by Jin Yong
“I didn’t pay much attention. I am sure her dress wasn’t filthy, because I would have noticed when she poured wine for me,” Lin Pingzhi replied eagerly.
“Brother Cui, what do you think?” Lin Zhennan turned to Escort Cui.
“I think this old man and the young girl must be involved with the deaths of Escorts Shi and Zheng, and Henchman Bai. It’s even possible that they were the actual killers,” Escort Cui concluded.
“The two fellows from Sichuan must have been in on it too; otherwise, why would they move the dead body?” Escort Ji added.
“But that fellow Yu was harassing the girl. I wouldn’t have called him names otherwise. They can’t be working together,” Lin Pingzhi objected.
“Young Master,” Escort Cui explained, “you may not realize it, but we are living in a very dangerous world, and people may intentionally set traps into which others may fall. It happens all the time. Two people pretend to fight, and when someone comes to try and separate them, the two will suddenly turn on him.”
“Chief Master, what’s your opinion on this?” Escort Ji asked.
“The old man and the young girl must have come for us. I am just not sure if those two fellows from Sichuan were in league with them,” Lin Zhennan replied.
“Father, didn’t you say that Master Yu of Pine-Wind Temple sent four people over. There…there were exactly four people,” Lin Pingzhi muttered restlessly.
These words struck Lin Zhennan like a hammer. “The Fortune Prestige Escort House has always shown great respect to the Qingcheng Sword School, and has never done anything to displease them. Why would Master Yu send people to stir up trouble? Why?!” he muttered to himself.
The four just looked at each other in silence; no one could think of anything to say. After a long while, Lin Zhennan finally spoke.
“Let’s move Escort Shi’s body inside first. When we get back to the Escort House, don’t mention this to anyone. We don’t want the authorities to know about this and cause any unnecessary trouble. Humph, the Lin family respects others and wants no trouble, but that doesn’t mean we are cowards who won’t fight back.”
“Chief Master,” Escort Ji agreed heartily, “like the old saying goes, ‘Keeping an army for a year just for one battle.’ All of us will fight for the honor of the Escort House.”
“Many thanks!” Lin Zhennan nodded.
The party headed back to town. Just as they were about to reach the Escort House, they saw a big crowd gathered in front of the gate. Countless torches lit the street, turning the night into day. Lin Zhennan’s heart missed a beat. He rushed forward.
“Chief Master is back!” several people cried out.
Lin Zhennan dismounted his horse and saw that his wife, Madam Wang, looking extremely angry.
“Look! Humph, someone is trying to challenge us in our home,” she exclaimed.
A pair of broken poles lay on the street; each had a flag attached to the end. These were the flags of the Escort House; someone had cut down the two flagpoles and left them lying on the ground. The broken ends were very smooth, apparently cut with a very sharp blade.
Madam Wang was not carrying a weapon, so she drew Lin Zhennan’s long sword out from the sheath at his waist. With two sharp tearing sounds, she cut off the two flags from the broken flagpoles. Picking up the flags, she went inside through the gate.
“Escort Cui, cut the stumps of the two flagpoles down,” Lin Zhennan instructed. “Humph, it won’t be an easy task to take down the Fortune Prestige Escort House!”
“Yes, sir,” Escort Cui answered.
“Damn them! What a bunch of cowards they are, only daring to play these dirty tricks when the Chief Master is not at home,” Escort Ji cursed.
Lin Zhennan beckoned his son and the two went into the house while Escort Ji poured out even more profanities. Father and son went into the East Hall where Madam Wang had already spread the flags on two tables. On one of the flags, the eyes of the yellow lion had been cut out, leaving two empty holes. On the other flag, the word “Prestige” had been cut out from the name “Fortune Prestige Escort House.”
Lin Zhennan was a patient man with an even temper, but even he could not stand these insults any longer. He struck the table with a resounding blow. One leg of the sandalwood table broke with a crack.
“Father, it’s…entirely my fault. I got the family into this situation!” Lin Pingzhi trembled.
“Yes, the Lin family has killed someone. So what? If I ever saw a punk like him, I’d kill him too!” Lin Zhennan roared.
“Who got killed?” Madam Wang asked in surprise.
“Pingzhi, tell your mother about it,” Lin Zhennan said.
So Lin Pingzhi told Madam Wang everything that had happened: How he killed the man from Sichuan, how they found the body of Escort Shi in the garden of the wine shop, and so forth.
Madam Wang had heard about the mysterious deaths of Henchman Bai and Escort Zheng. At the news of the death of Escort Shi, she exploded.
“Husband, how can we let others push the Fortune Prestige Escort House around like this? Let’s gather our people and go seek justice from the Qingcheng Sword School in Sichuan. We can also invite my father and my brothers to join us.”
Since her youth, Madam Wang had been known for having a bad temper. As a maiden, she had no qualms about pulling out a knife for even the smallest of disagreements. Her family, the Golden Blade Wang Family, was a large and powerful family in the city of Luoyang. Everyone would defer to her out of respect for her father, the Unbeatable Golden Blade, Wang Yuanba. Even now, after her son was already a grown man, her hot temper still had not improved much.
“We are still not sure who our enemy is. It might not even be the Qingcheng Sword School. But whoever they are, I doubt they’d stop at two broken flagpoles and two dead escorts…,” Lin Zhennan replied when he was suddenly interrupted by the bellowing voice of Madam Wang.
“What else do they want?”
Lin Zhennan cast a sideways glance at Lin Pingzhi and Madam Wang understood instantly. Her heart started pumping fiercely, and her face paled with fear.
“I caused all the trouble. A true man should take full responsibility for his own actions. I won’t…won’t be afraid.” Lin Pingzhi’s words were brave enough, but his trembling voice gave him away.
“Humph, they’ll have to pass through me first before they can get to you,” Madam Wang exclaimed. “The banner of the Fortune Prestige Escort House has been held high for three generations. We’ve never lost our glory.” She turned to Lin Zhennan. “If we can’t even settle this little problem, what good are we? How can we look at ourselves in the mirror for the rest of our lives?”
Lin Zhennan nodded to Madam Wang in agreement. “I’ll send people to search the town for new faces. Meanwhile, I’ll have more people on patrol around the Escort House. You wait here with Pingzhi. Don’t let him run around by himself.”
“Yes, I understand!” Madam Wang acknowledged.
The couple both understood that Lin Pingzhi would undoubtedly be the next target. The enemy was hidden in the dark while they themselves were exposed under the light. Even if Lin Pingzhi only stepped out of the Escort House for one minute, he would be in grave danger.
Lin Zhennan walked to the Main Hall and gathered the escorts, sending some people to go check out the town, and instructing the rest to patrol the Escort House. All the escorts had heard about the situation. The flagpole of the Escort House being cut down was a slap in the face for each and every one of them. Infuriated, they had already dressed themselves in uniforms and taken up arms. Upon the command of the Chief Master, they instantly obeyed the order wholeheartedly.
Lin Zhennan felt a measure of relief as he witnessed the entire Escort House working in unison, preparing to defend its honor. Walking back inside, he spoke to Lin Pingzhi.
“Pingzhi, your mom hasn’t been well for the last couple of days. The enemy will soon be coming; why don’t you move into the room outside her bedroom to guard her?”
&n
bsp; “I don’t need…,” Madam Wang rejected, but before finishing the sentence, she suddenly realized what her husband really meant. He wasn’t asking their son to guard her; instead, he was really trying to have their son close by, so they could protect him. Their son was a very sensitive and proud young man. If they had asked him to hide behind them, he would probably feel humiliated, and go straight out to challenge the enemy to a fight. That would be too dangerous! So she immediately swallowed the second half of the sentence down her throat.
“That’s right, Pingzhi. Mom is having joint problems these days; both my arms and legs feel weak. Your father needs to take care of the Escort House and can’t be accompanying me all the time. If the enemy gets in, I won’t be able to fight them off.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Lin Pingzhi stated without hesitation.
That night Lin Pingzhi slept on the bed just outside his parents’ room. The couple left the door open. Placing their weapons right next to their pillows, they slept dressed, so that they could jump up to fight at any time.
The night passed uneventfully until dawn, when someone outside the window called in a low voice, “Young Master? Young Master!”
Lin Pingzhi had not been able to sleep for the most of the night, and had just fallen asleep, so he didn’t wake up.
“What’s the matter?” Lin Zhennan asked.
“The Young Master’s horse…the horse is dead!” the man outside answered. Lin Pingzhi loved his horse very much, so as soon as the horse’s groom found out about the calamity, he rushed to tell Lin Pingzhi.
Roused by the words, Lin Pingzhi sat up in bed. “Let me go look.”
Lin Zhennan knew that once again, something had gone terribly wrong, so he hurried to the stable with Lin Pingzhi. The body of the horse lay on the ground. It had been dead for quite some time. As before, there was not a single wound on the corpse.
“Did you hear any noise last night?” Lin Zhennan asked.
“No, sir!” the groom answered.
“Don’t get upset. I’ll see to it that you receive another good colt.” Lin Zhennan patted Lin Pingzhi gingerly on the shoulder, as Lin Pingzhi quietly caressed the horse’s corpse, tears emerging from his eyes.
All of a sudden, Henchman Chen burst into the stables shouting in panic, “Chief…Chief Master, it’s terrible…horrible! All those escorts…the escorts were killed by the demon!”
“What did you say?” Lin Zhennan and Lin Pingzhi asked in unison, their voices filled with incredulity.
“Dead, all dead!” Henchman Chen kept muttering uncontrollably.
“Who is dead?” Lin Pingzhi demanded angrily. He grabbed Chen’s collar and shook him hard.
“Young…Young Master…dead!” Chen mumbled dazedly.
Hearing the words “Young Master dead,” Lin Zhennan was most disturbed. But he did not want to yell at Chen for saying those ominous words, afraid of revealing his uneasiness.
“Where’s the Chief Master? We’d better report this to him fast,” a man’s urgent voice floated in from the outside. “The demon is so vicious, what…what can we do?” another voice asked timidly.
“I am over here! What’s going on?” Lin Zhennan shouted loudly towards them, who, in turn, rushed over. It was an escort, followed by three henchmen.
“Chief Master, not a single escort we sent out made it back,” the leading escort said.
Lin Zhennan had expected news of someone’s death when he heard the commotion. But he had sent out a total of twenty-three escorts and henchmen to gather information last night; how could all of them have been wiped out?
“Well, are you sure they’re dead?” he asked hurriedly. “Maybe they’re still investigating and just haven’t gotten back in time.”
The escort shook his head. “We have already found seventeen bodies….”
“Seventeen bodies?” Lin Zhennan and Lin Pingzhi cried out in unison.
Fear written all over his face, the escort confirmed with a nod. “Yes, seventeen bodies. Among them were Escorts Fu, Qian, and Wu. All of the bodies are in the Front Hall at this very moment.”
Without saying another word, Lin Zhennan hurried to the Front Hall. All the tables and chairs in the hall had been moved against the walls, and seventeen bodies lay on the floor in no particular order. Although Lin Zhennan was not a novice in handling difficult situations, when he took in the horrible scene in front of him, his hands could not help trembling and his knees almost gave out.
“Why…Why…Why?” he muttered, his voice so dry that the others could barely hear him.
“Alas, Escort Gao was an honest and diligent man; who’d expect that the demon would not spare him, either.” Voices came from outside the Front Hall, and seconds later, five neighbors walked into the front hall, carrying a door plank. A dead body lay on top of it.
“When I opened my door this morning, I saw him lying dead in the middle of the street,” one of the neighbors explained. “I recognized him as Escort Gao from your Escort House. I figured he probably had some kind of plague, so I asked a couple of neighbors to help me carry him back to your Escort House.”
“Many thanks! Many thanks!” Lin Zhennan cupped his hands17 and bowed. Turning toward a henchman standing by the side, he instructed, “Give three taels of silver to each of these wonderful neighbors. You can go to the bookkeeper to get the money.”
Frightened by all the dead bodies in the hall, the neighbors thanked Lin Zhennan and hurried away, and before long, the bodies of four more escorts were sent back. Lin Zhennan counted the bodies which totaled twenty-two in all. Escort Chu’s was the only one not among them, but it might not be long before his body was found somewhere.
Lin Zhennan walked back to the East Hall. Pouring a cup of hot tea for himself, he tried to calm down, but that didn’t help. Still feeling completely dumbfounded, he walked out the gate and looked around. The stumps of the two broken flagpoles had been taken away, but he found himself even more disturbed. The foes had killed over twenty people in the Escort House, but had never actually shown themselves; they never formally announced their intentions, nor did they reveal their true identities. He turned around and glared at the big sign bearing the golden words “Fortune Prestige Escort House,” thinking, “The Fortune Prestige Escort House has been renowned for decades. Will it come to ruin in my hands?” Then he heard the sound of hoof beats approaching from the street. A horse slowly trotted toward the Escort House, and a man lay slumped back on the saddle. Lin Zhennan walked to the horse, and he wasn’t surprised to see that it was Escort Chu. The enemy must have killed him and just left the body on the horse. The horse remembered the way home and came back, all by itself.
Lin Zhennan let out a deep sigh as tears poured down his face and fell on the body of Escort Chu. “Brother Chu,” he murmured as he carried the body into the hall, “if I can’t avenge you, I’d rather die. Why…why did you leave so hurriedly without even telling us the name of your killer?”
Escort Chu was just a regular escort in the Escort House, and not particularly close to Lin Zhennan. Lin Zhennan’s tears were shed more out of frustration than from the sadness of losing a friend.
Madam Wang stood in front of the hall holding her golden saber in her left hand. Pointing at the courtyard with her right hand, she shouted challengingly.
“You cursed murderers! Why are you hiding yourselves and sneaking around? If you are real men, I dare you to come to the Fortune Prestige Escort House and fight a real fight. Aren’t you afraid of being looked down with all of this sneaking around?”
“Did you see anything?” Lin Zhennan asked his wife in a whisper as he placed Escort Chu’s body down on the ground.
“No, I didn’t see anything,” Madam Wang growled. “These rotten lowlifes must be frightened of our Lin Family’s seventy-two moves of the Evil-Resisting Sword Art.” She waved the saber in the air and continued, “They are frightened of the golden saber in my hand, too!”
Suddenly, a snickering sound rose from a corner of t
he roof, and then with a hiss of wind, an object zipped through the air and struck the spine of the golden saber. Madam Wang felt a shock run through her arm and she had to let go of the weapon. The saber flew into the air and landed in the middle of the courtyard.
Wasting no time, Lin Zhennan unsheathed his sword and jumped up onto the roof, and with a move called “Cast Upon Demons,” the tip of his sword danced like the scatter of falling petals and flew toward the origin of the attack. Having not been able to face his enemies, he found his anger growing over the past couple of days and it now reached the point of explosion. Sparing no strength, he attacked with full force. But the attack hit nothing. The corner of the roof was completely empty; there wasn’t even a shadow. He jumped onto the roof of the east room, but found no one there either.
Madam Wang and Lin Pingzhi also jumped up onto the roof with their weapons drawn. Filled with fury, Madam Wang snarled.
“Damn you! You son of a dog! Be a man; come out and fight. Are you scared? What kind of shameless cowards are you?”
“Where did that son of a dog go? Who was he?” she asked Lin Zhennan.
Lin Zhennan shook his head. “Keep your voice down,” he whispered.
The three searched the entire roof and then jumped back down to the courtyard.
“What hit your saber?” Lin Zhennan asked in a low voice.
“Damn that son of a dog! I don’t know,” Madam Wang snapped.
They searched the courtyard but could find neither darts nor other missiles. The only thing they were able to find were small grains of bricks spread over the floor under the osmanthus tree. Obviously the attacker had hit Madam Wang’s saber with just a small piece of brick, and it was quite frightening to imagine that such a small piece of brick could have carried such great power. Seeing the fragments of brick, Madam Wang stopped cursing. Her anger was quenched, and completely replaced with fear. She froze for a moment, and then walked silently into the room.
After her husband and son entered, Madam Wang shut the door behind them. “The enemy is too skillful. We’re not in the same class. What…what shall we…?” she whispered nervously.
