CH 1.3

Chapter 1

Shocking Turn in Peach Blossom Spring

Part 3 (3)

Turning once again to Yang Menghuan, he risked his life to intercept and stop the Twin Revenants of the South from seizing the wounded man. Fortunately, the abbot of Mystic Metropolis arrived just in time to call him off and so he did not meet the Twin Revenants’ palm force head on. But he was still hit by the leftover force of their palm strikes. He pitched into the air and fell straight down. Luckily, Xialin hurried over and caught him and rubbed his acupoints to get the blood flowing.

Yang Menghuan had concentrated his internal power to guard his vitals when he was dodging the Twin Revenant’s palm strikes, so he did not suffer serious injury, and after Xialin massaged his acupoints his blood circulation was flowing unimpeded and he came to. He opened his eyes and saw he was cradled in Xialin’s arms and he felt gratitude and shame at the same time and quickly got to his feet. Xialin was delighted to see him spring up so quickly and nimbly. “Senior Brother Yang, you’re not hurt?”

Yang Menghuan nodded. “I stopped breathing for a moment but no big deal. I troubled Junior Sister to render aid.”

Shen Xialin shook her head and smiled. “It made me feel better to do it.”

As soon as she said that she felt it was wrong and she blushed crimson and hung her head and fiddled with the hem of her robe.

Yang Menghuan was grateful for how concerned she was for him, but also sad. He sighed inwardly and turned to see Shifu carrying the bloody man’s body. He hurried over. “Shifu, who is that person, want me to carry him?”

Master One Yang was relieved to see he had no internal injuries. He said gravely, “He was your senior sectbrother, Cai Bangxiong. Hurry and pay your respects!”

Yang Menghuan was taken aback at that because he was the only student of Master One Yang, and he never heard Shifu talk about having other disciples. How could he out of nowhere have a senior sectbrother? But from the serious look on Shifu’s face he didn’t dare question it. Shifu told him to pay his respects, so all he could do was respectfully kowtow before the bloody body, then accept the body with open arms.

Master One Yang looked back at Clear Karma. “Let me first bury my student’s. Tonight we’ll turn up the wick and talk. I have an important matter to discuss with, Dao Brother. You and Lin’er go on to the abbey.”

Greatmaster Clear Karma was baffled, but he didn’t ask about it but took Xialin and wound through the peach grove and back to the abbey. Master One Yang took Yang Menghuan and they cremated Cai Bangxiong’s body and put the bones in a porcelain urn and buried it behind the abbey. Master One Yang used his powerful Diamond Finger skill to write on a tombstone, “Grave of Cai Bangxiong, disciple of Master One Yang of the Kunlun School.”

After burying Cai Bangxiong, it was already the tenth double-hour of the day, the hour of the cock, and the moon was beginning to rise in the east, clear and bright as water, shining on the myriad trees and peach blossoms. Master One Yang was deeply grieved as he walked back to the abbey. Dozens of years of past grudges surged to his mind. Suddenly he turned and said, “Disciple, your senior sectbrother got angry once and accidentally hurt a disciple of Shaolin, nearly damaging the harmony between the two schools. He was expelled from the school by me, but later on he reflected on his faults and turned things around and tried every means he could think of to return to the school. Three times he knelt before the Cinnabar Chamber, and every time I refused him. He pointed to the sky and sword an oath and liked to weep blood so hard he implored me, saying that if only I would permit him to return to Kunlun, no matter how difficult a task I gave him he would do it. I answered him that he should never again harbor any thought to return in this life unless he were to seek out a marvelous rare treasure map of the martial world. How could I know he would take to heart my jest spoken in anger. Twenty years later he really did find this map and was about to present to me and request me to once again take him in as a disciple. Such a pity that he was chased and struck down and killed by the Twin Revenants of the South just as he reached the Mystic Metropolis Abbey. In the future when your training is complete and you go out on your own, you must not rashly injure good people, but you must without hesitation mercilessly strike down those evildoers of the jianghu!”

Yang Menghuan only half understood all this, and he gave some noncommittal responses, and by the time teacher and disciple slowly made their way back to the abbey under the moonlight it was already the first watch. Greatmaster Clear Karma was impatient waiting and was about to say something, but the solemn, grieved look on the abbot’s face checked him, and he stood there dumbly in the corner of the Cinnabar Chamber and watched his old friend become abnormally lost in thought.

Master One Yang walked to a table, opened a drawer, and took out a red-lacquered wooden box and placed it respectfully on the table. First he solemnly kowtowed to it, then he opened it and took out a picture and hung it on the wall behind the table. Yang Menghuan looked up and examined it. It was an old man in Daoist garb embroidered in white thread on yellow satin. He had a sword on his back and looked so lifelike. Yang Menghuan thought it strange and suddenly heard Master One Yang shout, “Disciple, get over here and pay your respects to the founder’s deceased portrait and graciously accept Kunlun School’s most momentous swordplay.”

Greatmaster Clear Karma was at full attention and he quickly put his palms together and faced the portrait and paid his respects, then gently pulled Shen Xialin out of the Cinnabar Chamber. Yang Menghuan faced the portrait and performed the thrice three-times kowtow rite. Master One Yang waited till he was finished, then put the portrait away and said seriously, “The martial world all thinks that Kunlun’s Split Second Swordplay only has 96 forms, but they are entirely mistaken. This swordplay in total actually has 108 moves. Twelve of them contain the quintessence of the entire craft, and so it is also called the Soul Seeking Twelve. It has many unusual and mystical variations. Your two junior sectuncles and I agreed not to pass on these twelve killer moves without the permission of all three of us, but tonight I will make an exception and allowed you to pay homage to the founder’s portrait and have decided to teach you the Soul Seeking Twelve. Starting tomorrow I will teach you one move every day…”

He paused, his solemn expression carrying also a trace of sadness. He sighed. “Go on out, tell your Senior Sectuncle Clear Karma to come in. The moonlight is nice tonight, you and Lin’er can practice your hand-to-hand and swordplay. Neither you nor Lin’er are permitted to step foot in the Cinnabar Chamber unless summoned.”

Yang Menghuan felt this was unusual, but he dared not question it. He bowed and exited the Cinnabar Chamber. Clear Karma was in the side courtyard of the main hall giving Lin’er some pointers with her hand-to-hand. Yang Menghuan relayed his sectfather’s message, then went with Lin’er outside the abbey to practice. Miss Shen was glad to hear that Yang Menghuan was going to practice swordplay with her and her dimples showed she as giggled. She had no thoughts of asking the old monk about idle matters.

~*~

Let’s talk now of Greatmaster Clear Karma, who went back to the Cinnabar Chamber. Master One Yang’s attention was focused on the white silk painting that was in the jade box. Incense wisped and wafted out of a jade burner, thick heady vapors whirling and swirling. On the table two tall red candles burned, lighting the room as it it were daytime. Clear Karma walked over and looked down and had a start.

The white silk was spread out on the table. Three large faded characters read straight across, “Authentic Treasure Map”, and below it four lines of verse like a poem but also not like a poem, which read:

Myriad merits return to the secret origin, One Sword stroke ices the Divine Land.

Verdant pines sift the bright moon, Over stone flows the clear spring.

Under the verses were painted a line of continuous mountain peaks enclosing on both sides a secluded valley. within the valley, a path wound through the peaks, winding and helical. Deep in the secluded valley green pines stood in great number, one of them especially tall, like an open umbrella. Moonlight shone through the pines, spotting the ground with scattered points of silver light, and a clear stream wound past an enormous rock below the pines, flowing straight toward a deep ravine. The stream was not large, and it cascaded like a curtain of water , only the ravine was so deep one could not see the bottom, and the painting did not depict the bottom. Master One Yang turned to Clear Karma and laughed. “This treasure map is the number-one rare prize sought by all in the martial world. For a hundred years people have been looking for this map. Who knows how many jianghu masterhands have lost their lives looking for it, yet I obtained it without doing anything.”

He remembered expelling Cai Bangxiong in the past and couldn’t help but feel sad.

Greatmaster Clear Karma arched his merciful brow. “I’ve heard but a few rumors about the treasure map and the Return to the Origin Manual, and there are so many stories about it that all contradict each other. You three Kunlun masters are well-known throughout the martial world and have been famed throughout the jianghu for decades. You’re experienced and knowledgeable, you must know the true story. Might I venture to ask you to tell this old monk the details? I’m all ears.”

Master One Yang sighed faintly. “To talk about the Return to the Origin Manual one must go back 300 years to two remarkable individuals: Mystic Workings Perfected and Divine Nun Three Tones. One of them became a Buddhist, the other a Daoist. Both possessed consummate skills and were unrivaled in the world, their internal and external skills had all reached the peak of perfection. Back then, of the the martial world sects and schools, Shaolin and Wudang were the most prosperous and had the largest number of disciples. After them, the seven schools of Mount Hua, Kunlun, Diancang, Kongtong, Mount Snow, Qingcheng, and Emei were second. The rest of the sects and schools each had their unique martial arts, but none could be placed on a par with those seven. In those days the nine schools all had outstanding talents. It was a very prosperous, flourishing time for the martial arts of the Middle Kingdom, and the sectmasters of each school viewed themselves as orthodox schools, and they arranged to have a swordmeet on Shaoshi Peak on the Central Marchmount, wherein each would use their unique martial arts to determine rankings.”

Master One Yang continued, “All the heroes of the world wanted to see it, and so an unprecedented grand gathering convened before Shaoshi Peak, each of the nine schools selecting three good hands to compete in a round robin tournament to decide the victor. The swordmeet lasted seven days, and each school lost some good hands. Mount Hua, Diancang, Kongtong, and Mount Snow were the first four to be eliminated. The five schools of Shaolin, Wudang, Kunlun, Qingcheng, and Emei then held a finals, each school selecting their most elite. Should any one of them perish in the duel, who knows how many masterful arts would be lost…” Saying this, he paused and sighed.

Greatmaster Clear Karma was eager to hear the rest of the tale. “So in the end, which school won the competition?”

Master One Yang laughed. “If they really had fought it out, decided a victor, determined the rankings, even though several elders would have perished and some martial arts would have been lost, they still might have been able to have some days of peace in the days that followed. As luck would have it, the masterhands of the five schools were just about to start the competition when Mystic Workings Perfected arrived just in time on Shaoshi Peak, and he fervently urged everyone to stop fighting. But the sectmasters of the five schools had been worrying over this moment for hundreds of years, it was not an easy thing to convene the elite masters of each school together, so they were not about to give it up. Seeing that his exhortations were no use, Mystic Workings Perfected promptly using his bare hands challenged the masters of the five schools. Shaolin, Wudang, Kunlun, Emei, and Qingcheng all longed to vie for first place, and seeing how wildly arrogant he was, looking down on the five great schools, they sure enough ganged up and attacked him. But who could have expected that Mystic Workings Perfected’s martial arts had already entered the sublime realm of perfection. Within 500 moves, using his bare hands, he defeated the masters of the five schools and won him self the honorable title of Number One Martial Artist in the World. And with that, the bid to determine the rankings of the five schools was dispelled, and the swordmeet on Shaoshi Peak of the Central Marchmount was canceled and dissolved.”

Greatmaster Clear Karma nodded. “You could say that Mystic Workings Perfected really did a great deed, making it so the vital elite of the five major martial world schools remained alive, and because of that the martial world now is able to be so prosperous.”