Duan Zhixiu
Young Master of Songyan Pavilion of the Diancang Sect, titled the "Clear Smoke Swordsman", and one of the Four Young Lords of Flower City. He is very rich, and cares about face above all else.
A descendant of Emperor Tianming Duan Suxing of Dali, at the age of five he was used by the powerful Gao Family and drawn into a failed coup. Emperor Xuanzong Duan Zhixing, a devout Buddhist, saw that the child was innocent and merely stripped him of his position as heir, packing him off to the Diancang Sect. For over ten years he has kept to himself and repented in earnest, copying sutras all the while, hoping only that one day the Emperor might show him grace and let him return to his ancestral name.
Seeing Ye Yunzhou and Ye Yunshang stranded in the southern lands, he felt a kinship in shared misfortune, and the three swore brotherhood and sisterhood under different surnames.
Story
Years ago he received a letter from home and learned that his eleven-year-old sister Duan Wanqing was to be married off to Tubo. Only then did he realize that years of copying sutras had won him not a shred of the Emperor's sympathy, only ever-worsening humiliation. This was beyond bearing. He plotted with the Ye siblings to ambush the marriage convoy and rescue her in the chaos.
Rebelling against the Emperor required soldiers, and raising an army required deep pockets. He remembered that when Ye Yunshang was nine and they played house by the Seven Dragon Maidens' Pool, she had said the Ye Family possessed King Yue's Treasure. Clinging to this, he changed his mind on the eve of battle, bribed his fellow disciples, abandoned Ye Yunzhou amid the routed troops, and even tricked away the Listening Cloud Sword to win Ye Yunshang's trust and coax the treasure's whereabouts out of her. But Ye Yunzhou was not fated to die: with one sword he crippled Duan Zhixiu's right hand, severed all ties with him, and fled with his sister to the Central Plains.
With his right hand ruined, his career as a swordsman was over, so he withdrew from the Diancang Sect and took Iron Crown Daoist of the Qingcheng Sect as his master. For the sake of his grand ambitions he insisted on tracking the Ye siblings, and heeding Lady Wen's scheme, he posed as Nangong Xiu and bribed bandits to attack the Tang Clan. This indirectly led to Zhao Huo coming to Qingcheng to study, and to another meeting with Ye Yunshang.
Unable to strike within the sect, he bribed Qingcheng Disciples to watch Zhao Huo's party and bided his time. Ye Yunshang tricked the Message Token about the Tang Clan attack out of him, but she was accidentally poisoned, and the writing on the secret letter had faded. Only then did he realize he had been set up by Lady Wen and . While she was being treated, he confronted Zhao Huo, thinking Ye Yunshang's illness a trifle, and was roundly cursed out by Tang Fang.
After Zhao Huo's party left Qingcheng, Ye Yunshang's scheme lured him onto the Lingnan Sect's turf, where he was extorted by the whole gang and forced to join. Being tricked was part of the initiation: chewing dung cakes and drinking mouth-rinse tea. When they heard he was a kinsman of the Dali Duan Clan, they married him in, wedding him to . Since she was not in Lingnan, he was made to bow to a hen in her place.
On the day of Tang Moling's marriage contest, he met Zhao Huo and Ye Yunshang on the back mountain. Recalling his Lingnan ordeal, he was furious enough to want to take them all down with him, but Zhao Huo defeated him. Then Iron Crown Daoist appeared and pinned Zhao Huo with a peerless martial art, revealing himself to be Patriarch Wuxiang. Pleased with Duan Zhixiu's shameless hide, he hoped the man would inherit his mantle. Duan Zhixiu seized the moment to ask again where the treasure was, and learned it had been a child's joke all along. Stunned and dazed, he then helped Zhao Huo drive off Patriarch Wuxiang, only to see Zhao Huo and Ye Yunshang fall into the valley. He tried to force his way into Zhengxin Hall to see the , hair disheveled and raving like a madman as he told the tale, and left before anyone could react.
At the Wulin Assembly he traveled with the Lingnan Sect, and fled in terror the moment he saw Ye Yunzhou. In the battle of the Western Wulin, he fought the Diancang Twin Venerables alongside Ye Yunzhou, and afterward was expelled from his sect.
Notes
- Revealed on Bird Bear's Facebook on 2024/10/5: link
- He is only met on Ye Yunshang's route, while .
- He is not actually a bad man, but breaking faith and forgetting righteousness cannot be forgiven.
- Surprisingly easy to fool. He even believed Zhao Huo when he claimed to be of the Zhao family of Great Song, so no wonder he was so sure King Yue's Treasure existed.
- He knows the Duan family's secret , and his Internal Skill runs deep.
- He loves flowers, but will not plant them himself, because soil is dirty and has bugs in it. Every morning he pins a different flower in his hair and goes shopping, sniffs it, and throws it away.[1]
- For the full story of his imperial Dali origins (why he is counted a descendant of Emperor Tianming Duan Suxing, and his childhood coup and exile to Diancang), see The Dali Duan Lineage.
- To keep up appearances, the imperial house still sends him a good deal of money each year. He may not compare to the princes of the capital, but he is still filthy rich.
- His beloved horse "Chongxiao" is a fine steed that ordinary horses cannot hope to match. A journey that takes half a day for most horses, he can overtake in at most one or two hours.
- He knew Iron Crown Daoist's martial arts were weak, and took him as master only because he thought him easy to manipulate.
- He believed the Lingnan Sect's rumor that he married was ugly, and only when he met her in person was he drawn to her. By then, however, her heart already belonged to another.