The Heavenly Sword & the Dragon Sabre – Chapter 7, Who Sends the Ice Boat to the Fairy Land

Who sends a boat of ice to the land of Immortals?

Zhang Cuishan swung his left hand, sending the silver hook flying to catch the edge of the iceberg. Borrowing the momentum, he vaulted back, expecting Yin Susu to fall once more into Xie Xun’s grasp. But beneath the cold moonlight, he saw Xie Xun pressing both hands against his eyes, crying out in agony, while Yin Susu lay upon the ice.

Zhang Cuishan rushed forward and lifted her. Yin Susu whispered, “I… I struck his eyes…” Before she could finish, Xie Xun let out a tiger’s roar and lunged toward them. Zhang Cuishan clutched Yin Susu and rolled aside, narrowly evading the blow. Crash after crash resounded as Xie Xun swung his wolf-tooth club,¹ striking the iceberg with tremendous force. He then cast aside the club, lifted a block of ice weighing over a hundred jin,² tilted his head to listen, and hurled it toward Zhang and Yin.

Yin Susu was about to leap away when Zhang Cuishan pressed her back, and both concealed themselves in a hollow of the iceberg, not daring to breathe. They watched as Xie Xun, after hurling the ice block, held his head still, evidently searching for their hiding place. Zhang Cuishan saw thin streams of blood flowing from both his eyes and realised that Yin Susu, in her moment of peril, had finally launched her silver needles, and Xie Xun, in his frenzied state, had failed to guard against them. Both eyes had been struck. He was now blind. Yet his hearing remained extraordinarily keen. Let them make the slightest sound and he would be upon them, and the consequences did not bear thinking of. Fortunately there were waves on the sea, and the wind was loud besides, and with them the knocking and booming of ice block against ice block, and all of it drowned their breathing. Otherwise, they could never have escaped his lethal reach.

Xie Xun listened for some time, but amid the tumult of wind, waves, and colliding ice, he could not locate them. His eyes burned with excruciating pain, and before him stretched an endless, boundless darkness. Rage mingled with fear, and suddenly he let out a great cry, beating and pounding upon the iceberg, seizing chunks of ice and hurling them wildly in every direction. The sharp cracks rang ceaselessly. Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu clung to each other, their faces ashen with terror, as great blocks of ice whistled overhead. Any single one striking them would mean death.

Xie Xun’s frenzied leaping and hurling lasted a little under half a shichen,³ yet to Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu, it felt like years.

Finding his ice-throwing futile, Xie Xun suddenly ceased. “Young Master Zhang, Lady Yin,” he said, “just now I was momentarily confused. A fit of madness overcame me, and so I gave offence. I beg you not to hold it against me.” He spoke mildly and courteously, his usual manner restored. Having spoken, he sat upon the ice and waited silently for their reply.

Zhang Cuishan and Yin Susu, in such a situation, dared not rashly respond. Xie Xun repeated his words several times, and when neither answered, he rose with a sigh. “Since you will not forgive me, there is nothing for it.” With that, he drew a deep breath.

Zhang Cuishan was suddenly alert. He remembered how, upon Wang Panshan Island,⁴ Xie Xun had unleashed a mighty roar that felled many men, and before that roar, he had likewise drawn a deep breath. Though his eyes were blind, the devastating power of his sonic attack remained undiminished. The danger was on them in a breath. To tear off a strip of his robe and stop their ears would already be too late. Without further thought, Zhang Cuishan seized Yin Susu and slipped into the sea.

Yin Susu had not yet understood when Xie Xun’s roar erupted. Zhang Cuishan, holding her, sank rapidly. The bone-chilling seawater closed over their heads and flooded their ears. His left hand clung to the silver hook anchored in the iceberg, his right arm wrapped around Yin Susu. Save for that one left hand, their bodies were entirely submerged, yet still they faintly felt the terrifying force of Xie Xun’s roar. The iceberg drifted ceaselessly northward, bearing them beneath the water’s surface. Zhang Cuishan counted himself fortunate. Had it been the silver hook he lost and not the iron brush, then even with the roar escaped they would surely have drowned in the open sea.

After a long while, they raised their mouths above the surface to draw breath, keeping their ears submerged. Only after six or seven such exchanges did Xie Xun’s roaring finally cease. That prolonged shout had consumed tremendous neili,⁵ and for the moment even he was weary. He could not spare the attention to see whether Zhang and Yin were alive or dead, but sat on his ice block and quietly regulated his breathing. Zhang Cuishan made a gesture, and the two climbed silently back onto the iceberg. They tore soft fur from the sealskin and stuffed it tightly into their ears, thus temporarily escaping disaster.

Yet sharing the iceberg with him, any sound whatsoever would invite immediate catastrophe. They faced each other in sorrow, gazing westward. The blood-red sun still hung above the sea. They did not know that, nearing the Arctic, the heavens behaved most strangely: here, daylight endured for half a year, and darkness reigned for the other half. To them, all seemed utterly alien, as though they had reached the very edge of the world.

Yin Susu, soaked through, suffered the bitter cold piercing her heart. She could not help but tremble, her teeth chattering softly. Xie Xun heard at once. He roared aloud and brought his wolf-tooth club crashing down. Zhang and Yin, forewarned, leapt aside. The great club came down on the iceberg with a crash, knocking seven or eight blocks the size of bushels flying into the sea. The strike carried at least six or seven hundred jin of force. They stared at each other in horror as Xie Xun whirled the wolf-tooth club, casting forth a thousand silver glints, pressing toward them. The club, over ten feet in length, swept with a lethal radius of forty to fifty feet. Swift though their leaps might be, there was no escape. They could only retreat step by step until they stood at the iceberg’s very edge.

Yin Susu cried out in alarm. Zhang Cuishan seized her arm and, with all his strength, leapt into the sea. While still airborne, they heard a tremendous crash. Ice shards splattered against their backs, stinging dully. As he leapt, Zhang Cuishan had already spotted a block the size of a table. His silver hook flew out and caught hold. Xie Xun, hearing them fall into the water, smashed more ice with his club and hurled it ceaselessly. But blind though he was, and with Zhang and Yin drifting upon the currents, his first cast missed, and none thereafter found their mark.

What floated above the sea was but a tiny fraction of the iceberg. Beneath the water lay a far greater mass. Yet the block Zhang and Yin clung to was merely a fragment Xie Xun had struck from the great iceberg, not even one-thousandth of its bulk. Thus it drifted swiftly in the current, moving ever farther from the iceberg Xie Xun occupied. When dusk approached, they looked back to see his figure reduced to a small dark dot, while the great iceberg still gleamed and sparkled in the distance.

The two clung to their block, grateful only that it did not sink, but their bodies trailed in the seawater. How long could they endure? Fortunately they drifted northward, and before long spotted another small iceberg ahead. When it drifted close enough, they climbed aboard.

Zhang Cuishan said, “If heaven truly means to spare us, why must it make us suffer so? How are you?” Yin Susu replied, “Pity we didn’t bring any seal meat. You’re not hurt, are you?” The two spoke at cross-purposes, neither understanding what the other said. They paused, then pulled the seal fur from their ears. In their flight for survival, they had forgotten they were plugged.

They had come through great peril, and their tenderness for each other deepened. Zhang Cuishan said, “Susu, even if we die upon this iceberg, we shall never be parted.” Yin Susu suddenly asked, “Fifth Brother, I have a question. You must not lie to me. If we were on land, without all these trials, if I were still as determined to marry you as I am now, would you still want me?”

Zhang Cuishan was taken aback. “I think… we would not have grown close so quickly, and there would surely be many obstacles… our schools are different…” Yin Susu said, “I think so too. That day, when you first tested palm strength against Xie Xun, I wanted several times to shoot my silver needles to help you, but I never did. I carried my jian at my side, yet I had no mind to stab him from behind.” Zhang Cuishan asked in surprise, “Yes, why was that? I always assumed you couldn’t see clearly in the dark and were afraid of striking me by mistake.” Yin Susu whispered, “No. If I had harmed him then, once we escaped back to the mainland, you would not have wanted to be with me any longer.”

Zhang Cuishan’s chest grew warm. “Susu!”

Yin Susu said, “Perhaps you blame me in your heart, but all I wanted then was to be with you, to go to some deserted island where no one could find us, and stay together forever. Xie Xun forcing us to travel with him suited my wishes perfectly.” Zhang Cuishan had not realised her love for him ran so deep. Gratitude filled him, and he said softly, “I do not blame you at all. Instead, I am grateful that you care for me so much.”

Yin Susu nestled against him, lifting her face to look into his eyes. “Heaven has sent me to this frozen hell, and I do not grudge it in the least. I am only glad. I only hope this iceberg does not drift south. But if someday we do return to the Central Plains, your shifu⁶ will surely despise me, and my father may well try to kill you…”

Zhang Cuishan said, “Your father?” Yin Susu said, “My father is Yin Tianzheng the White-Browed Eagle King,⁷ founder and Order Leader of the Tianying Order.”⁸ Zhang Cuishan said, “Ah, so that is who he is. No matter. I have said I will be with you. However fierce your father may be, he cannot kill his own son-in-law.” Yin Susu’s eyes shone, a flush rising on her cheeks. “Do you truly mean that?” Her voice carried no small anxiety.

Zhang Cuishan said, “Let us be husband and wife this very moment.”

Footnotes

1. 狼牙棒 – lángyá bàng. Literally wolf-fang club. Heavy mace-like weapon covered in protruding metal spikes, wielded by Xie Xun. Its enormous size and weight make it usable only by someone of extraordinary physical strength. ↩

2. 斤 – jīn. Traditional Chinese unit of weight, approximately 500 grams or 1.1 pounds. Four hundred jin would be roughly 440 pounds or 200 kilograms. ↩

3. 时辰 – shíchén. Traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two hours; the day was divided into twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 王盘山 – Wángpán Shān. Wangpan Island, the sea island where the Tianying Order raised the Dragon-Slaying Dao to overawe the wulin some years before. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

6. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher or master responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 殷天正 – Yīn Tiānzhèng. White-Browed Eagle King, founding Order Leader of the Tianying Order and Wuji’s maternal grandfather. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 天鹰教 – Tiānyīng Jiào. Tianying Order, founded by Yin Tianzheng the White-Browed Eagle King. 教 here is the order’s own neutral name for itself; “Cult” is the orthodox schools’ derogatory register and is not the sect’s name. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩