Ding Chunqiu’s assault on Xue MuHua’s refuge turns the Eight Friends of HanGu’s long-awaited chance to stand together into a rout, and ends with their capture and removal from Xue’s home. A refuge built to shelter its owners in danger is breached by explosives; its defenders are defeated by poison and frost-poison attacks; and Ding forces Xue to treat the captive HuiJing before taking the gathered company away. The attack leaves not a rescued band but a group of prisoners, shut inside ten curtained carriages as Xue’s residence burns.

The refuge and the gathering

Xue MuHua’s old servant had mistaken the approaching party for enemies and set off a fireworks signal without first consulting his master. The signal, made by Xue’s sixth brother, could light the sky for several li; each of the eight friends had a distinct firework. The group was meant to reunite only once every two years, but the danger brought them together sooner. Xue saw the signal’s double edge: it had summoned the Eight Friends of HanGu to resist an enemy, yet the same gathering might give the Old Freak of XingXiu the opportunity to destroy them all at once.

Before the attack, Bao BuTong tried to stiffen the group’s resolve by pointing to XuanNan as a formidable opponent for Ding Chunqiu and promising that the assembled allies could make a fight of it. His words faltered as his frost poison flared, leaving him unable to speak and shivering. The contrast between the brave speech and the speaker’s physical incapacity anticipates the gap between the defenders’ determination and their actual ability to withstand the assault.

The company had taken shelter in a cave belonging to Xue’s family. Feng ASan could tell from the wood markings and stonework that it had existed for roughly three hundred years, but Xue knew only that the refuge had passed down through his family; he did not know who had built it. Its age and hidden entrance seemed to promise protection. Instead, the cave became a confined space in which the attackers could dictate when the defenders emerged and where they went.

The breach and Ding’s demand

The refuge’s defenses did not fail through a contest of mechanisms. A loud blast shook the ground, and Feng ASan recognized that Ding Chunqiu was using explosives to force open the entrance. Kang GuangLing condemned the method as a disgrace to a sect whose inherited skills included mechanisms and traps, especially because Ding had not even tried to unravel the defenses. Another explosion sent dust through the cave and opened a way for fresh air, confirming that the hidden shelter was being dismantled by force.

As Feng ASan operated the cave mechanism, three cannon blasts sounded. White smoke spread, and the stone slab finally moved enough to reveal an opening large enough for one person. Feng BoE rushed through it before the others, challenging Ding and striking a Xingxiu Sect disciple. His attacks landed, but the poison’s effect had drained his strength, and he could not bring the opponent down. The moment captures the defenders’ predicament: courage and quick action could still produce contact, but their compromised condition made that effort insufficient.

Once the others came out, they saw Ding Chunqiu standing with two companions, including the man recognized as You TanZhi. Ding had already pursued HuiJing because he wanted the monk to help locate the Frost Silkworm. Finding HuiJing seriously ill, he had instead sought Xue MuHua’s medical skill. He now offered to spare Xue if Xue would treat the monk, join the Xingxiu Sect, and accept Ding as master. Ding’s purpose had expanded: beyond securing treatment and continuing the search for the silkworm, he wanted Xue’s expertise to help investigate the Eternal Youth Never Ageing Skill.

Xue refused to present himself as Ding’s subordinate. He said he answered only to the person who ordered him to treat someone, and that while Ding could kill him, obtaining treatment required appealing to that authority. Ding identified the authority as Su XingHe. His demand therefore pressed on more than Xue’s medical skill: it tested whether the former disciples would disown their master in order to survive.

Loyalty under threat, and the battle

Ding explained that Su XingHe had expelled the eight disciples to preserve their lives, fearing Ding would kill them. The friends understood the danger in affirming their continued allegiance. Nonetheless, with Shi QingFeng too seriously injured to leave the cave, the other seven declared together that expulsion had not ended the bond between master and disciple. Their answer made their loyalty explicit at the moment it was most dangerous to express it.

The confrontation became a battle when the Xingxiu Sect attacked. XuanNan moved first against Ding, sending eighteen rapid palm strikes in succession and forcing him back eighteen steps, then following with thirty-six kicks. Ding evaded the kicks but was struck by XuanNan’s final fists. The exchange initially demonstrated XuanNan’s speed and force; it also exposed the cost of approaching an opponent whose clothing and body carried deadly poison. XuanNan was poisoned in the encounter and collapsed after Ding’s counterattack.

The larger fight turned against the defenders. Ding’s disciples engaged the group while You TanZhi’s frost-poison palm disabled GongYe Gan and Fan BaiLing. Ding then attacked the remaining fighters: Bao BuTong fell to a kick, while Deng BaiChuan lost strength after exchanging palms with him. In a short time, Ding and You had defeated the Murong family retainers, XuanNan and the other Shaolin monks, and the Eight Friends of HanGu. You TanZhi’s martial technique remained relatively undeveloped after only a few days of Ding’s instruction, but his deep internal energy and the frost poison accumulated in his body made even a limited set of palm moves dangerous. GongYe Gan’s first successful strike against him only resulted in GongYe Gan being injured by the poison.

Xue MuHua alone remained uninjured. The Xingxiu disciples avoided fighting him directly, and Ding used that separation to make Xue the focus of a different kind of attack. He threatened to ask eight times whether Xue would treat HuiJing. Each refusal, he said, would be answered by killing one of Xue’s fellow disciples, moving through the group until the final threat reached Su XingHe. Xue rejected the bargain at first, insisting that the eight could die together, but Ding’s threat made the price of refusal unmistakable: the safety of Xue’s companions and master had become leverage against his medical oath.

Forced treatment and removal

Xue ultimately agreed to treat HuiJing, while asking Ding to treat his friends with courtesy. Ding said he would comply, then ordered his disciples to bring the monk over. Xue learned that HuiJing’s illness followed prolonged contact with a powerful poison object: the Frost Silkworm from Kunlun Mountain. He did not question the monk further. Instead, he used acupuncture and moxibustion, gave HuiJing two crimson pills, and treated the other injured people, setting bones and tending their wounds through the night. By dawn, the group had received treatment, and Xue’s family brought out noodles for them to eat.

The respite did not restore their freedom. Ding ordered Xue’s family to hire ten donkey carriages, then had his disciples kill the drivers. He gave no justification beyond asserting that the Xingxiu Sect did not need to explain whom it killed. He ordered everyone into the carriages and announced that he would burn Xue’s home. Xue had already memorized his medical books, but the medicines and preparations he had made could not be gathered before the Xingxiu disciples set fire to the back of the house.

HuiFang had been instructed by XuanNan to escape and carry news to Shaolin Temple, but Ding’s close surveillance ended the attempt and HuiFang was captured again. XuanNan, six other Shaolin monks, the four Murong family retainers, and the Eight Friends of HanGu were unable to move: some had been injured or had their internal energy sealed by Ding, while others had suffered the effects of You TanZhi’s frost poison or the Xingxiu disciples’ poisons. Xue MuHua’s family was taken too. Ding’s followers drove or escorted the ten carriages, whose curtains were drawn and tied shut so that the prisoners could not see outside. They did not know where they were being taken, and had to wait for the destination to be revealed.

Consequences and significance

The battle dismantles several kinds of protection at once. The cave’s inherited defenses are defeated not by the mechanisms that had made it a refuge, but by explosives; the friends’ reunion becomes an occasion for their collective defeat; and Xue’s medical knowledge, rather than freeing him to help others on his own terms, becomes the means by which Ding compels his cooperation. Even treatment brings no release: once the wounded have been tended, the captors kill the drivers, destroy the home, and take the patients and their families away.

The episode also makes the conflict between Ding and Su XingHe’s disciples concrete. The seven who could leave the cave choose to affirm their enduring bond with their expelled master, while Ding answers that loyalty with threats against each member and finally Su XingHe himself. Their fidelity survives the demand, but the group’s physical defeat gives the declaration an immediate cost. The sealed carriages carry the unresolved consequences forward: the captives are alive and treated, but isolated from one another and from the world beyond the curtains.