by Jin Yong
“We can ask for help from friends. It’s perfectly normal for people to help each other in a time of need,” Lin Zhennan replied.
“We have many true friends that we can trust, but how many of them can fight better than we can? The ones that are no better than us won’t be of any help anyway,” Madam Wang questioned.
“Yes, you are right,” Lin Zhennan admitted, “but the more people, the more brain power. It might not be a bad idea to ask them for ideas.”
“Fine! Who do you think we should ask?” Madam Wang asked.
“Let’s get friends who live close by first,” Lin Zhennan suggested. “I will transfer all the elite fighters from our Escort Houses in Hangzhou, Nanchang and Guangzhou here, and also invite famous Kung-Fu masters in our province and the neighboring three provinces.”
“Don’t you think that would hurt the reputation of the Fortune Prestige Escort House?” Madam Wang frowned.
“Wife, you are thirty-nine years old this year, right?” Lin Zhennan suddenly asked out of the blue.
“Why are you suddenly asking about my age? I was born in the year of the Tiger;18 don’t you remember how old I am?” Madam Wang spat at him.
“I’ll be sending out invitations for your fortieth birthday party…,” Lin Zhennan said when Madam Wang quickly cut him short grouchily.
“Why the hell are you so interested in seeing me get a year older? You think I’m not old enough already?”
“You’re not old at all! You don’t even have a single gray hair.” Lin Zhennan shook his head. “I am using your fortieth birthday as an excuse, so when we invite relatives and friends over, we won’t arouse any suspicion. When everybody arrives, we shall only tell our close friends the true story, then there will be no damage to our reputation,” he explained.
Madam Wang thought about it for a while and finally agreed. “Very well! It is your decision. But what do I get for a birthday present?”
“A big one! Let’s have a cute, fat, baby boy next year!” Lin Zhennan whispered in her ear.
“Bah, you old goat! Still talking nonsense in such a crisis.” Madam Wang’s face went scarlet, and she spat at her husband half in annoyance.
Lin Zhennan grinned, and then left for the bookkeeper’s office so he could arrange to have the invitations sent out. The joke was just to ease his wife’s fear; he, himself, was still deeply worried. “Water a mile away can not put out a fire at hand. Terrible things will most probably happen again in the Escort House this very night. When our friends arrive, there might not be a Fortune Prestige Escort House waiting for them,” he thought to himself.
When Lin Zhennan arrived at the door of the bookkeeper’s office, he was greeted by two very frightened servants.
“Chief…Chief…Chief Master…something horrible…horrible has happened,” one of them mumbled in a trembling voice,
“What’s the matter?” Lin Zhennan asked.
“Bookkeeper Mr. Dong just sent Lin Fu to go buy some coffins, and right…right after he turned the corner on East Street, he fell to the ground dead,” said the servant fearfully.
“What? Where’s the body?”
“Still lying on the street.”
“Go bring the body back here,” Lin Zhennan directed. “Now, our enemies are becoming more reckless. They even dare to commit murder in broad daylight, and right in the middle of the street,” he thought inwardly.
“Yes, sir…yes, sir…!” the two servants answered, but neither of them moved an inch.
“Well?” Lin Zhennan roared.
“Chief Master, you’d better go have…have a look…at….”
Lin Zhennan knew something bizarre must have just happened again. He gave a snort and walked toward the gate. Three escorts and five henchmen were already there. They stared through the gate, all looking very frightened.
“What’s going on?” Lin Zhennan demanded, and then saw for himself before anybody had a chance to answer. At about ten paces from the gate, an inch-wide line was drawn on the stone slab street in blood. Words also written in blood next to the line read, “Cross the Line and Die.”
“When was this drawn? Did anyone see who did it?” asked Lin Zhennan immediately.
“Earlier, when Lin Fu died on East Street, everybody was crowding around him to see what was happening. There was no one here. I don’t know who would do such a thing,” an escort answered.
Lin Zhennan raised his voice and said loudly, “I, Lin Zhennan, am tired of living; I’d like to see how I’m going to die, after I cross this line.” He strode out of the gate.
“Chief Master!” Two of the escorts cried out.
Lin Zhennan waved them off and stepped over the line. The blood used to draw the line and the words was still wet. He scuffed the words out with the bottom of his shoes and then went back through the gate.
“This is just an attempt to scare us,” he said to the three escorts. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Brothers, would you please first go to the coffin shop, and then make a visit to the Heavenly-Peace Temple in the west end of town to have the monks come over for a mass to calm the souls, deliver them from purgatory, and drive away the evil spirits?”
The three escorts watched the Chief Master stepping over the bloody line with their own eyes. Seeing that no harm had befallen him, they were quite relieved. After getting their weapons, they walked out the gate side by side. Lin Zhennan watched them stepping over the bloody line and rounding the corner of the street. He waited a little bit longer and then went back into the house.
Walking into the bookkeeper’s office, Lin Zhennan said to Bookkeeper Huang, “Mr. Huang, will you please write some invitations to some relatives and friends for a wine party in honor of my wife’s birthday?”
“Of course, sir! And which day would that be?” Bookkeeper Huang asked.
Suddenly, sounds of running steps came from outside. A man rushed in through the gate. Lin Zhennan stuck his head out and heard a loud thud. Someone had fallen. Hurrying to the place where the sound came from, Lin Zhennan saw Escort Di, one of the three escorts he just sent to the coffin shop, laying on the ground. He was barely alive.
“Brother Di, are you alright?” Lin Zhennan held him in his arms and asked frantically.
“They’re all dead, I…I…I ran back,” Escort Di gasped.
“Who did this to you?”
“Don’t…don’t know…don’t know….” Then after a couple of shudders, Escort Di lay still.
Within minutes, everyone in the Escort House heard the news. Madam Wang and Lin Pingzhi both came out and all they heard from the crowd was: “Cross the Line and Die.”
“I’ll retrieve the bodies of the other two escorts,” Lin Zhennan said with determination.
“Chief…Chief Master…you can’t go,” Bookkeeper Huang muttered. “Great courage brings great rewards. Thirty taels of silver for the one that…that brings the bodies back.” He made the announcement three times, but no one answered.
“Where is Pingzhi? Pingzhi? Pingzhi?” Madam Wang suddenly shrieked frantically, her voice filled with fear.
“Young Master! Young Master!” everyone started calling together with Madam Wang.
“I am here!” Lin Pingzhi’s voice floated in from outside the gate.
With a surge of relieved happiness, everyone rushed to the gate, and rounding the street corner was Lin Pingzhi, with a body draped over each shoulder – he was carrying back the two dead escorts. With weapons in their hands, Lin Zhennan and Madam Wang both rushed over the bloodline to guard Lin Pingzhi’s back.
“What a brave young man the Young Master is! He has great courage!” all the escorts and henchmen cheered, while Lin Zhennan and Madam Wang were both filled with pride for their son.
“Child, that was too reckless. These two escorts were good friends, but they were already dead. It wasn’t worth the risk,” Madam Wang said reprovingly.
Lin Pingzhi managed a smile, but deep inside, he was miserable. “The whole affair is my fault,” he thought
to himself. “It is all because I couldn’t contain myself and killed that guy; so many people have died because of me. If I only worry about my own life like a coward, how can I bear to ever look at myself again?”
“Unbelievable, Mr. Hua is dead too!” Suddenly shouts came from the back room.
“What happened?” Lin Zhennan shouted as the steward of the Escort House walked out in quick steps.
“Chief Master,” the steward said fearfully, “Mr. Hua went out the back door to shop for some vegetables, and he just dropped dead about ten paces out the back door. There are the same…the same words in blood.”
Mr. Hua was a cook in the Escort House. His cooking skills were top notch; he was quite famous for his “White-Gourd Pot,” “Buddha Over the Wall,”19 “Pickled Fish,” and “Fish-wrap Wonton.” He was Lin Zhennan’s secret weapon when he wanted to socialize with local officials and rich business owners.
But Hua was just a cook, neither an escort, nor a henchman. It was an unwritten rule that wagon-pullers, sedan-carriers, grooms, and porters were to be left alone when bandits raided escort convoys. With enemies so ruthless, it would probably result in a massacre of the entire Escort House. Lin Zhennan shivered at the thought.
“Don’t be afraid.” He tried to calm everyone. “Humph, these damn bandits only have the guts to attack when one is off guard. You’ve all seen the Young Master, Madam Wang, and I step across the line. What did those damn thugs do? Nothing? They dared do nothing.”
Everybody agreed obsequiously, yet no one dared to step out of the gate. Lin Zhennan and Madam Wang frowned at each other and neither had any idea what to do.
That night Lin Zhennan scheduled the escorts to guard the Escort House, but when he checked upon them, he found no one on duty. All the escorts just huddled within the hall. When they saw the Chief Master, all stood up looking embarrassed, yet no one wanted to move. Lin Zhennan knew that the enemy was just too vicious, and after the deaths of so many people, he still had not come up with a solution. No wonder everyone was so scared. So he uttered a few words of comfort, ordered servants to bring wine and dishes to the hall, and then drank together with the escorts. Greatly worried, each one just drank the wine silently, and no one talked much. Not long after, many became drunk and fell asleep.
The following noon, several horses suddenly thundered out of the Escort House. After a short investigation, Lin Zhennan found that five escorts simply could not bear the stress and had fled without notice. He shook his head and sighed.
“When trouble comes, each bird will fly in its own direction. I can no longer take care of each of you, brothers. If you feel like leaving, please go ahead,” he declared.
Some escorts started berating the five for lack of loyalty, while some others kept their silence and only sighed. They were probably wishing that they had fled as well.
Near dusk, five horses came back with five bodies. The five escorts, who wanted to escape, only ended up losing their lives before everyone else.
Lin Pingzhi was enraged. Sword in hands, he dashed out of the gate and stood three paces beyond the line of blood, yelling, “A true man should take full responsibility for his own actions. I, Lin Pingzhi, killed Yu from Sichuan. It has nothing to do with anyone else. If you want your revenge, come to me. Stab me through the heart and slice me up! I won’t complain. But you keep killing innocent people; what kind of monster does something like that? Lin Pingzhi stands before you. Come and kill me if you dare! If you are too scared to come out, then you are just a pack of craven weaklings; you son of a dog.” The sound of his voice escalated, becoming louder and louder. Tearing open his shirt and exposing his body, he pounded his own chest, shouting, “Come out and put your knife right through here! I am a real man and I am not afraid of death! Why are you so scared to stand in front of me face to face? You damn cowards! You filthy monsters!” His eyes turned red from anger as he struck his own chest heavily.
Many bystanders watched him from far away, but no one wanted to come near the Escort House. Hearing their son shouting, Lin Zhennan and his wife both rushed out of the gate. Their anger and frustration had been steadily building over the last couple of days. The anger finally exploded, and they too began to pour streams of abuse at their unknown enemies.
The escorts looked at each other with admiration for the courage of the three. They felt no surprise that their Chief Master and his wife would shout defiance at their enemies, since the Chief Master was an outstanding man and Madame was a brave woman, but the Young Master looked as fragile as a girl, making him seem that much more heroic for his fearlessness.
The three shouted for a good long while, but were only rewarded with silence.
“‘Cross the Line and Die?’ I just crossed the line, what are you going to do?” Lin Pingzhi yelled out loud. He walked across the line again and stood straight with pride, sword in hand.
“Yes, yes. These damn thugs only bully the weak but fear the strong. They don’t even have the guts to come and face my son,” Madam Wang said to Lin Pingzhi tenderly. She grabbed his hand and dragged him back through the gate.
Lin Pingzhi was still trembling with fiery anger. After going back to the bedroom, he could no longer hold back his tears. Bending over the bed, he started to cry.
“Son, you are very brave. You are a true man of the Lin family. There’s nothing we can do if the enemy doesn’t have the guts to face us openly. Why don’t you go take a rest?” Lin Zhennan patted him on the head, trying to comfort him, but Lin Pingzhi continued to cry until he finally dozed off.
After dinner, Lin Pingzhi overheard his parents talking. It was something about some escorts who were talking about digging a tunnel out from the back garden. This way, they could escape without crossing the line of blood. If they were trapped in the Escort House, all of them would die, sooner or later.
“If they want to dig a tunnel out, let them,” Madam Wang sniffed, “but I am afraid…afraid that…Humph!”
Lin Zhennan and Lin Pingzhi both understood what she meant. The escorts would most likely end up just like the five escorts who tried to ride away – losing their lives earlier, rather than later.
“Why don’t I go have a look? If it really works, then it might be a good way for all the escorts and henchmen to escape,” Lin Zhennan said. He went out, but soon returned, saying, “They were just talking about it, but no one really dared to dig.”
That night, the three went to bed very early. Everyone in the Escort House had resigned themselves to their fates, and no one cared to stand guard for the night.
Lin Pingzhi slept till about midnight, when he suddenly felt somebody patting his shoulder. He jumped up and instantly reached for the sword under his pillow. Then he heard his mother’s voice.
“Pingzhi, it’s me. Your father has been gone for a good while and still hasn’t returned. Let’s go look for him.”
“Where did Dad go?” Lin Pingzhi asked in surprise.
“I don’t know!” Madam Wang replied.
The two grabbed their weapons and walked out of the room. They first peeked into the big hall, only to find that it was filled with candlelight and a dozen gambling escorts. Everyone had his heart in his throat for the last couple of days; finally realizing there was really nothing to do to improve the situation, they just stopped worrying about their safety. Madam Wang gestured Lin Pingzhi to follow her, and then left.
Mother and son looked everywhere, but still couldn’t find Lin Zhennan. They became more and more worried, but were afraid to alert the household. The news of the Chief Master’s disappearance at a time when everyone was scared to death would be disastrous. The situation would be completely out of control.
The two searched all the way to the rear of the Escort House, when Lin Pingzhi suddenly heard a faint noise coming from the armory to the left. Fluttering candlelight shone from behind the window. Walking quietly to the window, he poked a hole in the paper20 with his fingertip, and looked inside; then he called out happily.
“Dad,
there you are!”
Lin Zhennan was hunched over something shielded by his body. When he heard the call, he turned his head back. Lin Pingzhi’s smile froze when he saw the terrified expression on his father’s face. His heart started thumping hard, and he just froze there, mouth wide open.
Madam Wang pushed the door open and went in. There was blood everywhere. Three benches were put together side by side and a body lay across them. The body was completely stripped, and the chest and belly were cut open. Madam Wang looked at the face and recognized it as Escort Huo, one of the five escorts who rode away and then was carried back dead. Lin Pingzhi walked in and closed the door behind him.
Removing the bloody heart from the chest cavity and holding it in his hand, Lin Zhennan exclaimed, “The heart was crushed to pieces. Just as I expected, it was…it was….”
Madam Wang completed the sentence for him, “It was the “Heart Crushing Palm” technique of the Qingcheng Sword School!”
Lin Zhennan nodded and then lowered his head in silence.
By then Lin Pingzhi finally understood that his father was performing an autopsy on the body to try to determine the cause of death.
Lin Zhennan put the heart back into its cavity, wrapped the body with oilskin, and then placed it in a corner. He wiped the blood off his hands with the oilskin and went back to the bedroom with his wife and son.
“The enemy is definitely an elite master hand from the Qingcheng Sword School. Wife, what do you think we should do?” he asked.
“The whole trouble started because of me, I’ll go challenge him to a fight. If I can’t win, then just let him kill me,” Lin Pingzhi bellowed.
Lin Zhennan shook his head. “This person can crush someone’s heart into pieces with a single hit without leaving any sign of damage to the body. His Kung Fu skills are remarkable. He must be a first-class master in the Qingcheng Sword School. If he had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead long ago. I think he is being deliberately cruel. He’s not just simply going to kill us.”
“What does he want?” Lin Pingzhi asked.
“He wants to play with us, like a cat plays with mice. He wants to see us squirm, until we are all frightened to death, and that’s when he will be satisfied,” Lin Zhennan answered.