Why this book

This was the last novel Jin Yong ever wrote, and the strangest. For thirty years he had given China noble swordsmen who died for honor. Then, as his farewell, he crowned a coward who cannot fight and will not die — and asked whether the world truly belongs to the good, or to the clever.

The Story

Our story opens in a pleasure house in the city of Yangzhou, where a quick-witted boy named Wei Xiaobao sweeps floors, runs dice games, and swindles the customers. He cannot read a single word. He does not know his father's name. But no one alive can out-talk him, and he fears nothing so much as honest work.

One evening a wounded outlaw, a huge whiskered swordsman named Mao Shiba, stumbles through the door with soldiers on his heels. Wei Xiaobao hides the fugitive and lies to his pursuers; therefore the grateful giant, owing the boy his life, carries him off on the long road north — toward Beijing, and the throne of the empire.

In the capital the pair are seized and hauled, of all places, into the Forbidden City itself. To stay alive, Wei Xiaobao must disguise himself as a palace eunuch and serve inside the emperor's own household. But a boy raised on lies wears deception like a second skin, and soon he walks the imperial halls unquestioned.

Inside the palace, Wei Xiaobao is taken in by a blind old eunuch named Hai Dafu, a deadly master who suspects nothing of the boy's true nature. Through flattery and quick fingers Wei Xiaobao survives the sinister old man, learns the palace's hidden ways, and begins to understand just how much power lies within these walls.

There Wei Xiaobao meets a boy his own age, and the two strike up a friendship the only way boys do — by wrestling each other black and blue in a locked room each day. Cheating at every hold, our rascal never suspects the truth: his sparring partner is Kangxi, the young Emperor of all China.

Young Kangxi carries a heavy burden. A brutal regent named Oboi, the mightiest warrior in the land, has seized the true power of the court and treats the boy-emperor as a puppet. Kangxi cannot hope to beat such a man in a fair fight. Therefore he turns to the one friend who never fights fair.

So Kangxi and his young guards spring a trap, and Wei Xiaobao supplies the dirty tricks. He hurls scalding incense-ash into the giant's eyes, blinds him with hidden powder, and drives a concealed dagger home while the great warrior is helpless. And so the unbeatable Oboi is brought down — not by a hero, but by a cheat.

Overnight Wei Xiaobao becomes the hero of the palace. Kangxi, delighted, heaps rank, gold, and trust upon him, never dreaming his sworn little brother is a penniless brothel fraud. Yet fortune is a blade with two edges — for the sworn enemies of the Qing throne have been watching this sudden favorite very, very closely.

Those enemies are the Heaven and Earth Society, a secret brotherhood sworn to overthrow the Manchu Qing and restore the fallen Ming dynasty. They snatch Wei Xiaobao in the night. Because a rumor says he slew a hated turncoat, they honor this illiterate boy as a lodge master. Terrified, he bows and accepts.

Consider now the impossible knot Wei Xiaobao is tied in. By daylight he is the emperor's dearest companion, showered with honors. By dark he is a captain of the rebels who have sworn to see that same emperor dead. Both sides love him, both sides trust him — and to fail either is certain death.

Deeper still runs a secret that every faction hungers for. Concealed within forty-two Buddhist sutras, hidden away across the whole empire, lies a map to the buried Manchu treasure and to the dragon-vein that feeds the dynasty's fortune. Gather every book, and you could shatter the Qing forever. So the great hunt begins.

The chase flings Wei Xiaobao to the far corners of the empire. He tumbles into the clutches of the sinister Mystic Dragon Cult, whose masters feed him a slow poison so he must return for the antidote and stay obedient. But he lies his way loose, playing every fanatic against the next, and slips their grasp.

And everywhere he goes, women are swept into his chaos. A blade-swift swordswoman, a gentle nun's disciple, a fierce cult maiden, and a wild imperial princess among them — through flattery, cheating, and sheer dumb luck, Wei Xiaobao ends with seven wives in all. He adores every one, and never wins a single one by fair means.

One of those wives is no ordinary bride. Princess Jianning, Kangxi's own sister, is a spoiled and violent girl who delights in cruelty, yet loses her heart to the cheeky commoner. Their courtship is a storm of slaps, knives, and laughter — and somehow, against all sense, Wei Xiaobao survives even her.

As the years pass, a mighty warlord named Wu Sangui rises in the south and declares war upon the young emperor. Kangxi, trusting no one more, hands his rascal-friend real command. And Wei Xiaobao, who still cannot swing a sword, wins battles the only way he knows — with bribes, spies, and outrageous, brilliant lies.

Stranger still, fate carries Wei Xiaobao all the way to distant Russia. There he befriends an ambitious princess in the midst of a palace revolt and, with his gutter cunning, helps her seize the Russian crown. The illiterate boy from a Yangzhou brothel has now made emperors on two ends of the earth.

Later, when Qing and Russian armies face off along the frozen northern border, it is Wei Xiaobao who is sent to make the peace. With flattery, feasting, and shameless haggling, he wins a treaty that fixes the frontier in China's favor — a scoundrel doing, by charm, what generals could not do by war.

Then Kangxi entrusts him with the most tender secret of the throne. He sends Wei Xiaobao to distant Mount Wutai, to a quiet old monk who lives among the pilgrims there. Only our rascal learns the truth — that humble monk is Kangxi's own father, the former emperor who gave up the throne to mourn a lost love.

Guarding such a secret only binds Wei Xiaobao closer to Kangxi's heart, and the emperor comes to love him as true kin. But his rebel brothers grow impatient. They press him harder and harder to strike the emperor down. The knot draws tight from both ends, and this time the trickster cannot slither free.

At last the secret breaks open: Kangxi discovers that his beloved favorite is also a master among the rebels. Wei Xiaobao braces for the executioner. But the emperor, whose love is real, offers instead a bitter bargain — betray the brotherhood into my hands, and every crime is forgiven. Now, at last, the boy must truly choose.

And here, in the choosing, we finally see his heart. Wei Xiaobao will not betray the emperor, for he loves him like a brother. But neither will he betray his rebel oath-brothers, for a vow is a vow. Torn between loyalty and loyalty, the trickster does the only thing left to him. He runs.

Therefore Wei Xiaobao stages his own death and simply vanishes. He gathers his mother, his seven wives, and a fortune no honest man could earn in ten lifetimes, and slips away to some far, quiet place where neither emperor nor rebel will ever find him. The scoundrel, wanting no throne, chooses only to live and be happy.

What it means

And so Jin Yong closes his life's work with a knowing smile. In a world crowded with noble heroes who gladly die for their causes, the one who survives believes in none of them — who prizes a warm and living happiness above every crown. Cunning, not virtue, is what outlasts the empire. That is his farewell.

🎧 Read-along audio is being prepared — text-only for now.