Yi Rong’s “Recognition”, “Ghostwriting”, and “Rise to Prominence”
by Hu Zhengqun
Sword of the King is the work that made Yi Rong famous in Taiwan wuxia literary circles and was his first work after establishing himself as an author writing under his own name. It was published in 1965.
if you want to talk about Sword of the King or its author, Yi Rong, then you must first go back to the source and start by talking about Wolong Sheng.
Starting in 1959, Wolong Sheng’s wuxia novels were popular at home and abroad, and he became the grandmaster of the martial world par excellence, which lasted for a long time. At his peak he was serializing five different novels in five different daily and evening newspapers every day in Taiwan. He was truly at the height of his popularity.
Among these five works, one was Heavenly Whirlwind, published in Public Opinion Daily News. When it was in the middle of serialization, Public Opinion announced that the publication was shutting down. Wolong Sheng at the time was the “leader of the pack” of the martial world, so the paper shutting down lightened the interest and pressure on his writing, and so he stopped writing it. But the publisher that was already putting out monthly booklet installments of the work still hoped it could continue, so they pressed him closely.
In order to deal with the publisher and allow the booklets to continue being released, Wolong Sheng found someone to “grasp the knife” and ghostwrite it for him. That person was Yi Rong.
Yi Rong’s real name is Lu Zuolin, a native of Wuhan in Hubei, born 1932. He was still a student at Chung Hsing University in the Cooperative Economics Department, a rather introverted, somewhat reserved person. He would often hang out with people, but he would always just sit there silently, rarely putting forth his own views. But he was very enthusiastic about wuxia novels.
When he started, Wolong Sheng briefly outlined the major plot points of the novel, then gave Lu Zuolin free rein to do as he liked with the original structure and plotline.
Though it was his first attempt, it was actually very successful. It not only matched up well with what Wolong Sheng had already written, with no plot holes, it also had its own distinctiveness, adding its own flavor to it that elevated Heavenly Whirlwind to the next level and was critically acclaimed.
At that time, the Taiwan wuxia literary circle was a “Peaches of Immortality Banquet” and a “Dragon-Flower Assembly”; it was in its most flourishing period of great prosperity. There were hundreds of people vying for supremacy in the martial world, and publishers stared wide-eyed waiting for the next “hero” or “hegemon” to be born.
For Lu Zuolin to be able to ghostwrite for Wolong Sheng, the Doyen of the Martial World and do it so brilliantly, such an accomplishment was of course a rarity and a precious commodity in the eyes of the publisher. Consequently, with encouragement from the publisher and his friends, Lu Zuolin took up the pen name “Yi Rong” and dashed off Sailing in a Sea of Blood and Sword of the King.
Lu Zuolin had received a thorough education and had his own ideals and aspirations toward a teaching career. His “ascent of the martial world” was originally just a fun thing to do for a short time. After completing Spirit of the Great Xia and Ranking of the Rivers and Mountains, he resolutely “washed his hands in the golden basin”, put down his “Three-span Dragon Spring”, and took up his teacher’s pointer to teach in Taichung at Puli Junior High School
”Appearance” are “Changed”, but the Shadow Still Remains
Sword of the King is about the wonderful married couple, Hua Yuanxu, leader of the martial world, and his wife Wen Zhaoyi and how they are besieged by a group of masterhands from a heretical school of the dark path while attending the “North Caliginous Sea Assembly”. Hua Yuanxu is killed and née Wen is defeated, her martial arts ability destroyed. She takes her young son, Xing’er (Hua Tianhong) and hides out in the remote mountain wilderness. In order to avoid being killed by their enemies, Xing’er is soaked in medicinal water to conceal his original face.
Ten years later, they learn that their benefactor, Qin Baichuan’s, family is in trouble and née Wen sends Xing’er to go help them out and repay their benefactor. At this time the dark path of the jianghu is dominated by the Divine Banner Gang, the Wind & Cloud Society, and the Conduit to Heaven Cult. When Xing’er goes out into the world he first encounters Bai Junyi, the daughter of Bai Xiaotian, the leader of the Divine Banner Gang, being persecuted and humiliated, and he is thrown by Bai Xiaotian into a cold pond where he obtains the secret of the Golden Sword. Xing’er meets prisoner Zhou Yikuang and learns his incredible martial arts and learns of the “Sword of the King”—the whereabouts of the Golden Sword. Xing’er gets out of danger and happens to witness the astonishing murder of the only son of the director of the Wind & Cloud Society. Has has to flee and go through many hardships, and then happens to meet Lady Yuding of the Conduit to Heaven Cult. In the midst of the grudges and struggles of the treacherous jianghu, Xing’er reveals his identity as a son of the Hua family, Hua Tianhong and reveals his original dashing visage and is compelled to ingest “Cinnabar Fire Poison Lotus” and falls into a kind of suspended animation, but thanks to Qin Baichuan’s daughter, Wanfeng help, she manages to take him ten thousand miles away to the Miao border where he is revived by Nine Poison Immortaless and her disciple.
Hua Tianhong appears again once his injuries are healed and takes it upon himself to rid the martial world of the heretical sects and revitalize the martial world. He makes friends all over with chivalrous xia, and at the same time, the three dark path organizations are fighting amongst themselves in order to obtain the Golden Sword, each hoping to rule over the others. The Conduit to Heaven Cult sets up a “Great Libation Ceremony” and sets up a deadly trap to wipe out the chivalrous heroes and the other two dark path groups. The Divine Banner Gang and the Wind & Cloud Society each has its own axe to grind. At the Great Libation Ceremony, an ambitious hero from the West, “One Stroke Prevails Over the Central Plains” goes eastward with a golden box as bait and kills numerous masterhands of the dark path. The leader of the heroes, Madame Hua, Wen Zhaoyi, and Hua Tianhong destroy the bad guys and avert disaster, but it leads to the Nine Yin Cult and the Constellation Sect forcefully joining the struggle over the Golden Sword. In the end, the Golden Sword is returned to the West, and Hua Tianhong takes out the martial arts manual Sword Scripture and becomes the “Most Venerated in the Martial World” because of his peerless martial arts and the novel reaches its climax. Finally, Hua Tianhong wins a popular following and brings harmony to the martial world, not only winning the allegiance of all the heroes, but also winning the “three beauties” with whom he lives happily ever after.
Sword of the King taken as a whole established Yi Rong as an author in his own right, and is a great example of the plot of vying for supremacy over the martial world, but the story’s pacing, plot structure, and prose still shows traces of Wolong Sheng’s influence throughout.
Wolong Sheng’s early work like Graceful Beauty Sword Rocks the Jianghu, Reclusive Xia, down to his peak period works Swallow Startles the Dragon and Jade Hairpin Oath all feature protagonists like Yang Menghuan and Xu Yuanping who go on thrilling adventures, frequently reflect on their experiences, and improve their martial arts.
In wuxia literary circles, Wolong Sheng was accepted as a dominator, but when it came to women and love, Wolong Sheng was a romantic brimming with longing and yearning. Despite the fact that his views on love belong to his own “inner world” that no one else can peer into, “falling in love everywhere he goes” is still a hallmark of the “Wolong stylish manner”. Naturally projecting one’s real life and mentality into his work, the male protagonist becomes the object of affection for pretty ladies, at the same time enriching and satisfying the author’s own wish fulfillment and providing the reader with much gorgeous fantasies. This is the creative thread track of Wolong Sheng’s early work.
Yi Rong’s opportunity to continue Heavenly Whirlwind won him the admiration and high regard of Wolong Sheng and allowed the two of them to become closer, plus his specialized study in Chinese literary history led him to testing out a new trend. When he wrote romance, such as Qin Wanfeng’s virtue, affability, and calm; or Bai Junyi’s unruliness, willfulness, and infatuation; or Lady Yuding’s allure, charm, and bewitching beauty; or the changing feelings of Bai and Yu, their firm faithfulness after a undergoing romantic trials, all of it is movingly written, so much so that compared to Wolong Sheng he is a “student who has surpassed the master”.
A Sudden Change in Writing Style, Pursuing Wang Dulu
Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring uses “at first it was really narrow and too cramped for more than one person to pass through” to describe the feeling of a fisherman entering a cavern. I felt the same way reading Sword of the King.
It might be that the author was under pressure to and was eager to write well, but the first dozen chapters or so are strenuously laid out and the wording and phrasing feels overly cautious. In order to magnify the sense that his “artistic endeavor” was passed down from the “master”, he uses a “Wolong writing style”, but it is clumsy and dull. What’s praiseworthy is he still maintains his master’s distinctive style, and he gets smoother and smoother with employing it as he goes along, so that by the time we reach the “Great Libation Ceremony” he “suddenly sees the light” and opens up before the reader’s eyes a vast panorama.
Writing major set pieces like an “assembly of the world’s heroes” scene is Wolong Sheng’s true unique ability among the martial world. It’s like a big performance where all of the big name actors appear and perform together on stage, and the playwright and director have to give each their lines and actions can’t leave any of them out “with nothing to do”, just standing there in a daze. The large cast and stage for the “Great Libation Ceremony” is handled by Yi Rong perfectly. It’s really skillfully directed to just the right degree, allowing every “famous actor” down to the “supporting actors” to shine and ingeniously “perform”. This point is really laudable and shows his superior literary talent and craftsmanship.
Several characters in the book are successfully portrayed, like Bai Xiaotian, Wen Zhaoyi, Zhao Sangu, Xu Hongmei, even the Nine Melodies and Four Illuminaries. All of them have distinct personalities and clear appearances, and the three major female leads—Qin Wanfeng, Bai Junyi, and Lady Yuding, all so lifelike they practically jump off of the page. On the contrary, although much ink was used, the male lead Hua Tianhong is modeled by the author entirely after Wolong Sheng’s Yang Menghuan and Xu Yuanping, and this restriction, even though it gets the job done, it still feels like it’s lacking something.
In chapter 60, suddenly the “night ends and the dawn breaks” and the writing style changes greatly, becoming nimble and lively, the prose flowing smoothly and meaningfully, the descriptions detailed and vivid. Especially chapter 62, “The Luoyang Youngsters”, wherein the “Little Scamps” are clever, eccentric, chivalrous and gallant, marvelous to the extreme, especially Little Five who is admired and doted on by all, and their “Big Bro” Gao Tai is also a heavyweight, despite not appearing often. These chapters can be called a stroke of genius rarely seen in Taiwan or Hong Kong wuxia novels. To the point that if you were to put them into a Wang Dulu novel, they would not be inferior in the least.
The book once again writes about vying over the jianghu, but the “one man, three women” love square tugs on your heartstrings even more. Especially Hua Tianhong and Bai Junyi and Lady Yuding. What they go through is complicated; even the “concerned party”, Hua Tianhong, finds it difficult to manage the “keep cutting the threads but it’s still a mess” love affair with multiple women, but the author matches Qin Wanfeng up with him properly and reasonably, just right, making readers shed hot, emotional and joyful tears, reading with a knowing smile. This kind of “one man, three women” happy ending clearly does not conform to current social norms, but in the nonspecific “old times” of the book’s setting, there’s no need for reproach.
Yi Rong’s writing of Little Five is really a stroke of genius. Not a single sentence isn’t funny, not a single paragraph isn’t brilliant; one can really say that every word is a gem. I wanted to select a portion to excerpt for everyone to enjoy, but to be honest I can’t decide on one, so I’ll just have to forgo that. Fortunately, when you read the novel it will stand out, so check it out for yourself if you like.
As for the rest of the book, most of it is brilliantly presented, like chapter 90, “Most Honored in the Martial World”, where Qin Wanfeng handles Bai Junyi and Lady Yuding in “obtaining the treasure”. That part is even more like Grandmaster Wang Dulu’s moving xia-romance style. I could go on about that part all day; not only is it brimming with character and feeling, the psychology of the characters is finely portrayed and wonderfully written, causing one to thump the table and shout “bravo!” The easy, smooth style of writing could be said to be directly in the vein of Wang Dulu.
Minor Flaws that Don’t Detract From Its Luster
Taken as a whole, Sword of the King is like eating sugarcane: the more you eat, the sweeter it gets, just getting better and better. But since this is a “reading guide” introduction, I ought to point out the outstanding parts, but also “pick” out the deficient parts, the minor blemishes.
Because the author specializes in Chinese literary history, his preliminary writing is unavoidably full of erudition, the writing somewhat “bookish”. In the book are a bit too many set phrases and allusions like “Bian Zhuang stabs a tiger”, “when the duckweed moves there is wind”, “learn the Handan walk”, and “three households destroy Qin”, and these set phrases can’t be understood by anyone unless they are explained. There are also clichés like “in an instant” and “excessively calm” that become a bit too much.
In order to preserve the original text, for this reissue we have not changed a single thing. Fortunately, that does not diminish it.
Note: This essay was an introduction to a mainland China edition of Yi Rong’s novel, Sword of the King. The above video is a clip from wuxia documentary Wuxia 60.