My surname is Yuan; people call me Yuan Gong — and the surname is my fate. The Yue Jue tradition records it plainly: a sword-maiden of Yue, unmatched under heaven, met an old man on the road who called himself Yuan Gong. He broke a bamboo branch to test her swordplay — and when the test was done, the old man turned into a white ape and was gone.
The day I first read that passage, I refused to believe it was only a story.
How could swordsmanship descend from an ape? Because an ape's movement is the finest swordplay in the world: in and out like wind, turns without bone, strike and vanish before you can grab hold. I served five years in the army, trained under the best sword instructors and the caravan guards, and the more I learned, the truer that old page read. The year I mustered out, I heard Flower-Fruit Mountain was rich in apes, so I moved to the ravine. Thirty years now.
I've been hunting that white ape ever since. The town calls me mad.
Thirty years, and no white ape — but I've come to know apes. The Spirit Apes on the mountain, the big clever ones — I've stolen three-tenths of their movement: their "yield" isn't dodging; it's giving way to your force and folding back in. And the Long-Armed Apes — arms longer than legs, plucking fruit two zhang away without moving their bodies — that's not long arms, that's a long power line: force from the foot, through waist and shoulder, out to the fingertips. I wrote it all into a manual, the Ape Sword Classic. Nobody buys it.
No matter. One day some child of the sword will open it and understand at a glance.
This plague year, the mountain apes come down more often. One night I heard movement on the cliff, took my lamp out — and there was an old Spirit Ape squatting on Ape-Cry Bluff, beckoning to me. Actually beckoning, like a person. I advanced, it retreated; I stopped, it stopped. Past midnight it led me to a stone at the bluff's edge and vanished. Under the stone lay a broken sword, rusted beyond dating.
I polish that broken sword every day now. Thirty years of chasing a shadow, and this is the first solid thing I've touched.
Mad? Fine, mad. If you go into the ravine and see a white ape — don't strike it. Come to me first. I'll trade you the whole Ape Sword Classic for that single piece of news.