The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 6 Part 5

That evening, the three of them gathered at the stern to talk. Yin Susu asked with a laugh, “What is the finest beast in all the world?” All three answered in unison: “The seal!” And at that very moment, a series of clear, bright chimes rang out—ting-dong, ting-dong—crisp and almost musical.

The three of them froze. The colour drained from Xie Xun’s face. “Drift ice,” he said. He thrust his wolf-fang mace into the water and stirred it about. Sure enough, it struck several pieces of hard, floating ice. At once the mood of all three turned as cold as the ice itself, for they knew full well what it meant: the ship had drifted northward without cease, into ever colder waters. Today the ice was small fragments; before long, the entire sea would be frozen solid. When the ship became locked in ice and could move no further, that would be the end of them.

Zhang Cuishan said, “In the ‘Carefree Wandering’ chapter of the Zhuangzi,¹ there is a line: ‘Beyond the barren reaches of the uttermost north lies the Dark Sea—the Celestial Pool.’ We must have drifted into the Celestial Pool itself.”

Xie Xun said, “This is no Celestial Pool. It is the Dark Sea. Dark Sea—the sea of the dead.”

Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu exchanged a rueful smile. But where there was floating ice, there was fresh water, and that at least answered one pressing need.

That night the three of them lay awake, listening to the ting-dong, ting-dong of ice fragments striking one another, and none of them slept.

By the following morning, the ice on the sea had grown to the size of rice bowls, clattering against the hull. Xie Xun gave a bitter laugh. “I was fool enough to dream of uncovering the secret hidden in the Dragon Slayer. Instead I have sailed into an ice sea to become an ice man—and in so doing, made myself a true ice man² for the two of you.”

Yin Susu’s cheeks flushed, and she reached out to clasp Zhang Cuishan’s hand. Over these many days of shared peril, the three of them had forged a bond of fellowship that none could have foreseen. They were no longer the mortal adversaries of those first hours.

Xie Xun raised the Dragon Slayer, glaring at it with loathing. “Go back to the Dragon Palace,” he snarled, “and slaughter your damned dragons there!” He swung his arm to hurl the dao into the sea. But at the very instant he was about to release it, he let out a long sigh and laid the weapon back in the hold.

Four more days they drifted northward. The floating ice grew until some pieces were as broad as tabletops and others as large as small cottages. All three knew that survival was no longer to be hoped for, and so they ceased to dwell upon the matter of life and death. That night, at the stroke of midnight, a tremendous crash shook the ship from stem to stern.

Xie Xun cried, “Splendid! Marvellous! We have struck an iceberg!”

Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu exchanged another helpless smile. Then they opened their arms and held each other close. Icy seawater was already creeping up their shins—the hull had been breached. From outside came Xie Xun’s voice: “Jump onto the iceberg! Every extra day, every extra hour we live is a victory. Thieving heaven wants me dead? I will spite it to the last.”

The two of them sprang to the bow. Before their eyes, a great mass of silver light shimmered in the moonlight. The iceberg gave off a strange, cold radiance of blue and violet, at once unearthly in its beauty and terrible to behold. Xie Xun already stood upon a jutting ledge at its flank, his wolf-fang mace extended toward them. Yin Susu caught hold of the mace, and she and Zhang Cuishan leapt onto the iceberg together.

The hole torn in the hull was enormous. In no more time than it takes to eat a meal, the ship had sunk without a trace.

Xie Xun laid two seal pelts upon the ice and the three of them sat side by side. The iceberg was the size of a small hillock on dry land. At a glance, it stretched some two hundred feet across and eighty or ninety in length—far more spacious than the ship had been. Xie Xun tilted his head back and let out a long, clear whistle. “That ship was suffocating,” he declared. “This is just the place to stretch one’s limbs.” He rose and paced about the iceberg with an air of perfect ease. Though the surface was treacherously slick, his steps were as sure and steady as if he walked on level ground.

The iceberg followed wind and current, still drifting steadily north. Xie Xun laughed. “Thieving heaven has sent us a grand vessel to carry the three of us to an audience with the Old Immortal of the North Pole.”³

Yin Susu seemed content so long as her beloved was beside her, and would not have cared if the sky itself collapsed. Of the three of them, only Zhang Cuishan furrowed his brow, agonising over the doom that lay before them.

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The iceberg drifted northward for seven or eight more days. By daylight the ice reflected the sun with a blinding glare that scorched their skin and left their eyes red and swollen with pain. And so the three of them took to covering their heads with seal pelts and sleeping through the day, rising only at nightfall to catch fish, hunt seals, and chip ice for drinking water. Strangely, the further north they drifted, the longer the days became, until at last there were nearly twenty hours of daylight and the nights passed in a flash.

Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu grew haggard with exhaustion, but Xie Xun’s demeanour changed in a different and more troubling way. A strange light blazed in his eyes. He took to gesticulating wildly and railing at the heavens, the venom in his breast seemingly beyond all containment.

One night, Zhang Cuishan lay wrapped in seal pelts against the ice, dozing fitfully, when Yin Susu’s piercing scream tore him from sleep: “Let go of me! Let go!”

He leapt to his feet. By the shimmering glow of the iceberg, he saw Xie Xun clutching Yin Susu by the shoulders, his mouth working in a guttural snarl that sounded less like a man than a beast. Zhang Cuishan had noticed Xie Xun’s increasingly erratic behaviour over the past several days and had been quietly worried, but he had never imagined it would come to this. Shock and fury surged through him. He hurled himself forward and bellowed, “Release her!”

Xie Xun’s voice came low and dark: “You filthy traitor. You murdered my wife. Very well—today I strangle yours!” His left hand closed around Yin Susu’s throat. She cried out in alarm.

Zhang Cuishan said, “I am not your enemy! I did not kill your wife! Senior Xie, come to your senses! I am Zhang Cuishan—Zhang Cuishan of the Wudang School! I am not your enemy!”

Xie Xun started, then roared, “Who is this woman? Is she your wife?” Zhang Cuishan saw him gripping Yin Susu tight, and panic seized him. “She is Miss Yin! Senior Xie, she is not your enemy’s wife!”

Xie Xun screamed, “What does it matter who she is? My wife was murdered! My mother was murdered! I will kill every woman in the world!” His left hand tightened. Yin Susu’s breath was crushed from her body and she could not utter a sound.

Zhang Cuishan saw that Xie Xun had gone utterly mad and was beyond all reason. He channelled his qi into his right arm and drove his palm with all his might into the Shendao acupoint⁴ on Xie Xun’s back. The blow landed as though he had struck iron. Xie Xun snarled like a wild animal, and his arms only tightened further. Zhang Cuishan shouted, “If you will not let go, I will use a weapon!” But Xie Xun paid him no heed. Zhang Cuishan drew his judge’s pen and drove it hard into the Xiaohai acupoint⁵ at the crook of Xie Xun’s elbow.

Xie Xun’s right hand whipped back, snatched the judge’s pen from Zhang Cuishan’s grasp, and hurled it far out into the sea.

Yet his iron grip had loosened for an instant. Yin Susu ducked and twisted free of his embrace. Xie Xun’s left palm slashed toward Zhang Cuishan’s neck; his right hand clawed at Yin Susu’s shoulder. With a sharp ripping sound, a strip of seal pelt was torn from her body by his five fingers. Zhang Cuishan knew that if he dodged, Yin Susu would be seized again. He countered with Petals Adrift,⁶ a Cotton Palm technique designed to redirect the opponent’s force. But the instant his palm made the slightest contact with Xie Xun’s, he felt a tremendous adhesive power latch onto him. He could not pull free. He summoned his internal strength to resist.

With Zhang Cuishan locked in his grip, Xie Xun dragged him bodily toward Yin Susu. She leapt clear, but before her feet could touch down, Xie Xun kicked the ice beneath him and sent seven or eight sharp fragments hurtling into her right leg. She cried out and fell sideways.

Xie Xun released a sudden burst of palm force and sent Zhang Cuishan flying several yards. The force was staggering, and when Zhang Cuishan came down he was at the very edge of the iceberg. The surface was treacherously slick. His right foot touched down, skidded—and with a splash, he plunged into the sea.

Footnotes

1. 庄子·逍遥游 – Zhuāngzǐ · Xiāoyáoyóu. Literally Zhuangzi: Carefree Wandering. The opening chapter of the Zhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoist philosophy attributed to the 4th-century BCE sage Zhuang Zhou. The passage Zhang Cuishan quotes describes a vast, mysterious northern ocean at the edge of the world—an image that resonates powerfully with their predicament. See Wikipedia. ↩

2. 冰人 – bīngrén. Literally ice man. A pun. In Chinese, “ice man” is a colloquial term for a matchmaker, originating from the Jin Dynasty story of Linghu Ce, who dreamed of standing on ice and speaking to a man beneath it—interpreted as an omen of acting as a go-between. Xie Xun jokes bitterly that by bringing Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu together on this frozen sea, he has inadvertently become their matchmaker. ↩

3. 北极仙翁 – Běijí Xiānwēng. The Old Immortal of the North Pole, a Daoist deity of longevity. Xie Xun’s joke is characteristically defiant—invoking the god of long life at the very moment they face death. ↩

4. 神道穴 – shéndào xué. Literally spirit path acupoint. An acupoint on the midline of the upper back, between the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae. A powerful strike here can disrupt the flow of qi through the governing vessel. ↩

5. 小海穴 – xiǎohǎi xué. Literally small sea acupoint. An acupoint in the groove behind the inner elbow, on the small intestine meridian. Striking it can cause numbness and temporary loss of arm function. ↩

6. 自在飞花 – zìzài fēihuā. Literally petals adrift. A Cotton Palm technique that uses a light, glancing touch to deflect and redirect incoming force, turning the opponent’s power against him. ↩