Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse — Gao Yong

I recently acquired a new (old) novel, Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse《銹劍瘦馬》by Gao Yong. Here’s a look at the first couple chapters.

Liang Chengyan (Lyahng Chung-yen, 梁承彥)¹ is living with his wife and young daughter on a secluded cliff, having retired from the jianghu (jyahng-hoo, 江湖]). He has just returned home and is waiting for his junior brother,² Tang Baizhou (Tahng B{eye}-joe, 唐百州), who is scheduled to make a rare visit. The two of them are fellow disciples of the Spirit Snake Swordplay 靈蛇劍法. Their master gave them each one half of the sword manual before he passed away.

But while he is waiting for his junior bro to arrive, two strangers show up instead: Diao Tianyi (Dyow Tyen-ee, 刁天義) and Diao Shuxian (Dyow Shoo-shyen, 刁淑嫺) of Diao Family Village, a famous sword school. They have come for the Spirit Snake Swordplay manual. A fight ensues, and just as Liang Chengyan is wounded, Tang Baizhou arrives and fends off the attackers, who flee. But the real danger is still close at hand.

That evening, Tang Baizhou and Liang Chengyan are drinking inside Liang’s thatched cottage. Instead of being grateful that his junior bro came to the rescue, Liang Chengyan instead is harboring resentment because Tang Baizhou’s internal strength is greater than his ever since Tang Baizhou received the internal strength training half of the sword manual from their teacher, while Liang Chengyan only received the half detailing the sword moves. Liang Chengyan thinks it unfair of their teacher since internal strength is crucial to mastery of martial arts. And so he asks Tang Baizhou to lend him his half of the swordplay manual so that he can learn the internal strength exercise techniques. Tang Baizhou agrees and immediately hands his half over. Everything should be fine, right?

But Liang Chengyan has sinister intentions. He’s gone so far as to set his junior bro up to ruin him:

Where he was sitting was exactly facing Liang Chengyan’s wife’s bedroom. The bedroom door was not shut, covered only by a cloth door curtain, and though it was not yet dark out, the bedroom was brightly lit by a tall red candle. Tang Baizhou didn’t know it was a setup, plus he was tipsy, but he thought it strange; it was almost dark and the little girl Yingying was already sound asleep, so why would there be the sound of water coming from the bedroom? Unconsciously, he fixed his eyes on the room.
With the cloth curtain covering the doorway he actually couldn’t see clearly, but it just so happened that a gentle breeze blew suddenly and lifted a corner of the curtain. Tang Baizhou looked inside and his face immediately blushed to the ears. It was exceedingly awkward.
Turns out that when the curtain lifted, Tang Baizhou’s left eye was aimed right at Sister-in-law Li, who was taking a bath, and he got a look at her whole glossy body at once.
He was shocked and turned away immedifately and checked himself, not daring to cast a sidelong glance.
But Liang Chengyan seemed to see through this moment of impropriety. His face clouded and he hmphed, a baleful gleam in his eyes. With an evil grin he said, “Dear brother, did you get a good look?”
Tang Baizhou was terrified to no end, his tipsiness fled from him, and he trembled all over and replied meekly, “Your younger brother deserves death, I saw everything!”
Liang Chengyan said, “How many eyes got a peep?”
Tang Baizhou knew he was had, but now that it had come to this there was nothing more he could say. “My left eye saw it.”
Liang Chengyan’s face sank, and with a frosty voice said, “As the saying goes: ‘An elder sister-in-law is like one’s mother. I treat you like a dear brother; as a dear brother you know what you should do.”
Tang Baizhou steeled himself, raised his hand and firmly plucked his left eyeball out of its socket. Blood dripped onto the table as he shot to his feet. “Your younger brother knows he was wrong, so I’ve plucked out the offending eye as a small token of my deep affection. I’ll take my leave now. Some day, if I am still living, I will repay Senior Brother and Sister-in-law’s great kindness.”
Saying that, he spun around, covered his left eye with his hand and flew out the door and ran like mad down the ridge. Behind him he heard the faint sound of Liang Chengyan’s sneering laughter along with the sound of née Li’s hoarse, mournful sobbing.
Gentle reader, you should know that in those days the code of ethics in our country was strict. Tang Baizhou knew full well that née Li’s door not being closed while she was naked, bathing, was all part of Liang Chengyan’s malicious plan, but he shouldn’t have peeped into the inner chamber, yet there was also no way to explain himself. Fortunately he had just gotten a glimpse with his left eye. Had it been both eyes, he would have had to pluck both eyes out in order to show that he had acted without intention and had accepted his well-deserved punishment.

Right away the novel gives us something a little different. Enemies showing up to steal a manual is a common wuxia (ooh-shyah, 武俠) trope, but here it is not the enemies who succeed in taking the manual and harming the protagonist, but the protagonist’s own senior brother. What follows is more typical: Tang Baizhou stumbles away in pain both physical and emotional, hurt also by the knowledge that his dear senior brother betrayed him. Aimless he wanders until he passes out from blood loss, then wakes up in a field in the rain, takes some time to bandage up his eye wound, and then he’s off again, until he finds a cave with a small opening he can just barely crawl through.

In wuxia novels caves are where one is likely to find treasure—usually martial arts manuals—and such treasures are sometimes guarded by mythical beasts or spirits. Which is not unlike medieval dragon lore now that I think about it. In this case, instead of a dragon hoarding gold, it’s a giant python that just happens to be hanging out in a seemingly empty cavern. Giant snakes are a common occurrence in early wuxia novels, influenced in large part by Huanzhu Louzhu. Its blood and/or gall bladder often impart increased strength to whoever consumes it. There’s going to be a fight of course, either the point-of-view character or some other mythical creature, such as a giant crane. The snake usually loses. Tang Baizhou here also has to fight the snake:

Tang Baizhou grabbed the python’s head with both hands, unable to dodge it any longer. He felt the python’s body slowly tightening around him. It was not only crushingly painful, it was also getting harder to breathe, and the strength was gradually leaving his arms. The python’s head was no more than two feet or so away, its red tongue darting in and out, on the verge of touching his face. He knew that there was no way out except death, so all he could do was steel himself and yank the python’s head closer, tilt his head to the side and raise the python’s head over his shoulder. He opened his mouth and bit down on the huge python’s neck and held on for dear life.
With pythons and other kinds of snakes, the “seven-inch” area on its neck is its most vulnerable spot. When Tang Baizhou bit down on it, he felt a stream of unimaginably rancid blood pour into his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach. He absolutely could not let go, he could only ignore whether or not the python’s blood was poisonous or not and swallow gulp after gulp. Strange to say, as soon as the python blood hit his stomach he felt a sudden flash of scorching heat that penetrated his body and went right into his cinnabar field.³ In an instant Tang Baizhou felt really tingly all over. The tingling seemed to be in his heart, also in his limbs, yet also inside his bones. In any case, that tingling feeling, like ants crawling all over him, was almost unbearable. Several times he thought about freeing a hand so he could scratch the itch, but he was afraid that if he let go of the huge python then his life was forfeit, so he could only screw up his face and try his hardest to restrain himself.

The python blood flowed without end, like a river sluice gate had been opened. His little stomach simply couldn’t hold it all! But not drinking it was not an option, he could only tilt his face out to blow some of it out as he swallowed the rest. After a while the reek of blood was surging up into his throat and he felt a dizziness that was difficult to stifle. He embraced the python’s head and fainted.
When he regained consciousness, the cavern was pitch-black. Must be nighttime outside. All of his bones hurt, and the huge python was still wrapped around him tightly, but the python’s head hung limply off his shoulder. It was obviously dead. He heaved a long sigh, rejoicing that he was actually able to escape the jaws of the python with his life; it was a rare miracle. He slowly uncoiled the body of the huge python wrapped around him and stretched his muscles. Though he was sore and aching, his strength seemed to have increased considerably, but the most curious thing was the vision in his right eye was particularly clear; even in the dark he could see everything clearly. It was just that his face was sticky. He reached up and came away with a hand covered in python blood, but he paid it no mind and turned his attention to scanning the chamber carefully and was surprised at what he saw. Of course when he entered he had been busy wrangling with the python and had no time to get a good look around, but now he saw that aside from the four smooth cavern walls and the level floor, someone had also been living here.

What he finds there is a skeleton and a sword tomb. This part has a lot of similarities to the Dugu Qiubai section of Jin Yong’s (Jeen Y{oh}ng, 金庸) Return of the Condor Heroes (hereafter ROCH). In that novel, Yang Guo encounters a giant eagle that leads him up a cliff where he discovers a sword tomb that contains three swords as well as an inscription from Dugu Qiubai in which Dugu laments that he was not able to find anyone to defeat his swordplay. One of the swords entombed there is a heavy sword made of “mystic iron”⁴ (xuantie, [shwen-tyeh], 玄鐵). Tang Baizhou finds something similar:

Tang Baizhou thought, Was this stone chamber built specially to house this sword tomb? So then whose bones are those? He hurried over to the corner to inspect the skeleton closely and discovered the skeleton’s legs had been neatly snapped off; it wasn’t sitting there crosslegged.
(…)
All the dirt had been excavated from the top of the grave, exposing the corner of a heavy iron box which was not at all easy to lift out of the ground. Tang Baizhou’s heart was about to leap out of his mouth as he used his sword to cleave off the lock. He opened the strongbox and couldn’t help being disappointed. Yes, there was a sword laid out inside the iron case, but though the scabbard, spotted with rust, was nothing surprising, when he drew the sword out it was enough to make one want to vomit for three days: the sword was even more multicolored all over with rust. Not only did it lack the fine, cold gleam of a rare, precious sword, it didn’t even have a cutting edge. It couldn’t be more ordinary, poles apart from the blue-steel sword he was holding. Not only could a sword like this not hurt anyone, you would have a hard time even cutting tofu with it.
He was fuming, to do all that work just for that. He felt the humilitation one feels after being swindled. He hefted the rusty sword in his hand. It was terribly heavy, not easy to wield with one hand. Now he threw it at the cave wall.
But as soon as he threw the rusty sword, the blue-steel sword in his left hand moved as well, as if it wanted to take off flying too. That jolted Tang Baizhou out of his mood and in the sword case he saw a thin book. On the cover sat three medicinal pills each the size of a longan. He took out the book and saw on the cover four words: Supreme Demon Sword Technique.
Evem more curious, Tang Baizhou set his sword down and sat and opened the book. On the first page was written: Since you have dug up my grave you have entered my tutelage; there’s no need to kowtow or pay respects. Sword and spirit communicate, spirit and sword are concentrated. Take the pills before you study the techniques. Tang Baizhou found it funny how the writing was so out-of-place, like it was a poem but not a poem. He thought, “Looks like the work of a crazy person. I’ve been had already in obtaining the sword, who knows what those pills will do.” He turned to the second page and blushed. There was a drawing of a naked man holding a book with both hands. It looked exactly like himself at that moment……

According to The Historical Development of Taiwan Wuxia Fiction (hereafter Taiwan Wuxia) by Ye Hongsheng (Yeh H{oh}ng-shung, 葉洪生) and Lin Baochun (Leen Bow-chwun, 林保淳), Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse was published in 1959.⁵ At that time, Gao Yong (Gow Y{oh}ng, 高庸) was not the pseudonym the author, whose real name was Wang Zeyuan (Wahng Zuh-ywen, 王澤遠), was using. Instead he published under the pen name Linghu Xuan (Ling-hoo Shwen, 令狐玄). Given that the scene just shown occurs at the end of the first and beginning of the second chapter, that means Gao Yong’s Patriarch Pocky Gu would have come before Jin Yong’s Dugu Qiubai since the Dugu Qiubai scene doesn’t occur until just over halfway through ROCH, which began its serialization in May 1959, so that scene wasn’t written until at least sometime in 1960.

However, the same book elsewhere also lists 1960⁶ as the date for Rusty Sword, annoyingly contradicting itself. I contacted Lin Baochun and asked him if he knew the precise date of the publication, and he told me it was May 11, 1961. So three different dates all from the same source. Well, Taiwan Wuxia was published in 2005, so maybe better information was discovered since then. At any rate, there are three reasons I take the third, later date to be the actual date: 1) The 1959 date for Rusty Sword is listed in Gao Yong’s bibliography at the end of the book; that bibliography also lists two works which have notes that say the information came from a bibliography that Gao Yong supplied himself, so maybe the entire bibliography printed in Taiwan Wuxia is from Gao Yong. Now you might think that would mean 1959 should be right, but there are no precise dates aside from the year, and wuxia authors often wrote many novels and had trouble remembering the exact dates themselves. So maybe there was confusion there, or maybe that part of the bibliography didn’t come from the author. 2) The precise date, down to the month and day of the first volume published, gives one more confidence than just a year. 3) Jin Yong was already quite popular at this time; he had just started his own newspaper, ROCH being his first wuxia novel published there. Authors are often influenced by popular, influential predecessors, Jin Yong included. And yes, Jin Yong was influenced by his contemporaries as well, so it is not unreasonable that he might have copied from Gao Yong. But it’s much more likely that Gao Yong copied from Jin Yong since Jin Yong was already popular and Gao Yong was still a relatively new author and was not near as popular.

In any case, there are some key differences between the two descriptions. In ROCH, Dugu Qiubai never appears. He is an earlier figure who is only mentioned but never seen, as he had already passed away. This is true of Pocky Gu in Rusty Sword as well, but we do get to see Tang Baizhou take up where Pocky Gu left off. And that’s another difference: Dugu Qiubai doesn’t expect anything from anyone else, but Pocky Gu specifically wants someone to finish the mission he was unable to fulfill—to find someone who can defeat him:

On the last page was a drawing of a filthy, ugly old man without a stitch of clothes on, his face covered in pockmarks and a thick beard. Above the drawing was written: “The likeness of Supreme Master of the Sword, Patriarch Pocky Gu.” Below the drawing there were a few lines of text in very small characters: Novice disciple, know this well, despite your teacher’s ugly, crazed appearance, he immersed himself in the art of the sword for a hundred years, a hundred years of painstaking grind, travelling everywhere under heaven, acquiring only these eight forms. You tell me, how can your teacher not go mad? How can he not go crazy?
It is said that: All sword arts under heaven originate from Wudang. Your teacher says: All sword arts under heaven end with Pocky Gu. Why do I say this? It’s because your teacher exhausted a lifetime’s effort to collect the quintessence of every school, and improved them with great wisdom and discernment to end up with eight forms, and with these eight forms I swept unhindered everywhere under heaven for fifty years, fighting in nearly a thousand duels both large and small, yet not one person could dissect or defeat these forms. And for my long-drawn-out infatuation I received no reward, so I cut off my own legs and personally buried my sword of wisdom and sat in thought for seven days, only to die still nursing resentment. Although not a sword demon, I had long become a sword fanatic. This special announcement to my disciple: To obtain my techniques you can train for eight days, one form each day, but you absolutely must not exceed this time limit. After eight days, exit the chamber and try your sword. You must continue your teacher’s dying wish and roam the jianghu, and should you meet a swordsman who can dissect and defeat these eight sword forms, no matter where you are, be it the ends of the earth ten thousand miles away, you must remember to set out the sword as an offering and pray in order to inform me. Don’t forget, don’t forget. When your teacher hears the good news, even though he’s in the netherworld, he will surely be smiling.
All sorts of feelings welled up in Tang Baizhou’s mind after reading that. This self-styled “Pocky Gu” senior was lost in the art of the sword his whole life, and though he reached the pinnacle, he still could get no peace of mind, and as he approached death he put away his sword and left this book, built a sword tomb and decided to cut off his own legs and die seated (as for why it was necessary to cut off his own legs, the book doesn’t say, and it remains a mystery to this day), bearing the pain and suffering for seven days only to think of a way to dissect and counter his own technique. He really did deserve to be called a “sword fanatic”. He closed the sword manual and on the back cover he saw another line of text which read: This school’s techniques may be passed down to men, but not women. One should know that: it is only the servants and women who are difficult to deal with.⁷ Given this, how can these techniques be imparted to them? You absolutely must obey this rule and do not violate it.
(…)
…these eight strange, eccentric sword moves really encompassed everything, with limitless variations. They incorporated the best of nearly every form and move set seen or heard about within the martial world, with many unpredictable variations containted within. Their consummate perfection left the “Spirit Snake Swordplay” so far behind that it could only see the dust of others up ahead. He was so in love with reading it he could not put it down, and before he knew it, it was already getting dark outside.

Gao Yong really emphasizes obsession, and that seems like it will be the overriding theme throughout Rusty Sword. Pocky Gu was obsessed with trying to find someone who could defeat him so that he could still improve his swordplay. He had reached a limit and was desperate to surpass it. Like Dugu Qiubai, Pocky Gu had studied the sword and developed his technique so that he had become invincible. But while Dugu Qiubai ultimately defeated every move through “no move”, Pocky Gu simply studied everything and condensed it all down to eight moves. And Tang Baizhou soon becomes absorbed in practicing these moves:

And so he hurried over to the corner and retrieved the “Mystic Iron Sword” and drew it from the scabbard. It was more than twice as heavy as a normal precious sword, and at that moment he really admired Pocky Gu, and he believed that this “Mystic Iron Sword” must be a good sword. If not, then why would a person addicted to the sword like Pocky Gu was set up a tomb and bury it?
He was engrossed the whole night, going without sleep or rest, but he didn’t feel tired or hungry. At first, he thought it was because he had been concentrating his energy and that’s why he wasn’t tired or hungry, but the next day he went the whole day without sleeping or resting, yet still he had energy. Only then did he start to think it strange. Also, the “Mystic Iron Sword” was really heavy at first so that it was difficult to wield, but over time he didn’t notice its weight. Then he suddenly realized why Pocky Gu advised so strongly to take the three pills.
(…)
After repeating the move over and over, he still couldn’t grasp its essence, and in a fit of frustration he stabbed the sword into the ground, intending to take a break before practicing again.
But when the “Mystic Iron Sword” hit the ground, he heard a faint “ding” and his blue-steel sword three feet away flew on its own and stuck to the blade of the Mystic Iron Sword. Tang Baizhou picked the two swords up together and spent a considerable amount of energy trying to force the blue-steel sword off, but when he let go it stuck itself back again. All that for nothing. Turns out the Mystic Iron Sword was strongly magnetic.

After eight days of practicing the eight sword moves, Tang Baizhou leaves the cave as instructed. At this point he’s been in the cave for many days without eating, sustained by the boost of strength and stamina he received from drinking the python’s blood. But now he’s hungry, so he stops at an inn to eat. But when it comes time to pay the bill, he discovers that he has no money on him. The waiter gets angry, and then the local toughs show up to handle the situation.

Now in wuxia novels it is common for the protagonist to not actually want to get into any fights. He tries to avoid conflict, but somehow or other ends up getting in situations he is forced to fight his way out of.

Not so in Rusty Sword. Since he has learned Pocky Gu’s eight moves and has taken up the mantle of sword fanatic, Tang Baizhou is now itching to fight so he can test out his new moves. To do this, he intentionally provokes people into fighting by being rude to them. The local toughs just mentioned, Li Changshou and Huo Yiming (H{wo-} Ee-ming, 霍一鳴), are challenged to a duel outside town, which they agree to.

When they show up to duel, Li Changshou has brought some help, who he has fight Tang Baizhou first. Tang Baizhou easily defeats them. Realizing the kind of person they are dealing with, Li Changshou and company make to leave. But Tang Baizhou has not had his duel with them yet. (Also it should be mentioned that they run into an irascible monk, who will appear in the excerpt below).

Seeing his two men defeated, Li Changshou did as he said and turned to leave. Tang Baizhou said, “Hey hey, not so fast. We agreed to a duel, how can you all just leave? Isn’t that rather belittling?”
Huo Yiming said icily, “Friend, if you have such amazing skill, why not come to the assembly in Chang’an. We’re not blowing smoke, everyone who can come is welcome, we wil definitely receive you. Right now we don’t have time for all this chatter.”
With that, he turned and left with Li Changshou in exasperation. Tang Baizhou turned to Chan Master Flying Dragon. “They’ve all left. Your Reverence, why don’t the two of us have a go?”
Chan Master Flying Dragon looked him up and down and snorted. “My Holiness is also busy. Who can be bothered to mess with the likes of you.”
Tang Baizhou put a hand out to block him. “His Holiness is busy, but as a monk you’re not busy.⁸ Don’t leave just yet, wait for me to try my ‘Tofu Poke’, then you can leave.”
Chan Master Flying Dragon took him for a lunatic and strode off to the north with a whisk of his big sleeves. Tang Baizhou hurried after him and spun around in front to block his way. “Hey! Baldy, why are you being so difficult? If everyone leaves, who am I going to spar with?”
Chan Master Flying Dragon roared like a tiger and shot a palm out to push him back lest he be pestered again, but Chan Master Flying Dragon was indeed a first-rate master of Superior State Monastery; although he had no intention of taking Tang Baizhou’s life, his palm strike packed not a small amount of power. Who would have expected that Tang Baizhou would stagger and with unusual dexterity slip past the palm strike. He said, “Wretched monk, you want to hit someone? Come on come on, I welcome it.”
Chan Master Flying Dragon saw the lunatic suddenly dart to the side, almost unreal, and he was stunned as his palm missed. But it really had happened. He thought, Is this little squirt playing dumb? You can act a lunatic with others, but if you bump heads with His Holiness then its your bad luck, bringing on your own downfall!
He at once glided around in a half-turn, his wrought-bronze staff sweeping across, pushing with it a fierce gust of wind toward the small of Tang Baizhou’s back.
That’s just what Tang Baizhou was trying to make him do so that he could show off his skills. He twisted to the left and his “Mystic Iron Sword” reached out with “Obviously Drunk” to attract Chan Master Flying Dragon’s wrought-bronze staff.
Who knew it would be one draw, one pull; it actually didn’t draw the bronze staff. Quicker than words can say, Chan Master Flying Dragon spun the end of his staff around like lightning toward the “Residence of the Will”⁹ acupoint at the small of Tang Baizhou’s back.
The move came unbelievably fast; Tang Baizhou never imagined his own consummate move wouldn’t work. In a moment of carelessness, the end of the staff narrowly missed him, and he hurriedly staggered back, returning with his “Mystic Iron Sword” an the move, “Counterstriking the Head of Garlic”, and with a snap the blade met the wrought-bronze staff and passed through, Chan Master Flying Dragon now with an extra weapon suddenly in his hand. The wrought-bronze staff, as big around as the mouth of a bowl, had been sliced in two by the rusty sword, and now each hand held a half of the staff.
Shocked, Chan Master Flying Dragon pushed off with his feet and vaulted into the air three staves¹⁰ high, did three somersaults in midair and landed four or five staves away. He looked at the broken staff in his hands, then at the rusty sword in Tang Baizhou’s hand and was shocked again, and also afraid. He couldn’t understand what had happened.
Tang Baizhou, on the other hand, was so delighted he broke out laughing and stuck the tip of his sword in the ground and doubled over, stamping his foot, nearly crying laughing. He pointed at the monk. “One stick became two, a long staff became a short staff, that’s so funny!”
Chan Master Flying Dragon saw he was as insane as before and knew he had run into an extraordinary person today. Without saying a word he turned and bolted.
Tang Baizhou didn’t go after him, he just laughed as he watched, indescribably happy. He seriously never imagined that a rusted up sword would turn out to be a precious blade that could cut through iron like mud. Such a thick wrought-bronze staff cut so easily into two pieces was really more than even he could believe. No wonder Sword Patriarch Pocky Gu was unbeatable and had specially dug a grave to bury the sword. Now that he thought about it, there must be some reason for all this. He thought and laughed, laughed and thought. Henceforth, his madness intensified and his obsession deepened.
And so he thought, Back then when he took his sword and went around looking for opponents, Pocky Gu fought around a thousand duels and never met his match. Nowadays, masterhands are even more rare, so where will I find an opponent? Ah! I know, didn’t it say in the manual, “It is said that all sword arts under heaven originate from Wudang?” Then why don’t I go to Wudang and find someone there to spar with? Then he thought, No, no, even though Wudang is where swordplay originated, now the most prestigious sword school is the Diao Family Village and its “Snake School” swordplay. It’s best to go to Mount Ba first and spar with Diao Renjie there.
With that he set out on the road, walking with his head down thinking to himself, If I can defeat Diao Renjie in one stroke, my name will spread everywhere. Then everyone will know of me and there will actually be no reason for me to have to journey thousands of miles finding people one by one to spar with. Instead, everyone who thinks his swordplay is top-notch will come looking for me. The best thing would be to find a convenient place, with few people around, and set up a big archway with “Gathering of All Swordsmen Under Heaven” inscribed on it, then invite all the schools and sects of the martial world to each select a master swordsman to come one by one to duel. With every duel I will set off firecrackers, so I need to prepare a bunch of firecrackers and set one off for each win. Heheh, when that time comes, everyone for miles around will hear the firecrackers set off to congratulate me and my victory. People will say, “You hear that, isn’t that Tang Baizhou defeating a sword master?” For now I’ll set the goal at a thousand, and once I’ve defeated a thousand people I’ll set up a memorial tablet in the hall for “Supreme Master of the Sword, Patriarch Pocky Gu”, then I’ll add a thousand huge firecrackers and set them off. Then I’ll add another memorial tablet for “Minor Master of the Sword, Minor Patriarch Tang Baizhou”, and then I too can cut off my legs, dig a grave, bury the sword, and wait for the third generation to come unearth it!

What we have here is a kind of Dugu Qiubai: The Early Years. In ROCH, we never see Dugu Qiubai and his exploits since he has long since passed away. But what if we did get to see Dugu Qiubai dueling people, testing out his skills? That’s pretty much what Rusty Sword is at this point (keep in mind that this entire article is discussing only the first two chapters of the novel). Tang Baizhou is eager to fight, and this time it’s the enemies who are trying to run away!

Though the other characters are basically just standard stock wuxia characters, Tang Baizhou is rendered in lively fashion. We get his inner thoughts and his humorous retorts. It’s this animated characterization of the protagonist and the minor inversions of the standard wuxia tropes already mentioned that elevate Rusty Sword (so far) above the generic wuxia novel.

Now Tang Baizhou in his wandering has come close to the cliff where his senior brother lives, so he decides to head over there and see him. Not for revenge, though. He is surprisingly sympathetic toward the person who harmed him and betrayed him, owing to the fact that they are fellow apprentices and so share a special bond.

On his way over there he runs into three people dressed in gray. The men try to avoid him, but Tang Baizhou’s not having it, and in his needling way he ends up provoking them and they draw steel:

Tang Baizhou still wanted to set up an archway and duel with the people of the martial world, so when he saw these three draw swords he was delighted. His mind raced, trying to seize on the right move to use to ward off all three of their swords at once. Meanwhile, he drew “Mystic Iron” and nodded to himself. Ooh, yeah, the first move, “Myriad Flowers Quaking”, then follow it up with “Trembling All Over”, that ought to do the trick.
The three men had no idea what he was talking about. The short one seemed to be the leader. He shouted, “You rodent, you dare to look down on us? You’re asking for it!”
He uttered a secret signal and the three swords flashed with a cold gleam as they all attacked Tang Baizhou at once from behind and in front. Tang Baizhou rejoiced and readied his first move. “Mystic Iron” suddenly shook to life and “Myriad Flowers Quaking” was unleashed, circling around him to meet the three swords. For anyone else it would have just been cling clang and there would have fallen three broken sections of blade. But who knew that these three were not so ordinary. Their swords didn’t connect with his rusty sword but recoiled and shrank back as they changed their footing and slipped away from “Myriad Flowers Quaking”.
Tang Baizhou was well pleased and followed up closely with the eight-form variations and “Mystic Iron” curled around in bloom after bloom of sword flourishes¹¹ and enveloped everything in a swath of sword.
This was his first time employing the hidden variations and their might, sure enough, was extraordinary, but curiously the three gray-clad men didn’t meet him head-on but all dodged and evaded, shrinking back with each thrust. Tang Baizhou’s eight variations only moved them back about five feet but were unable to knock down their swords.
Tang Baizhou’s exhilaration rose, and with a faint yelp he changed to the second move, “Trembling All Over”. This move was as strange as its name; he really did tremble all over like a spell of feverish chills, his whole body shivering nonstop, and “Mystic Iron” suddenly flitting about in a storm of swords¹², feints and thrusts by turns, thrusts and feints one after the other. Despite the fact that they were arrayed in three different directions, each one of them felt that the sword move was directed at him alone. As soon as they were about to advance they felt the second sword move enveloping them. How could they not be demoralized with fear?
The tall one and the short one withdrew first and were again forced back five or six spans¹³ and were already a stave away. The skinny one hesitated half a step and with a “clang” his sword broke in two, scaring him so much he broke out in a cold sweat. He dropped to the ground and hurriedly rolled away to finally get away from the sword screen¹⁴. The three were stunned, their six eyes staring like six bronze bells¹⁵ as they stood there stiff as wooden statues. Tang Baizhou threw his head back and laughed. In less than two moves he had defeated three people, how could he not be beside himself with joy, laughing his head off.
The short one regarded his two companions; fortunately, no one had been injured. He turned back to Tang Baizhou and cupped a hand over his fist. “I would like to ask Your Excellency’s great name and from which school you hail?”
Tang Baizhou had achieved his aim already and so was in no mood to chitchat. He returned the cupped-hand salute. “You flatter me, I couldn’t possibly. See you later.”
With that he ignored whether or not the three in gray were terrified or astonished and jumped up, sheathed his sword, and boisterously laughing, sped up the mountain without so much as looking back.

I like that Gao Yong gets into the head of his protagonist and allows him to think the way people think, almost stream-of-consciousness style. As he nears his senior brother’s home, Tang Baizhou’s enthusiasm is replaced by anxiety, nervousness over seeing once again the man who betrayed him all for a sword manual, someone he just recently was quite close to.

As he neared the cliff, Tang Baizhou became more and more nervous. To tell the truth, he really didn’t know what his first words to Senior Brother should be. Should he keep a stiff face? Or something more friendly? When he saw Sister-in-law, would it be really awkward? In fact, the only reason he even had the idea to go there to see the senior brother who had set him up and plotted to seize his swordplay manual was because he had already become a sword fanatic. Otherwise, if you asked him to go, he probably wouldn’t have had the courage to do so!
He walked as slow as he could, ever hoping to delay the awkward scene to come. As he walked he would smile, then glare, then grit his teeth or sigh, so torn up inside was he, yet some inexplicable force spurred him on so that he had to go and see them. Maybe just see them, maybe not even say a word.
His emotions were truly difficult to explain.

Then the story takes a different turn:

A road always ends sometime. No matter how much he put it off, after half a day he finally vaulted up the cliff……
But what he saw made him nearly leap out of his skin.
The thatched cottage was reduced to ashes, some broken posts of charred wood littered on the ground. Along the path to the cottage was a discarded blue-steel sword——the one Liang Chengyan used. There was also a trail of blood leading to the burned-out house. The mountain ridge was quiet, not the slightest sound.
Tang Baizhou stood there dumbly awhile before finally snapping out of his daze. Heavens! There had definitely been a huge disaster. People killed, house burned down, people and their affairs, grudges and kindnesses, all vanished in a pile of ash!

He discovers his senior brother and his wife and children gone, with just his senior bro’s discarded sword and a trail of blood as evidence. Then he thinks of the three men in gray he encountered on the way there and thinks they might be responsible, so he sets off back the way he came to give chase. And that’s how chapter 2 ends. He expects the Diao family might be responsible, since two of their members had shown up earlier (the first fight in chapter 1 before Tang Baizhou arrives), and he guesses that the three in gray were sent by the Diaos.

I have read a bit ahead and can say that yes there is a scrawny horse, one that turns out to be an amazingly fast stallion that was just down on its luck. This is another borrowing from Jin Yong’s ROCH, which in turn is an allusion to a famous essay by Han Yu of the Tang dynasty. But more on that another time.

Hopefully the rest of the novel is as good as these first two chapters are, though I am curious just where the novel is going to go. I guess that Tang Baizhou will not simply be looking for an opponent to defeat him a la Dugu Qiubai, and I wonder if this is really going to be just a power struggle between the Diao family and their snake-form swordplay, and Tang Baizhou and his senior brother and their Spirit Snake swordplay? I suspect that something else will be introduced to complicate things. We shall see.

But so far, Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse is looking to be a minor forgotten gem. It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised because most wuxia novels, as with any genre, are rather generic with nothing much to recommend them. Rusty Sword at least has risen above that level.

An early edition of Rusty Sword, Scrawny Horse

Notes

I’ve created a transcription of Mandarin I’m calling GZ Mandarin (GZM) to help those who don’t know Chinese learn how to pronounce it. So for the first instance of a romanized Chinese word, such as names, I include the GZM pronunciation in parentheses.

The idea is that you just read it according to the standard conventions of English phonetics. In other words, read it how it’s spelled. Sometimes a segment is encapsulated in brackets {} to show that that sound should be pronounced on its own. This is my way of showing long and short vowels, as well as certain other pronunciations that are not exactly phonetic. For example, {oh} is pronounce oh as in “oh my”, so H{oh} would be pronounced “hoe”, as in the gardening tool. {wo-} is meant to be the “wo” sound in “woman”. I can think of no other way of showing this. So later on, the name “Huo” in Chinese is rendered H{wo-}, an H sound followed by the “wo” in sound in “woman”.

This system is still in its infancy, so all feedback is welcome. Also I want to emphasize that I am not attempting any kind of methodological, systematic linguistic replacement for pinyin, the system used to write Chinese words using the Latin alphabet. I am only aiming for a more-or-less, “meh that’s close enough” approximation of the Mandarin pronunciation. I am aware that my renderings are at times not exact. My goal is to give readers who know no Chinese some confidence in pronouncing Chinese because not knowing how to pronounce names can be quite daunting to those new to Chinese. I’m just trying to make it a bit easier.
Junior brother is a translation of 師弟, which literally means “teacher-little brother”. This is a term of address for a fellow apprentice, one who studies under the same master/teacher as you. Senior brother is a translation of 師兄, which is the elder brother equivalent. Senior sister is 師姐, and Junior sister is 師妹.

Note: Seniority is determined based on who became a student first. It has nothing to do with age. So your junior brother is not necessarly younger in age than you, it simply means that he joined the school or sect or began study under the teacher after you did and so is your junior. As a personal example, I am a student of the martial arts system Feeding Crane 食鶴拳 in Taiwan. I am older than some of my senior brothers, who joined years before I did. Likewise, there is a man in his 70s who is still the junior brother of many of the students because he joined later.

Also note that brother/sister here does not indicate a blood relationship; it’s just how your classmates are addressed. Therefore, to distinguish them, I think senior/junior brother/sister should be used for fellow disciples, while elder/older and young(er)/litte brother/sister should be used for blood relatives.

Now in Feeding Crane, the most senior student is called 大師兄, which literally means “big teacher-elder brother”. Or big senior brother. I also render this as First Brother, because the first four students by rank are also known by number. So the second to join is 二師兄 (second senior brother), which I often render as Second brother. I recommend in such cases to write the full translation “Second Senior Brother” on the first use of the term in order to make the relationship clear, then shorten to Second Brother or Second Bro if you prefer.
The dantian (dahn-tyen, 丹田). The area a couple inches below the navel. In wuxia novel it’s a concentration point for one’s qi 氣. The implication here is that it is increasing his qi potency, thereby increasing his strength. It’s called the “cinnabar field” because in Daoist and pre-Daoist alchemical practice, cinnabar was an important ingredient and became a synechdoche for elixirs in general. So this is the “field” where the elixir of transcendence is cultivated. According to Daoist belief, there are three cinnabar fields in the body: in the brain, the heart, and just below the navel. It is this last “lower” cinnabar field that is referred to in wuxia novels and other martial arts texts.
Sometimes translated as “heavy iron sword” or “black sword”. Because 玄, which I have translated here as “mystic”, can mean black as well as mysterious. Indeed, Jin Yong describes the sword Yang Guo finds as black with a red sheen, the exact qualities of 玄 as a color word. But in Rusty Sword, the Mystic Iron Sword is not described as black, so I have rendered it here “mystic” because of its mysterious properties: magnetism, which is not so mysterious, but also its ability to cut through damn-near anything despite seemingly having no cutting edge. Dugu Qiubai’s sword also had no cutting edge, though I don’t believe it was described in ROCH as magnetic.
《台灣武俠小說發展史》，台北：遠流出版社，2005年, p. 553.
《台灣武俠小說發展史》，台北：遠流出版社，2005年, p. 206.
This is a slight variation from a famous passage from the Analects of Confucius, ch.17.
What I have translated as “His Holiness” is really the monk likening himself to Buddha. So Tang Baizhou is essentially saying the Buddhis is busy, but you’re just a monk, so you’re not. In other words, he’s no Buddha.
BL-52, in the Bladder Meridian according traditional Chinese medicine. It’s off just to the side of the spine, around where your kidney is.
A stave, zhang 丈, is a unit of measure roughly equal to 3 1/3 meters. Also equal to 10 尺 (spans, often translated as “foot”). That’s a rather absurdly high jump. The graph is cognate with 杖 (staff, stave, rod), which is why I transate it as “stave”. It’s also translated as stave in Paul W. Kroll’s A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese.
Here the author describes something called “sword flowers” 劍花, which I have rendered “sword flourishes”. Basically, the sword is dancing around darting this way and that, weaving around so that if you were to trace the point of the blade’s movement, it would resemble something like the petals of a flower in its motion, kinda like the lines of a spirograph. Serendipitously, the word “flourish” comes from Latin florere, to bloom, so it’s kinda the perfect word to use here for the way he’s brandishing his sword. “Sword flowers” is a common expression in wuxia novels. The author wrote “petal after petal”, meaning he is waving his sword around over and over, and I have rendered it here “bloom after bloom”.
I also used “swath of sword” for 劍影 which is usually translated sword “shadow”. But of course “shadow” would make no sense here. It refers to the afterimage, the blur of the sword swishing by quickly. I used “swath” instead of blur or afterimage because it is described as a “sheet” 片 of sword blur.
劍雨, literally “sword rain”. Just a sword thrusting in and out rapidly as if each strike is a pelt of rain.
Span, 尺. Usually translated as “foot”, the actual dimensions varied in different periods. Roughly about 9.5 inches. I render it here as “span” because it originally referred to the span of a person’s outstretched hand, i.e. from thumb to little finger.
Sword screen, 劍幕. Translated literally. It means the sword was coming so fast that it seemed to be a solid sheet enveloping him. Like sword flower and sword rain, sword screen (or sometimes net) is a common description in wuxia novels.
A bell is large and round at its bottom. So they were staring wide-eyed, eyes big and round like the mouth of a bell. Another common description.