Formosa Neijia

Quick Update: the server my site is on is having issues. Many people have complained to the service provider about it. My options at this point are limited and drastic. We’ll wait a week or so more and see how it goes. If the site remains slow, then I might move it. But I’d rather hold off doing that for now. Thanks for your patience.

This is a story that Mike Sigman posted over at AikiWeb. He got it from this page at Wikipedia about a wuxia novel. But it’s a great read and shows how splits in emphasis within the same sect can lead to disaster. The split, in this case as in so many others, seems to be application vs. cultivation or internal energy vs. technique.

Huashan Sect (華山派)
Huashan Sect was originally the most powerful of the five allied sects. Unfortunately, it became divided into two factions: the Qi faction (氣宗), which emphasized the cultivation of internal energy before learning sword techniques and the Sword faction (劍宗), which focused on acquiring sword techniques and mastering its use and making internal energy cultivation a secondary emphasis. While the Sword faction was in the majority, the Qi faction managed to win control of Huashan mountain and the sect through a ruse, forcing the other faction to leave the sect into exile or take their own lives. Because of the feud, the sect’s strength was severely weakened and consequently, the Songshan sect won control of the leadership of the five sects. In general, the Sword faction possessed more innovative and creative sword techniques and skills, while the Qi faction relied on having strong internal energy and brute power, but were less creative and skillful with the sword.

The origin of the split arose when Yue Su (岳肅) and Cai Zifeng (蔡子峰), martial brothers from Huashan and the best of friends, went to the Shaolin temple and stumbled upon a manual written by a eunuch called the Sunflower Manual. In an effort to copy the manual, the two each read half of the manual and memorized it before return to Huashan. However, when they tried putting their parts together, much of the content was incomprehensible. Consequently, each believed his memory and interpretation to be correct and the other person’s to be incorrect. However, from the individual parts that each of them had memorized, neither one could come up with or practice anything substantial either. From this, these once best of friends became heated rivals and helped to cause the rift between members of Huashan. Yue Su became the founder of the Qi faction and Cai Zifeng became the Sword branch’s founder. The Shaolin abbott, upon realization of the nature of the Sunflower Manual and the inherent dangers of its practice, sent a monk, Du Yuan (渡元), to dissuade them from practicing the methods found there. The two martial brothers, who apologized to Du Yuan for what they had done and admitted their doings, asked Duyuan, to help them understand the manual.

Unknownst to the two Huashan masters, the monk had never heard of the manual or practiced the martial arts contained within. However, he was able to make logical conclusions from what Yue Su and Cai Zifeng recited. From the recollections of the two Huashan fighters and the monk’s understanding, a manual was able to be formed. At the same time, however, Du Yuan began to be seduced by the manual and began secretly memorizing these recollections. Using his recollections of the dialogue between him and the Huashan masters, the monk made his own copy of the manual on his cassock or robe. Later, the monk fled the Shaolin temple and renounced his vows , returning to secular life as Lin Yuantu (林遠圖), the great-grandfather of Lin Pingzhi, compiling the Bixie Jianfa (辟邪劍法) manual. The two Huashan masters’ disagreements were never resolved and as a result, led to the formation of the Sword and Qi factions. The copy which they compiled was stolen and became the Sunflower Manual (葵花寶典) in the hands of the Sun-Moon Sect (日月神教).

Though the two masters eventually died while fighting the Sun-Moon Sect members who had come to Huashan to steal the manual, their disagreement over which training should take precedence, qi or internal energy cultivation or swordsmanship continued within the factions they created. Each argued that the other side had turn away from orthodoxy by forgetting the teachings of the past Huashan masters. Disagreements between the sides eventually grew to the point that an all-out war between the two factions took place, taking the lives of many masters and students. Using a ruse to draw Feng Qingyang, the Sword faction’s greatest swordsman and Huashan’s best fighter away from Huashan, the Qi faction was able to eventually win control of the school and drive out the Sword faction members into exile. Feng Qingyang, who realized that he had been tricked, chose to stay in exile in the back of Huashan as a recluse.