had mastered the fury in his breast. If I kill or maim even one person among the six great Schools, he thought, I become their enemy, and can serve as mediator no longer. This bloodletting in the wulin will lie beyond all settling, and I shall have played directly into the hands of that villain Cheng Kun.²⁵ No matter how they revile me, strike me, wound me, even if they insult my parents or my sworn father, I must endure to the end. That is the true path to avenge my parents and my sworn father.

Having reached this conclusion, he set Yuanyin down and said slowly, “Great Master Yuanyin, your eye was not blinded by Zhang the Fifth Xia. There is no need to harbour such lasting resentment. Besides, when your party went up Wudang Mountain that day and drove Zhang the Fifth Xia and his wife to take their own lives, any grudge between you should have been settled then. You are a monk, Great Master, and compassion is your guiding principle. Why cling so tenaciously to the past?”

Yuanyin, escaped from the jaws of death, stared blankly at Zhang Wuji, unable to speak. When the young man held out his chan staff, he took it almost without thinking, then lowered his head and retreated, dimly aware that the resentment he had nursed all these years had perhaps not been wholly justified.

Hearing these words, the eminent monks of Shaolin and the xias of Wudang could not help but nod silently to themselves.

Footnotes

1. 袈裟 – jiāshā. A Buddhist monk’s outer robe, from the Sanskrit kaṣāya. ↩

2. 禅杖 – chán zhàng. A long staff carried by Buddhist monks, used both as a walking aid and as a weapon. ↩

3. 圆音 – Yuán Yīn. A Shaolin monk of the Yuan generation. ↩

4. 张翠山 – Zhāng Cuìshān. His name meaning “Jade Mountain”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 大师 – dàshī. Literally great master. An honorific title for a monk of high standing. ↩

6. 圆真 – Yuán Zhēn. A dharma name of the Shaolin Order. ↩

7. 师兄 – shīxiōng. Male senior fellow disciple. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher and lineage father. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 宗维侠 – Zōng Wéixiá. One of the Five Elders of Kongtong. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 真人 – zhēnrén. Literally true person. A Daoist honorific title for a master of the highest attainment. ↩

11. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. The community of martial artists and their world. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 内力 – nèilì. Internal force. The kinetic manifestation of qi cultivated through neigong. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 殷素素 – Yīn Sùsù. Zhang Wuji’s mother, formerly of the Tianying Order. She blinded Yuanyin’s right eye with a silver needle at West Lake before Zhang Cuishan ever met her. She took her own life on Wudang Mountain alongside her husband. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 西子湖 – Xīzǐ Hú. Another name for West Lake (西湖) in Hangzhou, after the beautiful Xi Shi of ancient legend. ↩

15. 围魏救赵 – wéi Wèi jiù Zhào. Literally besiege Wei to rescue Zhao. One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: attack an enemy’s vulnerable point to force them to withdraw, thereby relieving an ally. ↩

16. 斤 – jīn. A unit of weight, approximately 590 grammes in the Ming dynasty, a little over a pound. ↩

17. 梯云纵 – Tīyún Zòng. Literally Cloud Ladder Leap. The most celebrated qinggong of the Wudang Order, enabling the practitioner to change direction in mid-air as though climbing an invisible ladder of cloud. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 太师父 – tàishīfù. One’s shifu’s shifu. Two rungs above in the martial lineage. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. The shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. ↩

20. 师叔 – shīshū. Junior lineage uncle. The shidi or shimei of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Shū means father’s younger brother. ↩

21. 乾坤大挪移 – Qiánkūn Dà Nuóyí. The supreme secret art of the Ming Order, capable of redirecting force and reversing the flow of qi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

22. 轻功 – qīnggōng. Lightness skill. Martial arts techniques for agility, leaping, and movement. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

23. 穴位 – xuéwèi. A point on the body’s meridian system through which qi flows. Striking vital acupoints can paralysе or kill. ↩

24. 借刀杀人 – jiè dāo shā rén. Literally kill with a borrowed blade. Another of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: use a third party or the enemy’s own resources to destroy them. ↩

25. 成昆 – Chéng Kūn. His name meaning “Establishing Strategy”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩