Edition note: An independent English rewriting of the Chinese argument, shaped for English-language readers.

Villains’ Valley is supposed to be the place from which no decent person returns. Five of its residents raise Xiao Yu’er: Du Sha the Bloody Hand, Li Dazui Who Eats No Human Heads, the smiling monk Haha’er, the master of disguise Tu Jiaojiao, and the ghostlike Yin Jiuyou.

The wider roll of the Ten Great Villains actually contains eleven names. Some deserve their reputations; others do not fit them neatly. Xuanyuan Sanguang forces people to gamble and causes harm through reckless good intentions, yet he is candid and loyal. Tie Zhan is violent and unreasonable, but not faithless. The list sounds like a verdict. The lives inside it refuse to stay uniform.

Making a child into a masterpiece

When the infant is left behind after Yan Nantian’s defeat, Tu Jiaojiao proposes that they keep him. Pity is not the reason. The villains have spent their lives cursed by the jianghu; why not combine their specialties and raise the most evil person in the world?

They divide the curriculum. Du Sha teaches fighting and hopes to shape a perfect killing instrument. Haha’er teaches the smile that lowers another person’s guard. Tu Jiaojiao teaches disguise and deception. Li Dazui supplies a startling breadth of learning. Yin Jiuyou teaches stealth and lightness skills.

They do this with unusual seriousness. Nothing is withheld. In a novel full of secret manuals and guarded lineages, its most complete education occurs among people who have no moral right to call themselves teachers.

The result grows away from its use

Xiao Yu’er learns to lie, feign stupidity, escape traps, set traps, and remain shameless at exactly the right moment. He does not become what they ordered. He will not kill someone who does not deserve it. He helps people in trouble. Over the course of the novel he saves more people than he cheats.

No hidden saint explains the discrepancy. No upright master intervenes. The five villains remain what they are. They give him techniques, but a technique cannot contain its future direction. The hand that receives it still has to move.

This is the crucial difference between Villains’ Valley and Yihua Palace. The villains desire a result but do not regulate every day of the process. They give Xiao Yu’er no institution to obey, no lineage to honor, no oath that claims his adulthood. Their failure is also the accidental opening through which he becomes himself.

Teachers who trust no one

The five have lived together for decades without friendship. They guard themselves even against one another. Eventually they lure Xiao Yu’er toward Wei Wuya’s lair and do not come when he is trapped.

Yet the child raised among people incapable of trust grows into a man rich in friends. He does not acquire their suspicion as a destiny. He knows exactly what they are and remains grateful for what they actually gave him.

How the list closes

The valley’s founders finally destroy one another through money, plots, feigned deaths, and pre-emptive betrayals. Their end is less a moral sentence imposed from outside than the completion of a life in which no one can risk believing anyone else.

Du Sha dies regretting that he did not fall to Yan Nantian, who at least was a hero. It is one of the rare moments when a villain asks how his death might be held in another person’s eyes.

Xiao Yu’er does not erase the crimes of those who raised him. Nor does he pretend their care was pure. He keeps two accounts at once: they meant to use him, and they taught him without reservation. Their intended purpose belongs to them. What he does with the inheritance belongs to him.

Primary text: Gu Long, Juedai Shuangjiao (绝代双骄). Full-novel spoilers.