Kung Fu by Giddens Ko (功夫-九把刀)

[9Dragons]

Why not pursue Hydra as a chance to heal Yi Jing? Or at least after another breakthrough? Is Yuan Zai following his Master's last words to seek Justice and give up vengeance? Yuan essentially transformed into Master's clone. What kind of future is that? Is the author saying that Justice is more important/admirable to personal happiness? Could be a futile task against a god-like character with omnipotent powers...

[deathblade]

Wow, I just took about 15 minutes writing a response, and then when I hit "post" it disappeared..... Okay, back to write again.

[deathblade]

Okay, here are some of my thoughts:

About the ending

As a stand alone book, the ending sucks. Super depressing, no true resolution. However, the book is part of a series. If you read The Fellowship of the Ring and stopped there, it would suck. Gandalf dies, the Fellowship breaks apart. Sucky. That having been said, I didn't even realize Kung Fu was part of a connected series until 3/4 of the way through the translation. So, apologies for that.

I assume there will be a final resolution in a future book in Urban Horror Stories. Even if there's not, though, we do get a slightly happy ending with Yuan finding a disciple who apparently has natural talent for martial arts. So, Justice will continue on.

click to show/hide spoilers

If the comic book is any indication, it's possible that Yi Jing and Yuan travel the world and defeat Hydra. Perhaps Yuan's story mixes Justice and Revenge...?

About Hydra

I don't think he's as invincible as some of you think. Each personality has different strengths and weaknesses, and he has to take time to switch between them. Hydra's main personality can do kung fu, including Heaven Reaching arts. But he himself said that he isn't as fast as Lan Jin. Furthermore, neither Hydra nor Lan Jin have the magic of the Vampire King.

I can totally envision a finale book in which all the protagonists team up to take down Hydra. Yuan beats Lan Jin, and when he switches to the Vampire King, the (assumably) werewolf protagonist from Howl of the Werewolf beats him. Hydra switches again, and other protagonists takes a turn. Rinse and repeat until Hydra is down for the count.

Also, don't forget this: Huang Jun was not a natural born martial arts talent, whereas Yuan was. When Master died, he passed all his inner force along, including that of the founder of the sect. Just imagine how powerful Yuan will be after years of training. Even at the end of Kung Fu, his power level must be the same as Master's, or even more. By the time it comes to take on Lan Jin 2.0, he will definitely be super powered. True, Hydra could use his powers to beef up Lan Jin, but he could have done that the first time and didn't so... We'll see

About Justice

I think the author is trying to say that if you have the power or ability to "do the right thing," you should. In the novel, the protagonists have super-powered martial arts. Thus, a la Spider-man, they have the responsibility to bring Justice to the common people. But the author says that in Master's quote "Justice requires high level kung fu," the kung fu is not martial arts, but boldness and spirit. As such, even common people can still be agents of Justice by helping others and standing up to bad people as best they can.

About future translation projects

I know some of you would love to have more Giddens Ko translated, especially Urban Horror Stories. However, to be honest, the Chinese level of his writing is a bit above my level. I've only been studying Chinese for about 5 or 6 years, so I have a lot more work to do. During this translation, I had to spend a lot of time looking up things in the dictionary and consulting native speakers. If there is anything I'm hesitant about, I will not just guess. I want the translation to be as accurate as possible. As such, this project was much more arduous and not as fun as previous translating.

I recently started reading another Gu Long book, and man, it is so much easier! With Kung Fu, almost every sentence has characters and words I don't know, but with Gu Long, I would say I understand about 85-95% of the characters and words.

So, my next project will probably be Gu Long again. I don't want to get involved with an epic internet Xianxia, because I don't to start something and then drop it later. I want to finish what I begin!

In any case, I'm going to take a break for a while from translating. As I wrapped up Kung Fu I essentially abandoned my Chinese study to focus on the translating. I want to go back to a routine of studying Chinese before I start another project. Whether that break will be a few weeks, months... a year.... permanent....? We will see.

Thanks to everyone

Special thanks to everyone who commented along the way with encouragement, speculations, pointing out mistakes, etc. You guys make it worth it to do the translating and you know who you are. Thanks also to everyone else who just enjoyed the story. Giving you a chance to enjoy a work you might not otherwise is why I do this

Okay, that's it for now. See you in the afterlife of heroes!

[9Dragons]

To bypass the spcnet bug, you need to click Remember me. Otherwise it's Russian Roulette.

Hydra is really 九把刀! The Creator who orchestrated this sinister game. Unfortunately he miscalculated because Yuan's next disciple will be Super Saiyan.

For the next project, might I suggest "Legend of Mount Zu"? haha Thanks for a super fast finish and bringing us readers hours of pure enjoyment.

[LuDongBin]

when Yue Fei received the 120 gold plaques ....

If my memory serves me correct, it is 12 not 120.

I dun like the ending and the restoring abilities of Hydra. I can understand the multiple personalities within a body ... but once the body dies, I would imagine the personalities die with it. Creating new bodies? To introduce magic in what is essentially a kung fu novel kinda throws my expectation of outcomes into a spin.

But thks deathblade, it was an interesting ride.

Looking forward to another Gu Long.

[wandering]

thanks a lot deathblade...i actually enjoy the story..and it's actually an interesting twist to have the bad guy not truly be defeated...and let him be the bad guy for multiple books.

[baldy]

As it stands the novel's ending sucks but the translation is superb. I like the way you add the footnote which make the whole story more readable. Thanks and looking for to your next translation project. Please no more Gideon Ko ...

[WesY2K]

Dear Deathblade, take your time to relax and study! You powered through this even when you say that you had to ask a lot. They speed was amazing and your translation style is very good! I really enjoyed everything you wrote. I hope you don't take a permanent leave as this would really be a loss! Thank you really much for everything!

[ycb5959]

error in (7)

It was 3:30 in the morning, and I was sill kneeling there in front of Dad and Mom, holding burned out incense sticks.

should be still

[oxwivi]

I'm usually the silent leecher type, reading and never commenting if could help it. (I've a history with forums, and I don't want to become a regular in one again) But I just had to sign in and say I really regret reading this one.

[CFT]

Thanks for completing the translation deathblade. I wish you well in your Chinese studies.

[WesY2K]

For all who are interested in Giddens: the manhua adaption of one of his Killer novels is currently scanlated: http://forum.egscans.com/showthread....nd-Discussions

[tape]

Are any moderators going to be updating this to the translation links? Would hate to see a completed work be buried.

[deathblade]

@baldy - Yeah I hear you

@ycb5959 - Thanks for your support all along!

@WesY2K - Maybe I am Hydra. Wahahaha. As for it being anti-Gu Long ... hmm, why do you say that... Thanks for the kind words, I think I feel myself revving up for another translation. Still considering...

@Bludflag - Week.. weak....... 'doh. will fix later

@Ren Wo Xing - so, your final thoughts?

@9dragons - thanks for your help with finding the mistakes. Legend of Zu. Hahaha!

@honaidy - I figured some people wouldn't like the ending... I didn't like it very much myself the first time I read it. Second time around was better

@tape - Yeah, the first part was better imho

@LuDongBin - You're right about the gold, I'll fix that.

@wandering - Glad you enjoyed it!

@oxwivi - Yeah, as I mentioned in the spoiler thread, I figured this would be a bit polarizing




And yeah I agree that the links to translations should be updated by somebody.

[Ren Wo Xing]

I'll start linking up some of these translated books this weekend! Time to clean it up a bit.

Honestly speaking, this story was great, but the ending...was meh. It feels like a writer cop-out or a shaggy dog ending. When you read and get invested in a story, even one where bad stuff happens, you do so to get emotionally invested so you get that payoff at the end. I didn't get that in this story. Not just because the ending was 'sad', but it was just unsatisfying. I don't feel I got closure, and not in the sense of 'I want moar!'. The Fellowship of the Ring, the example you gave, was clearly an 'interlude' in a longer story. By contrast, the way this was written makes it feel like it was supposed to be able to stand on its own ground...and for me, sadly, it doesn't. Great story, terribly written ending, imho.

=\

[tape]

The last line actually bugged me a lot. It was probably original at some point or another, but seemed rather juvenile the way it was presented.

The theme that justice isn't always served, but capable people should still try to the best of their ability might have something to do with it. The final events are inherently meant to be unsatisfying and instead thought provoking, but the whole novel would have had to be written with that in mind. What we got was a suspenseful story of humor and fantasy...and then a seemingly hastily jammed in thematic ending.

Something like that, or just a diabolical ploy to get you interested and read the rest of the Hydra books .

[WesY2K]

@deathblade: Well, maybe I was in my mind always comparing the novel to Gu Long since both authors are from Taiwan. Could be that this is actually "just" a martial arts fantasy. But I always had a feeling like reading The Shining and watching the Kubrick version. These are just examples and having not read as much as some other fans, this is what popped up in my mind:

1. Gu Long (afaik) left the time and place most of the time obscure. Giddens gave an exact time and exact place.
2. Gu Long tends to build a supervillian with superhuman strength and kills him off with a wave of a hand.
3. The Female Lead was not a selfabsord b**** who used the man.
4. There was not much drinking. :-)
5. You had some "history background" that was fleshed out and was not just name-dropping a la "Everybody who knew the Jiang Hu, knew that Big Knife Chow was the greatest master in his field ever known."

I know all of this is quite shallow (and like I said before just examples) but it felt for me a bit this way...

[deathblade]

@RWX - yeah my feelings were quite similar, especially on my first read. Second time through, while translating, I liked the end a bit more. Not sure why

@tape - yeah I kind of agree. maybe he had a deadline to meet or something

@WesY2K - LMAO. That is a great analysis and quite hilarious. Especially since I'm now reading another Gu Long book, and it has a lot of that stuff you mentioned. HAHA!

[WesY2K]

Maybe that was indeed the case. I don't know if Kung Fu was part of this but he made a power writing year:

[quote]
After struggling for five years, he launched a 14-month writing marathon — cranking out one novel a month
[unquote]
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/08/2...of-giddens-ko/

[Bludflag]

[QUOTE=WesY2K;1102749][QUOTE=deathblade;1102743
@tape - yeah I kind of agree. maybe he had a deadline to meet or something
QUOTE]

Maybe that was indeed the case. I don't know if Kung Fu was part of this but he made a power writing year:

After struggling for five years, he launched a 14-month writing marathon — cranking out one novel a month
[unquote]
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/08/2...of-giddens-ko/

There is the option"Wrap quote tags around selected text".You should consider using it :/