The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 30: East and West Forever Parted Like Shen and Shang

East and west are forever parted, like the stars of Shen and Shang that never meet.

After Yin Li sang those few lines of her little ditty, she began another song. This time the melody was unspeakably eerie, nothing at all like the songs of the Central Plains. Listening carefully, the words resembled what Xiao Zhao had once sung: “They come like flowing water, they pass like the wind. None knows whence they come, nor where they shall end.” She repeated these two lines over and over, her voice growing fainter and fainter, until at last it was lost among the sound of waves and wind, vanished without a trace.

Each of them reflected on the impermanence of life. A human drifts into this world like a leaf upon a river, flowing from some unknowable source. No matter how great a hero you may be, in the end death comes for all, and your passage through this world is as aimless as a breeze that none can predict.

Zhao Min reached over and took Zhang Wuji’s hand. He felt her slender fingers, cold as ice, trembling faintly.

Xie Xun spoke suddenly. “That Persian song was taught to her by Lady Han. More than twenty years ago, I heard it once on Bright Summit.” He sighed. “I never imagined Lady Han could be so heartless as to harm that child.”

Zhao Min asked, “Old Master, how did Lady Han come to know a Persian song? Is it a hymn of the Ming Order?”

Xie Xun replied, “The Ming Order was transmitted from Persia. This Persian melody has certain ties to the Order, but it is not a Order hymn. The song was composed more than two hundred years ago by the most celebrated poet of Persia, a man named Omar,¹ and it is said that every Persian knows it by heart. When I heard Lady Han sing it that day, I was deeply moved and asked about its origins. She told me the whole story in detail.

“Long ago, there lived in Persia a great philosopher named Yemang,² who took students and taught them. Among his many disciples, three stood above the rest: Omar, who excelled in literature, Nizam, who was masterful in affairs of state, and Hassan, whose martial arts were unmatched. The three were as close as brothers, and they swore an oath that in years to come they would share fortune and misfortune alike, and never forget one another in their hour of triumph.

“Later, Nizam rose to great heights and became the Grand Vizier to the Islamic Pontiff.³ His two old friends came to seek him out, and Nizam petitioned the Pontiff to grant Hassan an official post. Omar, however, had no taste for office. He asked only for a pension sufficient to live in quiet study of astronomy and the calendar, drinking wine and composing verse. Nizam granted all his requests and treated him with the utmost generosity.

“But Hassan was consumed by ambition. He could not bear to remain beneath another man for long, and he plotted rebellion. When the plot failed, he gathered his followers and seized a mountain stronghold, establishing a sect devoted to assassination, known as the Ismaili Order.⁴ In the age of the Crusades, when the peoples of the Western Regions spoke the name ‘the Old Man of the Mountain’, as Hassan was called, their faces drained of colour. The rulers of many Western lands perished at the hands of the Old Man of the Mountain’s assassins, their number beyond counting. Lady Han told me that far across the western seas there lay a great nation called England, whose King Edward once offended the Old Man of the Mountain, who sent an assassin to strike him down. The King was poisoned by a poisoned blade, and only because his Queen sacrificed herself to draw the venom from his wound did the King survive. Hassan, unmoved by the bonds of old friendship, also sent an assassin to murder the Grand Vizier Nizam. As Nizam lay dying, he recited Omar’s verses, those very lines: ‘They come like flowing water, they pass like the wind. None knows whence they come, nor where they shall end.’ Lady Han added that the martial arts of the Old Man of the Mountain’s sect were later learned by members of the Persian Ming Order. The strange and uncanny skills of the three Persian envoys, she believed, derived from this very lineage of the Old Man of the Mountain.”

Zhao Min said, “Old Master, this Lady Han seems much like the Old Man of the Mountain herself. You treated her with the utmost kindness, yet she plotted to harm you.”

Xie Xun sighed. “Repaying kindness with treachery is commonplace in this world. It is hardly worth marveling at.”

Zhao Min lowered her head and pondered for a moment, then said, “Lady Han ranks first among the Order’s four Kings, yet her skill does not seem to surpass yours, Old Master. When she fought the three Persian envoys last night, why did she not employ the deadly techniques of the Thousand Spiders, Ten Thousand Poisons Hand?”⁵

Xie Xun said, “The Thousand Spiders, Ten Thousand Poisons Hand? Lady Han could not use it. A woman of such surpassing beauty as she, she prized her looks above her very life. How could she bring herself to practise such an art?”

Zhang Wuji, Zhao Min, and Zhou Zhiruo were all taken aback. Golden Flower Granny was hideous to behold. Even allowing for three or four decades more of age, she could never have been called a beauty of surpassing loveliness. Her nose was flat, her lips thick, her ears large and prominent, her face narrow at the top and broad below, such a bone structure could never be altered.

Zhao Min laughed. “Old Master, I should think Golden Flower Granny was never much to look at.”

Xie Xun said, “What? The Purple-Robed Dragon King was beautiful as a celestial maiden. More than thirty years ago, she was the foremost beauty in the jianghu. Even now, in her advancing years, something of her former grace must surely remain.” He sighed. “Ah, but I shall never see it again.”

Zhao Min heard the gravity in his voice and sensed that some mystery lay within. This wretched, haggard old crone had once been the foremost beauty in the wulin? It was beyond belief. She asked, “Old Master, your name shakes the jianghu, and your skill needs no telling. The White-Browed Eagle King founded his own Order and defied the six great factions for more than twenty years. The Blue-Winged Bat King moves like a phantom. That day in Wan’an Temple he threatened to destroy my face, and the memory still haunts me. Golden Flower Granny’s skill is high, her schemes deep, but to rank above those three seems beyond her. What was the reason?”

Xie Xun said, “That was because Eagle Brother Second, Wei Fourth Brother, and I were all willing to yield her the honour.”

Zhao Min asked, “Why?” Then she gave a sudden laugh. “Because she was the most beautiful woman under heaven, and no hero can withstand the test of beauty. The three great heroes all willingly bowed beneath her pomegranate skirt?”⁶ She paid no heed to rank or propriety. Whatever came into her head, she spoke without restraint, even teasing Xie Xun without a trace of reserve.

Xie Xun was not angered. He said, “Those who bowed beneath her pomegranate skirt were far more than three. In those days, within the Order and beyond it, there were not a hundred men who hoped for a glance of favour from Dai Qisi.⁷ I would say even a hundred was too few.”

Zhao Min said, “Dai Qisi? So that was Lady Han? What a strange name.”

Xie Xun said, “It is a Persian name.”

Zhang Wuji, Zhao Min, and Zhou Zhiruo were startled and spoke as one: “She was Persian?”

Xie Xun looked at them in surprise. “Can none of you see it? She was the child of a Chinese father and a Persian mother. Her hair and eyes were black, but her nose was high and her features deep-cut, her skin white as snow, quite unlike the women of the Central Plains. One look was enough to tell.”

Zhao Min said, “No, no! She had a flat nose, half-closed little eyes, nothing at all like what you describe. Isn’t that so, Zhang Gongzi?”

Zhang Wuji said, “Indeed. Could she, like Bitter Dhūta, have deliberately destroyed her own appearance?”

Xie Xun asked, “Who is Bitter Dhūta?”

Zhang Wuji said, “It is Fan Yao, the Bright Right Messenger of the Ming Order.” He briefly told Xie Xun how Fan Yao had disfigured himself and gone to the Prince of Runan’s mansion as a spy.

Xie Xun sighed. “Brother Fan’s act was one of extraordinary devotion and sacrifice, of tremendous merit to our Order. It was beyond what any ordinary person could endure. Ah, but in part, it may be said to have been prompted by Lady Han.”

Zhao Min said, “Old Master, stop keeping us in suspense. Tell us the whole story from the beginning.”

Xie Xun hummed in assent, raised his head to the sky, and remained lost in thought for a long while. Then slowly he began:

“More than thirty years ago, when the Ming Order was still under the leadership of Order Leader Yang, it was in its full splendour. One day, three Persian foreigners appeared at Bright Summit, bearing a letter from the Pontiff of the Persian headquarters. They requested an audience with Order Leader Yang. The letter stated that among the Persian headquarters there had been a Pure Virtue Envoy, originally a man of China, who had settled in Persia, embraced the Ming Order, and rendered considerable service. He had married a Persian woman and fathered a daughter. This Pure Virtue Envoy had died a year before, and in his final moments his heart had turned toward his homeland. His dying wish was that his daughter should return to China. The Pontiff of the Persian headquarters, respecting his last wish, had sent envoys to bring the girl to Bright Summit, hoping that the Ming Order of the Central Plains would look after her with kindness.

“Order Leader Yang naturally agreed at once and had the young woman brought in. The moment she stepped into the hall, the entire room seemed to brighten. Her beauty was beyond description, radiant and dazzling, too lovely to behold. As she gracefully bowed to Order Leader Yang, everyone in the great hall, the Bright Left and Right Messengers, the three Kings, the Five Unbound Adepts, and the commanders of the Five Elemental Flags, all were shaken. The three Persians who had escorted her stayed one night at Bright Summit and departed the next morning. Thus this Persian beauty, Dai Qisi, came to live upon Bright Summit.”

Footnotes

1. 峨默 – Émò. Referring to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), the celebrated Persian polymath, mathematician, astronomer, and poet, best known in the West for the Rubáiyát. Quatrain quoted here – “They come like flowing water, they pass like the wind” – echoes the Rubáiyát’s famous meditation on life’s impermanence. ↩

2. 野芒 – Yěmáng. Likely a rendering of the Persian sage Imam Mowaffaq or a composite figure. Three disciples – Omar, Nizam, and Hassan – correspond to the historical trio associated with the Nizari Ismaili state. ↩

3. 伊斯兰教教王的首相 – Yīsīlánjiào jiàowáng de shǒuxiàng. Literally grand vizier to the Islamic pontiff. The Nizam referred to is Nizam al-Mulk (1018–1092), the powerful Seljuk vizier who served the Abbasid Caliphate. ↩

4. 依斯美良派 – Yīsīměiliáng Pài. The Nizari Ismaili state, historically centred at Alamut in the Alborz mountains of Persia. “Old Man of the Mountain” (Shaykh al-Jabal) was the title given to its leaders, most famously Hassan-i Sabbah (c. 1050–1124), who established the order of assassins that terrorised the medieval Middle East. ↩

5. 千蛛万毒手 – Qiān Zhū Wàn Dú Shǒu. Literally thousand spiders, ten thousand poisons hand. A venomous martial art that poisons the practitioner’s body through contact with spider venom. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 甘心拜服于石榴裙下 – gānxīn bàifú yú shíliú qún xià. Literally to bow willingly beneath the pomegranate skirt. A Chinese idiom meaning to surrender to a woman’s charms. The pomegranate skirt (石榴裙) was a symbol of feminine beauty and allure in classical Chinese literature. ↩

7. 黛绮丝 – Dài Qǐsī. A phonetic rendering of the Persian name Daisy. Holy Virgin of the Persian Ming Order, and Xiao Zhao’s mother. ↩