Chapter 117 — Cold Night
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 6 of 6
Far off in the distance came Jin Pingyue's laughter, soft and beguiling, tinged with a note of mockery. Ming Li heard it, and said nothing.
Moonlight, like water, spilled over this desolate hilltop and the silent street.
The woman before him, white-robed as snow, the long sword in her hand bright as autumn water.
And in those bright eyes, gazing so deeply—at whom?
Note 1: Seven-Li Cave was, in history, the largest settlement of the Miao people, named for the legend that it stretched seven li wide and broad. When it was first opened up can no longer be verified; it was destroyed when government troops besieged and suppressed it at the end of the Yuan and the beginning of the Ming. Legend holds that the place was easy to defend and hard to attack, joined to the outside world by a single narrow passage, and it was long the spiritual mainstay of the Miao world.
Today its exact location is hard to verify, but according to the records, it seems that in 1983 a "Daping Township" was discovered in Heyang, Guangxi (Heyang??), where the surrounding terrain is extremely similar, and, led by the Miao people, there is on a nearby hilltop a "Dog-God Cave" containing a great rock shaped like the dog-god worshipped by the Miao—so it is suspected that the place must be here.
Another note: The dog-god. According to Miao legend, government troops advanced by night while the Miao all slept, when suddenly a stone dog on the mountaintop gave loud bark, rousing the clansmen, who then joined forces to resist the enemy, and the whole clan was saved. From that time on the dog-god has been worshipped, with incense never ceasing year after year.