Today we reach the finale of Huang Ying’s 1974 wuxia novel/novella, The Silver Sword Grudge. This is the final installment. Sometime in the next few days I will combine all these parts and put them together in full chapters and post them on a page dedicated to the novel similarly to other novel translations on this site.

This is the first of 29 stories in the Legend of Shen Shengyi series. The next one in line is called《十三殺手》(The Thirteen Assassins). I don’t currently have any plans to translate it. But that might change if people want it. I don’t know if people will liked The Silver Sword Grudge or not. Let me know in the comments!

EDIT: I’ve got the novel page up if you want to read the full chapters all at once instead of broken into multiple installments: https://wuxiawanderings.com/the-silver-sword-grudge/

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Have you ever heard Huang E’s Windblown Plum Blossoms, Gu Gu’s Venting Inner Feelings, Zhu Tingyu’s The Devotee, Yao Mu’an’s New Water Command?

Have you felt the pent-up bitterness of them, how melancholy and bleak they are!

Do you know how melancholy and bleak , how bitter Huo Qiu’e felt when playing those tunes?

If you don’t know, if you haven’t felt it, if you haven’t heard them, then you might as well take note of this.

It’s not Windblown Plum Blossoms or Venting Inner Feelings.

Nor is it The Devotee or New Water Command. It’s Water Immortal, Black Liu the Fifth’s Water Immortal:

Hate piling up, piling up hate, continuous hate, filling the lady’s boudoir of an evening.

Woe building up, building up woe, getting more and more intense, filling a jade-green cup.

Lazy to dress up, dressing up lazily, languidly lighting the incense burner.

Teardrops spilling, spilling teardrops, teardrops flowing and flowing nonstop.

Feeling unwell, unwell feeling, this sickly state is my mood.

Flowers with me, I with the flowers, flowers even more wan and withered.

Moon faces me, I face the moon, the moon even more bashful.

Complaining to Heaven, with Heaven complaining, Heaven too looks sad…

With a tinkle the zither stopped playing and the lady’s bedchamber became more silent, her figure more forlorn.

Huo Qiu’e stood up absently and moved to the roseleaf raspberry stand under the flowering crabapple blossoms.

The crabapple blossoms were in full bloom. Another drizzling rain tomorrow and they would all turn to rouge tears.

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Here is the second part of Chapter 2 of The Silver Sword Grudge by Huang Ying. Sorry about the poetry parts. I didn’t really know what it was saying at times and to be honest didn’t want to take the time figuring it out in detail. Trying to get this translation done soon. So that part could be better, sorry!

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Liu Zhanqin opened his mouth in sudden realization.

“There’s a saying that skill is born from experience, and this experience is real-world experience, not theory or experience from working in isolation.”

Liu Zhanqin just nodded.

“Experience can’t be passed on to others, one of life’s sad realities, and no one can gain experience through others’ hard work. He must do the work himself.”

“I know.”

“It’s not too late. After all, you’re still young.”

“But now it is too late.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Pretty soon I have to go kill someone, a very skilled someone!”

“Oh?”

“For you I don’t know whether you will be grateful or resentful. If it wasn’t for your self-assurance making things bode ill for me then at least I would have a bit of will to fight left, but now I don’t even have that.”

“Oh…”

“No need to apologize. In any case you made me recognize something, that a person must understand oneself thoroughly. And to understand oneself thoroughly one must personally face up to the test.”

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Today’s update begins the second chapter of The Silver Sword Grudge by Huang Ying. See previous posts for the earlier parts. This is the final chapter of this short work, but it’s a bit longer than the first chapter. Probably three or four posts before it’s finished. On my side I split the chapter into 11 parts to make it more manageable to work with. Today’s post is the first 3 of those parts.

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Chapter 2

Upstairs an Aggrieved Wife,
A Killer Looses a Thunderclap

Yu Qian wasn’t disappointed.

It was just as Sun Yu had said, Xiang Zulou was waiting at the bridge.

A dead man naturally isn’t going to leave.

Xiang Zulou’s eyes were wide open, the spitting image of the eyes of a dead fish, staring straight ahead unchanging without any emotion.

A dead man’s eyes naturally wouldn’t change or have feeling.

Yu Qian and Cui Qun unconsciously knelt down to the left and right and sat Xiang Zulou up.

They didn’t speak.

What would they say?

And they had no tears.

A real man was said to shed blood not tears.

They were completely steeped in the pale yellow lanternlight, but their faces were still unmistakably pale, even more so than a dead man’s face.

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Here is the third and final part of the first chapter of The Silver Sword Grudge. There’s only one more chapter left in this short novel (or novella). It’s just a bit longer than this chapter.

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Shu Mei was silent for some time, then suddenly sighed. “So why hasn’t your sword struck yet?”

“When facing me people always try to survive, no one tries to die, except you. Facing someone who’s talking and laughing like it’s nothing, helpless waiting to be executed, has extinguished all my murderous intent.”

“So then what are you going to do?”

“Wait, wait till your will collapses, wait till my murderous intent is reignited.”

“And if it doesn’t happen?”

“I haven’t thought that far yet…”

“Actually, you needn’t worry…” Shu Mei laughed sadly and suddenly let out a high-pitched cry!

Such an alarming sharp cry! Sun Yu’s silver sword involuntarily stabbed! The cry was cut off, the sword, clogging up her throat!

The muscles of Shu Mei’s face spasmed, but she was still smiling, a contented smile, so dreary.

Sun Yu was stunned. Gradually his hand holding the sword shivered, and then his body. Although he was masked, the change in his expression indiscernible, but his exposed eyes revealed his complex inner turmoil. He didn’t know if it was pity, admiration, or surprise.

The shivering sword came out of Shu Mei’s throat.

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Here is part 2 of Chapter 1 of Huang Ying’s The Silver Sword Grudge. There will be one more installment for the first chapter before moving on to the final chapter.

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A lamp, a silver lamp, a rich and powerful lamp.

The person next to the lamp was like the moon, shining white wrist like frost and snow.

The person was no more than twenty, quite young. Very pretty, skin really like frost, like snow. She picked up a jade spoon with her right hand, fiddled with the incense in her King Wen cauldron burner, cheek resting lightly in her left hand, her upper body leaning against the bird-carved table, barely sitting.

Lamplight shone from the side, casting a faint silhouette of her face and making her even prettier.

Outside the curtain, rain gurgled, spring coming to an end. But the spring in her eyes was still flourishing.

Wind suddenly gusted in through the window and blow over the lamp.

The lamplight flickered, wisps of smoke wafting up from the King Wen cauldron wavered.

The wisps of smoke suddenly curled around the lamplight and had yet to waft before her when she wrinkled her nose in disgust and she blew at it.

The wisps of smoke dispersed, drifting out far away but quickly coalesced again and were borne back on the wind.

Her nose therefore scrunched up more, she shook her head but didn’t blow at it again, only sighed. “The spring breeze…”

Only two words out and a “person” followed up with, “The spring breeze is a stranger, why have you entered my gauze curtain?”

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