The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 34 – Part 8

What Zhao Min had held in her palm for Zhang Wuji to see was a lock of pale yellow hair. The moment he saw it, Zhang Wuji recognised it at once as Xie Xun's hair. Xie Xun's forebears had possessed Semu blood,¹ and though his features were no different from those of any man in these lands, his long hair had always been this pale yellow. Zhang Wuji reasoned that since Zhao Min had cut off a lock of Xie Xun's hair, the old fox must already be in her hands. If he went through with the wedding rites with Zhou Zhiruo, she would fly into a rage and either kill Xie Xun or harm him in some other way. Yet before all these guests he could not explain himself to Zhou Zhiruo. Among the assembled heroes, apart from those of the Ming Order,² the Wudang Order and the Emei Order, there was hardly a soul who would not gladly see Xie Xun dead, whether to avenge the slaughter he had wrought of old or to seize the Dragon-Slaying Dao.³ So the moment he saw Zhao Min flee, knowing full well the wrong he was doing Zhou Zhiruo, he put his godfather's life above all else, and without a word of explanation he set off in pursuit.

He emerged through the gate to find Zhao Min sprinting away at full speed, a trail of blood dripping from her shoulder along the broad street. He drew a breath, crossed several tens of feet in a single bound, and blocked her path. “Miss Zhao, do not force me to play the traitor and earn the contempt of every hero in the jianghu.⁴”

Zhao Min’s shoulder wound was grave. At first she had held herself upright on a single breath of zhenqi,⁵ but at these words she faltered. “You… you…” The qi broke from her, and she collapsed on the spot. Zhang Wuji bent over her. “Tell me first where my godfather is.” Zhao Min said, “Take me with you to rescue him. I will… I will… show you the way.” Zhang Wuji said, “Is the old gentleman’s life out of danger?” Zhao Min answered, too spent for anger, “Your godfather… your godfather is in Cheng Kun’s hands.⁶”

At the name Cheng Kun, Zhang Wuji felt his heart lurch, though he had long suspected as much. Confirmation still struck like a blade through the ribs. Zhao Min said, “You cannot go alone. Call… call Yang Xiao and the rest to follow…” She raised a hand and pointed west. Then her head fell back, and she fainted.

Zhang Wuji imagined his godfather’s peril at that moment, and anguish consumed him. He lifted Zhao Min into his arms, tore a strip from his robe, and bound her wound as best he could. Then he beckoned a Ming Order follower loitering by the roadside and instructed him, “Go at once and report to Left Messenger Yang. Tell him to bring the others westward with all speed. I have urgent business for them.” The follower acknowledged the order and ran off.

Zhang Wuji thought that every moment counted. Affairs of the world were beyond forecasting. A delay of half a shichen⁷ might mean the difference between saving his godfather and losing him. Holding Zhao Min, he walked briskly to the city gate, ordered the guardsmen to bring him a strong horse, and vaulted into the saddle. Then he rode west at a gallop.

After several li⁸ he felt Zhao Min’s body grow cold in his arms. He took her pulse and found it faint. Alarmed, he drew back the cloth binding her wound and saw five punctures sunk deep to the shoulder bone. The flesh around them had turned a dark purple-black, the sign of a poison so virulent that no common external art could have laid it there.

He was greatly shaken. Zhiruo is a disciple of the Emei Order. How can she practise so malevolent an art? Her strike was more ruthless even than Miejue Shitai’s.⁹ What is at the bottom of this? He saw that without swift aid Zhao Min would die of the poison. He was still dressed in his wedding finery. What antidote would he carry on his person? After a moment’s thought he dismounted, held her in his arms, and scrambled up the hillside to the left. He searched in every direction for a herb to draw out the venom, but in a short while could not find so much as the commonest remedy.

His heart hammered. He rounded two or three spurs, murmuring prayers the while. Then his eye caught a flash of colour. Ahead and to the right, beside a small waterfall, grew four or five crimson flowers. They were Buddha’s Seat Small Red Lotuses,¹⁰ a herb with proven power against poison. Though it was mid-spring and flowers bloomed in profusion, that this particular herb should happen to grow in just this spot was nothing short of Heaven’s mercy. Overjoyed, he carried Zhao Min across two mountain streams, plucked the flowers, chewed them to a pulp, and fed half into Zhao Min’s mouth while he pressed the other half against her wound. Then he gathered her up again and ran west at speed.

After thirty-odd li, Zhao Min stirred with a soft moan and opened her eyes. “Am I… am I still alive?” she whispered. Relieved to see the herb taking effect, Zhang Wuji smiled. “How do you feel?” Zhao Min said, “My shoulder itches something fierce. Ai, Miss Zhou’s kung fu is truly formidable.”

He set her down gently and examined the wound again. The dark discoloration had not faded in the least, though her pulse had steadied from its former faintness. Zhang Wuji reflected that the Buddha’s Seat Small Red Lotus was too gentle in nature to draw out so virulent a poison. He bent to her shoulder, pressed his mouth to the wound, and sucked the poisoned blood out in mouthfuls, spitting it onto the ground. The reek of it was enough to turn the stomach. Zhao Min’s starry eyes turned towards him. She reached up and touched his hair, sighing, “Wuji gege,¹¹ have you at last worked out the truth of all this?”

Zhang Wuji finished drawing out the poison, rinsed his mouth in a mountain stream, and came back to sit beside her. “What truth?” Zhao Min said, “Miss Zhou is a disciple of a renowned orthodox school. How does she come by so sinister an art?” Zhang Wuji said, “I too find it strange. I cannot imagine who taught her.” Zhao Min gave a faint smile. “It must have been some lecherous demon from your Ming Order.”

Zhang Wuji laughed. “The Ming Order has its share of demons, true enough, but not one of them knows this art. Only the Green-Winged Bat King¹² sucks blood from the neck, and Zhang Wuji sucks blood from the shoulder. The two are much of a muchness.” Then he asked, “I long suspected that my godfather had fallen into Cheng Kun’s hands, yet I could never find the slightest trace of him. Where is he now?”

Zhao Min said, “I will take you and find a way to rescue him. As for where, that was told me by the Cloth-Sack Monk, Cannot Tell.¹³ The moment I speak, you will dash off and leave me behind.” Zhang Wuji sighed. “I would not be so heartless as all that.”

Zhao Min said, “For your godfather’s sake you were willing to abandon a bride as lovely as flower and jade. How much more would you abandon me.” She leaned against him as she spoke. “I have spoiled your nuptial rites today. Are you angry with me?”

Zhang Wuji did not know why, but at that moment he felt a great lightness in his heart. Apart from his anxiety for Xie Xun, he was more at ease than he had been on the brink of wedding Zhou Zhiruo. What the reason was he could not say. Yet to admit that he was glad Zhao Min had ruined the wedding was beyond him, so instead he said, “Of course I am angry with you. Someday, when you stand beside some dashing prince-consort for your wedding rites, I shall come and cause a great disruption too, and see that you do not enjoy being a bride in peace.”

Zhao Min’s pale cheeks flushed. “If you disrupt it, I shall run you through with my jian.” Zhang Wuji sighed and fell silent. Zhao Min said, “Why do you sigh?” Zhang Wuji said, “I wonder what great virtue that prince-consort has performed in some former life, to earn such good fortune.” Zhao Min said, “You still have time to cultivate it yourself.” Zhang Wuji’s heart gave a sudden start. “What do you mean?” Zhao Min flushed and said no more.

Neither of them dared to pursue the conversation further. After a short rest, Zhang Wuji dressed her wound again, gathered her into his arms, and continued west. Zhao Min rested her head against his shoulder, her cheek pressed to his left cheek. He breathed the fragrance of her powder and rouge. He held the soft warmth of her in his arms. His mind began to wander, his spirit to drift, and had it not been for the urgency of rescuing his godfather, he would willingly have slowed his pace and walked on like this through these wild mountains and desolate ridges for ever and without end.

The two spent the night in the barren hills west of Haozhou. The following day they reached a market town, where they bought antidotes and wound-medicines from a small apothecary, dosing Zhao Min both internally and externally, and purchased two fresh horses besides. Zhao Min’s poison could not be drawn out in a single stroke. She remained too weak to ride alone and could only lean against Zhang Wuji, the two of them changing mounts at intervals and sharing a saddle. So they travelled for five days until they had entered the borders of Henan-Jiangbei Province,¹⁴ and turned north. Some days later they passed Xuzhou and drew near Xinzheng.¹⁵

They were on the road that day when suddenly a great cloud of dust rose ahead. Over a hundred riders came galloping towards them, and the clank of iron armour told Zhang Wuji at once that these were Mongol cavalry. He pulled his horse to the roadside and gave way. The column swept past, and after a space of several hundred feet another band of riders followed. These were less orderly, straggling ahead and behind at uneven intervals. In a single glance Zhang Wuji recognised, among their number, the Eight Heroes of the Divine Arrow.¹⁶ He cursed under his breath and turned his head quickly away.

The twenty-odd riders took no notice of a man in splendid dress holding a young woman, both with their faces turned towards the roadside. Not one of the Eight Heroes marked them either. When the column had passed, Zhang Wuji was turning his horse forward again when he heard the light tread of hooves and three riders came flying up. The middle one bore a white horse, its rider in a brocade robe and a golden coronet. On either flank rode a chestnut, and in the saddles, unmistakable, were Lu Zhangke and He Biweng, the Twin Xuanming Elders.¹⁷

Zhang Wuji was about to turn away, but Lu Zhangke had already spotted them. “Your Ladyship the Princess need not fear. Your rescue has arrived.” He Biweng raised his voice in a long, piercing whistle. At the sound, the Eight Heroes of the Divine Arrow and their companions wheeled their mounts and closed in around the pair.

Zhang Wuji started and glanced down at Zhao Min in his arms, as though to ask, Have you set an ambush for me? But her face showed only anxiety and alarm, and he knew at once he had misread her. His heart eased. Zhao Min spoke, “Brother, I did not expect to meet you here. How is Father?” Only when she addressed him as Brother did Zhang Wuji take proper note of the young man in the brocade robe upon the white horse. He recognised him as Zhao Min’s elder brother, Kuokuo Temür,¹⁸ whose Han name was Wang Baobao.¹⁹ Zhang Wuji had seen him twice before in Dadu, but at that moment his whole attention had been fixed upon the Twin Xuanming Elders, and he had not spared a glance for the rest.

Footnotes

1. 色目 – sèmù. Literally coloured eyes. A social class of the Yuan Dynasty encompassing peoples from Central and Western Asia, including Persians, Arabs, Turks and others who had settled in China. ↩

2. 明教 – míngjiào. The Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 屠龙刀 – túlóng dāo. The Dragon-Slaying Dao, one of the twin legendary weapons whose rivalry gives the novel its title. 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. 真气 – zhēnqì. True qi; the refined qi cultivated through internal neigong practice. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 成昆 – Chéng Kūn. A master schemer whose vendetta against Xie Xun set much of the story in motion. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 时辰 – shíchén. A traditional division of the day into twelve two-hour periods. ↩

8. 里 – lǐ. A Chinese unit of distance, approximately a third of a mile or five hundred metres. ↩

9. 灭绝师太 – Mièjué Shītài. The late zhangmen of the Emei Order, renowned for the severity of her arts and her implacable hatred of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 佛座小红莲 – fózuò xiǎo hónglián. Buddha’s Seat Small Red Lotus. A medicinal herb whose crimson flowers possess properties that draw out poison from wounds. ↩

11. 哥哥 – gēge. Elder brother; a term of affectionate address. ↩

12. 青翼蝠王 – qīngyì fú wáng. The Green-Winged Bat King, the sobriquet of Wei Yixiao, one of the four great Guardians of the Ming Order. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 说不得 – Shuōbùdé. Cannot Tell, one of the Ming Order’s five great elders, known for carrying his victims away in a cloth sack. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 河南江北行省 – hénán jiāngběi xíngshěng. The Henan-Jiangbei Branch Secretariat, one of the administrative provinces of the Yuan Dynasty. ↩

15. 新郑 – xīnzhèng. A town south of modern Zhengzhou in Henan Province, famed in antiquity as the capital of the state of Zheng. ↩

16. 神箭八雄 – shénjiàn bā xióng. The Eight Heroes of the Divine Arrow, a band of eight expert archers in the service of the Yuan court. ↩

17. 玄冥二老 – xuánmíng èr lǎo. The Twin Xuanming Elders, Lu Zhangke and He Biweng, whose Xuanming Divine Palm is famed for its cold, virulent neili. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 扩廓帖木儿 – Kuòkuò Tièmù’ér. The Mongol name of Zhao Min’s elder brother. ↩

19. 王保保 – Wáng Bǎobǎo. The Han Chinese name of Kuokuo Temür, a celebrated Mongol general of the late Yuan Dynasty. ↩