This story, “Nie Yinniang”, is the first thing I ever translated some 9 years ago or so. It’s been revised several times since then. Originally I had posted this elsewhere; now I am posting it here on my site. Back then, I actually translated the complete Legends of Swordsmen 劍俠傳, which is a collection of thirty-three Tang & Song dynasty chuanqi stories, of which this story is one of them, but to date have never completed revising it for publication. I need to get on that @_@
Nie Yinniang
Nie Yinniang was the daughter of Nie Feng, general-in-chief of Weibo during the Zhenyuan reign period (785-805 CE) of the Tang dynasty. When she was just ten years old, a Buddhist nun came by Feng’s place to beg for food. The nun saw Yinniang and was delighted. She said, “Sir, I beg you to let me take this girl away and teach her.” Feng was furious and rebuked the nun. The nun said, “Even if you kept her in an iron chest, I would still take her away.” That night, sure enough, Yinniang disappeared. Feng was panic-stricken, and ordered his men to search for her, but there was no trace of her. Every time father and mother thought of their daughter, they could only face each other and weep.
Five years later the nun escorted Yinniang back home. She told Feng, “My teaching is complete, you can have her back.” Then the nun was suddenly gone. The whole family was overjoyed. They asked her what she had studied. Yinniang said, “At first we just studied the sutras and intoned mantras. That was it.” Feng didn’t believe her, so he sincerely questioned her further. Yinniang said, “I’m afraid if I tell you the truth you won’t believe me.” Feng said, “Just tell us the truth.”
Yinniang said, “When I was first taken by the nun, we traveled I don’t know how many li (about 1/3 mile). At dawn, we came upon a big, spacious stone cave. A dozen or so steps inside it was quiet, and no one lived there. There were many gibbons and monkeys, and pine trees and vines grew in abundance. There were already two girls there, each of them ten years old. They were both smart and beautiful, and they didn’t eat. They could flit from cliff to cliff as if they were flying, and they climbed trees as nimble and quick as gibbons, all without missing a step.
“The nun gave me a pill and ordered me to carry a precious sword at all times. The sword was perhaps two feet long, and so sharp that if you blew a hair across the edge, the hair would be sliced cleanly in two. I was made to clamber around after the two girls, and gradually I felt that my body was as light as the wind. A year later, when stabbing at gibbons and monkeys, in a hundred attempts I didn’t miss once. Later, I killed tigers and leopards. With each one I cut off its head before returning.
“Three years later I could fly, and when attacking eagles and falcons, I pierced them through the center every time. My blade was gradually reduced to five inches, so that the birds couldn’t detect it coming.
“In the fourth year, the two girls were left to guard the cave, and I was taken to a city, I don’t know which one. She pointed at a person and enumerated his misdeeds, and said, ‘Cut off his head and bring it to me without being seen. Steel your courage and it will be as easy as killing a bird.’ She gave me a ram’s horn dagger measuring three inches wide. I succeeded in killing that person in broad daylight in the city without anyone seeing me. I put the head in a bag and returned to my master’s lodgings, where I used a drug to dissolve the head into water.
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