Xiaoyaozi (simplified: 逍遥子, traditional: 逍遙子, pinyin: Xiāoyáozǐ, jyutping: siu1 jiu4 zi2) the Dragon Amidst the Clouds is the eldest of the Four Xias of Taiyue. A sickly middle-aged man in tattered clothes who smokes an iron pipe with his eyes half closed, he looks like a hidden master and is nothing of the kind.
Biography
When the four block Zhou Weixin’s convoy, Xiaoyaozi leans against a tree smoking and mocks Zhou’s epithet, the Iron Whip that Quells All Directions, as Yields All Directions. Zhou takes his calm for the mark of a master with profound neigong.1 As Zhou flees, Xiaoyaozi throws a muddy shoe that sticks to his whip, and in the fight with the escorts he takes a dao cut to the shoulder, which he shrugs off as the price of being outnumbered. When Ren Feiyan shoots his pipe from his hand, he judges at a glance that Lin Yulong is a bad man and Ren from a reputable lineage.2
He tries to seal Xiao Zhonghui’s acupoints with his pipe and misses; she lets him tap her leg, tells him he is two inches off the Zhongdu point, then knocks the pipe away and carries him off by the nape of his neck.3 Dragged along the ground, he names the acupoint she is holding and its meridians; with her dao at his neck, he protests that he has remained a virgin past fifty and has never been disrespectful to a woman, and corrects her aim by an inch and a half. His sworn brothers’ offer to die with him wins all four their lives.4 He ends the novella helping to net Zhuo Tianxiong in a muddy river.5
Martial arts abilities
Xiaoyaozi fights with a pipe of fine iron, used like a judge’s brush to strike acupoints. He knows the acupoints by name and theory, down to their meridians, but cannot hit them: his strikes land a hair’s breadth wide, which in practice means inches.3
See also
- Mandarin Duck Blades characters
- Four Xias of Taiyue
- Chang Changfeng — second of the Four Xias
- Hua Jianying — third of the Four Xias
- Gai Yiming — fourth of the Four Xias
External links
- Xiaoyaozi (Chinese) on Baidu Baike