Cause and Effect

Many years ago there was an assassin in the jianghu known as the “Ghost Constable.” Just as the nickname suggests, any target he set his sights on would in the end meet death. No one knew how skilled the Ghost Constable actually was, since he rarely displayed it, and those who had seen him use his skills were mostly dead themselves. Besides, a truly formidable assassin really does not need much skill at all—there are countless ways to kill a man, and if you can achieve your goal, what does it matter if you know no martial arts whatsoever? Of course, in reality... the Ghost Constable’s martial arts were very high indeed. Just how high? Take the “Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist” mentioned earlier. At that level, the Ghost Constable knew at least ten such arts. Still, we should say a bit more about that Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist— In the martial world today, most people believe only three men still know this art: the “Iron Monk” Yihuai, the “Overlord Fist” Huo Ming, and the “Eight Wastes Fist Sage” Lei Buwei. But there is a problem... the three of them differ in sect, in station, and in age, so where did each of them learn his own Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist? For that, we have to go back a way... The man who first created this fist left no successor behind. Before he died he recorded the whole art into a manual, thinking only that if some destined person found it one day, it could be passed on. Later, that manual, along with the rest of his belongings, somehow ended up in the hands of a junk collector—and this junk collector had a friend, a farmhand street performer. One day the farmhand went to his junk-collecting friend’s house to drink and happened upon the manual. He leafed through it a bit; though he did not understand much of what he saw, he sensed vaguely that this was no ordinary art. So that very night he plied the junk collector with wine until the man was dead drunk, and quietly made off with the manual. The junk collector’s house was a mess to begin with, crammed full of odds and ends, so one missing “ragged book” was something he never even noticed. And so more than ten years passed, and the farmhand made a name for himself in the jianghu on the strength of the “Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist,” took a wife and had a son, and gained both fame and fortune. Meanwhile, the junk collector was still collecting junk. But the ways of this world truly cannot be explained... Perhaps in the dark there is cause and effect after all. The farmhand had made his fortune on a “stolen” manual, yet once rich he never once thought of showing gratitude. Even with a house full of wealth, he never lifted a finger to help the poor friend of his early days. And so retribution came knocking. Not long after they married, the farmhand’s wife took a lover behind his back; and not only did she take a lover, she also stole his “Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist” manual and gave it to the man. When the affair came to light, the woman threw all restraint aside, tore away every pretense, and confessed everything—even saying outright that the child was not his. That sent the farmhand into a fury; on the spot he beat his wife to death, then tracked down her lover and killed him without a word. But when it came to the child his wife had borne, a little over two years old, in the end he could not bring himself to strike. That night he took the child and a great sum of money and quietly went to the house of the junk collector from all those years ago; after so many years, the junk collector still slept so soundly. Perhaps that is something only a man with nothing on his conscience can enjoy. The farmhand left the money and the child behind, slipped away, went home, and killed himself. The year he died, he had been taking disciples for some years. He had a close disciple surnamed Huo, who had by then all but mastered his “Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist,” and this disciple’s son was Huo Ming, who would later found the Overlord Fist Sect. As for the manual his wife had stolen and given away, it vanished from that day onward, and was not seen again until many years later, when Yihuai came upon it by chance in a derelict temple. And how did Lei Buwei learn it? Quite simply: before Lei Buwei retired, he had once watched Huo Ming’s father kill a man with this art, and after a little mulling over, he knew it too. Few people knew, however, that others had also learned this art. The Ghost Constable’s master was one of them. Though he lived in a different age, the Ghost Constable’s master was a fist prodigy much like Lei Buwei: watch a set of movements once, go home and think it over, and he would have the better part of it. Many years ago, while the farmhand was still alive, the Ghost Constable’s master had secretly learned the “Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist” from him—of course, that was only one of the many arts he had secretly picked up. By the Ghost Constable’s generation the standard had slipped somewhat, but he was still a master carrying more than ten top-tier martial arts. For decades the Ghost Constable worked as an assassin, and of all the jobs he took on, not one ended in failure. Until one day, he felt... it was time to stop—because he was old. By modern standards he was no more than “middle-aged” then, but for a top assassin, the moment his body could no longer guarantee complete certainty on a job, that was the moment he ought to withdraw. But assassins do not retire so easily. With so much killing and so many blood debts clinging to you, even if you were not the mastermind, you cannot escape your share of it; someone will eventually trace it back to you and come seeking revenge. To retire safely, you need “friends.” Master Shu was a very good “friend.” With his help, the Ghost Constable retired without a hitch, and even came to live the life of an ordinary man—a wife, children, and a warm kang. In the winter of the second year after his retirement, the Ghost Constable had a daughter. The year after his daughter was born, he and his wife picked up an abandoned baby boy from the river. Perhaps because he had wrought so much killing in the first half of his life, he wanted to atone, and so he took this boy in too, as an adopted son. The Ghost Constable named his daughter “Xue’er” and his adopted son “Shui Sheng”; he had the daughter study letters, and taught the son martial arts. Time slipped by. Sixteen years later, Xue’er had grown into a graceful, stunning beauty—lovely within as well as without, blessed with both talent and looks—while Shui Sheng was tall and powerfully built, his martial skill surpassing other men’s. Only... his wits were a little slow, or perhaps he was simply too honest and too blunt. The Ghost Constable could see that the two of them were childhood sweethearts, and that ever since they were old enough to understand such things they had had feelings for each other. He was willing to see the match made. He had meant to find an opening, have his wife sound out their daughter, then go feel out Shui Sheng himself, and afterward pick an auspicious day, hold the wedding, and be done with it—they would all be living together as one family anyway. But just as the Ghost Constable was preparing to welcome a happy old age... the old “friend” came knocking. When you retired, others helped you. Now it is your turn to help others. The Ghost Constable had known this day would come, but he had not expected it at such a wretched time. A few years later—once Shui Sheng and Xue’er were married and settled—he would not have minded throwing away his old life at all, but things simply do not go as one wishes. On that mission, the Ghost Constable failed. An assassin who had never once failed in his life paid for his first failure with his life. But it did not end there... No one can owe Master Shu a favor and not repay it. Since you cannot repay it, let your children repay it for you. And so Xue’er was seized and brought to Qiliu Youran, where she became its top courtesan, “Chu Xue.” For three years she had never once spent a night with a guest, because Master Shu knew very well that only by keeping her so was she worth the most. Shui Sheng, meanwhile, became a drudge in the brothel, a dog Master Shu could snap orders at. Master Shu had once said to him: if you don’t want to be a dog, I can make you a cuckold... The implication did not need spelling out. To keep Xue’er’s purity intact, Shui Sheng willingly served as Master Shu’s eyes and fists; whatever Master Shu ordered him to do, he was willing to do. Of course, he also listened to Xue’er. A month ago, when Zheng Mukai and Ge Shi dueled in the challenge arena, the masked man who suddenly charged onto the platform to stop the two of them was Shui Sheng; there is no doubt he had gone there on Xue’er’s instruction. And Zheng Mukai’s death two days ago was also Shui Sheng’s doing. That time, though, no one had set him on it... That night, Zheng Mukai was still sour over the afternoon’s quarrel with Huang Donglai and the others at the tavern. The more he turned it over, the worse it stung, because almost everything Huang Donglai had said was true—he, Zheng Mukai, really was no match for the handful of standout young masters at the Youth Heroes Assembly, and when he fought in the challenge arena, he really had been easily subdued by a masked man of unknown origin. At that thought, Zheng Mukai’s mind turned back to Miss Chu Xue—after all, his duel with Ge Shi had in the end all come about because of this woman... So he sat there in his guest room, drinking sullenly and thinking of her, growing angrier with every cup. “Isn’t she just a whore?” he thought. “What’s with all the airs? I spent all that silver on her and didn’t even get to touch her hand, and on top of it I got humiliated like that because of her.” He was somewhat drunk, and mixed in with his rage was a measure of desire. He drank until dark and felt not the least bit sleepy—in fact, more and more alert—until at last a thought flashed through his mind... and carried him out of his room and out of the inn. Zheng Mukai’s room at the West-City Inn was separate from those of his two escort hands, so when he left, the two underlings had no idea; the inn’s serving lad happened to see him. Zheng Mukai, already half past reason, naturally had only one place to go: Qiliu Youran. He arrived at the hour of the Dog, then prowled about the back alley of the brothel for a while, watching the night deepen and the area empty out, before he used his lightness skill to run up the wall and vault over into the rafters along the edge of the roof. Because he had been there once before, he knew where the “Winter” room was, and soon slipped in through a third-floor window and reached the corridor outside the door of Chu Xue’s room. In a brothel, the doors of those rooms are, most of the time, unlocked, so Zheng Mukai simply pushed the door and walked in, giving Chu Xue’s maid a fright—but before the little maid could even get a cry out, Zheng Mukai dropped her with a knife-hand blow. Chu Xue came out at the noise, and she too was knocked senseless by a palm strike. Just as Zheng Mukai was about to take her by force, consequences be damned... Shui Sheng arrived. In truth, even if Shui Sheng had not come, Zheng Mukai could never have succeeded. How could Shui Sheng be the only skilled fighter in Qiliu Youran? Did he really think his sneaking in had gone unnoticed? They simply wanted to see what he meant to do—otherwise he would have been picked off by hidden weapons the moment he went over the wall... And even at the very worst, if the madam herself had come, he could not have beaten her. When Shui Sheng shouted him down, Zheng Mukai flew into a rage outright. Riding the wine, he spewed “stinking whore” and “drudge” with every breath. Cursing Shui Sheng was one thing, but the vile things he said about Chu Xue sent Shui Sheng’s blood pressure soaring, and the result was that... by the time Shui Sheng came back to his senses, a single blow of the Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist had already turned Zheng Mukai into a corpse. Only when the body lay there motionless did Shui Sheng start to panic. Even so, he first went over and checked the breath of Chu Xue and the maid, and after confirming both were unharmed, he shut the door and slipped out the window with Zheng Mukai’s corpse over his shoulder. Shui Sheng did not know that the whole killing, Zheng Mukai’s break-in included, had been witnessed by the madam; the old woman was full of bad ideas, and had hidden in the shadows to enjoy the show, never once coming out to help, saving the whole tale to report to Master Shu. But never mind that for now... Take Shui Sheng, running through the dark like a headless fly with the body, trying to work out what to do with it. Suddenly he remembered—at dusk, he seemed to have just heard a guest bring up Zheng Mukai. That guest was a jianghu man too, and a great gossip. He had overheard Huang Donglai running Zheng Mukai down at the tavern in the afternoon, and so at his banquet he was holding forth to the prostitutes, chattering from the Huang Clan of Shu all the way to the Guangxing Escort Agency, from Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie smashing the Tianqi Gang all the way to their clash with Zheng Mukai at the tavern—he even named which two inns in the city each group was staying at. Shui Sheng, waiting outside that room as a drudge, had hearing far better than ordinary, and had caught every word. And since the business between Zheng Mukai and Ge Shi involved Chu Xue, with himself mixed up in it as well, Shui Sheng had listened a little more carefully when he heard that name. Recalling it all now, Shui Sheng had a flash of inspiration—I’ll pin the blame on them. As noted earlier, Shui Sheng was a bit slow in the head—even more absurd than Zhu Jiaduan—and gave no thought at all to the logic of the details; he simply felt that as long as two things looked connected on the surface, that was enough... So he dumped Zheng Mukai’s body in an alley near the East-City Inn and ran. But after he had run a stretch, he thought again: Zheng Mukai had two underlings with him, and they might know Zheng Mukai had come to Qiliu Youran; if they said so, wouldn’t his frame-up fall apart? So, not stopping halfway, he slipped back into the West-City Inn and gave each of the two underlings a Five Thunders Piercing Heart Fist. Having done all that, Shui Sheng hurried back to Qiliu Youran—only to find that Master Shu, who had already heard the madam’s report, was waiting for him. When Master Shu questioned him, Shui Sheng did not dare stay silent, nor was he capable of lying to Master Shu’s face, so he laid out everything he had just done, not one detail spared. Unexpectedly, Master Shu did not reproach him; having heard it all, he simply let him go. But once Shui Sheng was gone, Master Shu summoned two subordinates and sent them at once to where the bodies lay, to beat the corpses with random blows and cover up the matter of the Five Thunders Piercing Heart Palm. In fact, even then Master Shu had already calculated that Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai might well be dragged into the affair and trace it back to Qiliu Youran; the cover-up he had ordered for the bodies was nothing like Shui Sheng’s useless work... It was a relatively effective measure with some logic behind it, and in terms of the outcome, it did indeed deepen Zhu Jiaduan’s suspicion of Lei Buji. Master Shu’s countermove of turning the incident to his own advantage—using the case Shui Sheng had committed on a sudden impulse as the lure, a move in the game of drawing Sun and Huang in and recruiting them as “friends”—was a genuinely fine one. Unfortunately, he miscalculated one thing—he had far too low an opinion of Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai.