The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 38 – Part 9

Shifu flew into a rage. “Hmph, that boy is far too sinister and vicious. He is the ringleader of the demonic cult, and how could he harbour good intentions? He laid a snare to lure you in like a willing fool.” My heart stirred with puzzlement, and I asked, “He... he laid what sort of snare?” Shifu said, “We are the mortal enemies of the demonic cult. Beneath my Heavenly Jian have fallen countless evil heretics of the cult, and the cult hates the Emei Order to the bone. What reason could they have to come to our rescue? That little demon must have set his sights on you and wishes to draw you into his net. He conspired with others to have us captured, then made a show of kindness, rescuing you so that you would be grateful to him for the rest of your days.”

I said, “Shifu, I think he… he was not pretending.” Shifu’s fury blazed. “You are no different from that worthless Ji Xiaofu, for your heart has gone to one of the demonic cult’s licentious wretches. If my neili¹ had not been sealed, I would strike you dead with a single palm.” I trembled from head to foot and stammered, “I would not dare.” Shifu’s voice turned sharp. “You dare not, or you are deceiving your shifu with honeyed words?” Tears fell as I said, “I would never dare defy your teaching.” Shifu said, “Kneel, then, and swear a solemn oath.” I knelt as she commanded, but I did not know what words to say.

Shifu said, “Say this: ‘I, Zhou Zhiruo, swear this oath before Heaven. If in days to come I harbour love in my heart for Zhang Wuji, cult leader of the demonic cult, and if I should become his wife, may my own father and mother lie restless in their graves, their bones never at peace. May my shifu, Miejie Shitai, return as a vengeful ghost and plague me day and night for all my life. And if I should bear his children, may the sons be slaves for generations, and the daughters whores for generations.’” I was struck with astonishment. I had never imagined that an oath could be so cruel, cursing not only the dead parents, not only the beloved shifu, but even the children yet unborn. I saw the light flashing in shifu’s eyes, fixed hard upon my face, and a dizziness seized me. I repeated after her, word for word, the oath she had dictated.

When shifu heard me swear that bitter oath, her expression softened at last. “Good. Rise.” I had long been weeping in silent torrents, and I rose in wretched obedience. Shifu’s face darkened once more. “Zhiruo, I do not do this to be cruel. It is all for your own sake. You are a young girl, and I can no longer watch over you. If you were to follow in the footsteps of your shijie Ji Xiaofu, I would know no peace even in the Nine Springs.² Besides, I have charged you with the duty of restoring our Order to its glory. Not a moment’s carelessness can be spared.” With that she removed the iron ring from her left index finger, rose to her feet, and said, “Emei Order disciple Zhou Zhiruo, kneel and receive my charge.”

My heart lurched, and I knelt at once. Shifu raised the iron ring above her head and said, “I, Miejie, third-generation zhangmen of the Emei Order, hereby entrust the office of zhangmen³ of this Order to the fourth-generation disciple Zhou Zhiruo.” After shifu had compelled me to swear that venomous oath, my mind was already a whirl of confusion. To hear now that I was to succeed as zhangmen of the Order struck me yet more dazed, and I sat frozen in shock. Shifu spoke slowly, each word deliberate. “Zhou Zhiruo, receive the iron ring of our Order’s zhangmen. Extend your left hand.”

I raised my left hand as if in a dream, and shifu slipped the iron ring onto my index finger. My voice shook. “Shifu, I am young. I have been in the Order only a short while. How can I bear such a burden? Surely you will find a way out of this predicament. Do not speak thus. I truly cannot…” I could say no more. I flung my arms about shifu’s legs and wept aloud.

Shifu said sharply, “Dare you disobey your shifu’s command?” She recited the precepts of our Order’s zhangmen in full, bidding me commit them to heart. I heard in her words the unmistakable tone of one leaving final instructions, and my fear redoubled. “I cannot do it. I am not fit…” Shifu raised her voice. “If you will not heed my charge, then you are one who despises her shifu and betrays her ancestors.” She drew me to my feet and held me in her arms, her voice softening. “Zhiruo, the reason I name you zhangmen rather than your shijies is not favouritism. The Emei Order is led by women, and the zhangmen must possess martial arts of surpassing excellence, so that she may hold her own among the heroes of the wulin.⁴” I said, “How can my martial arts compare to those of my shijies?”

Shifu smiled faintly. “Their attainments have reached their limit. At their present level, there is little further they can advance. That is a matter of innate talent, not something that labour alone can force. For martial arts to reach the first rank of excellence depends not on ceaseless toil but on intelligence and quick-wittedness, on a gift one is born with. When I was fifteen, my own shifu, Fengling Shitai, already knew that my martial arts would one day amount to a great deal. She decided even then to name me third-generation zhangmen. You may not surpass your shijies now, but your future is beyond measure. Yes, beyond measure. Those are the very words.” I gazed at her in bewilderment, not understanding her meaning.

Shifu drew her lips close to my ear and spoke in a low voice. “You are the fourth-generation zhangmen of our Order. There is a great secret I must tell you. The foundress of our Order was Guo nüxia,⁵ the youngest daughter of Guo daxia⁶ himself. Guo daxia’s fame once shook the world. In his lifetime he had two supreme arts: the first was the art of war and military strategy, and the second was martial arts. Guo daxia’s wife, Huang Rong the Heroine, was a woman of matchless wit. When she saw that the Yuan host was too great and Xiangyang could not in the end be held, the two of them resolved to die for their country. It was the devotion of those who know a thing cannot be done, yet do it still. But if the supreme arts of Guo daxia were simply lost to the world, would that not be a tragedy? Moreover, she reasoned that even if the Mongols conquered China for a time, we Han people would not forever consent to be their slaves. In the bloody struggles to come upon the Central Plains, both the military strategy and the martial arts would be of the greatest use. Therefore she engaged craftsmen of the highest skill, melted down the Heavy Iron Sword⁷ that Yang Guo the Divine Eagle Hero had bequeathed to our Foundress, and added to it fine gold from the West, to forge the Dragon-Slaying Dao.⁸ Then she took the two sharpest swords of the age, the Gentleman’s Jian of Yang Guo and the Lady’s Jian of his wife Xiaolongnü,⁹ melted them together, and forged the Heavenly Jian.¹⁰” I had long heard the names Dragon-Slaying Dao and Heavenly Jian, but only now did I learn that this pair of weapons had been forged by our Foundress Guo nüxia’s own mother.

Shifu continued, “Before she had the dao and jian cast, the Heroine Huang and Guo daxia spent months of painstaking effort transcribing the essentials of military strategy and martial arts. The military strategy was abridged from a book called Wumu’s Posthumous Book.¹¹ Guo daxia had once followed Yuan Taizu, Genghis Khan,¹² on his western campaign, and knew the Mongols’ methods of war and field combat intimately. He set down all he knew of their tactics within that military treatise. As for the martial arts manual, its core was the Nine Yin Manual,¹³ supplemented by certain supreme arts of the Foundress’s maternal grandfather, Island Master Huang,¹⁴ and the exquisite martial arts of the Nine-Finger Divine Beggar, the shifu of Guo daxia and his wife together. There is a portion of the Nine Yin Manual containing techniques that may be mastered in swift succession. Alas, two of Island Master Huang’s other disciples practised them wrongly, and the Island Master, grieving at their deaths, devised a means of correction, so that the techniques could still be learnt quickly yet with limited afterharm. Guo daxia and his wife hid the military strategy and martial arts manual in a place of the utmost secrecy. Then upon two sheets of thin iron they inscribed a map to that place, with instructions on how to enter, and concealed the iron sheets within the Heavenly Jian and the Dragon-Slaying Dao. To obtain the strategy and the manual, one must first find the iron sheets. And to open the dao and jian and retrieve the sheets, that can only be done with the weapons upon each other. Neither suffices alone.”

I listened in growing wonder, and shifu went on, “After Guo daxia and his wife had forged the dao and jian, they gave the treasured dao to their son Guo Gongpolu, and the treasured jian to our Foundress Guo nüxia. The Foundress had another sister, Guo Fu, but her nature was reckless and hot-tempered, so Guo daxia and his wife did not entrust the weapons to her. You will ask, why not simply tell their son and daughter the secret outright, instead of going about it in so roundabout a fashion? The reason was this: Guo daxia and his wife foresaw that if the military treatise and the martial arts manual were brought to light too early, before the time had come to drive out the Mongols, and fell into the hands of evil men, the calamity would be boundless, and the weapons might never serve their rightful purpose.”

Shifu paused here, then lowered her voice, her expression grave. She drew yet closer to my ear and spoke slowly. “The Dragon-Slaying Dao is forged wholly of dark iron, near impossible to damage. But at precisely nine inches from the spine of the blade, measured away from the hilt, one may press the edge of the Heavenly Jian at nine inches from its own hilt, and the blade will yield. The teeth of the cut will appear along both weapons, and by grinding them slowly back and forth, the dao and jian may be sawn apart. Those nine inches are a stretch that never meets an enemy’s weapon in combat, and so a patch of softer iron was left there. When the weapons are ground together, a gap opens in the spine of the Dragon-Slaying Dao and in the body of the Heavenly Jian, and the iron map falls out. Following the map, one may find the military treatise and the manual.”

Shifu paused again, then went on. “On the day Xiangyang fell, Guo daxia, his wife, and Guo Gongpolu all perished together, and the Dragon-Slaying Dao was lost to sight. The Foundress was then in Western Shu.¹⁵ By the time she hastened east to save her parents and kin, it was already too late. For a hundred years the wulin has been beset by upheaval, and this pair of weapons has changed hands many times. Later generations know only that the Dragon-Slaying Dao is supreme in the wulin, that only the Heavenly Jian can match it, but why it is supreme, that no one knows. Guo Gongpolu died young in his country’s service and left no heir, so the secret within the weapons has been passed down only by our Foundress Guo nüxia. In her lifetime she bent every effort to seek out the Dragon-Slaying Dao, but she never succeeded. Upon her deathbed she confided the secret to my own shifu, Fengling Shitai. My shifu, in turn, carried out the Foundress’s dying charge, but her search for the Dragon-Slaying Dao bore no fruit. When she passed from this world, she entrusted this jian and the Foundress’s charge to me. Soon after I took up the governance of our Order, your shibo¹⁶ Guhongzi fell out with a young martial artist of the demonic cult. A duel was arranged, one on one, no second to be called. Your shibo knew his opponent was young but exceedingly dangerous, and so he borrowed the Heavenly Jian from me.”

At the words “a young martial artist of the demonic cult”, a warmth rose unbidden to my face. But then I thought at once, It is not him. He was not yet born then.

Shifu went on. “I wished to go with your shibo to act as witness at the duel, but your shibo was a man who held to his word. He said he had given his pledge to the demon that no third party would take part, and so he would not have me there. In the contest itself, your shibo’s martial arts were no whit inferior to his opponent’s, but the demon played one trick after another, until at last a palm strike caught him full in the chest. The Heavenly Jian had not even cleared its sheath before the demon had torn it from his grasp.”

I could not help crying out, “Ah!” I thought of that other young demon who had seized the jian from shifu’s own hand atop Bright Peak, and shifu continued, “The demon laughed coldly, again and again, and said, ‘The Heavenly Jian carries a great name! In my eyes it is no better than scrap iron and broken slag!’ He flung the jian to the ground without another glance and stalked away. Your shibo picked up the weapon and set out to return it to me. But he was proud beyond measure, and the more he reflected, the worse he felt. He had travelled but three days when he fell ill on the road, and never recovered. The Heavenly Jian was seized by the local officials and presented to the court as tribute. Do you know who that demonic cult wretch was, who enraged your shibo Guhongzi to death?” I said, “I… I do not know who it was.” Shifu said, “It was the very great demon Yang Xiao, who later brought about the death of your shijie Ji Xiaofu!” I could not help crying out again, “Ah!”

Shifu whispered to me, “Zhiruo, time grows short. We can speak no more. This Heavenly Jian was later bestowed by the Tartar emperor upon the Prince of Ruyang.¹⁷ I stole it back from the Prince’s mansion. Now once more we have fallen foul of treachery, and the jian has passed into the hands of the demonic cult.” I said, “It was not so. It was that young lady surnamed Zhao who took it.” Shifu’s eyes flashed. “That woman surnamed Zhao is plainly of a piece with the demonic cult leader. Can it be that even now you do not believe your shifu’s words?” I found it hard indeed to believe, but I dared not argue with shifu.

Footnotes

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

2. 九泉 – jiǔquán. Lit. “Nine Springs.” The underworld; the realm of the dead. A common figure for death in Chinese. ↩

3. 掌门 – zhǎngmén. The head of a martial Order or School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 武林 – wǔlín. Lit. “martial forest.” The community of martial artists and their factions. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 郭女侠 – Guō Nǚxiá. Heroine Guo. The honorific bestowed upon Guo Xiang (郭襄), founder of the Emei Order and youngest daughter of Guo Jing. ↩

6. 郭大侠 – Guō Dàxiá. Guo daxia. The honorific for Guo Jing (郭靖), the famed defender of Xiangyang. Daxia (大侠) means “great xia,” a title of respect for a renowned martial artist. ↩

7. 玄铁重剑 – Xuántiě Zhòngjiàn. The Heavy Iron Sword, wielded by Yang Guo and later bequeathed to Guo Xiang. It was melted down to forge the Dragon-Slaying Dao. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 屠龙刀 – Túlóng Dāo. The Dragon-Slaying Dao. One of two legendary weapons forged from Yang Guo’s Heavy Iron Sword. Said to hold the secret of supreme power in the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 小龙女 – Xiǎolóngnǚ. The Little Dragon Maiden. Wife of Yang Guo and co-creator of the Jade Maiden Swordplay. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 倚天剑 – Yǐtiān Jiàn. The Heavenly Jian. One of two legendary weapons forged by Huang Rong from the swords of Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 武穆遗书 – Wǔmù Yíshū. Wumu’s Posthumous Book. The military treatise of Yue Fei (岳飞), the great Song-dynasty general, abridged and hidden within the Dragon-Slaying Dao and Heavenly Jian. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 成吉思汗 – Chéngjísī Hán. Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire. Guo Jing served in his western campaign before defecting. ↩

13. 九阴真经 – Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. The Nine Yin Manual. A comprehensive martial encyclopedia of yin-based arts. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 黄岛主 – Huáng Dǎozhǔ. Island Master Huang. The title of Huang Yaoshi (黄药师), the Eastern Heretic and founder of Peach Blossom Island, maternal grandfather of Guo Xiang. ↩

15. 西川 – Xīchuān. Western Shu. The old name for the Sichuan region in south-west China. ↩

16. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. The shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 汝阳王 – Rǔyáng Wáng. The Prince of Ruyang. Father of Zhao Min, a powerful Mongol nobleman who commanded forces against the rebels. ↩