This is the first entry in my first readthrough series. Hopefully it’s not too rough. I’m still trying to figure out how to write up one of these, how much detail to put in, how to write commentary, etc. I’ll do my best. I have not read ahead in the novel at the time of writing so as to keep my reactions spoiler-free.
Soaring Dragon of the Hinterlands《八荒飛龍記》was written by Wolong Sheng 臥龍生 and published in 1971. It can be considered one of his later works in that it features a lot of shorter paragraphs and a lot of dialogue, which is characteristic of his later work. Gu Long had just become really popular and wuxia authors began to copy his style, which was short paragraphs and a lot of dialogue. You could say the meta had changed. Wolong Sheng was good friends with Gu Long and his style changed seemingly in an attempt to play to the trend as well.
While he was writing this novel, Wolong Sheng was also writing Legendary Heroes of China《神州豪俠傳》, Flying Bell《飛鈴》, and I think one other novel all at the same time, serialized in different newspapers. Soaring Dragon is one of his shorter novels. The copy I have is in two volumes and a total of 443 pages, 17 chapters. The first three chapters are covered in this first part of our readthrough.
My goal with these readthroughs is to provide some examples of wuxia novels for those who are interested in the genre but can’t read Chinese. After all, there are many wuxia novels out there and most will never be translated into English. At least with plot summaries one can get an idea for the structure, tropes, and various writing styles of wuxia novels.
Chapter 1: Chivalry Manor
The master of Chivalry Manor, Chen Daolong, leaves on a trip. Another guy from the Mole Sect is going to steal a precious sabre and iron plaque conferred on the owner of the manor by the empeor from the manor when he is stopped by a man in black and taken to a deserted field and offered twice the amount of money (originally offered 500,000 taels) to capture the son of the manor, Young Master Chen, and bring him back to the deserted field so the man in black can look at him, then take him back to his home. The man in black forces the Mole Sect member, Shi Guangjing, to swallow a poison pill so he will not run away with the 500,000 taels the man in black gave him in advance.
The next day Shi Guangjing shows up with the kid, and to his surprise learns that the pill he was forced to swallow was not poison but meant to increase his vitality. The man in black takes the child, cuddles him a bit, and kisses him, hands over the four pearls as the last of the payment, and hands the child back and tells Shi Guangjing to hurry up and take him back; if he waits too long he won’t be able to get out of Chivalry Manor.
The next morning Young Master Chen sleeps longer than usual, alarming his maids. His mother, Madame Chen comes in and discovers two red lines running from his shoulder, approaching his face. A voice from outside says once the lines connect on his face he will be beyond saving. Madame Chen has the maids bring the doctor (whose voice that was) into the main hall along with the four disciples.
The senior disciple, Ge Yuanhong, along with the others, is shocked to learn the child is sick. He says they don’t need that quack doctor, but the doctor, in black, seems to know who he is and much about Chivalry Manor. He asks to be shown the child so he can cure him. The child is brought in and the doctor gives him a white pill and the red lines disappear.
But he says it’s not enough medicine; the child needs three pills or else the red lines will come back. He has the others leave so he can negotiate with Madame Chen.
The doctor takes off a human-skin mask to reveal himself as Li Shaoqing, a man who once courted Madame Chen years ago. But because he hung out with robbers and committed all sorts of crimes, it threatened to stain Madame Chen’s family reputation, so she didn’t marry him and married Chen Daolong instead. Li Shaoqing is here for revenge. He says he wants Madame Chen to come with him so that Chen Daolong can feel what it’s like to have his woman stolen from him.
They are to go to a far-away spot to retrieve the other pills to save the child, but Li Shaoqing insists Madame Chen must come with him alone. She agrees and goes and changes into all black, tight-fitting clothes, and heads out before him, saying if she doesn’t lead the way then he will likely not be able to make it out of Chivalry Manor.
Chapter 2: Sacrifice to Save a Child
Ge Yuanhong tries to stop them from leaving, but Madame Chen makes it clear that he is to let them leave. She has his go get two horses for them. She tells Ge Yuanhong that there is a letter for Chen Daolong in her wardrobe, should she not return.
Madame Chen follows Li Shaoqing on horseback a hundred miles away to a deserted graveyard. He uses his tiger shaker (虎撐, a metal torus with balls inside that clack around when you shake it; they were used by traveling medicine doctors to attract the attention of potential customers) to kill both of the horses, hitting them both in the head with it. Then he unsaddles them, pitches the saddles away and drags the horses among the grave mounds where scavengers will soon eat them. He then leads Madame Chen into a bamboo grove and to a newly-constructed stone brick house.
All along they are negotiating. Madame Chen doesn’t trust Li Shaoqing. What Li Shaoqing wants is to spend the night with her and make Chen Daolong a cuckold. Only then will he give Madame Chen the antidote to save her son.
Madame Chen wrestles with this for a while, not wanting to destroy her purity, but her motherly love wins out and she agrees. But she still does not trust Li Shaoqing. She wants to see the antidote and confirm it really is an antidote. She asks him to bring in a dish of water so she can see her reflection so she can administer the poison to herself and then the antidote to make sure it works.
Li Shaoqing keeps the poison and the antidote in the same jade bottle. They look the same, and there are three poison pills for every one antidote pill. This is for his own security. The only difference between the pills is the antidote pills have a tiny hole punctured in them.
Madame Chen takes four pills and swallows one randomly. Li Shaoqing informs her it was poison. She waits until she starts feeling the effects of the poison and sees her complexion darken like her son’s did before, then she takes the antidote. It works and she is immediately cured.
Satisfied, she agrees to sleep with Li Shaoqing, and she goes and removes her clothes and sets them aside and leaves her Butterfly Darts and dagger next to the pillow on the bed. Li Shaoqing hides her clothes, then asks her about the weapons she still has next to her. He’s afraid she might change her mind and attack him. She throws the butterfly darts into the nearby wall and throws the dagger into the door, closing it.
Finally, Li Shaoqing removes his clothes and climbs into bed.
The next morning he is gone and there is a letter from him:
Ten years of longing, I’ve gone crazy for you. Is it love or is it hate? A night of passion in a little cottage deep in the woods… Was it a debt or a sin?
Madame Chen puts on her clothes and goes back home. Before she left she had told the disciples to gather all the famous doctors so they could work on finding a cure for her son, in case she didn’t return within three days. But the doctors were stumped. But she had the antidote already so she had the doctors sent away. She gave the antidote to Young Master Chen and he recovered fully, but herself and the boy never came out of their rooms for the rest of the month after that.
Ge Yuanhong was worried that he couldn’t find any clues as to how the child was poisoned, or how the perpetrator had infiltrated their home without being discovered. He was afraid of having nothing to say to Chen Daolong when the latter came back home in a few days. He tells another disciple, Tan Jiaqi, about this, and the latter goes to ask Qiulan, the maid, about the boy’s condition.
Chapter 3: Clouds of Doubt
Ge Yuanhong has Qiulan, the maid, come out, and he and the other three disciples, Tan Jiaqi, Lu Xiaoluo, and Guo Wenzhang ask her what happens and she says Madame Chen and the boy had stayed together in her room the whole time, neither of them coming out. Qiulan said she felt something was troubling Madame Chen because she heard her crying in her room, even though no one else was in there except for the boy.
The disciples double their guarding efforts, personally leading the night patrols in two groups to make things more secure. They still don’t know how someone got in to poison Young Master Chen, and they don’t see how the medicine doctor could have done it, suggesting it was someone else who poisoned the child.
Chen Daolong returns and learns of what happened from Ge Yuanhong. He goes to visit his wife. He sees the child has been practicing writing a lot at her dresser. He sends the boy with the wet nurse to go play and asks his wife what happened. He laments that his long time in the jianghu has implicated his family, but she says it had nothing to do with him. Chen Daolong tells her he has decided to give up the manor and find a remote place for them to lie low and enjoy their lives in peace.
Madame Chen says it is already too late for that.
She won’t tell him what happened, but says she wants to go visit her parents’ graves.
Madame Chen said sadly, “I want to visit my parents’ graves to make a vow. I don’t want you to hear it.”
Chen Daolong is ok with that. As long as his eife and child are ok, he’s happy. He goes out to play with his child as his wife suggested. Young Master Chen is in the courtyard playing with the other disciples. Chen Daolong asks Ge Yuanhong, who is looking off into the distance in a daze, what he is thinking about.
Ge Yuanhong doesn’t want to say because he knows it will anger his master, but under pressure, he is force to confide that he feels there is a planted agent inside the manor. The servants were all questioned and they seem innocent. Ge Yuanhong suggests that Madame Chen knows the medicine doctor.
Chen Daolong gets mad and tells him not to speak of this again to anyone, or else Ge Yuanhong will be forced out of the manor, meaning the teacher-student relationship will be severed. Ge Yuanhong apologizes and Chen Daolong tells him that he and the other disciples should act like everything is fine, and that he himself would see into the matter.
Chen Daolong goes into the main hall and sees food and drink prepared. Madame Chen had said before he went outside that she was going to the kitchen to prepare some of his favorite dishes. She is not in the main hall though. Chen Daolong puts down the child he’s been carrying and says he will go get Madame Chen so they can all eat together.
The chapter ends with the following:
The lights were on in the room and the door was unlatched.
Chen Daolong pushed the door open and entered. A red candle was lit on a wood table, more than half of it already melted down. Clearly, it had been burning for a long time.
He coughed lightly and looked around. Everything was in its place, the bed made, but there was no sign of Madame Chen.
He looked up and saw the sword that always hung on the wall was gone.
He felt something was wrong and the rush of blood to his head made him black out for a second and he almost fainted, but he quickly circulated his qi and regained his composure. He scanned the room and saw a letter on the dresser, red characters on white paper. The sight of it frightened him.
The characters were written in blood. Chen Daolong extended his trembling hand and took the letter written in blood. On the envelope it read:
A blood letter to my husband. Don’t worry about your wife, but I must kill the villain with my own hands and cleanse this defiled body in a bath of blood. Our love has always been as deep as the sea. Take pity on the loving mothers of this world. My motherliness has betrayed your kindness. I will repay you with gratitude in the next life.
Chen Daolong read it over and over and was at once his blood was boiling. Even a hero is shaken at times, as two lines of tears rolled down his cheeks. He had been through many difficulties and intense conflicts, so that even in times of extreme grief he still maintained a measure of calm. He opened the letter.
Inside was a letter written in Madame Chen’s hand. In it she narrated everything that had happened in great detail. It was a letter she had written days ago.
The characters were written nice and proper, making it evident that Madame Chen was already determined to kill the enemy and die for her husband. That was why she was able to write in such a steady hand. Every stroke was written perfectly. In the calm following the height of her grief, she could only wait for Chen Daolong’ return.
He slowly turned around and looked at the embroidered bed curtain and heaved a deep sigh. He said to himself, “Yuqin, you sacrificed yourself to save your son, that shows your great motherly love. As your husband and as a man, how could I not understand you? You should have talked to me about killing him with your own hands, why did you have to write a letter in blood and leave without saying goodbye?”
Commentary
Wolong Sheng is great at establishing and maintaining a sense of mystery throughout a novel. In the first three chapters of this novel we have a few mysteries. First, is who is the man in black? Then, why does he want the child, and not only that, but why does he only want to view the child and then send him back? Why spend so much money just to get a look at the child?
Then we have the relationship between Li Shaoqing and Madame Chen. I wonder if it is really as simple as mere jealousy? He waited ten years and only now has the opportunity to get his revenge? Seems there must be something else to this. I haven’t read ahead as I write this, so we will see, but it’s interesting that we are three chapters into the novel (total of 17 chapters), and 72 pages in, and there has not been a single fight scene. And yet, the story is compelling and entertaining because of these little mysteries, each one resolved only for the reader to be presented with a new one.
At the end of chapter three we have Madame Chen going off on her own, supposedly with the sword that always hung on the wall, to go kill Li Shaoqing in revenge. It seems that she is prepared to die at the end of this as well, to clear her good name. That’s a common trope in Chinese literature, not just wuxia, when a woman has been defiled or besmirched in some way. Committing suicide is a way to cleanse oneself and show the world that your heart remained pure the whole time. I wonder if she plans to kill herself after getting revenge or if she just expects to die in the attempt?
As for what happened between Li Shaoqing and Madame Chen ten years ago, we get this:
Li Shaoqing said, “You’re greedy for wealth and reputation. You’re a fickle, loose woman…”
“Shut up,” Madame Chen fumed. “Back then you were leading a vagabond’s life, roaming around the jianghu and consorting with bandits. My father wanted to make friends with your father and then welcome you into my family, and I too once harbored such a desire, hoping you would change your ways and do good. But who knew that a wicked nature is hard to change. You committed several crimes and nearly implicated my father. Think about it, when did we every treat you poorly?”
Li Shaoqing gave a thin smile. “Madame Chen, I don’t have time to argue with you. Right now the situation is quite clear. Do you want to save your son or not?”
Madame Chen of course does want to save her son, and she is disgusted with how wicked Li Shaoqing has become. When they get to the stone cottage, a young man opens the door to greet them. Li Shaoqing kills him at once.
Madame Chen looked at the body of the young man. “Why did you kill him?”
Li Shaoqing said, “Mm! I had to kill him to keep the secret. He coveted my handsome 100 taels of gold reward, so I had him stay here and guard the house. No need to pity the killing of people like that.”
Madame Chen looked at the body and sighed sadly. “Just think of his father and mother, leaning against the door, waiting for their beloved son to return.”
Li Shaoqing laughed. “Greed is deadly. If he hadn’t coveted that 100 taels of gold reward, how could he had courted such a fatal disaster?”
“All these years roaming the jianghu have truly made you more and more vicious,” Madame Chen said.
Li Shaoqing doesn’t at all act like a jilted lover who is still in love. He is cold and vicious toward her and only speaks of revenge. It’s this drama between the characters that has sustained the novel so far. Wolong Sheng is good at describing emotions as well. After Madame Chen gives in and lets Li Shaoqing have his way with her (she lays down naked on the bed and lets him rape her, though this part is not described in the novel), she wakes up from fainting out of grief to find Li Shaoqing gone. All she can do is get dressed and go back home. But she is forever changed.
Even though not even a day had passed, the changes had been too great as far as Madame Chen was concerned. She felt like dozens of years had passed; the world and everything in it seemed remote to her.
There is no sorrow greater than a withered heart. Madame Chen’s heart had withered and died. All that remained alive was her body.
Death circled around her mind. She felt she had shamed her husband. Only death could wash away her shame and remorse.
But her motherly love kept her alive.
She continues in this manner once she gets home, shutting herself up in her room with her son and not allowing any visitors as she waits for her husband to come home. When Chao Daolong comes home, he finds out what is going on, but at first he only is told that his son was poisoned, but that Madame Chen already obtained the antidote and cured him. Chen Daolong doesn’t seem to understand how serious the situation as he brags to his disciples about his wife:
The mention of his virtuous, intelligent wife brought a smile to Chen Daolong’s face. “Actually, your Madame’s martial arts is not inferior to my own, especially her family’s Butterfly Darts; that skill is without peer among the jianghu. It’s just that she is quite modest and doesn’t like to show off…”
But as he learns more he notices the great change that has occurred at home and how different his wife is:
Chen Daolong’s home, which was normally brimming with happiness, had suddenly been invaded by a heavy sadness, though he could not tell what exactly the problem was.
When he finally talks to his wife and realizes she is still troubled, Chen Daolong thinks he has things figured out. They will just quit the jianghu and go live a life of seclusion.
Chen Daolong sighed. “All the cvonflicts and grudges I’ve incurred among the jianghu has made you and the child suffer. The thought of that is really troubling to me.”
Madame Chen said, “This grudge has nothing to do with you. You shouldn’t blame yourself for this. The child is already cured.”
“You see! The child is cured, yet something is still bothering you. Jianghu troubles have piled up layer on layer without end these past few years. I’m deeply weary of it myself. Let’s have a real talk about it. I’m prepared to give up the fame and position of Chivalrous Xia and find a place deep in the mountains, far away from people. We’ll conceal our names and not leave home anymore and instruct the boy in the classics, and spend our years in carefree leisure.”
Madame Chen smiled wryly. “Once part of the jianghu, always part of the jianghu. I fear it’s too late.”
He doesn’t yet know just what Madame Chen has gone through. He won’t learn that until he reads her letter at the end of the third chapter. She tries to act like things are okay and there is foreshadowing in her suggestion that he spend more time with his son:
Madame Chen said sadly, “Go see your child! This whole month you’ve been gone the child has asked me when is Dad coming back.”
Chen Daolong sighed. “Yuqin, all these years the martial fraternity has praised me and my prestige and fame has risen daily, and when I put it like that it sounds like admiration. Actually, I feel I have wronged you. Tall trees attract the wind. It’s fallen on you and kept you in a state of anxiety and caused you much suffering.”
Madame Chen held back the pain in her heart that felt like a venomous snakebite and forced herself to smile. “Go play with your child! You’ve not been home much these past few years. You rarely spend time with your son. In the future you must make more time to spend with him…”
The third chapter ends with Chen Daolong finding her gone and reading the letter saying she has gone to kill Li Shaoqing herself. She is also implying that she will not return alive. Is it because she plans to kill herself after killing Li Shaoqing? Or does she expect to be killed in the process of getting her revenge? I think she does not plan to remain alive no matter what because she will feel the only way to clear her name after being raped would be to commit suicide. But we will see.
I’m not sure where the story goes from here. It’s actually not clear yet who the main character is. Is it Madame Chen? Her husband? Or the senior disciple, Ge Yuanhong. He’s the only one of the four disciples who has been described in detail.
The only thing I dislike about the novel so far was the human skin disguise Li Shaoqing uses to conceal his identity. The Art of Disguise is a common trope in wuxia, but I feel it’s cheap and too easy and also unrealistic. A disguise that convincing could not simply be taken on and off so quickly. But it’s a minor nitpick. Overall the novel so far has avoided cliché. There have been no fight scenes and character drama has carried the story, and quite well so far. We’ll see how the next few chapters go.
