The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 3 Part 1

A precious dao, forged a hundred times, gives off a dark gleam¹

Blossoms bloom and blossoms fall. Blossoms fall and blossoms bloom. The young wanderers of the jianghu² grow old, and white hairs appear at the temples of once-beautiful maidens.

It was the second year of the Zhiyuan reign under Emperor Shun of the Yuan dynasty.³ More than fifty years had passed since the fall of the Song.

Spring had reached its zenith in the third month, and along the coastal reaches of Jiangnan,⁴ a stalwart man of some thirty years strode down a broad thoroughfare. He wore a blue robe, straw sandals upon his feet, and moved at a swift and steady pace. His brows swept up at a slant, his eyes gleamed bright and keen, his nose rose high and proud, all marking him as a man of formidable spirit.

Though dusk drew near and peach blossoms glowed red amid willow-green along the roadside, he had no leisure to admire the splendour of spring. His mind turned only on silent calculation: Today is the twenty-fourth of the third month. Fourteen days remain until the ninth of the fourth month. I must suffer no delay upon the road if I am to reach Mount Wudang⁵ in time to celebrate my shifu’s ninetieth birthday.

This stalwart man, surnamed Yu and named Daiyan,⁶ was the third disciple of Zhang Sanfeng,⁷ the founding patriarch of the Wudang Order.⁸ Earlier that year, his shifu⁹ had dispatched him to Fujian¹⁰ to slay a vicious bandit who had been ravaging the common folk and committing countless atrocities. That bandit, catching wind of his coming, had immediately gone to ground. Yu Daiyan spent more than two months tracking down his secret lair, then challenged him to single combat.

Using the Mysterious Void Bladework¹¹ passed down from his shifu, he slew the man on the eleventh move. What he had expected to take ten days had consumed more than two months, and when he counted the days remaining until his shifu’s ninetieth birthday, he found them alarmingly few. Thus he pressed homeward from Fujian with all haste, and on this day had already reached the coast of eastern Zhejiang, south of the Qiantang River.¹²

He pressed on at a rapid pace for a time, and the path grew narrower. To his right, toward the sea, he frequently glimpsed expanses of flat ground, smooth as mirrors and often seventy or eighty feet across, so level and slick that not even a water-polished tabletop could match them. Yu Daiyan had travelled the length and breadth of the land north and south of the Yangtze, and his experience was considerable, yet he had never encountered anything so peculiar.

When he asked a local, he could not help but laugh at his own ignorance: they were salt fields. The salt workers of that region channelled seawater into these fields. Once it evaporated, they scraped up the salt-laden earth, dissolved it into brine, and gradually dried it into salt crystals. Yu Daiyan thought, I have eaten salt for thirty years, yet never knew that producing it required such toil.

As he walked on, he suddenly caught sight of a party of more than twenty men approaching swiftly from a side path to the west, all bearing loads upon their shoulders. Yu Daiyan took note of them with a single glance. Every man wore a matching outfit of short blue shirt and trousers with a broad-brimmed hat upon his head, and their burdens clearly contained sea salt. He knew the government levied crushing taxes upon salt. Ordinary folk, though they dwelt beside the sea, could not afford the official product and had no choice but to buy smuggled salt from private dealers.

These men moved with bold, agile strides, their builds powerful and solid, clearly a band of salt smugglers. What struck him as strange was that the carrying poles upon their shoulders were neither bamboo nor wood, but black and dull, utterly without flex, as though they were iron bars. Each man bore some two hundred jin¹³ of weight, yet they moved with remarkable speed.

Yu Daiyan mused, Every one of these smugglers commands no mean skill. I have heard that the Haisha School¹⁴ of Jiangnan deals in contraband salt on a grand scale and counts among its ranks no few experts in martial arts. Yet for more than twenty such experts to band together hauling salt makes no sense at all.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have investigated further, but with his shifu’s birthday weighing upon his mind, he could not afford to meddle in matters that might cause further delay. He quickened his pace and pressed on.

By evening he had reached Andong Town¹⁵ in Yuyao County.¹⁶ From there he would cross the Qiantang River to Yanguan¹⁷ and Lin’an,¹⁸ then turn northwest through Jiangxi and Hunan before finally arriving in Hubei at Mount Wudang. No boats crossed the river after nightfall, so he had no choice but to find a small inn in Andong Town and lodge there for the night.

After supper, he had just washed his feet and was about to retire when a commotion erupted in the common hall as a group of men arrived seeking lodging. He heard them speaking in the local dialect of eastern Zhejiang, yet their voices rang with full and vigorous inner breath, clearly all accomplished practitioners. Peering through his door, he saw that they were the same band of smugglers he had encountered on the road. Yu Daiyan thought little of it. He sat cross-legged upon his bed, practised three cycles of breath cultivation, then lay down to sleep.

In the depths of the night, a soft clicking sound from the neighbouring room roused him at once. He heard a man whisper, “Let us slip away quietly. Best not to disturb the guest next door and stir up trouble.” The others crept out, pushing open their door and entering the courtyard. Yu Daiyan watched through a crack in the window shutter as the smugglers shouldered their loads and departed.

These salt runners are up to something furtive, he thought. If they are merely peddling contraband, that is no concern of mine. But if they mean to commit some villainy, now that I have stumbled upon it, I cannot simply look the other way. Should I prevent them from doing harm and save an innocent life or two, even if I miss my shifu’s birthday celebration, he would surely be pleased. He strapped the cloth bundle containing his weapons and hidden projectiles to his back, slipped through the window, and vaulted over the wall.

He heard their footsteps heading northeast and deployed his qinggong,¹⁹ following in silent pursuit. The night sky was choked with clouds, and neither moon nor stars shone through. In the heavy darkness, he could just make out the twenty-odd smugglers bearing their loads as they raced along the narrow dikes between fields.

It is common enough for salt runners to travel by night, he thought. But these men possess considerable skill. If they wished to commit some unlawful deed, never mind burgling a wealthy household, they could even raid the government coffers and the soldiers could not stop them. Why sneak about selling contraband salt for such paltry gain? There must be something else afoot.

In less than half a shichen,²⁰ the band of smugglers had covered more than twenty li.²¹ Yu Daiyan’s qinggong was formidable. His footfalls made no sound, and because the smugglers seemed intent on some urgent business and pressed forward without looking back, they failed to notice him. By now they had reached the seashore, where waves crashed against rocks with an unceasing roar.

As they advanced, the man at the head gave a low whistle, and everyone halted. The leader called out in a hushed voice, “Who goes there?”

From the darkness came a rasping voice, “Friends of the three water strokes, is it?”

The leader replied, “That’s right. And who might you be?”

Yu Daiyan’s brow furrowed. Friends of the three water strokes, what does that mean? A moment’s thought brought understanding: Ah, so it is indeed the Haisha School. All three characters of their name, Hai, Sha, and Pai, share the water radical.

The rasping voice continued, “I advise you not to meddle in the matter of the Dragon-Slaying Dao.”²²

The leader’s voice carried a note of alarm and anger. “Have you also come for the Dragon-Slaying Dao?”

The man with the rasping voice only laughed coldly, three short, sinister chuckles, and said nothing more.

Yu Daiyan concealed himself behind a rock by the shore and crept closer. He made out a tall, gaunt figure blocking the path. In the darkness he could not discern the man’s features, only that he wore white robes. To travel by night clad in white showed unmistakable confidence in his own prowess.

The Haisha School leader said, “The Dragon-Slaying Dao already belongs to our School. It was stolen by some petty thief, and we have every right to reclaim it.”

The man in white let out another three cold laughs and continued to stand there, blocking the way with an air of utter disdain.

A man behind the leader shouted, “Out of the way! A cur blocking the road! You’re asking for death… “

The white-robed stranger flew forward and clawed out with one hand. The Haisha School man’s words were not yet done when he gave a sudden shriek and toppled backward. The rest were aghast, but all they saw was a flicker of white in the darkness, and the man who had blocked their road was gone.

When the Haisha School smugglers turned to their fallen companion, they found him curled into a ball, the breath long since out of him. Shocked and enraged, several set down their loads and gave chase along the way the white-robed man had taken, but he ran as though on wings, and in that darkness what trace of him was there left to find?

Yu Daiyan thought, That white-robed man strikes fast. That clawing hand looked like Shaolin’s Great Strength Vajra Claw, though I could not see it clearly in the dark. And by his accent and turn of speech he comes from beyond the northwestern frontier. The Haisha School of Jiangnan makes its enemies a long way from home! He drew himself in behind the rock and did not stir, afraid the Haisha men would discover him and that he would earn a feud for nothing. He heard the leader say, “Lay Fourth Brother’s body aside. We will see to it on the way back. As for who our adversary was, we shall trace that out in time.” The others assented, shouldered their loads, and pressed on at a brisk pace.

Yu Daiyan waited until they were well away, then went to examine the body. Two small holes had been driven through the man’s throat, and the blood was still flowing freely from them. The wounds had plainly been torn open by fingers. He found the whole affair exceedingly strange, and quickened his pace to take up the smugglers’ trail again.

The party ran on for several more li before the leader gave a whistle and the twenty-odd men scattered, closing slowly upon a large house to the northeast. Yu Daiyan thought, This Dragon-Slaying Dao they spoke of, can it be inside that house? A column of thick smoke rose from the chimney straight into the sky and hung there without dispersing. The smugglers set down their loads, and each took up a wooden ladle, scooped something from the baskets, and scattered it about him. What they scattered was fine as powder, white as snow, and plainly sea salt. What is the good of scattering salt on the ground? he thought. Truly bizarre. If I tell my shixiong and shidi of this afterwards, most of them will never believe it.

But he saw that as they scattered it their hands moved lightly and slowly, as though they feared above all to splash a grain upon themselves, and all at once Yu Daiyan understood: the salt was poisoned. These men were ringing the house with poisoned salt, and meant treacherous harm to whoever was inside. I do not know the rights and wrongs between them, he thought, but for these men to work such tricks is far from honourable. Seeing that the Haisha smugglers were still scattering salt before the house, he made a wide circle round to the rear and dropped lightly over the enclosing wall.

The house ran five courtyards deep, thirty or forty rooms in all, and not a lamp burned anywhere within. The smoke rises from the middle courtyard, Yu Daiyan thought. There must be people there. He looked up to fix the place the smoke poured from and walked swiftly toward it, and from the hall came the crackle and snap of a fierce wood fire. He rounded a spirit screen and stepped toward the main hall, when light suddenly dazzled his eyes and a wave of heat struck his face, and he halted. In the centre of the hall stood a great furnace built of stone, its flames leaping, and beside it stood three men, each working a great bellows to fan the fire. Laid across the furnace was a great dao some three feet long, black and dull.

All three were old men of about sixty, dressed alike in blue cloth robes, their heads and faces caked with ash and grime, their robes spotted and pocked all over with holes burnt through by flying sparks. When the three worked their bellows together the flames rose five feet high, wrapping the great dao and hissing about it. Yu Daiyan stood several dozen feet from the furnace and the heat was already fierce. What the fire itself must have been can be imagined. The flames turned from red to blue and from blue to white, yet the great dao stayed black throughout and did not take on so much as a dull red glow.

At that moment a rasping voice called from the roof, “Ruining a treasured dao is an outrage against heaven! Stop at once!”

Yu Daiyan knew from the voice that the white-robed man he had met on the road had arrived. The three old men at the bellows might have heard nothing at all. They only pumped the harder. Then came three cold laughs from the roof, a sound at the eaves, and the white-robed man flashed inside.

The furnace fire was blazing now, and Yu Daiyan saw him clearly: a man of about forty, his face a ghastly white with a faint cast of green showing through it. His hands were empty. He said coldly, “Three Birds of Changbai, that you should want the Dragon-Slaying Dao, very well. But how do you dare use furnace fire to ruin such a treasure?” And with that he stepped forward.

One of the three, the old man to the west, leaned forward and his left hand flicked out, clawing at the white-robed man’s face. The white-robed man turned his head aside to avoid it and darted a step closer. Seeing him close in, the old man to the east snatched up the great iron hammer beside the furnace and brought it whistling down at his crown. The white-robed man swayed slightly aside. The hammer struck the ground with a crash and sparks flew in every direction, for the floor was laid not with ordinary blue brick but with granite of an uncommon hardness. The old man to the west took his hands from the bellows and pressed in from the flank, both hands like fowl’s claws, flying high and low, his attack ferocious.

Footnotes

1. 宝刀百炼生玄光 – Bǎodāo bǎi liàn shēng xuán guāng. Chapter title. Lit. “A precious dao, a hundred times refined, gives forth dark light.” 玄 is dark, close to black. ↩

2. 江湖 – jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. 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. ↩

3. 至元 – Zhìyuán. Second Zhiyuan era (1335–1340 CE) under Emperor Toghon Temür (Yuan Shundi). Not to be confused with the earlier Zhiyuan era of Kublai Khan. ↩

4. 江南 – Jiāngnán. Literally south of the river. Prosperous region south of the Yangtze River. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 武当山 – Wǔdāng Shān. Sacred Daoist mountain in Hubei Province, headquarters of the Wudang Order. See Wikipedia. ↩

6. 俞岱岩 – Yú Dàiyán. His name meaning “Lofty Cliff of Mount Dai.” Third of the Seven Xias of Wudang, crippled years before. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 张三丰 – Zhāng Sānfēng. His name meaning “Three Peaks.” Legendary founder of the Wudang Order and creator of taijiquan; Zhang Wuji’s grandshifu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 武当派 – Wǔdāng Pài. Wudang Order, the Daoist martial order founded by Zhang Sanfeng; 派 renders as “Order” for its religious character. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher or master responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 福建 – Fújiàn. Coastal province in southeastern China. See Wikipedia. ↩

11. 玄虚刀法 – Xuánxū Dāofǎ. Literally mysterious void bladework. Wudang Order dao technique. ↩

12. 钱塘江 – Qiántáng Jiāng. Qiantang River, famous for its tidal bore. Flows through modern-day Hangzhou. See Wikipedia. ↩

13. 斤 – jīn. Traditional Chinese unit of weight, approximately 500 grams or 1.1 pounds. Four hundred jin would be roughly 440 pounds or 200 kilograms. ↩

14. 海沙派 – Hǎishā Pài. Haisha School, meaning “Sea Sand School.” A Jiangnan faction. ↩

15. 庵东镇 – Āndōng Zhèn. Small town in Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province. ↩

16. 余姚县 – Yúyáo Xiàn. County in eastern Zhejiang Province. See Wikipedia. ↩

17. 盐官 – Yánguān. Historic town on the north bank of the Qiantang River. ↩

18. 临安 – Lín’ān. Capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1276), known for its cultural refinement and West Lake scenery. Modern-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. See Wikipedia. ↩

19. 轻功 – qīnggōng. Literally qinggong. Ability to move with superhuman agility, and weightlessness through qi redistribution to leap over trees and roofs, and skip over water. See Wikipedia. ↩

20. 时辰 – shíchén. Traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two hours; the day was divided into twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

22. 屠龙刀 – Túlóng Dāo. Dragon-Slaying Dao; the name’s literal sense is “dragon-slaying”. Legendary blade and the supreme weapon of the jianghu, forged with the Heavenly Jian from meteoric iron. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩