The Charging General

The Charging General is the second installment of The General's Sword within Malaysian-Chinese wuxia author Wen Rui'an's Seven Great Bandits: The Legend of Shen Huchan series. Written in February 1987, it was combined with The War General and The Fierce General into a single volume of The General's Sword (the simplified Chinese edition is largely collected in the 2007 21st Century Publishing House edition The General's Sword II: The War General, The Charging General, The Fierce General). The story follows directly from The War General: Shen Huchan and his group see through the weakness of the "Snakes and Rats in One Nest" formation—its fear of fire—and lead Mu Langhua, Chu Xing'er, and the others in a hard charge out of the manor, only to meet layer upon layer of interception by Yao Bafen, Tan Qianchun, the "three great foreign allies," and other masters under the Ten-Thousand-Man Enemy. Shen Huchan is entangled by enemies, forcing Mu Langhua to lead the others on in flight, but they are surrounded once more by "Snakes and Rats in One Nest"; Mu Langhua's only son, Mu Lihua, is killed by Zhang Shiwen, who has infiltrated the group as the Ten-Thousand-Man Enemy's second-ranked master. At the critical moment Shen Huchan appears, kills Zhang Shiwen, drives off the remaining enemies, and the group retreats to the General's Residence. After only a brief period of breathing exercise, he returns to the enemy lines with Cai Keji, one of the "Eleven Swords of Youth," intent on seizing back the Gaotang Mirror and rescuing the captured general's disciple Xu Wuhai; at "Falling Well Bamboo" he faces Li Shangyi, the "Unifying Swordsman," the Ten-Thousand-Man Enemy's top master, with the outcome impossible to foresee. The whole piece advances through interwoven flashbacks and secondhand narration; its language is poetic and vividly cinematic, a typical specimen of Wen's "New Wave wuxia."