Xiao Se 蕭瑟, real name Wu Ming 武鳴 is/was a wuxia author in Taiwan during the 1960s. His first novel was《落星追魂》(Falling Star Soulseeker) in 1963, and he became well known with his other 1963 novel,《碧眼金鵬》(Blue-eyed Golden Peng-bird). He ghostwrote several times for Zhuge Qingyun and Wolong Sheng. His writing style has been described as easy and smooth.1 In 2003, Xiao Se ended his 30-year retirement and published a new wuxia novel,《霸王神槍》(The Divine Spear of the Hegemon King). From June 2008 to June 2009, he published his first sword transcendent 劍仙 (xianxia 仙俠) novel,《仙劍神刀》(Transcendent Sword, Divine Sabre). At the end of this ten-volume light novel, Xiao Se wrote an afterword in which he talked about about the sword transcendent genre and its relation to wuxia and western fantasy. I have translated that afterword in full below:
I don’t know when it was that someone said, “Wuxia novels are fairy tales for adults”. It’s often quoted by others who believe the words have merit. But actually it’s not accurate, only half right. Because fairy tales at the very least have to possess mysteriousness, readability, and interest. For example, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and many other famous works too numerous to mention.
However, wuxia novels possess readability and are interesting; they only lack a sense of the mysterious, so they can’t be considered fairy tales, the same way a detective novel that lacks suspense can’t be called a detective novel. Perhaps the person who originally called wuxia novels fairy tales for adults saw that wuxia novels contain major sects, various kinds of martial arts, and many strange and eccentric characters and felt they were unfathomable and thought they were mysterious and so included them as fairy tales and stated they were fairy tales for adults. But he was wrong. Fairy tales are forever removed from reality; they can’t be found in reality, while everything in wuxia novels can be found in real life, such as the Eighteen Martial Arts, the Eighteen Weapons, and the major martial arts schools, etc.
The lightness skill, qigong, fist techniques, sabre arts, and swordplay in wuxia novels might be embellished or exaggerated, but it’s all to increase the story’s readability and is a must. It’s not just made up out of thin air. The real world really does have these martial arts, otherwise Shaolin’s martial arts would not have been passed down until the present day; they can be see in every part of the world, and Wudang’s founder Zhang Sanfeng’s Taijiquan is seen everywhere as well. If you don’t believe it, just get up in the morning and go to the park or the exercise yard, and you will see a lot of people slowly practicing the moves; that’s taijiquan.
The settings described in wuxia fiction, like mountains, rivers, marshes, cities and towns, all exist in the real world, and because wuxia fiction is the most unique of all fiction, you can see it in China, but you can’t find it anywhere in western literature. Even if you want mention France’s literary giant, Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, it doesn’t count as wuxia fiction. So this fiction that originates from China takes the history and geography of the Divine Land2 as its setting to become the most distinctive kind of fiction, wherein the jianghu, the greenwood, gangs and sects, and martial arts are all written about, all based on reality. The jianghu conflicts and love and hate depicted are inseparable from the parameters of “evil can never win over good” or “good has its reward and evil has its recompense”, often using foundations of traditional culture like loyalty, moral integrity, and righteousness to narrate all kinds of tense, exciting stories. Of course romance is an essential element, otherwise how could it be readable?
If you separate all the world’s fiction into genres, then without a doubt, wuxia fiction is the most unique and the most difficult to write, followed by spy fiction and detective fiction, and the easiest to write is romance fiction. I had a friend who used the pen name “Ever-laughing Codger” to write wuxia fiction, but he didn’t last long. We went out drinking and he heaved a long sigh and exclaimed that wuxia fiction was difficult to write, so he gathered a bunch of different materials and resources and switched to writing historical fiction and ended up becoming a famous author. This “codger” went by the pen name “Gao Yang” and has long since passed away.
Back then I had an old friend who when drunk would rain curses about those self-styled literary giant authors who looked down on wuxia fiction as worthless entertainment, and so he read a lot of western and eastern literature and incorporated their writing techniques into his wuxia novels, especially the suspense of detective novels, and in the end became a famous author. It’s just a shame that he became addicted to drinking and fell into melancholy and only lived to the age of 48 before passing away early. At the time of his death he had four different kinds of cancer spread throughout his body, and he coughed up blood and died. That good friend was Mr. Xiong, who wrote under the pen name Gu Long. Back then we ate and drank a lot, gambled together. We were devoted friends. But we had different values, plus his fame was growing to the point he was almost arrogant, and we gradually drifted apart and had no more contact with each other. At his public memorial service, a good friend of mine, director Chang Peng-i invited me to come offer my condolences. When I got there I saw 48 bottles of imported liquor had been placed in his casket, contrasted with his deceased visage made me even more choked up. From then on I stopped drinking alcohol. That was over twenty years ago, and I have not had more than a dozen drinks in all that time.
Why do I mention Gu Long right now? It’s not to namedrop him to boost myself, it’s just that as I’m writing this short piece I thought of all the discussions we had in the past, when wuxia fiction had already seemed to have fallen into a formulaic pattern, so maybe I should try to write a sword transcendent novel? At that time, he used a certain Hong Kong writer who wrote those kinds of novels that the time as an example, saying that sword transcendent novels were even more difficult to write than wuxia. Especially since Huanzhu Louzhu, who wrote before, and whom no one had been able to surpass. So he advised me not to overstep my bounds and continue writing wuxia. Later on that Hong Kong writer gave up writing sword transcendent novels as well and switched to writing speculative fiction about aliens coming to earth, which was really well-received. That person was also Gu Long’s good friend. At the memorial service, he took one of the bottles from the casket and took a swig from it and wished Gu Long a good journey. This guy’s heroic spirit reached the clouds, very admirable.
Because it was difficult to take wuxia fiction in a new direction, it didn’t thrive for a long time, but in the past decade or so things have been gradually turning around. The opening of China’s market had enabled more and more readers to become acquainted with this unique kind of book. But that doesn’t mean that wuxia fiction is fairy tales for adults, because this fiction lacks the fairy tale’s “mysteriousness”. If forced, one can say that sword transcendent fiction is fairy tales for adults.
Sword transcendent fiction is built on top of wuxia fiction and uses the philosophies of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as its support pillars. Aside from expounding and propagating Confucian loyalty, filial piety, humaneness, and righteousness, it also incorporates Daoist immortality and nonaction self-abidance, and Buddhism’s past lives, reincarnation, and karmic retribution as its main points, and adds to these raw materials romantic fiction to create what could be regarded as an alternative wuxia fiction. However, only because it contains more mysteriousness is it qualified to be called a fairy tale for adults.
Sword transcendent fiction originated from the Divine Land; it depicts humanities, history, geography, local cultures and customs, and village legends, all closely linked with this land, much different from the majority of fantastic fiction that is mixed with western culture. That kind of fiction uses Greek mythology and traditional Christian angels and demons as its main axis, and adds vampires, werewolves, and other monsters, and incorporates medieval princesses, kings, knights, archers, wizards, witches, malevolent dragons, elves, dwarves, etc., to create fiction similar to the movie “Lord of the Rings”. Due to it being transplanted from outside, it’s categorically not sword transcendent fiction, and of course is not wuxia fiction. It can only be called fantasy fiction.
There is not a lot of Chinese fantasy fiction; among them, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods are the most well-known, but sword transcendent fiction is not the same thing as fantasy. It is its own genre. Although it contains spirit elementals, demons, ghosts, and monsters, sword transcendents, xia, Buddhist monks and Daoist adepts, the principle focus is people, not gods and buddhas. Buddhism speaks of predestination and the six divisions in the wheel of karma; no matter how high a sword transcendent’s cultivation is, they still can’t escape the cycle of rebirth. Daoism again emphasizes that one is bound by the imperceptible restraints of heaven’s laws; one cannot act recklessly at whim, and can really not kill the innocent. These are fundamental concepts. If one crosses the line, he will descend into the demonic path, and could even have his body and spirit annihilated and be reduced to ashes.
More than forty years ago, I read three volumes of Huanzhu Louzhu’s Sword Xia of the Shu Mountains, no more than 100,000 words in total, and it was three volumes out of sequence, so it was fragmented and incomplete, It really shocked me. Later, I read Xiang Kairan’s The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple and became even more interested in sword transcendent fiction. But unfortunately, this genre was not much published, and I never read any other ones until recently when a bookshop put out a few pretty good sword transcendent novels, attracting my interest. I decided to try writing a sword transcendent novel for people to read that would allow readers to pleasantly shilly-shally around in the fantastic world of sword transcendents and forget the stress and frustrations of the real world. Thanks to this, I was also able to make it through a string of setbacks and stress without collapsing. This book is all thanks to Mr. Chen, my publisher, my editors and colleagues, and the reading public.
Transcendent Sword, Divine Sabre tells the story of a pair of lovers who separate because of a misunderstanding. The woman is carried away by intense jealousy and swears a vicious oath to not forgive her lover’s betrayal for eight generations, and the man, trying to overcome this oath, cultivates his body to perfection and attains the Way, allowing himself to reincarnate again and again. But this process leads to many entanglements following him with each reincarnation. After 300 years he has reincarnated eight times. On the ninth time, his lot becomes more complicated, his bad love karma gets stronger and stronger, until he had six lovers, with whom he loves each deeply, making it hard for him to part with them. The woman, hard-pressed by her inner demons for 300 years, enduring a long period of waiting, finally apprehends the truth and accepts the consequences of her jealousy and once more throws herself into her lover’s embrace.
This book doesn’t emphasize the man’s “universal love” or “promiscuous love”, but elucidates the notion that it’s “difficult for true love to endure forever, so one must treasure it”. Especially in that kind of archaic polygamous society, to ask that a man to not take concubines is even more impossible, and dying for the love of a woman is an almost unheard of thing. So, this situation is nearly nonexistent in Chinese history; the tale of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai turning into butterflies and flying away together is just a legendary folktale.
There was a novel called A Couple Through Seven Lives that took seven love folktales and strung them together. I remember reading it in junior high and now only remember the part “Meng Jiang’s Tears Tear Down the Great Wall” I’ve forgotten the other stories. But I still remember questioning how there could really be a love that went unchanged over the course of seven lives? I thought the book all just make-believe. Many years later, when I was more experienced, I learned there it wasn’t true that there was no such thing as true love, it’s just that true love can’t stand the test of time and distance. Anyone who doesn’t believe that will taste the bitter fruit themselves, because harmonious romantic love only exists in fairy tales. Love in the real world is always damaged and incomplete, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many unhappy divorced couples.
The above rambling is just my emotions upon concluding this book. I hope readers can disengage from the flying Apsaras, jumping zombies, drought-demons, ghosts and goblins, dragon maidens, jade essences, sword transcendents, and demonesses and experience the essence of everything it means to be “human”. Whether gods or buddhas, demons or monsters, all are man-made. The “heart” is what is most precious. Attaining Buddhahood or becoming a transcendent, or being a demon or revenant, all are creations of the heart; living in hell or in heaven are also creations of the heart. If one can have a bit of an awakening, then reading this book will not have been a waste.
