The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 29 – Part 5

Zhou Zhiruo's face flushed crimson and she lowered her head. Xiaozhao, however, remained composed. “Grandpa Xie, I am but a little maidservant attending the young master. I do not count.”

Though Zhao Min’s injuries were serious, she had remained conscious throughout. Suddenly she spoke, “Grandpa Xie, talk such nonsense again, and once I have healed, just you wait till I slap your face good and hard.”

Xie Xun thrust out his tongue. “Fierce, this girl of yours.” The smile vanished from his face as he mused aloud, “Hmm. Last night, those three desperate strikes of yours — the first was the Kunlun School’s ‘Jade Shatters Kunlun Ridge’;¹ the second, the Kongtong School’s ‘Man and Ghost Share the Same Path’;² and the third — what was the third? This old man is ignorant and widely travelled, yet I could not make it out.”

Zhao Min was secretly alarmed. No wonder the Golden Haired Lion King³ shook the jianghu⁴ from end to end in his day. Blind as he is, he can still divine the two killing moves I used. His fame is well earned. Aloud she said, “The third was the Wudang Order’s ‘Heaven and Earth Share Longevity’.⁵ It seems to be a newly devised technique, which is why you did not recognise it.” Her tone was most respectful.

Xie Xun sighed. “That you strained yourself to the utmost to save Wuji is well and good, but why did you throw your own life away as well?”

Zhao Min replied, “He… he…” She paused, hesitating within herself whether the next words ought to be spoken. At last she could not hold them back, and burst out in a choked voice, “He… who told him to cling to her so tenderly… to hold… to hold Miss Yin in his arms. I did not want to go on living!” When the words were out, tears rained down her face.

The four of them heard the young girl lay her heart bare before them all, and were every one astonished. None had expected it of Zhao Min, but she was a Mongol girl, and when she loved she loved, and when she hated she hated, without the coy dissembling bred in the Central Plains by centuries of propriety. Besides, they adrift in a flat boat upon the sea, drenched by heavy rain, every moment in danger of capsizing and drowning — with life and death hanging by a thread, even such scruples as she had were gone.

When Zhang Wuji heard Zhao Min speak thus, his heart was shaken. Miss Zhao was of our Order’s most dangerous foes. The purpose of this voyage overseas with her was nothing more than to fetch my sworn father. How could I have dreamed she harboured so deep a feeling for me? Without thought, he reached out and took her hand, and bending his lips to her ear whispered, “It is I who cling tenderly. You must never do such a thing again.”

No sooner had the words left Zhao Min’s mouth than she regretted them bitterly. A girl’s tongue has no gate to it. How could I have spoken such things aloud? Will he not think the worse of me for it? Then she heard him speak with such tender earnestness, and her heart was flooded with equal parts astonishment, joy, shame and love. A sweetness past words filled her, and she felt that three brushes with death last night, and today’s drifting upon the sea, had all been worth it.

The heavy rain abated after a time, but the thick fog grew only thicker. Suddenly, with a splash, a great fish of some thirty jin⁶ leapt from the sea. Xie Xun stretched out his right hand, drove his five fingers into the fish’s belly, and hauled it into the boat. The others cried out in admiration. Xiaozhao drew her jian and split the fish open, scraped off the scales, and cut it into strips. They were all truly hungry, and though the raw fish was rank with a heavy fishy smell, they forced down what they could. Xie Xun, however, ate with relish. He had lived more than twenty years on a desert island; what hardship had he not endured? What was a little raw fish to him? Besides, raw fish needed only to be chewed a while longer, and once one grew used to the fishy taste, there was a sweet freshness of its own.

The waves on the sea gradually subsided. After eating, each closed their eyes to rest. The fierce fighting of the previous day and night had drained them to the marrow, and though Zhou Zhiruo and Xiaozhao had not joined the battle, the fright they had endured was no small matter. The sea rocked the little boat gently, like a cradle, and one by one the six in the boat fell asleep.

They slept well, for more than three shichen.⁷ Xie Xun, being old, woke first. He heard the breathing of the five young men and women harmonising softly with the sound of the sea-wind. The two girls’ breath came rather quickly; he guessed they were Zhao Min and Yin Li, both wounded. A third breathing was light and long, such as the Emei Order’s neigong⁸ produces; that must be the young woman called Zhou Zhiruo. The one young man, Zhang Wuji, breathed in a rhythm that seemed now to break, now to continue, with no clear boundary between inhalation and exhalation. Xie Xun was secretly astonished. The depth of this boy’s neili⁹ is beyond anything I have ever met. The remaining girl’s breathing was sometimes quick, sometimes slow; the neigong she practised was plainly a most unusual one. That must be the little maid called Xiaozhao. Xie Xun frowned, recalling something. How strange. Could this girl in fact be…

Suddenly Yin Li cried out, “Zhang Wuji, you little wretch, why won’t you come to Spirit Snake Island with me?” Zhang Wuji, Zhao Min, Zhou Zhiruo and Xiaozhao were all startled awake by her shout. They heard her go on, “I am all alone on the island, so lonely… Why would you not come and keep me company? I long for you so bitterly, and you… do you know it, even in the underworld?”

Zhang Wuji felt her forehead; it was burning. She had developed a fever from her wound and was speaking deliriously. Skilled as he was in medicine, he had neither herbs nor drugs in the little boat, and could do nothing. He tore a strip from the hem of his robe, soaked it in water, and laid it across her brow.

Yin Li’s ravings did not cease. Suddenly she cried aloud in terror, “Father, you… you must not kill Mother! Don’t kill Mother! It was I who killed Second Mother. Kill me instead. It has nothing to do with Mother… Mother, Mother! Are you dead? I was the one who caused Mother’s death! Wuuu… wuuu…” She wept most piteously. Zhang Wuji said gently, “Zhu’er, Zhu’er, wake up. Your father is not here. There is nothing to fear.” Yin Li cried angrily, “Father, kill me quickly! Mother was killed by me, and driven to it by you! I am not afraid of you! Why did you take Second Mother, Third Mother? Is one wife not enough for a man? Father, you were of two minds and three intentions, always casting aside the old for the new, taking one woman after another. You made Mother suffer, you made me suffer! You are not my father. You are a faithless wretch, a great sinner!”

Zhang Wuji’s heart lurched, and his face went white at the lips. He had only just awakened from a fine dream. In it he had married Zhao Min, and then married Zhou Zhiruo as well. Yin Li’s swollen face had grown beautiful again, and she too, with Xiaozhao, had married him. Thoughts he had never dared turn in daylight had become reality in sleep, and in the dream each of the four girls had seemed beyond comparison dear, and he could not bear to part with any of them. Even now, as he comforted Yin Li, the sweet warmth the dream had left behind him still lingered in his mind.

Then he heard Yin Li railing against her father, and remembered what she had once told him. She, unable to bear her mother’s suffering under a concubine’s oppression, had killed her father’s favourite consort; her own mother had thereupon cut her own throat, so that her uncle Yin Yewang had sought to put his own daughter to death. That pitiful violation of all human bonds had sprung from Yin Yewang’s inconstancy in love, his taking of wife after concubine. He glanced at Zhao Min, and then, against his will, at Zhou Zhiruo and Xiaozhao as well, and the dream he had had filled him with deep shame.

Yin Li murmured confusedly for a while, then suddenly began to beg piteously, “Zhang Wuji, I beg you to come with me. Come with me. You bit my hand so fiercely, but I do not hate you at all. I will serve you and care for you all my life, and treat you as my master. Do not think me ugly. If it is your wish, I would rather scatter all my martial arts and cast aside the Thousand Spider Venomous Hand,¹⁰ and be to you exactly as I was when first we met…” The words were uttered in a voice so soft and tender that Zhang Wuji, who had always thought his cousin wayward in her humours, changeable in her moods, eccentric and wilful, could not have imagined such gentleness lay within her. He heard her go on, “Wuji, I searched for you everywhere. I walked to the ends of the earth and the corners of the sea, and heard no news of you. Only later did I learn that you had already fallen from a cliff in the Western Regions and perished. I was so grieved I truly did not want to live. In the Western Regions I met a young man called Aniu gege.¹¹ His martial arts were superb, and his character beyond compare. He said he would marry me.”

Zhao Min, Zhou Zhiruo and Xiaozhao all knew that Aniu was Zhang Wuji’s assumed name, and all three turned to look at him. Zhang Wuji’s face burned crimson. He was so mortified that, beneath the three girls’ peculiar gazes, he would gladly have leapt into the sea and waited till Yin Li recovered her wits before climbing back aboard.

They heard Yin Li murmur on, “That Aniu gege said to me, ‘Young lady, I am sincere and truly wish to take you as my wife. I only hope you will not think me unworthy.’ He said, ‘From this day forward, I will do my utmost to protect you and care for you. No matter how many people make difficulty for 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 make your heart glad, and cause you to forget the bitterness of the past.’ Zhang Wuji, that Aniu gege’s character is far finer than yours. His martial arts are stronger than even Emei Order’s Miejue Shitai. But I already had a certain heartless, short-lived wretch in my heart, and so I did not accept him. When you died young, I would keep widow’s vows all my life for you. Zhang Wuji, tell me — was Ali not good to you? You would not look at me back then. Are you regretful now, regretful now?”

At first Zhang Wuji, hearing her recite the very words he had once spoken to her, felt only deep embarrassment. But as he listened on, he was more and more moved, until tears fell in a steady stream. By now the thick fog had dispersed. A crescent moon shone into the cabin. Yin Li lay on her side, and he could see only her slender back.

He heard her say softly, “Wuji, are you lonely in the underworld? Are you alone? Is any ghost-maiden keeping you company? I will go with Popo to Ice Fire Island in the Northern Sea to find your sworn father, and then to Mount Wudang to sweep your parents’ graves, and then to the snow-peak in the Western Regions where you perished, and throw myself down to be with you. But that must wait until Popo’s hundred years are fulfilled. I cannot come to you before then, and leave her lonely in the world to suffer. Popo has been very good to me. If she had not saved me, my own father would have killed me long ago. For your sworn father’s sake I betrayed Popo, and she must hate me bitterly, yet I shall still be good to her. Zhang Wuji, would you not say that is right?” She spoke as though Zhang Wuji were beside her, the two of them planning together. In her mind, Zhang Wuji had long since perished and become a ghost; and thus she whispered tenderly to a phantom, whilst the moon brightened the sea and the lone boat lay still. The sound of it was heart-rending beyond words.

What followed was a jumble of disjointed phrases, now a startled cry, now an angry curse. Yet every word laid bare the endless grief within her. After a long while of such cries and curses, her voice sank lower and lower, and slowly she fell asleep again.

The five who were awake looked at one another in silence, each wrapped in his or her own thoughts and past. The waves lapped gently against the little boat, and they felt that the vast ocean had endured since time beyond count, and that the sorrows of men’s lives were likewise without end.

Then, drifting across the sea, came a song in a voice very soft, very far away:

“At the end, this body of mine,
cannot escape that day.
A hundred years of light —
of them, seventy are rare.
The fleeting years press on,
the passing waters flow away.”

It was Yin Li, singing quietly in her sleep.

Zhang Wuji’s heart stirred. He remembered that in the secret passage beneath Bright Peak,¹² when the exit had been sealed shut by Cheng Kun and there was no way out, Xiaozhao had sung the very same song. He could not help but turn his eyes towards her. In the moonlight he saw Xiaozhao gazing at him, as if entranced. In her clear eyes seemed to lie the same thousand words and ten thousand phrases that Yin Li had spoken, and upon that young, sweet, childish face was written a tenderness past telling.

Footnotes

1. 玉碎昆冈 – Yù Suì Kūn Gāng. Literally jade shatters Kunlun Ridge. A technique of the Kunlun School. ↩

2. 人鬼同途 – Rén Guǐ Tóng Tú. Literally man and ghost share the same path. A technique of the Kongtong School. ↩

3. 金毛狮王 – Jīn Máo Shī Wáng. The Golden Haired Lion King. Xie Xun’s epithet, one of the Four Guardian Kings of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 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, including pedlars, physicians, fortune-tellers, entertainers, boatmen, beggars, outlaws and the like. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 天地同寿 – Tiān Dì Tóng Shòu. Literally heaven and earth share longevity. A newly created technique of the Wudang Order. ↩

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

7. 时辰 – shíchén. A unit of time; the day was divided into twelve shichen, each equivalent to two hours. ↩

8. 内功 – nèigōng. Internal cultivation; the cultivation of inner strength through meditation, breathing and other practices, as distinct from the external conditioning of waigong. ↩

9. 内力 – nèilì. Internal force. The kinetic manifestation of qi, cultivated through neigong. ↩

10. 千蛛万毒手 – Qiān Zhū Wàn Dú Shǒu. Literally Thousand Spiders Ten Thousand Poisons Hand. A venomous martial art practised by Yin Li, which disfigures the user whilst rendering their touch lethal. ↩

11. 哥哥 – gēge. Elder brother; an affectionate form of address. ↩

12. 明教 – Míng Jiào. The Ming Order. A revolutionary organisation opposing Yuan rule, with Manichaean and Zoroastrian influences. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩