Five Flower Swords of Immortal Knights

Five Flower Swords of Immortal Knights is a late-Qing supernatural chivalric novel attributed to "Haishang Jianchi" (The Sword Fanatic of the Seas). Its preface and postscript date its composition to the Guangxu reign, and a movable-type reprint edition appeared in the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu (1901). It runs to six volumes and thirty chapters and is also known as The Illustrated Romance of Flying Immortal Swordsmen. The term "immortal knights" in the title marks the first time in the history of Chinese fiction that sword-wielding knights who cultivate immortality were called "immortal knights"; the work is regarded as a landmark that brought the classical immortal-knight form to maturity. The story begins in the Shaoxing era of Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song, when the treacherous chancellor Qin Hui monopolizes power, his partisans fill the court, and injustices multiply across the land. In the Taiyuan Realm of the upper world, Qiu Ran Gong, Huang Shan Ke, Nie Yinniang, Hongxian Nü, Kongkong'er and six other sword immortals gather to discuss descending to the mortal world, each to take disciples and perform true acts of chivalry, so that people may learn the difference between a knight and a bandit or thief. Gongsun Daniu brings out five flower swords forged in her alchemical chamber from fallen blossoms and the righteous qi of thunder: the Green Hibiscus, the Yellow Sunflower, the Red Pomegranate, the Black Moss and the White Peach. Five sword immortals each carry one down the mountain and pass their swordsmanship to the commoner woman Bai Suyun, the scholar Wen Yunlong, a righteous warrior, the famous courtesan Xue Feixia and others. Together they take on Qin Hui's partisan Qin Yinglong and the villains of his Crouching Tiger Camp, scouting the camp, stealing seals and attempting assassinations through many twists and turns. The one mishap falls to Kongkong'er: he mistakenly entrusts the hardest sword to master, the Green Hibiscus, to the thief Yanzi Fei. Yanzi Fei was already of dubious conduct, and with the sword he increasingly colludes with hardened criminals, murders and robs, becoming the chief adversary of the book's second half, whom the others repeatedly fail to capture. In the end Gongsun Daniu herself descends to the mortal world and, with the assembled knights, destroys him; the immortal knights complete their taking of disciples and wander off across the four seas. The book concludes with the couplet "Ten immortal knights take disciples and return to the Great Way; five flower swords pass through the world and unfold a wondrous tale." This edition is a simplified-Chinese e-book from Zhejiang Publishing United Group's "BookDNA Chinese Classics Series," collated from an old edition, retaining all thirty chapter titles and supplying characters missing from the font.