Du Xinyu Assigned to Assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi
Du Xinyu Assigned to Assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi. In the late Qing Dynasty, the traitorous and conservative faction led by Empress Dowager Cixi brutally suppressed the Hundred Days' Reform, arousing strong discontent nationwide. Many patriots vowed to depose Cixi, who ruled from behind the curtain. At dawn on August 14, 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces breached Beijing, and Cixi fled in panic with her close attendants...
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Du Xinwu Is Ordered to Assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the traitorous and conservative faction headed by Empress Dowager Cixi brutally suppressed the Hundred Days' Reform movement, arousing intense discontent throughout the country. Many people of lofty ideals swore to do away with Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled from behind the curtain.
At dawn on August 14, 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces broke into Beijing. Empress Dowager Cixi, with her close attendants, slipped in panic out of the Forbidden City and fled westward. It happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival. With nowhere to take shelter, Cixi and her party had to borrow temporarily the rear garden of the examination hall in Xinzhou Prefecture for a brief rest, and she ordered Yin Hu, the drill instructor of the Qing palace imperial guards, to perform baguazhang to relieve her boredom. Just as the performance was at its height, a glinting object suddenly flew toward Cixi. 'A hidden weapon!' Quick as a flash, Yin Hu raised his hand and shot out a flying dart, which met the opponent's hidden weapon head-on with a clang, and both fell at the same time, firmly embedded in the table. Yin Hu picked up the darts to examine them: one was his own, and the other was a flying-dragon dart, its head shaped like a dragon's head with three incomparably sharp dragon whiskers, its shaft shaped like a dragon's body and engraved with five delicate small characters: 'Divine Legs Du Xinwu.' Yin Hu cried out in alarm: 'So Du Xinwu really has come!' Yin Hu said to Cixi: 'As far as I know, he is a man from Jiangya in Cili County, Lizhou Prefecture, Hunan, known as "Divine Legs," awe-inspiring in the Northeast, with the titles "Great Knight of the Northeast" and "Great Knight of North and South," and the religious name "Hermit of Doumi Temple." He is about thirty-odd years old. Du has studied under more than ten masters, and his martial arts are peerless, combining the Natural School, Shaolin skills, Wudang skills, and the Tianmen Guigu skills. He has two famous masters, one named Xu Aizi and one named Liu Tianyi. Especially Xu Aizi, known as the "Eccentric Genius of the Southwest," comes without a trace and leaves without a shadow, impossible to fathom. As the saying goes, a famous master produces a brilliant pupil, and this Du Xinwu is ice born of water yet colder than water. Now we see his dart but not the man; he must not be taken lightly.' Hearing this, Cixi trembled with fear and was struck dumb, and only after a long while did she say: 'Judging by this, is he an assassin sent by Sun Yat-sen?'
After the failed secret assassination attempt on Cixi, Du Xinwu was displeased. On the way back, he heard that two masters of the Xingyi School, Che Yizhai and Guo Liangshen, were going to hold a contest in Taigu, and that heroes and knights from all over the world were coming to watch. His martial itch stirred, and he greatly wanted to see the true skills of the Xingyi School. So he temporarily set aside the matter of assassinating Cixi and hurried to Taigu overnight, only to run right into Mantianxing, the martial instructor of Ronglu's mansion, committing outrages there. Du Xinwu was a man who feared the soft but not the hard. He leaped over in one step and shouted: 'Mantianxing, so you've run off to this place!' Mantianxing looked closely and saw a man in a tight black short night-traveling outfit, a yellow cloth wrapped around his head, a battle saber thrust slantwise behind his back, cloth socks and hemp shoes on his feet, with a handsome face and bright, clear eyes flashing like lightning. Just as Mantianxing was about to fly into a rage and strike, Du Xinwu kicked him in the face with a flying leg, and the fake white beard fell fluttering to the ground. Enraged and humiliated, Mantianxing howled like a savage beast: 'Du Xinwu, instead of going to assassinate the Empress Dowager, what are you doing in Taigu?' Yin Hu, hidden at the scene, was shaken inwardly: how could this young man before him be Xu Aizi's brilliant pupil, the Divine Legs Du Xinwu? When Mantianxing saw that his sworn enemy had arrived, he panicked a little and did not dare fight for long. He broke through a window and fled, flinging a hidden weapon at Du Xinwu's head as he went. This was the 'Blood Droplet' that had made Emperor Yongzheng tremble with fear and turn pale at the mere mention of it. Du knew things were bad, but it was too late to dodge. At the critical moment, a man suddenly sprang up like a ball, leaped into the air, and desperately hurled a short sword at the 'Blood Droplet.' The incomparably sharp short blades inside the 'Blood Droplet' embedded themselves in the wall, looking like a round ball hanging there. Du Xinwu had intended to size up his rescuer with a heart full of gratitude, but when their eyes met, he recognized his benefactor as none other than Yin Hu, and it felt as if something had struck him hard in the heart. An inexplicable anger surged up in him: on that Mid-Autumn night in Xinzhou, it was this very man who had ruined his assassination attempt and left his lofty ambition unfulfilled; this man should be an irreconcilable enemy. Why had he come to save him today? Du Xinwu was unwilling to speak with him. He sprang up from the ground and left the scene, and by the time Yin Hu chased him into the main street, he had long since vanished without a trace.
Du Xinwu turned into an alley and was just thinking about which way to choose when a hoarse-voiced fellow carrying a cracked gong came along, beating it and shouting: 'Heroes from every road, hurry to Ji'an Hall to see the contest between the two masters Che Yizhai and Guo Yunshen! The two outstanding men of the Xingyi School are fighting; it's sure to be an extremely splendid great battle!' Du Xinwu quietly joined the crowd and saw the two outstanding men fiercely attacking when suddenly a woman, with five flying darts stuck in her chest and covered in blood, came stumbling toward the crowd, crying out brokenly and mournfully: 'Fellow countrymen, run quickly! The foreigners have hollowed out the foundation of the hall; Ji'an Hall is about to explode!' In an instant, the heroes were awakened from their daze and rushed madly in all directions, escaping the danger one by one through windows and over rooftops. With a huge 'boom,' Ji'an Hall was reduced in an instant to a heap of ruins. That heroine also perished in the sound of the explosion. When the heroes who escaped with their lives learned that this woman was the heroine Yu Yingxiao, descendant of the great loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty, General Yu Qian, they all admired the righteous deed of this descendant of a military family, bowed their heads and wept, and expressed their indignation at Mantianxing's crime of murdering Yu Yingxiao. Meanwhile, Du Xinwu had just escaped through a hidden passage when he suddenly heard gunshots from behind an old wardrobe in the church. He, Yin Hu, and Zhang Ce all shot flying darts at once, and a foreign woman rolled out from behind the wardrobe, nine flying darts stuck in her body, her face pale, a short gun thrown to one side. Everyone concluded that she was none other than the foreign spy Daina. Du Xinwu stepped forward, grabbed her hair and pulled, and the golden-blonde wig fell off. It turned out that Daina was a foreign devil with a ferocious look revealed, a cold smile appearing on her face: 'In this planned explosion, quite a few Chinese martial arts heroes died, didn't they?' Du Xinwu and the other martial arts masters roared in unison: 'Chinese martial arts cannot be burned up by wildfire; it grows again when the spring wind blows. Who on earth sent you?' The foreign devil said in a faint voice: 'I, Daina, am an American. The cardinal here is my father, and of course he too was sent by America.' Her head tilted to one side, and she died.
At that moment, the sound of galloping hooves suddenly came. Pointing at the dust flying behind the horses, Du Xinwu shouted: 'The foreigners are slipping away! Chase them!' The three men rushed out of the church together, left through the west gate of Taigu city, and, using their lightness skills, flew out like arrows from a bowstring, urgently chasing the black and white horses. The fleeing foreigners whipped their horses on, the two steeds flying, and turned into a mountain road. There was no one left on the black horse. Du Xinwu discovered that the man lying prone under a big tree by the roadside was none other than Mantianxing. Pointing at Man's face, his eyes glaring with fury, he demanded the inside story. Mantianxing glanced at Du and shook his head as he answered: 'The mastermind of this incident was the foreigners.' Man also said, 'Because Chinese martial arts are bad for the foreigners, the hard skills of the Boxers gave them a lot of trouble. They hope the Chinese will not practice martial arts and will not know martial arts, so they will be weak like sick men, and only then can the foreigners swagger in and occupy China and rule China. This time it happened to coincide with the Xingyi School's martial arts contest, with martial artists from every road gathered to watch, so it was a perfect chance to wipe them out all at once.' At this point he glanced at Du Xinwu and added: 'On the road I robbed a dart cart. The escort was a foreigner, and the cart was loaded with explosives. That foreigner's father was exactly the priest of the Taigu church. After the Boxers attacked the church, he had no time to escape and hid in a secret room. When this old foreign man heard the news of the Taigu martial arts contest, he plotted this scheme, digging the secret passage all the way under Ji'an Hall, wanting to swallow the elite of the Chinese martial world in one bite.' Hearing this, Du Xinwu cursed loudly: 'You beast worse than an animal, you actually help the tyrant do evil and kill your own people.' Seeing Du Xinwu momentarily distracted by anger, Mantianxing fired several flying darts in rapid succession. Du gritted his teeth and bounced the five flying darts back. When Mantianxing tried to fire another hidden weapon, he never expected Du Xinwu to use his 'Divine Legs' unique skill. Man panicked, scrambled up wanting to flee for his life, and had just started when a flying dart struck his left temple, and he fell dead on the spot. Du had not only removed a great scourge for the motherland, but also avenged the blood debt of the self-sacrificing heroine Yu Yingxiao.
The cardinal, that old foreign devil, ran until he was gasping for breath and had to stop his horse and ask: 'I can be bound, but you must release my son; he is my very life!' Du Xinwu replied: 'Your son was extremely wicked and has long since been executed.' The cardinal cried out: 'Oh, my God, why do you not save me?' Du Xinwu sent a dart flying, and the cardinal, whose crimes were full to overflowing, tumbled from his horse.
That night, Du Xinwu left Taigu in anger and indignation. He had to plan anew the assassination of Cixi that Mr. Sun Yat-sen had entrusted to him.