The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 5 Part 1

Pale arms like jade with plum blossom adornment.

The Qiantang River¹ swept round in a great arc before the Six Harmonies Pagoda,² then flowed eastward. The tower stood some distance from the capital, and swift as Zhang Cuishan’s³ feet were, the sky had darkened to near-black by the time he reached the pagoda.

Beneath three ancient willows on the tower’s eastern flank, exactly as promised, a small flat-bottomed boat lay tethered. The river craft differed markedly from the pleasure boats of West Lake,⁴ for they carried sails and ran far larger, yet this vessel bore two pale-green paper lanterns at its bow, identical in every way to the one he had glimpsed the previous night.

His heart began to race. He steadied himself, approached the willows, and there, seated alone at the bow beneath the lantern’s glow, was the young woman. She wore a pale green shirt, and had changed back into a woman’s dress.

Zhang Cuishan had come fully resolved to demand answers about last night’s business. Yet now, seeing her transformed, he found himself hesitant. Suddenly he heard her raise her voice in recitation, “Clasping knees upon the prow, hoping to meet my guest. The gentle breeze troubles the water, and I drift as though intoxicated.”

He called out clearly, “I am Zhang Cuishan. I have questions, and beg your indulgence in my boldness.”

The young woman replied, “Please, come aboard.”

He stepped lightly onto the prow.

“The night was dark,” she said, “heavy clouds obscured the moon. Tonight the sky clears, the clouds disperse.”

Her voice was crystalline and lovely, yet as she spoke, her gaze remained fixed upward, never once meeting his.

“Forgive me,” Zhang Cuishan ventured, “but might I ask your honourable family name?”

At this she turned sharply, her bright eyes flashing toward him for an instant, but she offered no reply. Her beauty was past describing, and pressed upon by that radiance he felt of a sudden how far beneath her he stood. He said nothing more, but turned, leapt up onto the bank, and set off at a run back the way he had come.

He had run more than ten zhang⁵ when his feet stopped dead.

Zhang Cuishan, Zhang Cuishan, he thought bitterly to himself, what are you afraid of? Are you a man of courage in the jianghu,⁶ to be so easily defeated by a slip of a girl?

He turned his head to look back. The boat was drifting slowly down the Qiantang with the current, its two green lanterns lighting the surface, two answering balls of lamplight sliding slowly downstream in the water. For the moment Zhang Cuishan could not settle his mind. He turned about and strolled along the bank, downstream as she went.

A man on the bank, a boat on the river, the two of them travelling east in company. She still sat at the bow with her arms about her knees, watching the new crescent moon low on the sky’s edge.

They proceeded thus for some distance. Zhang Cuishan found himself following her gaze, and saw the sky’s edge darkening with gathering clouds. Before long these had obscured the moon, the wind rose sharply, and rain began to fall. The shore was bordered only by open grassland, and there was nowhere to shelter, not that Zhang Cuishan desired to shelter. The rain was gentle at first, but it fell steadily, and he soon found himself drenched to the skin. The young woman, sitting at the bow, was equally soaked.

“Miss,” he called, “please take shelter within the cabin.”

The girl started at once, issuing a surprised gasp before quickly composing herself.

“Are you not afraid of the rain?” she asked. As she spoke, she withdrew into the cabin. After a moment she emerged carrying an oiled-paper umbrella, which she tossed toward him.

Zhang Cuishan caught it and unfurled it. It was a fine instrument, painted with distant hills and near water and a few weeping willows, a plain and elegant ink landscape, and inscribed with seven characters: “In slanting wind and fine rain, no need to turn for home.”⁷

Hangzhou umbrellas have always carried painting and calligraphy, and there is nothing remarkable in that. The painting bore unmistakably the hand of a skilled craftsman, and like the porcelain of Jiangxi it could never quite shed its workshop stiffness. Yet those seven characters were not the work of a tradesman at all. They bore the refined, delicate stroke of a genteel maiden’s brush, their elegance utterly transcendent.

As Zhang Cuishan examined the calligraphy whilst walking, his attention divided, his foot suddenly found nothing where the earth should have been. A drainage channel lay hidden in the darkness. His change of move was extraordinarily quick. He kicked out with his right foot, his body rose, and he crossed the ditch light as thistledown, for all the world as though he were treading on air. He launched himself upward in a graceful leap that carried him cleanly across the trench. He heard the girl cry out, “Excellent!”

Turning, he saw her atop the boat, a broad rain-hat upon her head, her robes streaming in the wind and rain, for all the world a fairy treading the waves.

“Do the painting and characters please your eye, young Master Zhang?” she asked. Zhang Cuishan was a man whose interests lay more in calligraphy than painting.

“This is the hand of Lady Wei’s Mingji Tie,”⁸ he replied. “The stroke breaks but the intent runs on; the stroke is short but the meaning long. It has the whole marvel of the hairpin-flower manner.”

Hearing her own technique so precisely divined, the young woman was delighted.

“Of the seven,” she said, “the character ‘no’ is the worst written.”

Zhang Cuishan studied the offending character carefully.

“That ‘no’ is written very naturally,” he observed, “only it wants a little reserve. It is not like the other six, whose savour is inexhaustible, so that one never tires of looking at them.”

Her face brightened with understanding. “Ah, now I perceive it! I have puzzled over this character endlessly, never quite understanding what troubled me, yet you have revealed it at once.”

Her boat drifted onward. Zhang Cuishan followed along the bank. As they talked of calligraphy, question and answer, they had gone about half a li⁹ without noticing, and neither marked when night fell utterly black, and soon the darkness was such that neither could discern the other’s features. Then the young woman spoke, “To hear you speak once is worth ten years of study. I am grateful for your instruction. Farewell.”

She raised a hand, and the boatman at the stern hauled on the halyard. The sail rose slowly, filled white with wind, and the boat at once ran faster. Zhang Cuishan stood motionless, watching the vessel recede into the darkness, seized by an inexplicable melancholy. Then, from across the widening distance, he heard her voice call, “My surname is Yin… We shall meet again, and I shall ask more of you…”

When he heard the words “My surname is Yin”, a memory struck him like lightning. Could it be? he thought. Did Du Dajin¹⁰ not mention entrusting my third shixiong¹¹ to a young master surnamed Yin? Could this woman be that same person, merely disguised?

At this realisation, all propriety fell away. He began to pursue. Fast as the boat was, it could not match his qinggong.¹² Drawing near, he called out clearly, “Miss Yin, do you know my third shixiong, Yu Daiyan?”¹³

The young woman turned, but offered no response. Zhang Cuishan thought he heard a faint sigh cross the distance between them, though he could not be certain, so great had the separation grown.

“I confess myself bewildered,” he continued, “and pray you will grant me clarity.”

“Why must you insist on asking?” she replied.

“Was it Miss Yin who entrusted my third shixiong to the Longmen Armed Escort?¹⁴ Such a kindness must be repaid.”

“Good intentions do not always yield good outcomes,” she said quietly.

“Where did Miss Yin come upon my third brother, and how did you save him?”

“I saw Yu the Third Xia lying on the ground by the bank of the Qiantang, and I picked him up as I passed.”

“My third shixiong was gravely wounded at the foot of Mount Wudang.¹⁵ Did you know this?”

“I am very grieved, and very sorry.”

As they spoke, the wind grew fiercer still, and the boat’s pace quickened. Zhang Cuishan’s neili ran deep, and he kept abreast of the sailing boat throughout, never falling half a pace behind. The young woman’s neili was not the equal of his, yet she caught every word he spoke.

The Qiantang was nearing its lower reaches now. The river broadened, and the slanting wind and fine rain turned by degrees into a howling gale and a downpour.

“Last night the whole household of the Longmen Armed Escort, dozens of souls, were killed,” Zhang Cuishan asked. “Who did it? Does Miss know?”

The young woman’s voice became cold and measured. “I told Du Dajin to escort Yu the Third Xia to Wudang with proper care, and that if there were the least slip on the road…” She stopped there.

“You said you would kill his men,” Zhang Cuishan pressed.

“Precisely. He failed to protect Yu the Third Xia. That is his failing, not mine.”

At these words, Zhang Cuishan felt ice flood through his veins. “Then they… all of them…”

“All of them were killed by me,” she confirmed.

There was a buzzing in Zhang Cuishan’s ears. He could hardly believe that this girl, lovely as a flower, was one who killed without blinking an eye. Only after a long silence could he speak again. “What of the two Shaolin monks?”

“I killed them as well. I never meant to make an enemy of the Shaolin Order, but they wounded me first with a vicious hidden weapon, and after that I could not spare them.”

“Then… then how did they come to lay it at my door?”

The young woman gave a low, gurgling laugh. “That was something I arranged.”

Zhang Cuishan’s anger surged up. “You arranged it so that they would lay it at my door?”

“Indeed,” the young woman said, with a laugh full of coquetry.

“I have no grudge and no quarrel with you,” he said furiously. “Why do such a thing?”

The young woman made a dismissive gesture and withdrew into the cabin. But Zhang Cuishan would not be so easily dismissed. The sailing boat now lay several zhang off the bank, too far to leap. In his fury he furled the umbrella, struck an old maple on the bank with his palm, and with two dry cracks broke off two thick branches, cast them into the water, and used them as stepping-stones to vault onto the bow.

“How,” he demanded, “did you construct this trap?”

From the darkened cabin came no answer. Zhang Cuishan prepared to enter, then hesitated. To force his way into a young woman’s private quarters was unthinkable. Behaviour most improper and ungentlemanly. As he wrestled with this constraint, light suddenly bloomed within the cabin. The young woman had lit a candle.

“Please,” she said, “come inside.”

Zhang Cuishan smoothed his robes and closed the umbrella before entering. Within, seated, was what appeared to be a young scholar, in a square scholar’s cap and a blue gown, a folding fan swaying gently in his hand, his bearing easy and elegant. The resemblance to himself was, he realised with astonishment, quite marked. The girl had resumed her male disguise, and he was brought up short.

In the candlelight’s uncertain glow, the similarity was undeniable. Small wonder that Monk Huifeng and Du Dajin had been so completely deceived.

“Please be seated, Zhang the Fifth Xia,” she said. She lifted a teapot and poured a cup with careful courtesy, extending it to him. “We have no wine here, alas, so I offer tea in its place, a humble welcome for an honoured guest.”

Her pouring the tea with such gentle courtesy left Zhang Cuishan with a chest full of anger and no way to let it out.

“My thanks,” he said. Observing that he was soaked to the skin, she spoke again, “There are clothes of mine in the back cabin. Should you wish to change into dry garments, you may do so there.”

Zhang Cuishan shook his head. Instead, he quietly worked his neili¹⁶ and a warm qi rose from his dantian¹⁷ until his whole body burned, and the wet in his clothes dispersed little by little.

“The neigong¹⁸ of the Wudang Order stands first in all the wulin,”¹⁹ she remarked. “For me to offer Zhang the Fifth Xia a change of clothes was the view from the bottom of a well.”

Zhang Cuishan asked, “What faction claims your allegiance?”

At this question, she turned sharply toward the cabin window, her expression clouding with unease.

Footnotes

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

2. 六和塔 – Liùhé Tǎ. Literally Six Harmonies Pagoda. Octagonal pagoda along the Qiantang River in modern-day Hangzhou. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 张翠山 – Zhāng Cuìshān. His name meaning “Verdant Mountain.” Fifth disciple of Zhang Sanfeng and member of the Seven Xia of Wudang. His epithet is the Silver Hook Iron Brush. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 西湖 – Xīhú. West Lake. Cultural symbol of Southern Song refinement, located in modern-day Hangzhou. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 丈 – zhàng. Traditional Chinese unit of length, about 3.3 metres. Ten chi make one zhang. ↩

6. 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. ↩

7. 斜风细雨不须归 – xié fēng xì yǔ bù xū guī. “In slanting wind and fine rain, no need to turn for home.” The closing line of Zhang Zhihe’s Yuge Zi, a Tang lyric on the life of a fisherman. ↩

8. 卫夫人 – Wèi Fūren. Lady Wei Shuo (272–349 CE), a legendary calligrapher of the Eastern Jin Dynasty whose methods of brushwork became canonical in Chinese calligraphic training. See Wikipedia. ↩

9. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, about half a kilometre. ↩

10. 都大锦 – Dū Dàjǐn. His name meaning “Great Brocade.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 师兄 – shīxiōng. Male senior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. Used here by Wang Nangu as an affectionate address to her husband. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 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. ↩

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

14. 龙门镖局 – Lóngmén Biāojú. Literally Longmen Armed Escort. Armed escort. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 武当山 – Wǔdāng Shān. Sacred Daoist mountain in Hubei Province, later home to the Wudang Order founded by Zhang Sanfeng. See Wikipedia. ↩

16. 内力 – nèilì. Literally internal force. Kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi; generates tangible effects such as deflecting weapons or scaling walls. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 丹田 – dāntián. Literally cinnabar field. Energy centre located three finger-widths below the navel, where qi is cultivated and stored. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 内功 – nèigōng. Literally internal skill. Practice of developing neili through breathing, meditation and qi cultivation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. Wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩