Lady Shi
"Shi Gongyuan, you're dead. The moment I can move, you're dead! Just wait till I bite your nipples right off!"
The wife of the Flying Stone Gang Leader, and a fiery-tempered woman.
She was once the daughter of a County Magistrate. While traveling on foot with her father to his new post, they were robbed by the men of Shi Gongyuan of Tengyun Fort in Tanzhou, and she stepped forward and went back with Fort Master Shi. Fort Master Shi fell in love with her at first sight, but did not dare presume, and plied her with good wine and meat. Ten days later, the County Magistrate, believing his daughter had been violated, led troops to wipe out the Mountain Bandits. In the Free-for-All, Fort Master Shi, his body bristling with arrows, shielded the official's daughter and brought her before the Imperial Soldiers. The young lady was a woman of the deepest feeling and loyalty: no sooner had she told her father she was safe than she ran back into the flames to flee down the mountain with him, and willingly followed him into the Jianghu.
They made their way west to Shu, strangers in a strange land, and had to hide from the authorities besides, and nearly starved to death. What took them in was the Tang Clan's Righteous Field. The pay was not much, but it was enough to settle down and live, to turn back from the brink of despair and give up any thought of desperate ventures. In the end they were able to stand on their own, founding the Flying Stone Gang, which made its living by taking on rough work and odd jobs for others.
But as the gang grew, Lady Shi began to think of moving against the Tang Clan. To become first in Shu, they would have to get past the high wall that was the Tang Clan. advised his lady kindly, saying a person must not forget a debt of gratitude. The argument grew heated, and Gang Leader Shi, hard put to parry slap after slap from his lady, raised a hand to fend her off, and his fingers accidentally brushed her cheek. In that instant Lady Shi was filled with bitterness, tears brimming in her eyes, and she stamped her foot and left. By the time Gang Leader Shi came to his senses, she was nowhere to be seen.
Tang Buyi, who happened to witness this, followed her and protected her in secret, and only after exhausting every kind word did he talk her out of throwing herself off a cliff, and then arranged lodgings for her. But Lady Shi's temper was more stubborn than an ox's, and she truly sulked, refusing to come out for a long, long time. thought the Flying Hero had carried Lady Shi off, and a small domestic matter brewed into a feud between two factions.
In the end, to draw out Lady Shi, who had taken shelter at Ciyun Nunnery, Tang Buyi arranged a decisive battle with at Woyun Ridge.
Notes
- When Zhao Huo accompanies the Eldest Senior Brother to Woyun Ridge, if his Beloved is Shangguan Ying, seeing Lady Shi will make him think the two look very much alike, only Lady Shi is a good deal older.
- Shi Gongyuan once said that when she gets angry she is nothing less than a lion of Hedong, fierce as can be.