“Lang Junxia!” Duan Ling urgently shakes him, calling his name loudly, yet Lang Junxia doesn’t react at all. Above him, clumps of snow accumulated on the pine tree crumble and fall, scattering all over Duan Ling.
In that very instant Duan Ling hasn’t even had time to think about this unexpected turn of events in much detail; fear merely flashes in his mind for a moment before a far more pressing idea takes over — Lang Junxia must have fainted because he’s too cold. Even though Duan Ling can’t explain the bloodstains on Lang Junxia, and he has no idea what he’s gone through, he must make him better no matter what.
With much difficulty, he attempts to drag Lang Junxia to heave him into the parlour, but after successfully managing this task, it’s taken far too much of his energy, yet Lang Junxia still shows no sign of waking up. Duan Ling calls him a few more times, sticking his face close to Lang Junxia’s to feel his breath, and finds his breathing steady and even, just that his lips are pale.
He needs to start a fire, Duan Ling thinks as he looks all over their new home searching in every corner, and he finds charcoal and an abandoned earthenware stove in the kitchen. He starts a fire right in the parlour.
There is also bedding in the rooms, and so Duan Ling tucks it to one side of Lang Junxia like a cushion. That’s when he notices the bright red blood dripping from Lang Junxia.
It extends out from the parlour, colouring the threshold with bloodstains, leaving a vivid trail from the closed door to the snow-covered ground inside the forecourt. Drops of blood cross the front gate threshold all the way through the alleyway they came through, pointing at the end of the long alley, and at the end of the alleyway, it takes a turn into the main street.
A thorough search of Lang Junxia doesn’t turn up any trauma ointment. All he finds is a small cloth package with Duan Ling’s birth certificate inside. What should he do? Lang Junxia’s cheeks are deathly pale, and he’s obviously very weak, starting to run a fever. There’s little else to do then but for Duan Ling to dig out some money, go out, and bring back a doctor.
If you get sick you have to get a doctor to check the patient and get a prescription filled. Back when he lived with the Duans, everyone there ordered him around to run errands, and he was often told to go to the pharmacy.
In the most tranquil hours of Shangjing, a mysterious force walks its streets still; sometime in the night the tall slender figure of Wu Du appears in the cold dressed in a tattered stuffed cotton long coat and a conical bamboo hat, absentmindedly fiddling with a dagger between his fingers. He’s going from house to house, and as he walks by he’ll occasionally turn his head to listen attentively.
A rather paranoid man in black is following him, looking around him in every direction.
Wu Du says, “Once we find some clues, don’t go off on your own again.”
The man in black gibes, “Wu Du! Don’t you forget that the general sent you to assist me! He’s injured — how far could he have gone?”
“I would never dare fight over credit with you for this, Zhuxiong,2 but if you’re worried I’d mess up the job, you can go right ahead and look for him on your own,” Wu Du says.
The man in black glances at Wu Du, and follows it with a sarcastic laugh. He turns to leave without saying another word, disappearing into Shangjing’s many courtyard homes.
Wu Du thinks quietly to himself for a moment looking into the distance, and heads towards the main street marketplace.
—
Duan Ling knocks at the backdoor of Prosperity Hall until it opens and slips inside through the blizzard.
“The doctor is out on a house call. What sort of illness?”
“Bleeding!” Duan Ling implores, “Not moving! When will the doctor be back?”
“What sort of injury?” The shopkeeper asks impatiently. “Man or woman? How old is the patient?”
Duan Ling is talking and gesticulating, anxious beyond measure, but on the other hand the shopkeeper is drunken and bleary-eyed. All he tells Duan Ling is that the doctor doesn’t live here — he lives two streets away. When he came drinking in the evening earlier, a family over on Dong Street was having a difficult labour, and so he took his medicine chest and went to see them. As for which house he went to, well, the shopkeeper didn’t find out exactly where.
Here, Duan Ling’s about to drive himself insane with panic while the shopkeeper remains quite calm. He tipsily tells Duan Ling, “It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ll get you some topical trauma powder3 and make up a prescription that helps mend flesh and encourage blood circulation. Drink down the decoction and he’ll be all better once the fever’s gone.”
The shopkeeper stumbles his way upstairs to dispense the prescription. Duan Ling stands restlessly behind the counter. He remembers someone telling him once that ginseng is guaranteed to cure anything, and so he pushes a chair up against the medicine cupboard and climbs onto it to search for ginseng.
And now there’s knocking at the front door again.
“Anyone here?” A deep and rough voice says.
A lamp in one hand and a stick of old ginseng in another, Duan Ling stands there hesitating as to what he should do. Something outside the door makes a snapping sound, and the door is clearly locked, but somehow a guest has come in. Duan Ling hastily climbs down, trying to stay quiet. He kneels on the chair, and placing the lamp down properly he looks out from behind the counter.
The one who’s come in is a young man, covered in snow. His left hand is in his lapel as though he’s holding onto something, and his right hand is exposed and red from the cold.
The man has long and slender fingers. Turning a little to the side, he puts one elbow on the counter and considers Duan Ling carefully while towering over him, looking intently at his eyes. Duan Ling is too small, and only half of his face is showing behind the counter. He feels all at once intimidated.
The man has a slim face, deep-set eyes and sharp cheekbones; his skin is slightly dark, with thick black eyebrows like rising strokes in rough cursive script, an ink-coloured inscribed tattoo in glyph is on his neck, below one side of his jaw. It looks like a paper cut of the profile of some strange beast.
“Where’s the doctor?” The young man says nonchalantly, then two of his fingers cross to reveal a brilliant, gold-toned bead between them. Duan Ling’s attention is quickly drawn to the pretty golden bead, utterly awestruck, his gaze drifting from the gold bead to the man. The young man grasps the bead between fore and middle fingers, giving it a whirl, and the bead starts spinning round and round on the counter.
“The doctor … has gone to deliver a baby.” The gold bead dazzles Duan Ling so much so that he can barely keep his eyes open, and he answers, “Dong Street … a family over there is having a difficult labour.”
With a light push of the young man’s finger, the gold bead rolls to a stop in front of Duan Ling.
The man makes a gesture to indicate help yourself, and says, “Aside from the family delivering a baby, has anyone else been by looking for a doctor?”
“No,” Duan Ling answers without pausing to think.
He can smell the scent of danger on this man, and he doesn’t dare take his gold bead either. There are always traps behind lures — the hardships he suffered as a young child makes him especially vigilant.
“Is the doctor your dad?”
“No.” Duan Ling backs up a little, looking the man up and down.
“What’s that there in your hand?” The man turns his attention to the medicinal ingredients in Duan Ling’s hand.
Naturally he can’t say he stole it, so Duan Ling shows it to him and makes up a lie, “Ginseng for the woman in childbirth.”
The young man goes quiet for a bit. Worried that the shopkeeper will come back downstairs and expose his lie, Duan Ling says, “Do you need anything else?”
“Nothing else.” The corner of the man’s mouth turns up in a slightly perverse smile, and placing a hand on the counter he drums along it in a steady rhythm. Suddenly the gold bead unfolds to become a shiny gold-backed centipede with a brightly coloured belly!
The centipede makes a beeline for Duan Ling — Duan Ling is so scared that he yells out loud, but the man just starts to laugh. With a smooth grabbing motion he takes the centipede with him and disappears into the snowy night outside the doors.
Duan Ling hurries upstairs to find the shopkeeper collapsed beneath the medicine cabinet in the attic, passed out from drink with a messily packed packet of medicine in his hand. Relieved, Duan Ling carefully wraps up the packet without waking the shopkeeper, looks up the topical trauma powder by the label, and retraces his steps back home.
The snow has obscured the blood path Lang Junxia dripped onto the road. In the late hours of the night, the street stretches bright and wide before him. Their horse is still outside the gates, and Duan Ling notices how it shivers from the cold and leads it to the stable in the back courtyard. He gives it some hay with a pitchfork and says to it, “I’ll be back in a bit.”
The moment he turns, Duan Ling is lifted up with one hand. As he opens his mouth to yell however, a big rough hand covers his mouth.
Duan Ling whimpers and makes what noise he can, struggling with all his might. The man’s hands are extremely strong; he presses a shiny dagger to the side of Duan Ling’s neck and pushes the point in, just a little bit. Duan Ling’s pupils dilate and dare not move anymore.
Behind him, the man says, “Where’s Lang Junxia?”
Through the light glinting off icicles he realises he’s being held by a masked assassin in a black rogue outfit, but then he finds himself calming down — he purses his lips tightly and doesn’t say a word.
“Point the way! Where is he?! If you don’t I’ll kill you!” The assassin threatens him in a low voice.
Duan Ling points at the back of the house, thinking about how to draw this man away or maybe to shout and alert Lang Junxia. The strong man loops one arm around Duan Ling and follows his directions to the back courtyard. The ice accrued on the ground here is quite slippery, and as the man leaps across the corridor, Duan Ling opens his mouth all of a sudden and bite down hard on the assassin’s hand.
With his middle finger bitten without any warning, the assassin cries out loudly in pain, and goes right for his blade and reflexively chops at Duan Ling. But Duan Ling has already dropped onto the ground, squirming away on his hands and feet. The assassin follows closely behind him, and knowing that he’s probably going to go seek help, he seems in no hurry to catch up.
But Duan Ling is extremely clever; he doesn’t run towards Lang Junxia’s location, and instead he dashes through the corridor, banging every door as he goes, yelling, “Murderer! Murderer!” while heading straight for the stable, trying his hardest to get away from here lest the assassin discovers any sign of Lang Junxia.
The assassin was going to use Duan Ling to draw out Lang Junxia, but the moment he sees Duan Ling running outside he realises it’s not going to work and with a sudden long stride he dashes forward, his fingers about to seize Duan Ling’s collar —
The gleaming point of a blade dazzles past from behind a side pillar and the assassin draws his dagger to block; with the sharp ting of metal the dagger snaps into two, and the sword cuts diagonally upwards quickly after. Pale-faced and shallow of breath, Lang Junxia thrust his sword at the assassin, staggering. However, his steps are wobbly, and ultimately that thrust misses its mark by half an inch.
The assassin escapes disembowelment; Lang Junxia takes one side step, his vision darkening, falling onto the ground. Duan Ling shouts, turns around and scurries towards him to throw himself on top of Lang Junxia’s back.
The assassins sneers, then taking one step forward he kicks away the long sword on the ground. He seizes Duan Ling and ruthlessly punches him in the face. He punched him like he was punching dough — the moment Duan Ling turns his head, a great big fist firmly connects with his eye socket. There’s a sudden quiet reverberation in his brain, stars appear in front of his eyes, and he falls onto the ground.
The assassin grabs a handful of Lang Junxia’s hair, making him look up. He takes out another dagger and presses the edge of it against his throat.
“Where is Li Jianhong?” The assassin asks quietly.
“If you don’t kill the child, I’ll tell you …” Lang Junxia’s lips barely move as he weakly opens his mouth.
Duan Ling struggles; he feels like his eye’s been punched into the back of his head, but even so he still gathers up all his strength to grab the sword that lies discarded on the ground.
The assassin has truly underestimated Duan Ling’s ability to take a beating. How tenacious a person can be when their life is threatened is actually intimately related to the accumulated battery they have ever taken. Ever since he was a tiny thing, Duan Ling has experienced being thrown headfirst into walls, beaten with bricks, slapped with hands and punched with fists — it’s long since tempered him into possessing the art of knowing how to take a beating. He knows that when someone’s punching you directly in the face, you have to avoid getting punched in the nose and the temples, and instead use the eye socket to take a fist.
The assassin leans forward a little, and from Lang Junxia’s clear pupils he notices that behind him, Duan Ling’s picked up Lang Junxia’s sword and he’s pouncing onto him …
It’s all over before the ink’s dry — just as the assassin’s about to turn around, Duan Ling is thrusting the sword into the back of his neck. The sharp sword makes a light sound and it nails the assassin right into the ground.
“I …”
The assassin’s pupils begin to dilate, entirely incredulous that he’s somehow dying at the hands of a frail little child. One of his hands scrabbles in the snow a couple of times. His neck and his windpipe has been pierced through, causing instant death.
The assassin’s last breath fades away, leaving behind nothing but the boundless flurry of snowflakes from the sky. It’s the first time Duan Ling’s ever killed anyone. His hands and his face are covered in bright, red blood, and he stares at the assassin in utter disbelief. Then he frantically crawls towards Lang Junxia, throwing himself into his arms.
Eyes closed, Lang Junxia wraps his arms around Duan Ling. Duan Ling looks fearfully behind him and finds the dead assassin’s eyes wide open, glaring at them. Then Lang Junxia raises a hand, covering Duan Ling’s eyes, making him not look anymore.
One hour later.
“Who’s there?!”
A northern goshawk circles the city skies and the patrolling officers finally discover the figure of the young man, and gallop full speed after him. The young man puts his fingers to his lips, whistling over and over again, but alas no one answers him in the snowstorm.
More and more officers of the law are coming from all directions to catch him, signalling each other with bird calls. The young man leaves the rooftops behind and drops into a small alleyway, turning in the snow and losing his pursuers. But the moment he leaves the alley, he finds more men closing in on him.
The young man dare not stick around for a fight and he retreats, his steps as light as drifting duckweed on a pond, leaving behind shallow tracks in the snow. To his surprise, the patrolmen have managed to surround him, bending their bows and nocking their arrows. Yet before they can complete their formation the young man has turned around, and with one shake of his sleeve shoots out countless little arrows each as small as a cow’s hair.
Before him, the patrolling horsemen arrive at speed and bellows, “Who dare act with such impudence on the streets of Shangjing!”
As the galloping horseman looks as if he’s about to smash right into that man, he quickly pulls off his conical hat and with a wave of his hand, tosses it. The guardsman falls head first off his horse in a flash; they cross each other and the hat flies back, with the young man catching it. He places it back on his head, and without another word, springs into an alleyway and vanishes without a trace.
Right after the commotion, the mounted guardsman go door to door to search for his accomplices.
Duan Ling starts a fire in the room. He makes Lang Junxia lie on the bed so he can put trauma powder on his wounds, then he chops the ginseng and puts it in a water pot to heat it.
“Where did you get the ginseng?” Lang Junxia asks with his eyes closed.
“Stole it from the pharmacy,” Duan Ling says. “Why are people coming to kill you? Are they bad people?”
“Twelve days ago, I set off for the city of Huchang4 to get some work done. My trail was discovered by the assassin Wu Du and I couldn’t shake him. I was going to take this chance to kill him, but alas he’s far more cunning than I expected — I fell into a series of traps he set for me and in a hasty exchange I ended up heavily wounded instead. Only by using every trick I know was I able to lose him at the foot of the Altyn-Tagh.5”
“Is that … the man in black who died?” Duan Ling asks.
“No.” Lang Junxia replies with his eyes closed, “The man in black outside was named ‘Zhu’. He was a member of the Chen imperial shadow guards. The shadow guards and Wu Du have never gotten along; I presume Zhu tailed me to Shangjing because he planned to take the credit for killing me. To think that due to this series of unforeseen events he somehow ended up dying in your hands.”
So the reason why Lang Junxia didn’t come get him was because he went to do some work. Where is the city of Huchang? Duan Ling is full of questions. But as he’s just about to ask, Lang Junxia says, “Hide the body in the stable, cover it with hay, then shovel the snow, cover up the blood stains, and change your clothes.”
Duan Ling is a bit scared, but he does exactly as Lang Junxia tells him to anyway. The body is still staring out blankly with vacant eyes; he wonders if it’ll turn into a ghost and come back at night to demand his life be returned. Just as he finishes doing this, taking off his bloodstained outer gown and changing into a thin set of unlined clothes, the sound of horses’ hooves come to the front gates.
“City guard official business! Open the door!” A guardsman outside yells.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
This translation uses standard pinyin name convention, but I’ll note when it’s confusing. Standard notation clumps a name, its suffix, and its prefix into a chunk except when the pronunciation is in question, in that case it’s separated by a single quote (’). “Xiong” here means literally ‘older brother’ and is a simple respectful suffix for an older man. ↩︎
The word 金創藥 literally means metal-trauma-medication, and it gets thrown around in wuxia novels a lot, as effective as a magical poultice in most wuxia novels including this one, stops bleeding, speeds healing. Usually (as in this case) a powder carried around in a small porcelain bottle. ↩︎
I can’t find this on any historic maps, but it’s probably somewhere to the west of Xinjiang, southwest of the Altyn-Tagh mountains. (I’m totally coming up with this based on the fact that it’s impossible to scale mountains in the winter. I’ve mapped it based on a guess.) ↩︎
Altyn-Tagh is on the southeast edge of Xinjiang. ↩︎
“Lang Junxia!” Duan Ling urgently shakes him, calling his name loudly, yet Lang Junxia doesn’t react at all. Above him, clumps of snow accumulated on the pine tree crumble and fall, scattering all over Duan Ling.
In that very instant Duan Ling hasn’t even had time to think about this unexpected turn of events in much detail; fear merely flashes in his mind for a moment before a far more pressing idea takes over — Lang Junxia must have fainted because he’s too cold. Even though Duan Ling can’t explain the bloodstains on Lang Junxia, and he has no idea what he’s gone through, he must make him better no matter what.
With much difficulty, he attempts to drag Lang Junxia to heave him into the parlour, but after successfully managing this task, it’s taken far too much of his energy, yet Lang Junxia still shows no sign of waking up. Duan Ling calls him a few more times, sticking his face close to Lang Junxia’s to feel his breath, and finds his breathing steady and even, just that his lips are pale.
He needs to start a fire, Duan Ling thinks as he looks all over their new home searching in every corner, and he finds charcoal and an abandoned earthenware stove in the kitchen. He starts a fire right in the parlour.
There is also bedding in the rooms, and so Duan Ling tucks it to one side of Lang Junxia like a cushion. That’s when he notices the bright red blood dripping from Lang Junxia.
It extends out from the parlour, colouring the threshold with bloodstains, leaving a vivid trail from the closed door to the snow-covered ground inside the forecourt. Drops of blood cross the front gate threshold all the way through the alleyway they came through, pointing at the end of the long alley, and at the end of the alleyway, it takes a turn into the main street.
A thorough search of Lang Junxia doesn’t turn up any trauma ointment. All he finds is a small cloth package with Duan Ling’s birth certificate inside. What should he do? Lang Junxia’s cheeks are deathly pale, and he’s obviously very weak, starting to run a fever. There’s little else to do then but for Duan Ling to dig out some money, go out, and bring back a doctor.
If you get sick you have to get a doctor to check the patient and get a prescription filled. Back when he lived with the Duans, everyone there ordered him around to run errands, and he was often told to go to the pharmacy.
In the most tranquil hours of Shangjing, a mysterious force walks its streets still; sometime in the night the tall slender figure of Wu Du appears in the cold dressed in a tattered stuffed cotton long coat and a conical bamboo hat, absentmindedly fiddling with a dagger between his fingers. He’s going from house to house, and as he walks by he’ll occasionally turn his head to listen attentively.
A rather paranoid man in black is following him, looking around him in every direction.
Wu Du says, “Once we find some clues, don’t go off on your own again.”
The man in black gibes, “Wu Du! Don’t you forget that the general sent you to assist me! He’s injured — how far could he have gone?”
“I would never dare fight over credit with you for this, Zhuxiong,2 but if you’re worried I’d mess up the job, you can go right ahead and look for him on your own,” Wu Du says.
The man in black glances at Wu Du, and follows it with a sarcastic laugh. He turns to leave without saying another word, disappearing into Shangjing’s many courtyard homes.
Wu Du thinks quietly to himself for a moment looking into the distance, and heads towards the main street marketplace.
—
Duan Ling knocks at the backdoor of Prosperity Hall until it opens and slips inside through the blizzard.
“The doctor is out on a house call. What sort of illness?”
“Bleeding!” Duan Ling implores, “Not moving! When will the doctor be back?”
“What sort of injury?” The shopkeeper asks impatiently. “Man or woman? How old is the patient?”
Duan Ling is talking and gesticulating, anxious beyond measure, but on the other hand the shopkeeper is drunken and bleary-eyed. All he tells Duan Ling is that the doctor doesn’t live here — he lives two streets away. When he came drinking in the evening earlier, a family over on Dong Street was having a difficult labour, and so he took his medicine chest and went to see them. As for which house he went to, well, the shopkeeper didn’t find out exactly where.
Here, Duan Ling’s about to drive himself insane with panic while the shopkeeper remains quite calm. He tipsily tells Duan Ling, “It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ll get you some topical trauma powder3 and make up a prescription that helps mend flesh and encourage blood circulation. Drink down the decoction and he’ll be all better once the fever’s gone.”
The shopkeeper stumbles his way upstairs to dispense the prescription. Duan Ling stands restlessly behind the counter. He remembers someone telling him once that ginseng is guaranteed to cure anything, and so he pushes a chair up against the medicine cupboard and climbs onto it to search for ginseng.
And now there’s knocking at the front door again.
“Anyone here?” A deep and rough voice says.
A lamp in one hand and a stick of old ginseng in another, Duan Ling stands there hesitating as to what he should do. Something outside the door makes a snapping sound, and the door is clearly locked, but somehow a guest has come in. Duan Ling hastily climbs down, trying to stay quiet. He kneels on the chair, and placing the lamp down properly he looks out from behind the counter.
The one who’s come in is a young man, covered in snow. His left hand is in his lapel as though he’s holding onto something, and his right hand is exposed and red from the cold.
The man has long and slender fingers. Turning a little to the side, he puts one elbow on the counter and considers Duan Ling carefully while towering over him, looking intently at his eyes. Duan Ling is too small, and only half of his face is showing behind the counter. He feels all at once intimidated.
The man has a slim face, deep-set eyes and sharp cheekbones; his skin is slightly dark, with thick black eyebrows like rising strokes in rough cursive script, an ink-coloured inscribed tattoo in glyph is on his neck, below one side of his jaw. It looks like a paper cut of the profile of some strange beast.
“Where’s the doctor?” The young man says nonchalantly, then two of his fingers cross to reveal a brilliant, gold-toned bead between them. Duan Ling’s attention is quickly drawn to the pretty golden bead, utterly awestruck, his gaze drifting from the gold bead to the man. The young man grasps the bead between fore and middle fingers, giving it a whirl, and the bead starts spinning round and round on the counter.
“The doctor … has gone to deliver a baby.” The gold bead dazzles Duan Ling so much so that he can barely keep his eyes open, and he answers, “Dong Street … a family over there is having a difficult labour.”
With a light push of the young man’s finger, the gold bead rolls to a stop in front of Duan Ling.
The man makes a gesture to indicate help yourself, and says, “Aside from the family delivering a baby, has anyone else been by looking for a doctor?”
“No,” Duan Ling answers without pausing to think.
He can smell the scent of danger on this man, and he doesn’t dare take his gold bead either. There are always traps behind lures — the hardships he suffered as a young child makes him especially vigilant.
“Is the doctor your dad?”
“No.” Duan Ling backs up a little, looking the man up and down.
“What’s that there in your hand?” The man turns his attention to the medicinal ingredients in Duan Ling’s hand.
Naturally he can’t say he stole it, so Duan Ling shows it to him and makes up a lie, “Ginseng for the woman in childbirth.”
The young man goes quiet for a bit. Worried that the shopkeeper will come back downstairs and expose his lie, Duan Ling says, “Do you need anything else?”
“Nothing else.” The corner of the man’s mouth turns up in a slightly perverse smile, and placing a hand on the counter he drums along it in a steady rhythm. Suddenly the gold bead unfolds to become a shiny gold-backed centipede with a brightly coloured belly!
The centipede makes a beeline for Duan Ling — Duan Ling is so scared that he yells out loud, but the man just starts to laugh. With a smooth grabbing motion he takes the centipede with him and disappears into the snowy night outside the doors.
Duan Ling hurries upstairs to find the shopkeeper collapsed beneath the medicine cabinet in the attic, passed out from drink with a messily packed packet of medicine in his hand. Relieved, Duan Ling carefully wraps up the packet without waking the shopkeeper, looks up the topical trauma powder by the label, and retraces his steps back home.
The snow has obscured the blood path Lang Junxia dripped onto the road. In the late hours of the night, the street stretches bright and wide before him. Their horse is still outside the gates, and Duan Ling notices how it shivers from the cold and leads it to the stable in the back courtyard. He gives it some hay with a pitchfork and says to it, “I’ll be back in a bit.”
The moment he turns, Duan Ling is lifted up with one hand. As he opens his mouth to yell however, a big rough hand covers his mouth.
Duan Ling whimpers and makes what noise he can, struggling with all his might. The man’s hands are extremely strong; he presses a shiny dagger to the side of Duan Ling’s neck and pushes the point in, just a little bit. Duan Ling’s pupils dilate and dare not move anymore.
Behind him, the man says, “Where’s Lang Junxia?”
Through the light glinting off icicles he realises he’s being held by a masked assassin in a black rogue outfit, but then he finds himself calming down — he purses his lips tightly and doesn’t say a word.
“Point the way! Where is he?! If you don’t I’ll kill you!” The assassin threatens him in a low voice.
Duan Ling points at the back of the house, thinking about how to draw this man away or maybe to shout and alert Lang Junxia. The strong man loops one arm around Duan Ling and follows his directions to the back courtyard. The ice accrued on the ground here is quite slippery, and as the man leaps across the corridor, Duan Ling opens his mouth all of a sudden and bite down hard on the assassin’s hand.
With his middle finger bitten without any warning, the assassin cries out loudly in pain, and goes right for his blade and reflexively chops at Duan Ling. But Duan Ling has already dropped onto the ground, squirming away on his hands and feet. The assassin follows closely behind him, and knowing that he’s probably going to go seek help, he seems in no hurry to catch up.
But Duan Ling is extremely clever; he doesn’t run towards Lang Junxia’s location, and instead he dashes through the corridor, banging every door as he goes, yelling, “Murderer! Murderer!” while heading straight for the stable, trying his hardest to get away from here lest the assassin discovers any sign of Lang Junxia.
The assassin was going to use Duan Ling to draw out Lang Junxia, but the moment he sees Duan Ling running outside he realises it’s not going to work and with a sudden long stride he dashes forward, his fingers about to seize Duan Ling’s collar —
The gleaming point of a blade dazzles past from behind a side pillar and the assassin draws his dagger to block; with the sharp ting of metal the dagger snaps into two, and the sword cuts diagonally upwards quickly after. Pale-faced and shallow of breath, Lang Junxia thrust his sword at the assassin, staggering. However, his steps are wobbly, and ultimately that thrust misses its mark by half an inch.
The assassin escapes disembowelment; Lang Junxia takes one side step, his vision darkening, falling onto the ground. Duan Ling shouts, turns around and scurries towards him to throw himself on top of Lang Junxia’s back.
The assassins sneers, then taking one step forward he kicks away the long sword on the ground. He seizes Duan Ling and ruthlessly punches him in the face. He punched him like he was punching dough — the moment Duan Ling turns his head, a great big fist firmly connects with his eye socket. There’s a sudden quiet reverberation in his brain, stars appear in front of his eyes, and he falls onto the ground.
The assassin grabs a handful of Lang Junxia’s hair, making him look up. He takes out another dagger and presses the edge of it against his throat.
“Where is Li Jianhong?” The assassin asks quietly.
“If you don’t kill the child, I’ll tell you …” Lang Junxia’s lips barely move as he weakly opens his mouth.
Duan Ling struggles; he feels like his eye’s been punched into the back of his head, but even so he still gathers up all his strength to grab the sword that lies discarded on the ground.
The assassin has truly underestimated Duan Ling’s ability to take a beating. How tenacious a person can be when their life is threatened is actually intimately related to the accumulated battery they have ever taken. Ever since he was a tiny thing, Duan Ling has experienced being thrown headfirst into walls, beaten with bricks, slapped with hands and punched with fists — it’s long since tempered him into possessing the art of knowing how to take a beating. He knows that when someone’s punching you directly in the face, you have to avoid getting punched in the nose and the temples, and instead use the eye socket to take a fist.
The assassin leans forward a little, and from Lang Junxia’s clear pupils he notices that behind him, Duan Ling’s picked up Lang Junxia’s sword and he’s pouncing onto him …
It’s all over before the ink’s dry — just as the assassin’s about to turn around, Duan Ling is thrusting the sword into the back of his neck. The sharp sword makes a light sound and it nails the assassin right into the ground.
“I …”
The assassin’s pupils begin to dilate, entirely incredulous that he’s somehow dying at the hands of a frail little child. One of his hands scrabbles in the snow a couple of times. His neck and his windpipe has been pierced through, causing instant death.
The assassin’s last breath fades away, leaving behind nothing but the boundless flurry of snowflakes from the sky. It’s the first time Duan Ling’s ever killed anyone. His hands and his face are covered in bright, red blood, and he stares at the assassin in utter disbelief. Then he frantically crawls towards Lang Junxia, throwing himself into his arms.
Eyes closed, Lang Junxia wraps his arms around Duan Ling. Duan Ling looks fearfully behind him and finds the dead assassin’s eyes wide open, glaring at them. Then Lang Junxia raises a hand, covering Duan Ling’s eyes, making him not look anymore.
One hour later.
“Who’s there?!”
A northern goshawk circles the city skies and the patrolling officers finally discover the figure of the young man, and gallop full speed after him. The young man puts his fingers to his lips, whistling over and over again, but alas no one answers him in the snowstorm.
More and more officers of the law are coming from all directions to catch him, signalling each other with bird calls. The young man leaves the rooftops behind and drops into a small alleyway, turning in the snow and losing his pursuers. But the moment he leaves the alley, he finds more men closing in on him.
The young man dare not stick around for a fight and he retreats, his steps as light as drifting duckweed on a pond, leaving behind shallow tracks in the snow. To his surprise, the patrolmen have managed to surround him, bending their bows and nocking their arrows. Yet before they can complete their formation the young man has turned around, and with one shake of his sleeve shoots out countless little arrows each as small as a cow’s hair.
Before him, the patrolling horsemen arrive at speed and bellows, “Who dare act with such impudence on the streets of Shangjing!”
As the galloping horseman looks as if he’s about to smash right into that man, he quickly pulls off his conical hat and with a wave of his hand, tosses it. The guardsman falls head first off his horse in a flash; they cross each other and the hat flies back, with the young man catching it. He places it back on his head, and without another word, springs into an alleyway and vanishes without a trace.
Right after the commotion, the mounted guardsman go door to door to search for his accomplices.
Duan Ling starts a fire in the room. He makes Lang Junxia lie on the bed so he can put trauma powder on his wounds, then he chops the ginseng and puts it in a water pot to heat it.
“Where did you get the ginseng?” Lang Junxia asks with his eyes closed.
“Stole it from the pharmacy,” Duan Ling says. “Why are people coming to kill you? Are they bad people?”
“Twelve days ago, I set off for the city of Huchang4 to get some work done. My trail was discovered by the assassin Wu Du and I couldn’t shake him. I was going to take this chance to kill him, but alas he’s far more cunning than I expected — I fell into a series of traps he set for me and in a hasty exchange I ended up heavily wounded instead. Only by using every trick I know was I able to lose him at the foot of the Altyn-Tagh.5”
“Is that … the man in black who died?” Duan Ling asks.
“No.” Lang Junxia replies with his eyes closed, “The man in black outside was named ‘Zhu’. He was a member of the Chen imperial shadow guards. The shadow guards and Wu Du have never gotten along; I presume Zhu tailed me to Shangjing because he planned to take the credit for killing me. To think that due to this series of unforeseen events he somehow ended up dying in your hands.”
So the reason why Lang Junxia didn’t come get him was because he went to do some work. Where is the city of Huchang? Duan Ling is full of questions. But as he’s just about to ask, Lang Junxia says, “Hide the body in the stable, cover it with hay, then shovel the snow, cover up the blood stains, and change your clothes.”
Duan Ling is a bit scared, but he does exactly as Lang Junxia tells him to anyway. The body is still staring out blankly with vacant eyes; he wonders if it’ll turn into a ghost and come back at night to demand his life be returned. Just as he finishes doing this, taking off his bloodstained outer gown and changing into a thin set of unlined clothes, the sound of horses’ hooves come to the front gates.
“City guard official business! Open the door!” A guardsman outside yells.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
This translation uses standard pinyin name convention, but I’ll note when it’s confusing. Standard notation clumps a name, its suffix, and its prefix into a chunk except when the pronunciation is in question, in that case it’s separated by a single quote (’). “Xiong” here means literally ‘older brother’ and is a simple respectful suffix for an older man. ↩︎
The word 金創藥 literally means metal-trauma-medication, and it gets thrown around in wuxia novels a lot, as effective as a magical poultice in most wuxia novels including this one, stops bleeding, speeds healing. Usually (as in this case) a powder carried around in a small porcelain bottle. ↩︎
I can’t find this on any historic maps, but it’s probably somewhere to the west of Xinjiang, southwest of the Altyn-Tagh mountains. (I’m totally coming up with this based on the fact that it’s impossible to scale mountains in the winter. I’ve mapped it based on a guess.) ↩︎
Altyn-Tagh is on the southeast edge of Xinjiang. ↩︎
