The Sword of Blood

The Sword of Blood is Jin Yong's second novel, serialized in Hong Kong's Commercial Daily in 1956 and later revised several times, with the Century New Revised Edition as the final text. Set in the turmoil of the late Ming dynasty, the novel begins with the loyalist general Yuan Chonghuan, who, after Hong Taiji's stratagem of sowing discord, is unjustly executed by the Chongzhen Emperor. His son Yuan Chengzhi, escorted by his father's old subordinates and a mute servant, takes refuge on Mount Hua and becomes the disciple of Mu Renqing, head of the Huashan Sect, and later learns lightness skills, hidden weapons, and chess from the Taoist Musang of the Iron Sword Sect. In a cave in the mountains he happens upon the skeleton and testament of Xia Xueyi, the Golden Serpent Gentleman, and obtains the Golden Serpent Manual and the Golden Serpent Sword, greatly improving his martial arts and emerging from the mountain fully trained. After descending, Yuan Chengzhi swears brotherhood with Li Yan and others, meets Wen Qingqing, the Golden Serpent Gentleman's daughter disguised as a man, and is drawn into the old feud between the Five Elders of the Wen family and Xia Xueyi. On Mount Tai he is acclaimed leader of the martial world of seven provinces, unites the rivers and lakes to resist the Qing army in the north and aid the rebel king in the south, and repeatedly enters the palace and the Qing camp, seeking to settle the score for his father's murder. Yet after the rebel army enters the capital, discipline collapses and Li Zicheng grows arrogant, and his ideal of saving the country and the people falls apart; in the end he leads his followers and Wen Qingqing overseas, following a sea-chart given by a Westerner. The novel's explicit thread is Yuan Chengzhi's growth and tangled loyalties; its hidden thread is Yuan Chonghuan and Xia Xueyi, who never appear directly and are progressively revealed through others' words. The book ends with a long essay, A Critical Biography of Yuan Chonghuan, which uses historical sources to argue the rise and fall of the late Ming.