Sequel to the Seven Kill Stele: Breaking the Formation in Southern Sichuan

This book continues Seven Kill Stele, a representative work by Zhu Zhenmu, a master of Republican-era wuxia. It picks up at the end of Chapter 34 of the original and strictly respects the original characterization. At the end of the Ming dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong breaks through Kuimen and marches into Sichuan, leaving no survivors in his wake. Military graduate Yang Zhan returns to Sichuan by way of the Shaanxi plank road, with Zhang Xianzhong's hundred-thousand-strong army behind him and his wife, Chen Yaoshuang, six months pregnant and bedridden, waiting ahead. Zhang Xianzhong erects the Seven Kill Stele on a main thoroughfare, with the names of the Seven Heroes carved on its reverse. A bloody battle is inevitable. Yang Zhan, Chen Yaoshuang, Yu Jinwen, the Seven Treasures Monk, Ironfoot, Yu Fei, and Liu Daozhen: the seven heroes of southern Sichuan make Jiading their base, ally with the Yi people, and win through surprise. The flying female guard crosses a thousand miles to find her husband; the Snow-Clad Lady defends the city after giving birth; the beggar-knight Ironfoot Cloth runs an intelligence network; the merchant-knight Yu Fei spends his entire fortune to open a grain route; the mad monk Seven Treasures sets up an Arhat formation to hold off seven thousand enemies; and Widow Qi arrives with eight hundred female soldiers... Yet corrupt, incompetent officials at court clip their own wings, cut off their provisions, and issue imperial orders to withdraw. Zhang Xianzhong's two-hundred-thousand-strong army bears down on them. One by one, the seven heroes die for their country: Ironfoot passes on the baton before his death; the last page of Yu Fei's ledger bears the words "Virtuous and righteous in equal measure"; Seven Treasures dies seated in meditation atop the Great Buddha's head; Widow Qi writes "the osmanthus flowers of Ta'er Ridge" in blood; Yu Jinwen never manages to say "wife" before her death; Yaoshuang entrusts her child to another at the Bridge of No Return; and Yang Zhan, clutching a lock of dark hair, fights alone before the Seven Kill Stele... Twelve years later, a young man returns to southern Sichuan and erects a Stele of Loyalty and Righteousness at the site of the old Seven Kill Stele. On the day it is completed, an old beggar, an old monk, and an old merchant arrive to pay their respects, each without knowing the others are coming. The seven heroes may be dead, but their spirit lives on.