The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre Chapter 7 Part 1

Who sends the ice vessel to the immortal land?

Zhang Cuishan’s¹ left hand lashed out with the silver hook, catching the edge of the iceberg. He used the momentum to swing himself back, certain in his heart that Yin Susu² must have fallen once more into Xie Xun’s³ grasp. Yet beneath the cold light of the moon, he saw only Xie Xun pressing both hands to his eyes and groaning in agony, whilst Yin Susu lay sprawled upon the ice.

Zhang Cuishan bounded forward and helped her up at once. Yin Susu whispered, “I… I struck his eyes…” Before she could finish, Xie Xun loosed a roar like a maddened tiger and threw himself at them. Zhang Cuishan seized Yin Susu and rolled aside several times, barely evading the charge. Behind them came a succession of thunderous impacts as Xie Xun swung his wolf-fang mace⁴ in a blind fury, smashing it against the ice with tremendous force. He hurled the mace aside almost at once, scooped up a great slab of ice weighing well over a hundred jin, cocked his head to listen, and flung it at the pair of them.

Yin Susu made to leap clear, but Zhang Cuishan pressed a hand to her back, pushing them both flat into a hollow in the iceberg’s surface, scarcely daring to breathe. They watched as Xie Xun hurled the ice block and then stood motionless, head tilted, straining to locate them. Zhang Cuishan could see two thin rivulets of fresh blood trickling from his eyes and knew that in her desperation, Yin Susu had at last loosed her silver needles—and that Xie Xun, his mind clouded by madness, had failed to guard against them. Both needles had struck home. He was blind.

Yet his hearing remained fearfully keen. The slightest sound would bring him lunging toward them, and the consequences were too terrible to contemplate. Fortunately, the sea furnished them with cover: the crash of waves, the howl of wind, and the grinding, booming clamour of ice blocks colliding all served to drown out their breathing. Without that merciful din, they could never have escaped his murderous hands.

Xie Xun listened for a long while. Amid the roar of wind and the thunder of colliding ice, he could detect no trace of the two. The agony in his eyes was excruciating, and before him stretched a darkness vast and without end. Fury compounded by terror, he let out a sudden, terrible cry and began flailing wildly at the iceberg, tearing up chunks of ice and hurling them in every direction. The sharp crack of shattering ice rang out ceaselessly. Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu clung to one another, their faces drained of all colour. Enormous blocks of ice whistled overhead, and a single one striking true would have meant instant death.

This frenzy of leaping and hurling lasted the better part of half a double-hour,⁵ though to Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu it seemed to stretch across years.

When his barrage of ice proved fruitless, Xie Xun suddenly ceased. He said, “Master Zhang, Miss Yin—just now I lost my wits for a moment, and my old madness seized me. I beg your forgiveness for any offence.” These words were spoken with perfect courtesy, his manner restored to its usual composure. Having said his piece, he sat down upon the ice and waited for an answer.

In such straits, how could Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu dare respond? Xie Xun repeated himself several times, and when neither answered, he rose to his feet with a sigh. “Since neither of you will grant me pardon, there is nothing to be done.” With that, he drew a deep breath.

Zhang Cuishan felt a jolt of alarm. On Wang Pan Island,⁶ before Xie Xun had unleashed that tremendous whistle that had felled every soul present, he had drawn just such a breath. Blind though he was, the devastating force of that whistle would be no less lethal. The crisis was upon them in a heartbeat—there was no time to tear cloth and stop his ears. Without a moment’s hesitation, Zhang Cuishan snatched Yin Susu into his arms and slid into the sea.

Yin Susu had not yet grasped what was happening when the whistle tore through the air. Zhang Cuishan clutched her tight and plunged downward. The bone-piercing cold of the sea closed over their heads, flooding their ears. His left hand gripped the silver hook still embedded in the iceberg whilst his right arm held Yin Susu fast. Save for that one hand, their bodies were entirely submerged, yet even so, the terrible force of the whistle reached them as a muffled vibration through the water. The iceberg drifted steadily northward, carrying them along beneath the surface. Zhang Cuishan silently gave thanks—had it been the iron pen he had lost instead of the silver hook, even if he had survived the whistle, they would surely have drowned in the open sea.

After a long while, they lifted their mouths above the surface to draw breath, though they kept their ears submerged. It took six or seven such breaths before the whistle finally ceased. That prolonged blast had consumed an enormous measure of neili,⁷ and even Xie Xun felt the toll of exhaustion. For the moment he could not concern himself with whether Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu lived or died, and sat upon the ice to regulate his breathing. Zhang Cuishan gestured silently, and the two of them crept back onto the iceberg. They plucked tufts of fur from the sealskin and pressed them firmly into their ears, having narrowly survived this latest calamity.

Yet they still shared the iceberg with Xie Xun. The faintest sound would bring catastrophe crashing down upon them. The two exchanged anguished glances, then turned their eyes westward. A blood-red sun hung above the horizon, refusing to sink beneath the waves. They did not know that they had drifted near the Arctic, where the seasons turned strangely—in these reaches, daylight endured for half the year without ceasing, whilst the other half was given over to endless night. Everything about this place seemed uncanny and otherworldly, as though they had come to the very edge of the known world.

Yin Susu was soaked through, and the merciless cold gnawed at her heart. She could not help but shiver, her teeth chattering softly, and a low whimper escaped her lips. Xie Xun heard it at once. He bellowed and surged toward them, bringing the wolf-fang mace crashing down. Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu had been braced for this; they leapt clear in an instant. A tremendous boom echoed across the ice as the mace struck the berg, shearing away seven or eight chunks each the size of a bushel, sending them splashing into the sea. That single blow carried no less than six or seven hundred jin of force. They stared at one another in horror as Xie Xun whirled the mace in a blazing arc of silver light, driving straight toward them. The weapon’s haft alone measured well over ten feet, and in motion its reach extended four or five zhang in every direction. No matter how swiftly they dodged, there was no escaping it. They could only retreat, step after desperate step, until in mere moments they stood at the very edge of the iceberg.

Yin Susu cried out in alarm. Zhang Cuishan seized her arm, gathered his strength, and leapt toward the sea. They were still in midair when the mace thundered into the ice behind them, sending a spray of frozen shards hammering against their backs, sharp enough to sting. Zhang Cuishan had already marked a table-sized slab of ice floating below. His left hand flicked outward, and the silver hook caught its edge.

Xie Xun heard the splash of their landing and began smashing ice from the berg, hurling the fragments after them. But he was blind now, and Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu continued to drift upon the current. The first block fell wide; after that, none came close at all.

The portion of an iceberg that rose above the waterline was but a fraction of the whole; the vast bulk lay hidden beneath the surface. The slab to which they clung, however, was merely a fragment Xie Xun had broken from the greater mass—scarcely a thousandth of the original. Light and buoyant, it rode the current swiftly, and the distance between them and Xie Xun’s iceberg widened with every passing moment. By the time the sky began to darken, they could look back and see his figure reduced to a small black speck, whilst the great iceberg behind him still glimmered with a pale, cold radiance.

Clinging to this slab of ice, they counted themselves fortunate merely not to sink, yet with their bodies immersed in the frigid sea, how long could they endure? Fortune favoured them: their northward drift soon brought another small iceberg into view. When they floated near enough, they hauled themselves onto it.

Zhang Cuishan said, “If heaven truly never bars every path, then why does it make us suffer so? How are you feeling?” Yin Susu replied, “A pity we had no time to bring any seal meat. You are not hurt?” They carried on talking, each asking after the other, yet neither could hear a word. After a moment’s bewilderment, they pulled the tufts of seal fur from their ears—in their frantic flight, they had forgotten all about them.

Having survived such peril, the tenderness between them only deepened. Zhang Cuishan said, “Susu, even if we die here upon this iceberg, at least we shall never be parted.” Yin Susu said suddenly, “Fifth Brother, I must ask you something, and you must not lie to me. If we were on solid ground, with none of these dangers behind us, and I still wished to marry you with all my heart—would you still have me?”

Zhang Cuishan was taken aback. “I think… it would not have come about so quickly between us, and… there would certainly have been many obstacles. Our schools are not the same…”

Yin Susu continued, “I thought the same. That is why, the day you first matched palms with Xie Xun, though I reached for my silver needles again and again, I never loosed them. I had my sword at my side, yet I never once thought of driving it into his back.” Zhang Cuishan said in wonder, “Why not? I always assumed you could not see clearly enough in the darkness and feared striking me by mistake.” Yin Susu said softly, “No. If I had wounded him then, and we had escaped back to the mainland… you would no longer have wished to be with me.”

Zhang Cuishan’s chest flooded with warmth. “Susu!” he cried.

Yin Susu said, “Perhaps you think ill of me for it, but in that moment all I wanted was to be with you—to go to some deserted island where there was no one else, and stay together always. When Xie Xun forced the two of us to sail with him, it suited my heart perfectly.” Zhang Cuishan had never imagined her love ran so deep. Gratitude swelled within him, and he said gently, “I do not blame you. On the contrary, I am thankful that you care for me so.”

Yin Susu nestled against his chest, lifted her face, and gazed into his eyes. “The heavens have sent me to this frozen purgatory, and I have not a single word of complaint—only joy. I pray this iceberg never drifts south again. But… if one day we do return to the Central Plains, your shifu will despise me. And my father might well try to kill you…”

Zhang Cuishan said, “Your father?”

Yin Susu said, “My father is the White-Browed Eagle King,⁸ Yin Tianzheng.⁹ He is the founding hierarch of the Heavenly Eagle Cult.”¹⁰

Zhang Cuishan said, “Ah, so that is how it is. No matter—I said I would be with you. However fearsome your father may be, surely he would not slay his own son-in-law?” Yin Susu’s eyes shone, and a flush of colour rose to her cheeks. “Do you mean those words truly?” There was a note of apprehension in her voice.

Zhang Cuishan said, “Let us be wed here and now, upon this very ice.”

Footnotes

1. 张翠山 – Zhāng Cuìshān. His name meaning “Verdant Mountain.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 殷素素 – Yīn Sùsù. Her name meaning “Plain and Simple.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 谢逊 – Xiè Xùn. His name meaning “Modest” or “Humble.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 狼牙棒 – lángyábàng. Literally wolf-fang mace. A heavy spiked cudgel with protruding metal studs resembling wolf fangs. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 时辰 – shíchén. A traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two modern hours, dividing the day into twelve periods. ↩

6. 王盘山 – Wáng Pánshān. An island where the jianghu gathered to contend for the Dragon Slaying Saber. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 内力 – nèilì. Literally internal power. The cultivated energy central to advanced martial arts. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 白眉鹰王 – Báiméi Yīngwáng. Literally white-browed eagle king. One of the Ming Cult’s Four Protector Dharma Kings. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 殷天正 – Yīn Tiānzhèng. His name meaning “Heaven’s Rectitude” or “Righteous as Heaven.” See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 天鹰教 – Tiānyīng Jiào. Literally heavenly eagle cult. A faction that split from the Ming Cult. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩