Synopsis
The most renowned swordswoman in the martial world, Yutu, lost her memory after vanishing for three years.
When a friend found her huddled in a corner and brought her home, she was clean and penniless, clutching a piece of paper in her hand. Written on it in her own handwriting were three words:
Kill Huang Gong.
"Huang Gong? The number one on the martial world's assassins' list, who just appeared a couple of days ago?" Her friend curled her lip. "Why are you looking into some nobody of an assassin? The death notice has been out for three days, and my dad's still alive and kicking! He's nowhere near as good as you were back then."
Yutu: ?
Sis, you're really filial.
Perhaps she had always been born carefree, unrestrained, and without a worry in the world. Though she had lost her memories, she was still as carefree as if she had never carried the love, hate, greed, and obsession of these past twenty-odd years.
She returned to the world as naked and helpless as a newborn, but unlike a baby, she did not wail. The first thing she did upon opening her eyes and seeing people was smile.
She smiled while drinking wine and tea, and smiled while drawing her sword to kill.
An enemy's blood splashed three feet high, lazily staining half a cup of leftover wine. That was all the more reason to raise her cup, drink deeply, and laugh aloud.
"Is there really nothing in this world you care about?" asked her friend, shaking her head with a complicated expression.
Nothing?
Yutu thought. Perhaps there really wasn't.
Yet she seemed to remember something important, something that lingered and refused to leave, but remained just beyond her grasp.
Her friend told her:
"No one knows where you came from. You once said that Tu was your given name, and that after leaving home you took your mother's surname, so from then on you were called Yutu."
"Later, an older sister who knew the past and present told you:"
"Yutu means tiger, the ruler of the mountains."
"So she gave you the courtesy name Shanjun."
Shanjun...
Vaguely, she remembered someone shouting at her over a fierce mountain wind: "Yutu Shanjun!"
"Why haven't you left yet?!"
Who was it?
She remembered those eyes, wet with tears and filled with anguish, but could not make out the person's face. In her memory, the gale whipped her sash and ribbons into the air, like a great roc about to spread its wings...
The roc rides the wind for ninety thousand miles.
The moon showed her the way, and the long wind carried her onward. At last, she followed that person's shouts into the wind and went far away, severing her ties to the past, never to return even in death.
That person's cries still echoed through the mountains, over and over, going from clear to hoarse, like jade shattering on Kunlun and a cuckoo crying blood.
"Shanjun, go!"
"Go!"
"Don't look back!"
Let the wind never cease,
and blow my boat to the Three Immortal Mountains.
Reading guide:
1. The heroine's name is Yutu, with the character Yu pronounced "yu," but when the word means "tiger" on its own, Yu is pronounced "wu."
2. All the characters in the blurb are women, except Huang Gong.
3. There is a romance. The heroine is a true rake, and none of the women have previous romantic or sexual experience with men.
4. At its heart, this story is about a boy who was once asked to become a "tu," and how he ultimately became "Yutu."
Theme: A hero's martial skills place him above the law
