Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 20
by Little PandaA Youth Takes a Master as the Years Deepen; Adrift in Two Places, Each Longs for the Other (Part 1)
Back at the thatched cottage in the woods, Zhao Yao bandaged her own wound first, then changed the dressing on Ling Cheng’s severed arm.
Throughout, Ling Cheng kept her eyes fixed on Zhao Yao’s face, and suddenly asked, “Does it hurt very much?”
Zhao Yao raised a brow and lifted her gaze, laughter still pooled in her eyes. She studied her for a moment as well, then abruptly shot out a hand, middle finger bent, and flicked her on the forehead.
“Does that hurt?”
Ling Cheng blinked, rubbing her forehead without thinking. There was a faint sting, but she couldn’t rightly call it pain.
“That wound feels to me about what you just felt. So — does it hurt, or doesn’t it?” Before her martial arts reached perfection, Zhao Yao had fought a hundred battles and taken her share of flesh wounds; she had long since trained herself to endure them. That shallow cut genuinely didn’t register with her, so this was no mere comfort offered to a child.
“But I saw you frown earlier. You looked… you looked like you were really suffering…”
“That was another matter. It has nothing to do with this wound.” Zhao Yao was ever candid — she didn’t deny the pain she’d just felt, only declined to explain it. She suddenly pointed at the wooden table and changed tack. “You haven’t eaten all day. There’s dry rations on the table — eat if you’re hungry. I need to sit in meditation and steady my breathing for a while. Whatever you have to say, save it for tomorrow.”
With that, she withdrew into the smaller room.
Ling Cheng knew better than to disturb her then. She ate some rations at random, then sat blankly in the room for a while. The earlier battle kept coming back to her, and the more she turned it over, the more it gnawed at her — until her gaze drifted, of its own accord, to the rows of sabers hanging on the wall.
Zhao Yao had collected no small number of long blades and short — but once a person’s martial arts reached the transcendent level, where a plucked flower or a stray leaf could serve as a weapon, she stopped caring much about the quality of steel. It was simply her nature to love beautiful things: any weapon whose scabbard caught her eye, she bought and hung upon the wall, a feast for the sight.
Suddenly Ling Cheng seemed to reach some resolution. She rose with a set jaw, plucked a dagger from the wall at random, and slipped out of the cottage.
Outside, the night stretched boundless and dark. A long wind rang through a thousand branches and ten thousand leaves, and moonlight poured down through the gaps, barely enough to make out the surroundings. She had walked these paths twice in daylight and held every turn clearly in her mind, so this time it took her only a little over half a shichen1 to emerge from the woods and look out ahead.
Beneath the hook of the moon, a great manor of whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs sat beside the road.
The hour neared the Zi Hour2; no lamplight flickered anywhere in the manor — its people must all have been asleep. Ling Cheng came to the outer wall. Nearly a hundred great willows stood in ranks around it, their leaves streaming on the wind. She tucked the dagger into her bosom, picked a tree at random, gripped a branch with her left hand, and climbed hand over foot as she had before; then she vaulted the wall, shinned down another tree within, and before long dropped softly into the courtyard.
However countless the rooms, the master of the house would surely lodge in the main quarters. Ling Cheng worked out the direction, stole along the gallery, eased open a door, slipped past the standing screen, and lit the bronze lamp on the desk — and saw clearly the middle-aged man lying on the bed.
—Sure enough: the landlord Chen from that noon.
She’d found the right place. At last a trace of a smile surfaced on Ling Cheng’s face — a smile keen as a cold blade. She drew out the dagger and rapped its scabbard against the bed’s head. Thud, thud, thud — three raps, and the man jolted awake. He blearily opened his eyes, saw the girl standing over him, and for a moment could only stare; then, as he finally placed where and when he’d seen her, he started so violently he nearly leapt from the bed.
“You… you… why is it you?!” He scrambled off the bed, glancing left, then right, panic plastered across his face.
“Heroine Zhao isn’t here. You can stop looking around.” Ling Cheng knew precisely whom he feared. She stood at the bedside, her expression cold as ice. “But she told you — even a thousand li away, there is nothing you could say or do that would ever escape her eyes and ears. So I’ve come to see you in her stead.”
Hearing that Zhao Yao was absent, the man let out a breath; his suspended heart dropped back into place, and he stopped regarding a mere child as any threat. “So you really do know that enchantress? Where is she? Dead?”
Whatever sorcery or immortal arts — hours earlier, a few Daoist masters had explained all that to him: it was merely something called “martial arts,” which anyone in the world could learn. And those three Daoists’ own skills were quite formidable; surely they had already subdued the demoness — why else would this little girl come alone, with no sign of the enchantress anywhere? Thus reassured, all his misgivings melted away, and he no longer spoke of Zhao Yao with any reverence.
Ling Cheng had meant first to question him about those three Dingshan disciples, then teach him a lesson. But at such insolence, the fury in her chest flared all the hotter. Word by word, she said, “You wanted her dead?”
“An enchantress like her — wouldn’t dying simply be her just deserts?” The man’s heart leapt as he sized up the girl opposite him. He had been badly frightened earlier; only now did he think the day’s events through and realize this child was very likely the true imperial fugitive the soldiers were hunting. If he could drag her before the officials, there might be a hefty bounty in it — and he reached out to seize Ling Cheng’s shoulder.
He little knew that young as she was, Ling Cheng had more than a year of martial training behind her. She was no match for the drilled soldiers of the Golden Feather Guard, but a soft, overfed layabout like him was hardly a challenge. She twisted aside, swept a kick into his knee — “Aiyo!” — and he dropped half-kneeling to the floor. In that opening she drew the short blade and drove its point hard into his chest!
“She isn’t dead. But you truly deserve to die!”
Scarlet blood welled up from the man’s chest. He couldn’t believe what was happening — only a violent pain, then blackness before his eyes, and he fell and did not rise again.
Perhaps because she was born to a general’s house, Ling Cheng had always been wild-tempered, her nerve far beyond any child her age. Back in Chang’an she had dealt out punishment to plenty of young rakes who ran wild and preyed on the decent, and many had privately nicknamed her the “Little Fiend.” But hurting people and killing them are, after all, different things.
Killing — this was her first.
A few drops of blood had spattered onto her hand, but her motion never faltered, and no panic touched her heart. Instead, she felt a fierce, cleansing satisfaction!
The gloom that had weighed on her chest since her parents died dispersed, more than half of it, in that single moment.
She gave the corpse on the floor a look of contempt, withdrew her dagger, turned, and left without a backward glance. Her whole action had been clean and swift, rousing no one else in the manor. She retraced her way to the outer wall and was about to climb the tree out — when she raised her head, and a familiar figure perched in the branches swam into her eyes.
“Her… Heroine Zhao…” She gaped, thunderstruck.
A cold light played on the moon — a golden hook hung in the vault of sky — framing Zhao Yao directly before it, so that she seemed to sit at the moon’s very edge. She looked down at the blood on Ling Cheng’s sleeve, her expression unreadable. A long moment passed before she spoke. “Ready to go back?”
Ling Cheng nodded.
Zhao Yao slapped her palm against the trunk, rose into the air in a blink, and bore Ling Cheng away as though riding the wind. In a little while they had skimmed several li, and only then did she set Ling Cheng down and walk on ahead.
Ling Cheng hurried after her. “Are you angry?”
Zhao Yao didn’t answer. She walked on in silence a good while, then stopped short and turned, her gaze leveling on Ling Cheng. “Why did you kill him?”
“Why are you angry?” Ling Cheng retorted, indignant. “He wanted you dead — didn’t he deserve killing?”
“He meant to harm me, not you. What business is that of yours?”
“You saved my life, and you’re Aunt Su’s dear friend — how could it be nothing to do with me? Of course your affairs are my business. Of course I’d help you.”
“Just for that?”
“What else could it be for?”
The words came out of Ling Cheng’s mouth as though self-evident. A faint, half-visible shadow of worry creased Zhao Yao’s brow; her look turned thoughtful. Then, a moment later, she suddenly laughed aloud.
“Weren’t you begging to be my disciple? I accept.”
“Ah?” Ling Cheng stood stunned — this was, truly, a joyful surprise. She had long heard that the Dingshan Sect was the foremost sect in today’s martial world, its every disciple formidable, and after watching Zhao Yao single-handedly best those three Dingshan disciples, her admiration for her skill had only deepened, her wish to study under her grown fiercer — she’d even been rehearsing how to beg her the very next day. Never had she imagined that before she could raise it again, Zhao Yao would change her mind of her own accord. Could it be because…
“I simply found that man loathsome — his crimes deserved death. Killing him wasn’t only avenging you; I wanted to vent my own spleen too,” Ling Cheng explained. “I wasn’t using it to bargain you into taking me as a disciple.”
“And you think I’m agreeing to take you as my disciple because you killed him for me?”
“Then why?”
“Never mind the reason, for now.” Zhao Yao smiled. “I only ask: are you willing or not?”
“Of course I’m willing!” Ling Cheng’s eyes lit. She answered before the words could cool, fearing Zhao Yao might reconsider, and dropped to both knees at once, back straight, and bowed the ceremonial bow of apprenticeship, her voice ringing crisp. “Master!”
Zhao Yao didn’t answer.
Didn’t make a sound at all.
Ling Cheng waited a stretch, then couldn’t help lifting her head to peer at her, puzzled, in the moonlight.
Only then did Zhao Yao say, half-smiling, “What did you call me?”
“Master… Is something wrong with that?”
“Then tell me — am I man or woman?”
From antiquity to the present, the single character for “father” had ever denoted a man; yet in the jianghu, whenever a woman took disciples, those disciples simply drifted with the current and called her “Master” all the same — while “Master’s wife” usually meant the master’s wife. Ling Cheng had never before thought anything amiss in this; now, with Zhao Yao’s prompting, she found it strange. She knit her brows. “Then what should I call you?”
“Get up — no need to kneel anymore. Anything except ‘Master.’ Call me whatever you like; use my name outright, if you please.” Zhao Yao had never stood on trifles of etiquette, and cared even less for convention — she simply owned her identity as a woman.
Ling Cheng rose and followed behind her a good while longer. Then she remembered a line she’d only lately studied from the Yizhuan — “In the family there is a severe ruler: that is what father and mother are” — and smiled. “Then I’ll call you Shijun!”
Zhao Yao said, “As you please.”
After that they spoke little on the road. Half a shichen later they were back at the cottage in the woods, and they rested the night. Early the next morning, Zhao Yao packed their things and led Ling Cheng down off Dalin Mountain.
Both of them had killed someone the day before, and the corpses had been left lying in plain sight — that would surely draw a flood of soldiers to comb the area. She didn’t fear them, but couldn’t be bothered with the nuisance of dealing with them, so she simply found a new dwelling far from Chang’an. Thus the two of them forded streams and crossed ranges, stopping and going, until two months later they settled on Yunxian Mountain in the outskirts of Quzhou.
In those two months or so, Ling Cheng’s stump was dressed daily and slowly healed over, until it no longer pained her at every turn.
Zhao Yao began teaching her the Left-Hand Saber Technique.
She was quick-witted by nature and gifted for the martial path, and with a supreme master like Zhao Yao pouring out everything she knew, her progress could fairly be called meteoric. Yet with the great vengeance in her heart, nothing short of ascending to heaven in a single stride would ever content her. After long brooding, one day she suddenly put a question to Zhao Yao:
“Shijun — that day, against those two Dingshan disciples, the saber art you used at the very end. Was it different from what you’d used before?”
Zhao Yao hadn’t expected her to detect even that. She arched a brow, smiling. “Not a bad eye.”
“I only had a vague sort of feeling,” Ling Cheng said. “That last move of yours seemed fiercer than anything you’d done before!”
“It was. But you may not learn that saber art.” Zhao Yao had read her intent and cut it off flat. “Not now, and not ever.”
Ling Cheng gaped. “Why?”
Zhao Yao went her own way in all things and never loved explaining herself — but this child was too relentless; short of laying out every last detail, she’d never be satisfied. She considered, then said, “That day you asked me — I’d taken only one wound, so why did my whole body feel wretched?”
“Why?”
“First: before that day, I had, for certain reasons, drained a good deal of my internal strength, so my stamina was somewhat short. Second: that saber art’s power is truly vast — unrivaled in all the world. But the moment it is unleashed, the wielder feels her five viscera and six bowels scoured by raging fire. The fiercer the blade, the crueler the pain.”
So that was the reason? Ling Cheng stared. “How can there be such strange martial arts in this world?”
Zhao Yao said, “So — do you still want to learn it?”
“Absolutely! Don’t worry, Shijun — I’m not afraid of pain!”
Those four characters — “unrivaled in all the world” — had hooked Ling Cheng fast.
In her heart as it stood now, so long as her parents’ great vengeance was avenged, she would walk unflinching through every torture in the eighteen layers of hell3.
Zhao Yao laughed despite herself. “Don’t be brave with your mouth. When the pain truly comes, you’ll know what that feeling is. Besides…” She paused a beat, the smile gradually banking down, and her face turned grave. “When I say you cannot learn it, you cannot learn it. First master the art I am teaching you. There’s still no word of Su Ying. I must go and make inquiries; in some days I’ll return, and I will test whether you’ve advanced.”
Ling Cheng had never been an obedient child, and she was about to keep pestering for the saber art’s origins — when Zhao Yao abruptly mentioned Su Ying, and she fell silent at once, nodded, and said no more.
All these days, Ling Cheng had been sick with worry for Su Ying’s safety. Now, watching Zhao Yao’s departing back, scenes of her days with Su Ying rose unbidden in her mind.
And in most of those scenes, Shejia had been there too.
She still thought of her.
The author has something to say:
Next chapter is back to Shejia’s storyline — the childhood arc is wrapping up.
Footnotes
- 时辰 | Shichen | The traditional Chinese double-hour, one-twelfth of a full day; each shichen spans two modern hours and is named for one of the twelve earthly branches.
- 子时 | Zishi | The 'Zi hour' — the double-hour of midnight, 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM, marking the boundary between one day and the next in traditional Chinese timekeeping.
- 十八层地狱 | Shiba Ceng Diyu | Literally 'the eighteen storeys of hell' — in Chinese folk Buddhism the netherworld prison holds eighteen levels of torment, each deeper and more excruciating than the last, reserved for the gravest of sinners.
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