The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 28 – Part 6

He told her everything. How he had studied medicine under Hu Qingniu,¹ the Butterfly Valley Medical Immortal, in Butterfly Valley.² How men from every faction, done to death by Jinhua Popo, had come to the valley seeking a cure, neither alive nor dead. How he had cured them on Hu Qingniu's instruction. How Jinhua Popo and Miejue Shitai³ had fought and the old woman had lost. How Hu Qingniu and Wang Nangu,⁴ husband and wife, had died at Jinhua Popo's hands in the end. He held nothing back. He thought of Hu Qingniu's eccentric temper, but how kindly the man had been to him. The image of their corpses hanging from the treetops rose unbidden, and his eyes stung.⁵

He left out Zhu’er’s attempt to drag him to Spirit Snake Island as company, and how he had bitten her on the back of the hand. Why he had omitted that, he did not himself know. Perhaps he found it rather indelicate.

Zhao Min listened without a sound. Her expression was grave when she spoke. “At first I took the old woman for nothing more than a formidable martial artist. I did not realise there were so many debts of gratitude and enmity entangled with her. By your account, this old woman is exceedingly difficult to face. We must not let down our guard for a moment.”

Zhang Wuji smiled. “The Princess Consort⁶ is a master of both letters and martial arts, and commands so many extraordinary followers. Against a mere Jinhua Popo, you would hardly be hard-pressed.”

Zhao Min laughed. “It is a pity there is no way to summon my warriors and monks across the vast sea.”

Zhang Wuji said, “The cooks who boil the rice and the sailors who haul the sails may not be first-rates of the jianghu,⁷ but they must count for second-rate at least?”

Zhao Min was taken aback, then burst into laughter. “I stand corrected. The Great Order Leader⁸ has sharp eyes indeed. Nothing escapes you.” In truth, when she had ridden back to the prince’s mansion for horses and silver, she had privately instructed her steward to dispatch a party of her subordinates to the coast, to await her orders. These men had ridden hard and arrived only half a day behind them. None of those she had summoned had taken part in the Wan’an Temple affair, and they had never set eyes on Zhang Wuji. They had been disguised as kitchen hands and sailors. But a man who trains in the martial arts carries himself differently. However hard he tries to conceal it, Zhang Wuji had seen through them at a glance.

Zhao Min thought to herself, Since he has seen through it, Jinhua Popo, who is far more worldly-wise and far more cunning, must have seen through it too. It matters little. Our side outnumbers her, and Zhang Wuji’s martial arts are superior. Whether she knows or not, even if she does make a move, she and Zhu’er together are only two. Nothing to fear. Since the girl did not call the bluff, she might as well keep up the pretence.

In the days that followed, what troubled Zhang Wuji most was whether the pill Jinhua Popo had given Zhou Zhiruo had begun to take effect. Zhao Min knew what was on his mind. Whenever his brow furrowed, she would send someone up to the upper deck with tea or water to spy on the situation. Each time the report came back the same: Miss Zhou was going about as usual, without the slightest symptom of poisoning. After the third or fourth such errand, Zhang Wuji began to feel rather sheepish.

He sat alone in a corner of the cabin and let his thoughts drift to the snowfields of the Western Regions. How Zhu’er had kept him company. How, even as He Taichong,⁹ Wu Lie¹⁰ and Ding Minjun¹¹ pressed in around him, she had still found a moment to come and see him. He remembered standing before them all and calling out loud, “Miss, I am sincere when I say I wish to take you as my wife. I only hope you do not think me unworthy.” And how he had told her, heart and soul: “From this day on, I will do my utmost to protect you and care for you. No matter how many people set themselves against you, no matter how formidable a foe comes to bully you, I would rather give my own life than let you come to harm. I will bring happiness to your heart, and make you forget the bitterness of the past.” Remembering those words, he felt the colour rise to his face.

Zhao Min suddenly snapped, “Pah! Thinking about your Zhu’er again!”

Zhang Wuji said, “I am not.”

Zhao Min said, “If you are, you are. If you are not, you are not. As if I could stop you. A grown man, and you lie about it?”

Zhang Wuji said, “Why would I lie? I will tell you. It is not Miss Zhou I am thinking of.”

Zhao Min said, “If you were thinking of Bitter Dhūta¹² or Wei Yixiao,¹³ your face would not have that look. Those ugly, grotesque fellows. Would you look so tender, so sheepish, at the thought of them?”

Zhang Wuji gave an embarrassed laugh. “You are far too sharp. How can you tell whether the person in someone’s thoughts is handsome or ugly? Very well. I will be honest. The one I am thinking of right now happens to be exceedingly ugly.”

Zhao Min, seeing the sincerity in his words, gave a faint smile and said no more. Clever as she was, she could never have guessed that the person he longed for was the ugly girl in the cabin above. Zhu’er.

Zhang Wuji thought of how Zhu’er, to cultivate the cruel art of the Myriad Spiders, Myriad Poisons Hand,¹⁴ had let her face grow swollen and pitted. The night they met again in the ruined garden, it had seemed worse than before. Thinking of this, he could not help sighing. That poisonous art went deeper the further it was practised. He feared it would corrupt both her body and her mind. Then he remembered how Yin Liting¹⁵ had told him of his own fall from the cliff, and how Zhu’er had thrown herself to the ground weeping. His grief grew heavier still.

Ever since arriving at Bright Peak, his days and nights had been spent either honing his skills or running the Ming Order’s affairs. When had he ever had a quiet moment to attend to his own heart? He had thought of Zhu’er now and then. He had asked Wei Yixiao about her. He had asked Yang Xiao¹⁶ to send men searching the surroundings of Bright Peak. But there had never been any news. Now, at last, he reproached himself bitterly. Zhu’er has been so good to me, and I have been so cold to her. How have I let so many days go by without once holding her in my thoughts? Ever since he had become the Ming Order’s Order Leader, he had cast all his private affairs behind his head.

Zhao Min suddenly said, “What are you regretting now?”

Before Zhang Wuji could answer, a shout rose from the deck above. A sailor came down to report, “Land sighted ahead. The old woman has ordered us to steer for the shore.”

Zhao Min and Zhang Wuji looked out through the porthole. Several li¹⁷ away stood a great island, thick with green trees. Strange peaks rose sheer above it, several tall mountains piercing the sky. The warship, her sails brimming, drove straight for it. In the time it takes to eat a bowl of rice, they had reached the island. The eastern end of the island fell in sheer cliffs to the sea. There was no shoal, and though the warship drew deep, she could anchor close inshore.

The warship had not yet come to rest when a great roar rang down from the headland, rich with neili,¹⁸ thunderously powerful. Zhang Wuji’s heart leapt with joy and alarm together. The call was achingly familiar. It was his sworn father. The Golden-Maned Lion King,¹⁹ Xie Xun.²⁰ More than ten years apart, and his sworn father’s might was as formidable as ever. How could his heart not overflow? He had no time to wonder how Xie Xun had come from the frozen reaches of Ice Fire Island to this place. He cared nothing for whether Jinhua Popo might see through his disguise. He took the ladder to the poop deck two steps at a time and gazed toward the headland from which the roar had come.

Four men, weapons in hand, were ringed around a tall figure. The man fought bare-handed. It was none other than the Golden-Maned Lion King, Xie Xun. In a single glance Zhang Wuji saw that though his sworn father was blind, though he fought one against four, though he had nothing but his bare fists against four blades, he gave away not a sliver of ground. Zhang Wuji had never seen his sworn father fight. Watching only a few exchanges, his heart swelled with pleasure. The Golden-Maned Lion King’s fame once shook the world, and it is no empty name. My sworn father’s martial arts surpass even Wei the Bat King’s. He stands shoulder to shoulder with my grandfather. The four men’s skill was also far from negligible. From the poop deck, looking up at the headland, he could not make out their faces. But he saw their clothes were ragged, and cloth sacks hung from their backs. They must be men of the Beggars’ Guild.²¹ Three more men stood to one side, watching.

Then a voice carried down on the wind, broken into fragments. “Hand over the Dragon-Slaying Dao… We will spare your life… The treasured dao for your life…” The mountain wind tore his words apart, and at this distance they could not be made out clearly. But it was plain enough what these men wanted. They meant to seize the Dragon-Slaying Dao.

Xie Xun’s great laugh rolled down the hillside. “The Dragon-Slaying Dao is at my side. You stinking thieves of the Beggars’ Guild, if you have the skill, come and take it.” He spoke as he fought, his hands and feet never pausing for a single stroke.

Jinhua Popo’s form blurred, and she was on the shore. She coughed several times and said, “The Beggars’ Guild’s worthy heroes have graced Spirit Snake Island with their presence, yet they do not come to speak to this old woman. Instead they harass the island’s honoured guests. What is the meaning of this?”

Zhang Wuji thought, So this is indeed Spirit Snake Island. From Jinhua Popo’s words, it seems my sworn father is her guest. Back then, nothing could have persuaded my sworn father to leave Ice Fire Island and return to the Central Plains. How is it that Jinhua Popo need only ask, and he came? And how did she learn where my sworn father was? Doubts crowded upon him all at once.

The four men on the headland, hearing their island’s mistress had arrived, hoped only to finish off Xie Xun quickly, and pressed their attack all the harder. They did not realise that in doing so, they had committed a cardinal sin of the martial arts. Xie Xun’s eyes were blind. He relied wholly on the wind of his enemies’ weapons to gauge their position. The faster the four men struck, the louder the wind they made. Xie Xun gave a great laugh and drove a fist straight into one man’s chest. A long, piteous wail rang out. The man toppled from the headland and fell, his skull cracked open, brains splattering the rock.

Of the three men watching, one cried, “Fall back!” A fist drifted out, light as if it were nothing, its force there and not there, so that Xie Xun could not trace its course. Only when the fist was within mere inches of his body did Xie Xun perceive it. He threw up a hasty guard, but the sudden shift left him flustered and hard-pressed. The three who had been fighting before drew back, and the old man who had been watching joined the fray. He fought in the same manner as the first, his palms soft and light. Within a few moves Xie Xun was hard pressed, driven from one peril to the next.

Jinhua Popo cried, “Elder Ji,²² Elder Zheng,²³ the Golden-Maned Lion King cannot see. You use such despicable means against him. For shame. You call yourselves heroes of the jianghu.” As she spoke, she supported herself on her crutch and climbed the headland. For all her trembling, tottering gait, as though a gust of mountain wind might send her tumbling, her advance was surprisingly swift. Her crutch braced against the ground and she glided forward as though riding the wind, and in moments she had reached the mountainside. Zhu’er pressed close behind, but still lagged far below.

Zhang Wuji, fearing for his sworn father’s life, climbed the hill at speed. Zhao Min followed and said in a low voice, “With the old woman there, the Lion King is in no danger. Do not reveal yourself. Staying hidden is what matters.” Zhang Wuji nodded and fell in behind Zhu’er. All he could see was her slender, graceful figure from behind. If one did not look at her face, was she not a beauty without peer? In what way did she fall short of Zhao Min, Zhou Zhiruo, or Xiaozhao? His thoughts turned, and at once he rebuked himself. Zhang Wuji, Zhang Wuji, your sworn father is in deadly peril, and at a moment like this you are gazing at a girl, appraising whether her face and figure are beautiful or not?

Footnotes

1. 胡青牛 – Hú Qīngniú. The Butterfly Valley Medical Immortal. A physician of unmatched skill and eccentric temper, husband of Wang Nangu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 蝴蝶谷 – Húdiégǔ. Butterfly Valley. Hu Qingniu’s home and surgery in the Central Plains. ↩

3. 灭绝师太 – Mièjué Shītài. The late zhangmen of the Emei Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 王难姑 – Wáng Nàngū. Wife of Hu Qingniu, skilled in the arts of poison and medicine. ↩

5. Translator’s note: the source has 尸体高悬树梢 (corpses hung high from the treetops), referring to an earlier event in which Jinhua Popo displayed the bodies. ↩

6. 郡主 – jùnzhǔ. Princess Consort, a title of nobility. Zhao Min holds this rank as daughter of the Prince of Ruyang. ↩

7. 江湖 – jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. The itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 教主 – jiàozhǔ. Order Leader. The title by which the head of the Ming Order is addressed. ↩

9. 何太冲 – Hé Tàichōng. Zhangmen of the Kunlun School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 武烈 – Wǔ Liè. Descendant of the Wudang Seven Xias’ foe and a master of the Shenquan School lineage. ↩

11. 丁敏君 – Dīng Mǐnjūn. A senior disciple of the Emei Order. ↩

12. 苦头陀 – Kǔtóutuó. Bitter Dhūta. A disfigured fighter in Zhao Min’s service. ↩

13. 韦一笑 – Wéi Yīxiào. Wei Yixiao, known as the Bat King. One of the four Guardian Kings of the Ming Order. ↩

14. 千蛛万毒手 – Qiān Zhū Wàn Dú Shǒu. Literally Myriad Spiders, Myriad Poisons Hand. A poisonous art that disfigures the practitioner. ↩

15. 殷梨亭 – Yīn Lítíng. The Sixth Xia of the Wudang Order. ↩

16. 杨逍 – Yáng Xiāo. The Brightness Messenger, senior leader of the Ming Order. ↩

17. 里 – lǐ. A Chinese unit of distance, approximately one-third of a mile. ↩

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

19. 金毛狮王 – Jīnmáo Shīwáng. The Golden-Maned Lion King. Xie Xun’s epithet, one of the four Guardian Kings of the Ming Order. ↩

20. 谢逊 – Xiè Xùn. Zhang Wuji’s sworn father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 丐帮 – Gài Bāng. The Beggars’ Guild. One of the great factions of the jianghu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

22. 季长老 – Jì Zhǎnglǎo. Elder Ji of the Beggars’ Guild. ↩

23. 郑长老 – Zhèng Zhǎnglǎo. Elder Zheng of the Beggars’ Guild. ↩