Now, the four heroes, Sun Deliang the Golden-Haired Sea Horse and his companions, had come to Ciyun Temple and seen a purple-faced old Daoist, whom they took for Shao Huafeng. The four of them drew their blades and dropped down, and the old Daoist held them fast with his magic. In fact this old Daoist was a mere nobody at Ciyun Temple. His surname was Dong and his name Dong Yunqing, and he was called the Perfected One Miaodao. He had once belonged to the Dragon King Temple at Wuzhen; when he came to Ciyun Temple he took Shao Huafeng as his master and was put in charge of the outer compound of the women’s camp. He too had some skill in the magic arts. The four men were all bold and highly skilled, but the old Daoist’s sorcery held them fast, and his men tied the four of them up. “What nerve!” said Dong Yunqing. “Where do you four assassins come from?” “Sorcerer,” said Sun Deliang, “if you must know, your great grandsire here1 is from Lianhua Stronghold on Mount Luyang.” “So you four are from Mount Luyang?” said Dong Yunqing. “The head of Mount Luyang is a sworn brother of our Patriarch, the closest of friends. Let me ask you, then: what is the name of the head of Mount Luyang?” “The Painted-Faced Tathagata, Fahong,” said Sun Deliang. “That’s right!” said Dong Yunqing. “If you four are from Mount Luyang, what are you doing here? What is all this about?” Sun Deliang was a straightforward man. “Sorcerer,” he said, “I’ll tell you, and you needn’t talk to me of friendship. We may be on Mount Luyang, but at Lianhua Stronghold we stand level with Fahong. We are here on the orders of Ji Gong, to kill you, you shaggy-haired Daoist. Are you Shao Huafeng, the Red-Haired Divine Officer?” “This man of the mountains is the Perfected One Miaodao, Dong Yunqing,” said the old Daoist. “So you little nobodies came here to murder us. Good, very good! Here, men, put these four under guard. When it’s full daylight I will report to the Patriarch, and the Patriarch can deal with them as he pleases.” At once men were set to watch the four heroes. When day had broken, Dong Yunqing had the four men carried off and went to report to Shao Huafeng. Then the Perfected One of the Fifth Hall took his seat and ordered the assassins brought in. The four men looked and saw the Red-Haired Divine Officer, Shao Huafeng. On his head was a goose-yellow lotus Daoist crown, and he wore a goose-yellow Daoist robe embroidered with the trigrams by the rule ‘Qian is three whole lines2, Kun is six broken, Li is hollow in the middle, Kan is full in the middle’, with the Taiji diagram in the centre. The old Daoist had red hair, a red beard and a face blue as indigo; he looked as fierce as a plague god, as savage as the Grand Duke3. The four men cursed him at the tops of their voices. “You four rats,” said Shao Huafeng, the Red-Haired Divine Officer, “mind your manners! What are your surnames and your names? Where are you from? Why have you come to murder me? Tell the truth, and be quick about it. Your Patriarch here has no old quarrel with you and no new feud; we have never met, and I wouldn’t know your faces. Who put you up to this? Only give me your reasons, and since your Patriarch has a heart that loves life, I will spare your lives.”

Sun Deliang, the Golden-Haired Sea Horse, glared at once. “Sorcerer,” he said, “if you want to know about your great grandsire here: I never change my name when I walk or my surname when I sit. I’m from Lianhua Stronghold on Mount Luyang. This is one of my sworn elder brothers, Sun Deming, the Fire-Eyed River Boar, and those are my two sworn younger brothers, Han Long, the Water Yaksha, and Han Qing, the Wave-Burrower. You people do evil and wrong: you send your thieves out everywhere to drug and carry people off, you set up thieves’ boats and black inns all over the place to prey on travellers and merchants, you plot rebellion, you ruin women’s good names, you tear families apart and you slaughter living things. For all your crimes, Ji Gong sent us to finish you off and rid the world of a menace. ‘Traitors and rebels: every man may put them to death.’ Now that you’ve caught us, so be it. Your great grandsire here is a hero, upright and open, a stalwart, bold and blazing. For a true man, what joy is there in living, and what fear in dying? Come on, come on, come on — kill your great grandsire here and be quick about it, and we’ll die without complaint. But if you lock us away, don’t blame me when I curse you and ten thousand generations of your line.” When the old Daoist Shao Huafeng heard this, his anger surged up. “Take these four out,” he ordered at once, “cut off their heads and hang them up as a warning.” His men answered, but someone stepped forward from the side. “Patriarch, wouldn’t killing them be letting them off lightly? They came to murder you, and that is as good as rebellion. They ought to be sliced to death4.” “Very well,” said Shao Huafeng. “If that’s how it is, I’ll send you to finish them off.” Sun Deliang, the Golden-Haired Sea Horse, looked and saw that the speaker was Gao Zhen, Iron Back. The four of them had known Gao Zhen in the old days, and now that Gao Zhen came out with this, Sun Deliang thought, “That fellow really is a petty man come up in the world, a mangy dog growing back its fur5. We’ve always known him, and he comes up with an idea like this to do the four of us in.” And at once he started cursing Gao Zhen at the top of his voice.

A word of explanation: Gao Zhen, Iron Back; Gao Shun, the Black-Haired Scorpion; and Zhou Hu, the Smiling Pixiu — ever since the three of them had seen Lu Bingwen home from Cuiyun Peak, they had taken him under guard to Ciyun Temple. For Lu Bingwen too, retribution had come full circle. His daughter had been taken as a concubine by the Red-Haired Divine Officer, Shao Huafeng; his wife had been seized by the Perfected One Qianfa, Zhao Yongming; and Lu Bingwen himself had been thrown into the prisoners’ camp to be ordered about by everyone. The hundred thousand taels and more he had got in his one term at the Criminal Court, scraping the land bare, had been kept by Ciyun Temple as well.