Shi Gongyuan

First Meeting1 / 6

Flying Stone Gang Leader

Flying Stone Gang Leader, a fierce-looking hero, and a henpecked husband.

He was once a bandit in Maozhou. After marrying, he retired from the martial world and stopped troubling the common folk, turning instead to renting out manpower for rough labor. The Flying Stone Gang grew ever more famous, until it could quietly stand as an equal to the Three Great Gangs.

Biographies

In his youth, Shi Gongyuan joined the army,
a common soldier under the famous general Bi Zaiyu.
Later he deserted, took to the hills of Mount Maoshi in Maozhou, and became a Mountain Bandit.

Shi Gongyuan had no great ambitions, living one day at a time. He drank and ate meat with his gang all day long, living as if drunk or dreaming, and took savagery for courage.
He trained his External Skill to mastery and grew strong and powerful,
and so became all the more reckless.

He even dared to abduct the newly appointed Magistrate as he traveled on foot to take up his post, and forced the Magistrate's daughter to become his wife of the bandit leader.

Once the Magistrate's daughter became his wife,
Shi Gongyuan's wild days came to an end.

No one knew that the delicate young lady
was in fact a tigress, fiercer than this burly giant of a man,
and the poor bandit chief was reduced to a henpecked husband.

At his wife's gentle urging, he bore a bundle of thorns to the yamen and confessed his crimes,
was thrown in prison and tortured, certain he would die this time,
but his young wife pleaded for him and had him set free.

The Magistrate led him into the inner hall, pardoned his past crimes, and had him bow to the ground,
and at last acknowledged him as a son-in-law.

With his capable wife's help, he gathered his old bandits and started anew: the Flying Stone Gang.
They specialized in renting out manpower, taking on rough work and odd jobs, running an outsourcing business.

Whatever the character of the men they took in, they had to remember the gang rules and not trouble the common folk. Shi Gongyuan too turned over a new leaf, becoming a righteous man who delighted in helping others.

The Flying Stone Gang rose with incredible speed. In less than twenty years it had hundreds of members, and could quietly stand as an equal to the three great gangs of the Jianghu.

It all began with a misunderstanding, but once the great mistake was made, neither side would bow.

In the end it took your intervention to turn swords into gifts, to mend what was broken, and all that had come before drifted away like passing clouds.

Though Shi Gongyuan has now retired from the martial world and withdrawn from the Jianghu with his beloved wife, deep in his heart he still remembers the Tang Clan's kindness.

He swears in secret that if the Tang Clan ever faces trouble, he cannot stand idly by.

Martial Arts

• All his martial arts come from other sects. He has both Songshan's and Kongtong's Iron Arm Divine Fist, and is famous for the latter.
• Though he can tense his muscles to resist Acupoint Strike, a Distraction will still land a hit, and since he has never trained Internal Skill, he cannot break the seal himself.
• The Secret Manual Throwing Stones to Question Heaven is nothing more than a summary of his stone-throwing know-how from before he came of age. Lady Shi had it copied and claimed the book held profound martial arts, to be passed around among the gang's Disciples only.
• He excels at external Hard Technique, and against the weak he is unstoppable, but against a true expert he cannot last three moves. On the Western Wulin route he challenges Rui Sheng and is killed in an instant; afterward Yin Zhiping says he was a straightforward, generous man whose death was a pity, and secretly lets him go.

Lady Shi

• Bold and proud abroad, meek and deferential at home, he fears his like a tiger.
• He says he was good for nothing, and only after Lady Shi married down to him did he find any ambition. Yet when he first came to the Shu region, no one believed he had reformed, and he would have starved if not for the Tang Clan's Righteous Field, so he is grateful to the Tang Clan.
• Because of the rivalry between the gangs, Lady Shi argues for moving against the Tang Clan, while Gang Leader Shi pleads earnestly on the Tang Clan's behalf. The quarrel ends with Lady Shi leaving in a huff.

Notes

• He dislikes the Clockwork Locust that Zhao Huo spent two days and nights making, saying he is a rough man and afraid he would crush it the moment he touched it.
• The Biographies say he took to the hills of Mount Maoshi in Maozhou, but when Zhao Huo chats with the , he says Tengyun Mountain in Tanzhou.
• On the Beyond Saving route, if you make peace with him, he leads the Flying Stone Gang to your aid on the day of the final battle. It cannot turn the tide, but it lets Zhao Huo die with his dignity intact.