Chapter 537: Poison-Blade Uproar, Poison-Blade March (10)

When you say “Suzhou,” the lake that jumps up is Tai Lake.

It even uses the big “Tai” in its name—so just hearing it, you figure, ah, that must be a very big lake.

And in fact it is.

A hundred seventy li north–south, a hundred thirty li east–west; so vast that, for all it’s “just a lake,” the far shore vanishes and the horizon shows.

Converted into Qing’s homeland’s Seoul-based unit, you feel its breadth at once—call it roughly under four Seouls end to end.

Here lies the Suzhou natives’ grievance.

Suzhou doesn’t only have Tai Lake; it’s ringed by lovely lakes, truly a city encircled by waters great and small.

To the north sits Zhao Lake; to the northeast, the larger Yangjing Lake; to the east, Golden Rooster Lake and Reading Lake; to the south, led by Yishan Lake, a hundred more; and to the remaining points of the compass—Tai Lake.

Even the smallest of them exceeds one Yeouido, the common unit from Qing’s homeland—this is a city of lakes!

And yet, for fame? Only Tai Lake gets the glory.

Anyway, Suzhou is where Jiangnan’s men of letters and the Central Plains’ pleasure-chasers gather.

Put nicely: connoisseurs of beauty. In their hearts: woman-crazed mutts. On paper: literati.

And into the literati’s city of Suzhou, a beauty appeared.

The leading contender for “fairest under heaven”—the Heavenly Flower Sword. Her looks aside—people said—her sword alone was unquestionably the most beautiful in the world: the Young Dragon.

Strictly speaking, Qing strays a bit from the beauty standard these literati chase.

A beauty’s face and figure must be beautiful; and right now the literati all say a woman ought to be like a swallow.

That is, a swallow’s sleek, tapered thinness is prized as perfection.

So? What’s the verdict? “Fairest under heaven,” or not?

Yes. Suzhou’s men of letters will concede.

Gentlemen, sign here!

The Heavenly Flower Sword is the fairest under heaven, and a modest bosom means only that the child is a little hungry!

At just such a time, a piece of writing struck Suzhou’s literati like a board to the head.

A book by an unknown man of letters, titled Delight of the High Moon.

Shang’e—known in Qing’s homeland also as Hang-a—is, to be plain, the goddess of the moon.

Among the Central Plains’ divinities she keeps the portfolio of beauty; in Daoist titles, the Lunar Star Lord of the Moon Palace.

Thus the novel’s content:

In ancient days, when Shang’e finished her exile from the Moon Palace and descended to earth, she used the lake where the moon shone largest as the gate of her advent.

That lake was Tai Lake.

The scholarship didn’t quite scan.

Among Central Plains lakes, first rank is Poyang (more than eight Seouls), second is Dongting (more than seven Seouls), and Tai Lake is only third (less than four Seouls).

Why choose Tai Lake, half their size, over the larger ones? Likely because the writer was a Jiangnan native.

In any case, the goddess chose the third lake on the list.

At that time Tai Lake lay within Yue’s realm; the goddess of beauty herself—pure beauty embodied—descended to the human world, so of course she would be the fairest under heaven.

This “Yue Lady,” who loved to wear garments pale as moonlight—also called “Ah-Qing”—whose exact name is unknown, is the epiphany of Shang’e.

A high deity of the Central Plains, daughter of the Divine Sovereign among the Three August Ones and Five Emperors—Shang’e.

Naturally she possessed divine might; and, says the novel, when she came among humans she bestowed the first martial art—and named it the Moon Maiden Sword.

A very fresh re-reading of the Moon Maiden cycle.

The jewel of the tale is the meeting of the Moon Maiden and Xishi.

Seeing the Moon Maiden’s beauty, Xishi grew ashamed of her own—an astonishing reinterpretation whereby the woman the world calls a beauty frowns in embarrassment at the comparison!

And at the end:

Long after the Moon Maiden left the world of men,

a world-slaying beauty who wielded the Moon Maiden Sword set foot in Suzhou.

Welcomed as the teacher who gave soldiers their first martial, she herself led the soldiers—the heirs of her disciples—home. Roughly two thousand years on: a return.

Shang’e → Moon Maiden → Heavenly Flower Sword—a seamless chain.

And it filled Jiangnan hearts, who think themselves heirs of Yue, with that sweet “hometown high.”

Most of all, the book’s value lay in a sensual strain unseen before.

A woman’s waist must be thin.

But her head must be five.

Thus began the On the More the Better—Five Heads, Six Virtues, five thousand seven hundred characters of it.

For Jiangnan literati, a heaven-and-earth inversion—a true overturning of geongon!

And with the Heavenly Flower Sword right there as living proof, Jiangnan’s men of letters chattered like this:

“My friend, have you read Delight of the High Moon? I read it, and I wept for shame.

My eyes were dark; I turned from the truth. Not knowing that true beauty lies in fullness—how dare I have called myself a man of letters and spewed impudent noise; I cannot lift my eyes to the sky!

“I knew well the many transmissions of the Moon Maiden, yet never questioned why I ranked Xishi’s beauty above the Moon Maiden’s. I feel only desolation.

How could the divine who opened the gates of martial learning to mankind be less than a mere human?

“And that prose—did you see it?

After reading it, I could not sleep.

Close my eyes and the lines shimmer; they scorch a man’s liver, summon flame; heat rises through mind and flesh and I cannot claim sleep.”

As for the unknown writer himself—Yi Eo, Third Ten-Leader of the Hundred-Chief Post in the Provincial Commander’s direct Suo—of Shandong—he was dumbfounded.

“Sir! You are the pioneer of Central Plains letters! Grant this lesser man the honor of debating taste and beauty with you all night!”

“We have launched a grand boat for you on Tai Lake, sir—please cross it and favor us with your views!”

“I was enlightened by your fine essay! Letters know no age; this old glutton dares to serve you as master!”

Two days in Suzhou.

Before selling off his place on the rolls, he’d only turned in the pieces he’d been writing in scraps to the Bureau of Letters—and somehow a fair copy flew around, and now the whole city’s literati had read them, were moved, and swarmed him?

Huh. Me? Do I have talent?

An ordinary fellow, a “lesser man,” would have let his nose stick up to heaven and strutted—“I’m a genius”—all arrogance and cheek.

But not Yi Eo: a true great man’s bearing, qualified to stand as an era’s grand writer.

“I merely set down in lines the beauty of the Heavenly Flower Sword, and even then my words lacked and failed to hold it. Your praise is too much for me; please withdraw it. Had you first seen the Heavenly Flower Sword yourself, and slowly melted that ultimate beauty into prose, far finer lines than my paltry piece would have been born. I only saw her first. I don’t deserve this.”

The literati marveled and thought: ah, truly a giant of the age has appeared.

And now begins the Heavenly Flower Sword’s era.

A man of letters’ standing shall be measured by how delicately he renders her beauty.

So each summoned inspiration and, desperately, hunted for lines.

Thus began—had Qing known, she’d have howled—the grand festival of composition:

Who Can Describe Qing to Arouse Better, the contest.

In other words: the Grand Carnival of Thirsty Babble.

—but Qing did not know.

How could she suspect she’d become the star, the moon, the world, the ultimate ideal of Jiangnan’s men of letters?

More to the point, Qing was busy.

“Why is Absolute so easy and yet nobody does it? You just hop a little wall and the Guardian Qi goes brrrr—how is this hard?”

[...]

“Should I do it like my teacher? Drive them with kill-intent and beat them senseless—if they don’t want to die, they’ll hit Absolute on their own.”

[...]

“But where do I even find them to beat them? Sani and Namgung already hit Absolute, fine. Jeogal—even if I beat him, he’ll just run his mouth.”

Now Qing was all-out complaining.

Where else could she say these things?

If this were a Western fable: “The king’s ears are donkey ears.” Right now: “My friends’ realm is the realm of third-raters.”

It wasn’t exactly the moon listening in silence so much as a huge Baleful Star blotting most of the sky—and not particularly bright either.

[...]

A blitz of images grazed Qing’s mind.

She groaned, pained.

“Ow. Stop—wait—going to pop—uncle—uncle—UNCLE! Hey! Uncle! I said uncle!”

She slapped the blood-slick floor with wet smacks.

But after getting chased out by the Final Weapon “Cleave” twenty times, Qing could endure.

Head-splitting pain, sure—Cleave-head—but you get used to anything you keep seeing.

It’s not my teacher’s nuclear knuckle-rap; it’s just a film in my skull. You can get used to that much.

[...]

“Look, to block sword-qi you need sword-qi at minimum. Why am I fretting? Aren’t there one or two Absolutes in every village? Every city’s chief instructor can at least spit sword-qi—so why are these kids, with their fine houses and fine blood and miracle tonics for breakfast, stuck at Peak?”

[...]

“Granted, Absolute’s not all that. It’s not like me—realm-transcending, each moment a new miracle, a new world record. So what can I do? The excellent me has to protect them.”

[...]

“Except protect, my ass—every one of them insists on following me into danger. It’s maddening. Right? Ugh. No. I have to. Hm. How do I peel these leeches off? Thoughts?”

[...]

“Hangzhou’s not a ‘stay a few days’ mission anyway—it’s just meet Nyenyong and done, right? So I only need to shake them for half a day. Hm. Should I ask Nanaa if she has sleep incense? Or—ah—ow—stop—okay—fine—I’m going—I’ll go—dammit, I said I’ll go!”

Qing’s eyes snapped open.

What, I asked you to help? Not to chase me out after hearing me vent.

No wonder you don’t have friends.

The instant she slipped free of [N O V E L I G H T] the heart-image, her whole body was leaden.

And... hot.

Of course it was—Murong Juhee and Gongsun Yo-ye were glued to her on either side, each hugging one limb up and tight.

Hot and stifling.

Qing wriggled—then slid down with a strange, snakelike motion, using supple grace and an infiltration escape trick.

Where she’d been—

deprived of the tall bamboo “body pillow,” the two groped about in their sleep.

“Mm—” “Young Lady, prickly—”

They mumbled something.

Their questing hands met—and promptly latched on.

Murong Juhee, curled like a child, burrowed into Gongsun Yo-ye’s arms; Yo-ye stretched and wrapped her up.

“Lady Seo Mun—” “Hehe—”

Qing smiled at the sight of them stuck together.

What sisterly affection.

Yo-ye has no friends but me; and Little Lady Murong could use someone else to hold her.

Those two will bond fast.

The other two—hm—write them off.

They’re all so high-maintenance.

Qing sat quietly and watched her friends sleep.

A single oil-lamp in a large room—dim to most eyes, but bright enough for her; the scene stood sharp in her sight.

Presently, the graceful crescent of Qing’s eyes set—and then flashed with the look of someone who has reached a decision.