by Yan LeiSheng
A sword!
So, she was expected after all. And vulnerable, trapped as she was in the doorframe. Instead of retreating, which her opponent surely expected, she dodged the blow and dashed into the room, slashing downwards with her sword. She refused to allow herself to be caught by a surprise attack. The blade cut flesh with a wet sound, and a hoarse cry rang out. The person who attacked Shao Jun could no longer hold a sword, but the voice wasn’t Zhang Yong’s. The young woman realized she had underestimated her prey. The leader of the Tigers clearly expected her to come, so he had placed one – or more? – of his men in the room while he remained elsewhere. Now, she was alone in the darkness surrounded by an unknown number of assailants. How could she escape?
She had no time to think because she was suddenly dazed by a glare of light, as if lightning had struck at her feet. Accustomed to the complete darkness of the room, brightness which could not have come from any normal lamp overwhelmed her vision. It created an opening for her attackers: one looped a cord around her right hand, another around her left, and her pitiful attempts to wave her sword at them blindly were to no avail. From their texture she could feel that her bonds were made from silk and sinew. The men holding them pulled with superhuman strength, forcing her arms to snap apart. Clang! Her sword fell to the floor. Victory had been so close. She was suddenly overcome with guilt. She should have listened to her master’s wise words and not underestimated Zhang Yong. The man never lowered his guard, even in the most unexpected situations. As unbelievable as it might be, he had spotted the boat before it had drawn up to the ship.
The strange light was extinguished, and a lantern lit the room in its place.
“Miss Imperial Favorite,” an androgynous voice said sarcastically, “thank you for honoring us with your presence!”
It was Yu Dayong!
When Shao Jun’s sight returned he was opposite her, hairless, stocky, and pot-bellied, his mouth twisted in an ugly rictus, holding a small copper cylinder in his hand – it must be the tool he had used to create the strange light. At his side stood a rough man who looked like a sailor, cradling his bleeding right wrist in his left hand. Seated on an armchair next to the wall behind them was a eunuch with white hair and a furious expression: Zhang Yong.
“Venerable captain general,” Yu Dayong asked as he caressed the knife at his waist, “may I send the imperial whore after her beloved Emperor?”
He had dreamed night and day of ending the final survivor of the Central Plain Brotherhood. Bound by his leader’s orders and driven by terror at the thought of being next to die after Wei Bin and Gao Feng, he fretted as his chest continued to swell with fear and hatred. He had been delighted when the leader of the Tigers had recently said to kill her on sight, and now here she was, bound and in reach of his blade. Internally he rejoiced even as his face remained as expressionless as ever.
He was considerably disappointed when Zhang Yong finally spoke.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, my dear governor, I have a few questions to ask her first.”
He moved closer but stayed at a distance, because the young woman’s feet were still free.
“Shao Jun,” he said after clearing his throat, “how fares brother Yangming?”
She didn’t answer, but Yu Dayong was very surprised by his superior’s respectful attitude.
The leader of the Tigers hadn’t stopped thinking about his old friend, a refined and powerful man, loved by all, who had never used his immense political power against him despite their numerous disagreements. Their night of discussion also haunted him; it was a long-cherished memory that now filled him with bitterness. Still consumed by his thirst for domination, he was unable to feel the slightest compassion. Nonetheless, a spark of emotion, nostalgia perhaps, drove his desire to hear about Wang Yangming from Shao Jun’s own lips before he finally took her life.
“You really have no scruples,” she spat. “I will avenge my master.”
He laughed loudly. She was undoubtedly a worthy successor for the mentor of the Central Plain Brotherhood!
“Don’t mock me, Shao Jun. Your master couldn’t resist the power of my yuxiao.”
So that was what they were called. Although they were undetectable to the way of the heart, they were certainly not invincible, and only their numbers and the surprise combined with Zhang Yong’s attacks had allowed them to overcome Wang Yangming. The leader of the Tigers’ Fire of the lotus would have never been enough on its own. Though he hadn’t lingered on the riverbank, he had been convinced that there was no way his rival could survive his wounds. The martial aspect of the School of Mind would end today, he decided. He pressed his right hand against his left wrist, releasing a thin blade from his sleeve. The weariness left his gaze to be replaced by his habitual cruelty.
Yu Dayong grimaced. He had hoped to kill the imperial whore with his own hands and had even unsheathed his dagger in readiness.
He noticed a strange light in the sky, faintly illuminating the interior of the cabin through the closed shutters. But there was no sound from the storm and no clouds blocked the view of the stars. The eunuch shivered as he remembered that Guimen was sometimes known as “the demon gate” before realizing what he had just seen. A flare!
The entire room began to shake violently from an explosion or an impact from an enormous solid mass. The ship was moored on the reef and wasn’t transporting any explosives. Shao Jun had arrived on a boat, and she would also be affected by any collision with the junk. Even Zhang Yong, who had anticipated Shao Jun’s attack by asking his subordinate and three personal guards to remain with him, had no idea what was happening. The sailors slept in the adjoining cabin, so it would surely not be long before they joined them after being woken by the commotion.
Bang! A gaping hole suddenly appeared in the wall of the room, just where the leader of the Tigers had been sitting seconds earlier. The wall was made from wood too hard for any saw to cut. Yu Dayong’s initial response was to think there had been an accident with some gunpowder, but the ship had none on board. While the group was still frozen in shock, an abrupt cry rang out and a man flew through the opening, feet-first and stiff as a board, in Zhang Yong’s direction. He dodged at lightning speed and stabbed the human projectile with his long, thin dagger, causing it to collapse to the floor like a sack of potatoes. It was a corpse! One of the sailors from the junk. Though the victim hadn’t been skilled in kung-fu, his silent death and conversion to a projectile was incredible.
A second man burst through the hole like a cannon ball. Zhang Yong’s position prevented him from using his sword in time, and he was forced to quickly raise his arm to protect himself. At the last second, he realized this projectile wasn’t dead, and he was going to be hit in the chest. Who was this assailant? What force had propelled him? And how had he got on board without being spotted? He had many questions, but they would have to wait. Pah! Zhang Yong intercepted the intruder’s punch with his open hand. The impact reverberated through his entire body and sent him stumbling back a step, but he immediately counter-attacked using Fire of the lotus to send a flow of yin energy into his opponent’s body and render him harmless. His adversary instantly reacted by opening his fist to exert pressure on the leader of the Tigers’ artery and block his neigong. The witnesses to this exchange with martial arts knowledge were impressed by the unexpected intruder’s speed. Under normal circumstances the captain of the guard’s high-level kung-fu would have had no trouble overcoming him, but his internal wounds still limited his abilities and the element of surprise had worked against him. The stranger inverted the position of his feet for stability, then launched a new series of strikes that were crude yet so fast that they seemed to blur into one long, drawn-out strike too impenetrable to allow through any counterstrike. On this occasion, sheer speed made up for any flaws in the clumsy technique.
Recovered from her initial surprise, Shao Jun recognized him: it was Tiexin! As unbe
lievable as it seemed, he managed to force the leader of the Tigers to move back without giving him a moment’s respite, dangerously weakening his internal organs each time a new shockwave travelled through his body. Aware that he needed to change his strategy quickly, Zhang Yong suddenly pivoted to disengage from the relentless assault. The next punches slammed straight into the stomach of the sailor who was standing just behind him and holding the roped arm of the former imperial favorite – he instantly spat out a stream of blood and collapsed to the floor. As soon as the young woman felt slack in the rope, she freed herself with a wide sweep of her leg, sending her foot blade stabbing into the chest of the man holding her left arm.
The tables seemed to have completely turned in the space of a moment. The leader of the Tigers thought his captive had planned this providential rescue from the beginning, and that the newcomer belonged to some new version of the Central Plain Brotherhood, but he was nothing of the sort. Tiexin hated taking reckless risks, he was there only for his own purposes. His motivations mattered little to Shao Jun. She simply planned to take advantage of the opportunity he provided to kill Zhang Yong, which was her sole objective. She slid the toe of her boat under a sword on the floor and flipped it up to her hand with a flick of her ankle. As soon as her hand closed around it, she felt stronger and more sure of herself, ready to jump back into the fight. Suddenly, the same light that had blinded her earlier dazzled her once more. No! She couldn’t let herself be caught by the same trap twice! She lifted her blade and hastily closed her eyes, protecting herself from the effects of the powerful tool. Tiexin didn’t have the same presence of mind and found himself blinded, striking out madly in front of him without being able to see to protect himself. He was also carried away by his zeal, convinced of his skill and certain he would be able to vanquish the head of the Eight Tigers himself.
Yu Dayong had developed the mirror-torch on Dai Yu island, with the help of Pyros, to compensate for the weaknesses in his kung-fu. Its intensity was exceptional, but it could only be used twice before it needed reloading. In the space of minutes he had seen two of his men die, both more skilled than he, and watched the powerful intruder gain the upper hand over his master. Crying out in terror, he grabbed the last remaining living sailor by the shoulder, the one with the bleeding wrist, shoving him at Tiexin as he and Zhang Yong fled. The poor man tried to protect himself with his good hand, which was instantly broken by the power of the attacks. Panicking, he lifted his other arm, and crack!, it broke in multiple places, sending small splinters of bone flying everywhere. The fractured radius tore his flesh, and a punch sank into his chest. He screamed and fell to the ground, a shredded, shapeless mass of impossible angles.
When Shao Jun opened her eyes again, she could see well enough to spot Yu Dayong disappearing through an open trap door in the middle of the cabin. Zhang Yong must also have rushed into it, as he was nowhere to be seen. She had to move, because Tiexin began to aim devastating punches in her direction after hearing her move. The boxing style he used was called Toppling Mount Kailash – a sacred place in Buddhism, on whose peak the celestial emperor supposedly resided at three thousand six hundred meters in altitude – and this particular sequence of attacks where one elbow followed the other relentlessly was known as Celestial drums beat the thunder. The most skilled users could usually maintain a sustained rhythm of four strikes per second with each elbow, but after years of exhaustive training he had achieved double this rate, earning the nickname of “Eight celestial drums”. It was almost impossible for an opponent to escape once caught in this flurry of attacks.
Shao Jun’s kung-fu relied on her vital breath, so she couldn’t speak or cry out while simultaneously dodging the attacks coming towards her with all the speed she could muster. The slightest error could be fatal. Without relaxing her concentration, she cautiously began to retreat towards the cabin’s exit, then mounted the deck, both eyes still fixed on her blinded assailant who was furious at being trapped just when he thought victory was in his grasp. Shao Jun’s heel abruptly hit the railing: she had reached the edge of the deck and had nowhere else to go to escape the boxing machine approaching her. In desperation, she jumped to the other side of the rail; one more step would send her into the water. A high-pitched voice suddenly broke the night:
“Big brother! Stop fighting!”
Chapter 18
It was A-Qian, dagger in hand and clothes covered in blood. She was followed by Tiexin’s Eight Celestial Kings, strong and courageous sailors who had just killed Yu Dayong’s men in their sleep. Recognizing his sister’s voice, Tiexin began to stop his attack, but the perpetual movement of the technique was so powerful that it was dangerous for the user to suddenly stop, so he simply redirected his blows downwards as he gradually slowed rather than stopping abruptly. As he did so, he broke the railing Shao Jun was holding on to. If she lost her footing, the pitch of the ship and the sea currents would be her end. Seeing her fall backwards, A-Qian rushed towards her and grabbed her sleeve at the last second. The former imperial favorite deployed her cloak, allowing her to float on the wind for a moment like a kite before landing back on the deck. Barely had she reached this relative safety when the junk shook, this time throwing the young fisherwoman overboard. Tiexin himself wavered, but quickly used his formidable energy to stabilize himself, sinking his fingers into the wood of the parapet and stretching his hand out to his sister, narrowly missing her. Her slim silhouette disappeared into the night but was caught at the last second by Shao Jun’s rope dart. She was able to reel the girl, pale with fright, back onto the relative safety of the ship with the sailor’s help.
All three gripped the railing tightly as they looked down: two lines of fire propelled a small boat that seemed to have burst out through the hull. On board they could clearly see the two figures of Zhang Yong and Yu Dayong. The two Tigers would have been at the Eight Celestial Kings’ mercy without the completely unexpected and unpredictable maneuver, but they accelerated away at incredible speed and would soon only be a dot on the horizon, like a star fallen into the sea. The boat was a fiery dragon on the surface of the sea, a military invention developed under the Ming dynasty: huge, thick pieces of bamboo filled with gunpowder were attached to its deck to propel it across the water when lit. If loaded with explosives, this type of boat could be used as a mobile bomb against an enemy ship, in this case it was a very effective means of transport for making a quick escape. Shao Jun had heard about this naval weapon during her first sea voyage with Zhu Jiuyuan. He told her that the governor of Guangdong had used one to successfully push back the Portuguese who tried to invade his territory in the sixteenth year of Zhengde’s reign.
As she retrieved her rope and wrapped it with a flick of her wrist, the young woman noticed the deck under her feet didn’t pitch as it should. Instead of rising and falling with the waves, the prow seemed to slowly rise. It wasn’t hard to guess what was happening: Yu Dayong and Zhang Yong must have punctured the hull before they fled. In the storm, simple fishing boats like those alongside the ship wouldn’t be enough to reach the coast…
“We need to hurry to the reef,” Shao Jun declared. “The ship is going to sink.”
A-Qian came out of her stupor and shouted at her brother.
“It’s your fault! What were you thinking, attacking big sister Jun?”
Out of an excess of confidence, Tiexin had left his men to await his signal before attacking and had boarded ahead of them to demonstrate his invincible kung-fu. He was aware his mistake had cost them, but he was too proud to take responsibility and unloaded his anger onto the Eight Celestial Kings.
“What about you, hmm?” he yelled at them. “What took you so long?”
Ye Zongman, the head of the small band, was his right-hand man and his sworn brother. Realizing his friend felt responsible, he chose to be diplomatic.
“I’m sorry, big brother Tiexin, we didn’t train hard enough!”
This childish appo
rtioning of blame was wasting time as the deck continued to slant, and the sinking ship was creating powerful eddies which would be certain death for anyone carried in the water. They needed to get to Guimen reef as soon as possible.
“Big brother,” said A-Qian, “there is no one alive on this ship, let’s get off, quickly…”
As she prepared to return to her fishing boat, she saw Shao Jun turn and reach the wheelhouse in three agile bounds.
“There’s still someone in there!” she shouted to the young girl.
And she was right: Tiexin and his men had killed all the sleeping sailors, but the one she had immobilized when she arrived on the ship was still alive. He was a bloody brute who executed the Tigers’ most abominable orders, but she couldn’t simply leave him to die. The extreme terror he showed when she got to him dispelled any lingering doubts. She removed the energy block that prevented him from moving.
“Follow me now if you want to live!” she whispered.
The entire front of the junk seemed to be on the verge of rising vertically before it finally sank. The night was filled with terrible creaks and groans signaling the deck’s imminent collapse. Shao Jun ran across the deck, followed by the sailor; two meters below floated the boat containing Tiexin and his sister, and a larger boat held Ye Zongman and the other Celestial Kings.
“Big sister, this way!” A-Qian cried.
Light and nimble, the young woman jumped into the boat without hesitation. She turned to look at the man still on board the doomed ship.
“Come, quickly!” she shouted.
The sailor knew he had no choice, so he opted to try his luck with his enemies rather than certain drowning. He followed her down and had barely reached safety when Tiexin leapt to his feet, fists up and ready to fight.
“Tiexin!” Shao Jun intervened. “Please, leave him alone!”
