Tianlong School

The Tianlong School (simplified: 天龙门, traditional: 天龍門, pinyin: Tiānlóng Mén, jyutping: tin1 lung4 mun4) was a martial school founded by the descendants of the Tian bodyguard of the Storming King, Li Zicheng. It was introduced as the Tianlong School of Liaodong (辽东天龙门) (ch. 1). Founded as a single school in the early Qing, it split during the Kangxi reign into a Northern Branch (北宗) and a Southern Branch (南宗) (ch. 1). The school was said to be peerless in both palm and jian, and its hereditary hidden weapon, the Poison Dragon Awl, was feared throughout the jianghu (ch. 1). For more than a hundred years it kept Li Zicheng’s Treasured Dao as its guardian treasure, the two branches holding it in turn (ch. 3, 6). The theft of that dao on the day the Northern zhangmen Tian Guinong retired brought the school’s leaders to Jade Brush Peak in Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain.

Overview

Northern and Southern Branches

The Tianlong School was founded in the early Qing as one school. In the Kangxi reign the zhangmen’s two senior disciples fell out, and when the zhangmen died the school divided into a Southern and a Northern Branch. The Southern Branch prized lightness, speed and ferocity; the Northern Branch valued steadiness and ruthlessness. Both branches drew on the same source and used the same forms, but each excelled at different applications of them. The qinggong of running up a mountainside, for example, was a Southern strength (ch. 1).

Each branch had its own zhangmen. Yin Ji, zhangmen of the Southern Branch, called the division a temporary expedient. He said that Tian Guinong himself had wanted to absorb the Southern Branch when he first became Northern zhangmen, and that uniting the two would be a fine thing for the school (ch. 7). The branches still guarded their own arts. When the Northern Branch men could not beat two child servants on Jade Brush Peak, Yin Ji joined in, reasoning that the South would share any loss of face by the North, and he hung back to study the Northern swordplay while Ruan Shizhong fought (ch. 2).

Succession and the treasured dao

Baoshu had heard that whenever the zhangmen changed, the outgoing zhangmen told the new one the history of the dao (ch. 3). The two branches kept the dao for ten years each (ch. 3). When the Northern Branch’s term ended, the school’s jian manual, the genealogical records of its patriarchs (历祖宗牒) and the dao all passed to the Southern Branch. The disciples of both branches gathered and bowed before the spirit tablets of the Storming King, the school’s founding patriarch and its past zhangmen, and the dao was then handed over (ch. 7). Without this dao-conferral rite (授刀之礼), Ruan Shizhong argued, the dao still belonged to the branch that held it (ch. 8).

Few in the school knew where the dao came from. Its members had always seen it brought out of an old wooden box, and Ruan Shizhong and Yin Ji, senior figures of both branches, first heard the school’s own origin from Baoshu on Jade Brush Peak (ch. 3).

Standing in the jianghu

The Tianlong School had seldom dealt with the authorities (ch. 7). Its leading members were men of family and property. Yin Ji was a well-known rich man of Liangguang, and when Liu Yuanhe announced that he acted on imperial orders, the Tianlong men lost their nerve (ch. 7). In Side Story of the Flying Fox the assembled masters at Fuk’anggan’s gathering reflected that the Tianlong School had been famous for a hundred years, and that the Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian families had been named together since the end of the Ming (SIDE ch. 18).

History

Origins

The four bodyguards of Li Zicheng were called Hu, Miao, Fan and Tian. After the Tian bodyguard and his two sworn brothers killed the Hu bodyguard, the Flying Fox, and then took their own lives, their children were raised by jianghu heroes. The three families each founded a line of their own, and the Tian family went on to establish the Tianlong School (ch. 3). Ruan Shizhong and Yin Ji, for all their seniority, heard this for the first time from Baoshu and were privately ashamed (ch. 3). See Hu Family and Miao Family for the feud.

The Luoyang covenant

In the early Yongzheng years the Miao, Fan and Tian families quarrelled over who should keep Li Zicheng’s military dao. Two brothers of the Hu family then wounded more than ten of their men. The Tian family called in fighters from across the jianghu, and together they killed the Hu brothers. That year the heroes of north and south met at Luoyang and swore that the Tian of the Tianlong School would keep the dao. If Hu descendants came seeking trouble again, the Tian family would raise the dao and summon the jianghu against them, and anyone who saw it was to set aside even the most urgent business and answer the call (ch. 3). Baoshu later remarked that the school had won its treasure at the edge of the dao (ch. 6).

The covenant was gradually forgotten, but the school’s zhangmen valued the dao above everything (ch. 3). At the time of Hu Yidao’s duel at Cangzhou, twenty-seven years before the events on Jade Brush Peak, the dao was in the hands of the Tian family of the Tianlong School (ch. 4).

The Cangzhou duel

Tian Guinong, called Young Master Tian (田相公), joined Guild Chief Fan in leading the band that tried to stop Hu Yidao near Cangzhou (ch. 4). He gave Tao Baisui a box of salve to smear on the weapons of Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng, and Tao passed the task to the bonesetter Yan Ji, later the monk Baoshu. According to Tao Baisui, the salve was the Tianlong School’s own secret poison, the one that gave the Poison Dragon Awl its name, mixed with drugs from the Poisoned Hand Medicine King (ch. 7). Hu Yidao died of it (ch. 5).

Tian Anbao

Tian Guinong’s father, Tian Anbao (田安豹), taught Ruan Shizhong his martial arts. His hidden weapon was a pair of small golden brushes, hollow, with heads that unscrewed. He and Miao Renfeng’s father had been good friends. They set off beyond the Pass together in high spirits and never returned, and the jianghu blamed Hu Yidao (ch. 5, 8). The treasure hunters later found both bodies in the treasure cave near Jade Brush Peak, each with a dagger in the other (ch. 8).

Tian Guinong’s retirement

Tian Guinong went to Beijing, where Commander Sai introduced him to the imperial guards as zhangmen of the Northern Branch. He offered to present Li Zicheng’s treasure to the emperor, explaining that the dao held by his school was one of its two keys and the Miao family’s map the other (ch. 7).

The Northern Branch’s term with the dao ended on the day Tian Guinong chose to close his gate and seal his jian (闭门封剑), at a banquet for several hundred guests from the jianghu. That day he named Cao Yunqi zhangmen of the Northern Branch in front of them all (ch. 7). Yin Ji came to receive the dao, bringing masters of other schools; Ruan Shizhong suspected that he meant to force the two branches back together under himself. Yin Ji in turn accused Ruan of trying to push Cao Yunqi aside and become zhangmen (ch. 7). The rite never took place. Tian Guinong had asked Liu Yuanhe to have Yin Ji framed and jailed so that the dao would not pass to the Southern Branch (ch. 7).

That night the dao was found missing. Ruan Shizhong pressed Tian to give him the zhangmen’s seat instead of Cao Yunqi, citing the child Cao Yunqi and Tian Qingwen had had together. Tian refused, saying it was too late to change what he had announced (ch. 7). He sent Tao Zian away with the iron box, now empty. Zhou Yunyang had stolen the dao and buried it. Miao Renfeng dug it up and brought it to Tian’s room, and after he left Tian Guinong drove an arrow into his own heart. Tao Zian, coming back to return the box, found the body and the dao and fled beyond the Pass with it (ch. 7). The Tianlong men believed that Tao Zian had murdered their shifu and stolen the school’s treasure (ch. 1).

The fight for the iron box

Ruan Shizhong, Cao Yunqi, Zhou Yunyang and Tian Qingwen of the Northern Branch, with Yin Ji of the Southern Branch, tracked the Taos to the Changbai Mountains, where Ruan Shizhong meant to ambush the diggers and leave none alive. They recovered the iron box after a three-way fight with Yinma Creek Stockade and the Pingtong Armed Escort, and Baoshu then led them all up to Jade Brush Peak (ch. 1). There two child servants of Hu Fei humiliated the Northern Branch men and trapped Ruan Shizhong in a corner (ch. 2–3). Baoshu took the box from Ruan and told the school’s history (ch. 3, 6).

Ruan Shizhong and Cao Yunqi tried to shove Baoshu off the cliff. He dodged, and Cao Yunqi fell; Hu Fei, climbing the rope, caught him and swung him back onto it, and Cao Yunqi climbed up (ch. 6). Once the stories were told, the Southern and Northern Branches each claimed the dao (ch. 8). A note from Hu Fei, hidden in one of Tian Anbao’s golden brushes, read: “Gentlemen of Tianlong, you have come to Liaodong: you came on horseback, you will go home on the wind.” Ruan read it as a promise that they would die there, ghosts in a strange land (ch. 8).

The Tianlong party joined the others in the treasure cave. When Hu Fei rolled the boulder back over its entrance, they were among those sealed inside, still fighting over the treasure (ch. 8, 10).

In Side Story of the Flying Fox

Tian Guinong appeared as zhangmen of the Northern Branch (SIDE ch. 1). His second disciple, Zhang Yunfei (张云飞), carried the poisoned letter that blinded Miao Renfeng (SIDE ch. 8). At the Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven, Tian came late with eight followers, among them his eldest disciple Cao Yunqi. He fought with a jian in his right hand and, in his left, the Tianlong School’s treasured dao, saying that as zhangmen he was entitled to use the school’s hereditary treasure (SIDE ch. 18). Hu Fei wondered why Tian had not carried it when he led his men against Miao Renfeng. He did not know that the two branches kept it in turn: at that time it had been with the zhangmen of the Southern Branch (SIDE ch. 18). The imperial Jade Dragon Cup was announced for Tian as zhangmen of the Tianlong School, though Hu Fei, disguised as the zhangmen of another school, had beaten him and taken the dao (SIDE ch. 19). Tian later recovered the dao and used it against Hu Fei at Hu Yidao’s grave near Cangzhou, where Hu Fei matched it with the Cold Moon Treasured Dao (SIDE ch. 20).

Martial arts

Palm and jian

The Tianlong School was known as peerless in both palm and jian (ch. 1), and the Northern Branch took pride in its swordplay (ch. 2). Ruan Shizhong fought with the school’s Tianlong Swordplay (天龙剑法) (ch. 2), and Tian Guinong had trained in it from childhood for nearly forty years (SIDE ch. 11). Erlang Bears the Mountain (二郎担山) was one of the school’s killing moves (ch. 2).

Poison Dragon Awl

The Poison Dragon Awl was the school’s hereditary hidden weapon: fast, accurate and so venomous that a man struck by it died within three shichen. The jianghu called it the Chasing-Fate Poison Dragon Awl (追命毒龙锥) (ch. 1). Baoshu knew it as a weapon unique to the Tianlong School, and Ruan Shizhong carried its antidote, black pills and a salve (ch. 1). The poison behind it was the school’s own secret preparation (ch. 7).

Notable members

Northern Branch

Tian Anbao (田安豹): Tian Guinong’s father and Ruan Shizhong’s shifu, who died in the treasure cave (ch. 8).
Tian Guinong: zhangmen, who retired and died on the same day (ch. 1, 7).
Ruan Shizhong: the Seven-Star Hand, lineage uncle to Cao Yunqi and Zhou Yunyang and the branch’s strongest fighter after Tian Guinong’s death (ch. 1).
Cao Yunqi: the Soaring Dragon Jian, Tian Guinong’s successor as zhangmen (ch. 1) and his eldest disciple (SIDE ch. 18).
Zhou Yunyang: the Returning Dragon Jian, Cao Yunqi’s shidi, a second-rate fighter never favoured by his shifu, who stole and buried the dao (ch. 1, 3, 7).
Tian Qingwen: Tian Guinong’s daughter, shimei to Cao Yunqi and Zhou Yunyang (ch. 1).
Zhang Yunfei (张云飞): Tian Guinong’s second disciple (SIDE ch. 8).

Southern Branch

Yin Ji: zhangmen, He Whose Might Shakes the South (ch. 1).
Yin Zhongxiang (殷仲翔): a Tianlong master of the Southern Branch in Fuk’anggan’s train at Shang Family Fort, later among the military officers in Beijing (SIDE ch. 3, 13).

Relationships

Hu Family: the Tian family’s hereditary enemy. The Luoyang covenant gave the school the dao so that it could rally the jianghu against the Hus (ch. 3).
Miao Family: allies in the feud. Tian Anbao and Miao Renfeng’s father were friends, but Miao Renfeng thought little of Tian Guinong, who later ran off with his wife (ch. 5, 8, 10).
Yinma Creek Stockade: Tian Guinong had robbed with Tao Baisui in his youth and betrothed his daughter to Tao’s son. After Tian’s death the school accused the Taos of his murder (ch. 1, 7).
Pingtong Armed Escort: a rival for the iron box (ch. 1).
The imperial court: Tian Guinong’s approach to Commander Sai drew the imperial guard into the treasure hunt (ch. 7). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, he was received with special courtesy at Fuk’anggan’s assembly (SIDE ch. 18).

Locations

The school was introduced as the Tianlong School of Liaodong (ch. 1). Tian Guinong’s own manor, where he held his retirement banquet, was called the Tian Family Manor (田家庄). From there he sent Tao Zian beyond the Pass to bury the iron box (ch. 7), and Hu Fei’s note greeted the Tianlong men as visitors to Liaodong (ch. 8).