Re-read Xiao Shi Yi Lang, one of my favorites from my favorite martial arts fiction writer: Gu Long. Reading his books is like having lived another life. Xiao Shi Yi Lang is about a man who is misunderstood in a world of hypocrites. Although he is kind hearted and chivalrous, the world sees him as a evil bandit responsible for all the crimes in the world. It can be difficult to understand someone’s trials through adversity unless you’ve gone through it yourself.
In the book there are clearly defined barriers to human interaction. Logic and order seem to define our social customs, but in some cases emotion and feeling can conflict with these. The real world is about conflict, emotion, unresolvable situations. One of these unresolvable situations is death.
Death is a road we all travel down from. In the end of the book, Xiao Shi Yi Lang travels down the road to death, to a battle he cannot hope to win. Following him is Shen Bijun, a beautiful woman who is conflicted because she has fallen in love with Xiao, but is also married to another man. In the end love prevails, and she follows him down the road to death. Shen’s husband, Lian Chengbi can be described as a perfect gentleman, but his humanity has been confined by social customs. As a result he lost the only thing that mattered – love. He in turn, follows his love down the road of death.
We never find out what happened at the end of the road, but it doesn’t matter. Just like death, you don’t know what will happen until you reach the end of that road – but we all travel toward it.
