Ashes of Time : Redux 2009

Ouyang Feng leaves his home at White Camel Mountain on the day of his brother’s marriage and sets up an inn near a desert village, offering his services as a killer while crossing paths with traveling martial artists who drift through the area.

Huang Yaoshi, a close friend, stops by the inn each year to share a drink with him before he heads back to White Camel Mountain. This time he brings a jar of wine that can erase memories, but Ouyang declines to drink. Huang secretly downs a cup himself, and Ouyang quickly infers it’s tied to a woman. He departs the next day, leaving behind a cloud of unresolved history.

Murong Yang, a prince of the former Yan kingdom, asks Ouyang to kill Huang because Huang had reneged on a drunken promise to marry his sister, Murong Yin. Murong Yin soon visits the inn and asks Ouyang to kill Murong Yang, believing her brother has become possessive and does not want her to marry Huang. Ouyang eventually realizes that Murong Yang and Murong Yin are the same person in disguise. As the tale deepens into its darkest turns, the figure reemerges years later as the invincible swordsman Dugu Qiubai.

A Blind Swordsman, an old friend of Huang’s who has fallen out with him over his love for Peach Blossom, visits the inn. Rapidly losing his sight, he longs to return home to see Peach Blossom one last time before the world goes dark. On Ouyang’s advice, he offers his services to the village to protect them from a bandit gang, hoping the earnings will fund his journey home. Facing hundreds of bandits alone, he is eventually overwhelmed and killed.

To avenge her brother’s death at the hands of soldiers, a village girl offers up her mule and a basket of eggs, but Ouyang rejects her plea. She chooses to stay by the inn, waiting for him to reconsider. Hong Qi, a down-and-out martial artist, takes up the offer and defeats the soldiers in exchange for a single egg, but loses a finger in the skirmish. After recovering, he leaves the inn with his wife and later becomes the renowned Northern Beggar.

Ouyang learns that his sister-in-law—someone he never fully moved on from—died two years earlier from illness. Before her death she asked Huang to bring Ouyang the jar of wine. In the end, Ouyang drinks the wine, burns down the inn, returns to White Camel Mountain, and takes on the moniker Western Venom.