Lei Dang

Basic Info

• Category: Boss / story character
• Combat Style: Long saber, wielded one-armed
• Appears In: Pangzhen Township, Huangcheng

Character Overview

Lei Dang is a hard, fierce man and a formidable fighter, loyal to his friends and devoted to his duty, with never a thought of weighing a debt of honour. He once served under Soul, the adopted son of The Order’s the Nether Lord, and in that time the two of them built a deep friendship. An incident later cost him his left arm, but it only made him fiercer — nothing could stand before him — and it earned him the name “the One-Armed Tiger.”

Background

Lei Dang was born in the thirteenth year of The Order. From the day he joined, he was placed under the command of Soul — “Black Wound” — the adopted son of the Nether Lord of that time. Lei Dang was as loyal-hearted as Soul himself, and so the two of them grew a friendship far deeper than the bond between superior and subordinate.

Phantom Blade

In the thirtieth year of The Order, with one upheaval after another in the Southern Wulin, the Nether Lord decided to send Soul and Zuo Shang to scout the country around Luocheng, the heart of the Southern Wulin, and sent a great body of Living Envoys to hold the key roads in support. Yet at that very moment the Nether Lord sought Lei Dang out in secret and gave him one more task, a closely guarded one: he was to take on the guise of a simpleton named Ah Fu, slip in among the Living Envoys sent to the pagoda in the Southern Wulin to reinforce Soul and Zuo Shang, keep watch on every move the others made, and act as occasion served.

At the second watch of the night on the fourteenth day of the seventh month, Lei Dang climbed with the rest to the top of the pagoda to face its master, the great monk Daosha. But just after Soul and Zuo Shang struck Daosha down together, Kuhai — the Living Envoy in charge of the relief party — poured a great mass of Sha-Chi back into Daosha’s body, and Daosha went berserk again. Seeing how desperate it had become, Lei Dang held nothing back any longer. He struck at once, killed Daosha outright, then blocked the passage down from the tower and stopped Kuhai from getting away. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, Lei Dang went aboard the airship Mirage with the others and helped to tear it apart; after that he returned to The Order to report.

Phantom Blade II

In the thirty-first year of The Order, the Mask Riots swept the Phantom World, and the Nether Lord gave Lei Dang another task: the gangs of Huangcheng had found the branch The Order kept there, the Black Snake Hall, and paid it a heavy sum to wipe out the Bureau of Rectitude, which had risen suddenly and to great strength around Huangcheng. Lei Dang took the contract and set out for Huangcheng.

In Huangcheng, Lei Dang came to know the man who had hired The Order, Bie Yingzong, and was joined there by Soul. The two of them fought the Bureau of Rectitude side by side, and under Bie Yingzong’s scheming they finally blew the Bureau’s headquarters to the ground with explosives; its chief, Banyuehua, and her deputy Zuzang burned in the fire. Some days later Lei Dang and Soul took their leave of Bie Yingzong and made ready to return to The Order.

In the fortieth year of The Order, word came that the Nether Lord had been murdered. Zuo Shang, who took his place, claimed outright that Soul was the killer, and at once ordered every member of The Order to hunt Soul down. As a man, Lei Dang could not bring himself to accept it — but he had been loyal to The Order all his life, and there was nothing for it but to join the hunt for the fugitive “Black Wound.”

Rainblood: Town of Death

Not long after, Zuo Shang introduced Lei Dang to a Living Envoy newly joined to The Order — Leng Tu — and sent the pair of them to Pangzhen Township to intercept and kill Soul, who had turned against The Order. On the fifteenth day of the sixth month the two of them reached Pangzhen Township, and Leng Tu laid out a plan for Lei Dang that had no flaw in it anywhere. But Lei Dang had a nagging sense that Leng Tu was not a man to trust. He gave up the ambush, and instead set out good wine and waited for Soul to come.

When Soul arrived, he told Lei Dang of his duel with Zuo Shang in that utterly secret place, and of the Poisoned-Heart art he had worked on himself to restore his powers. Soon after, though, a letter came from Zuo Shang by carrier pigeon, with another scheme for the two of them: Leng Tu was to pass off “Seven-Wits Star” as the deadly poison “Seven-Wits Exquisite,” make Lei Dang feign poisoning, and fight him to the death at Soul-Severing Cliff; when Soul arrived, Leng Tu would pin him with blood-threads while Lei Dang struck from behind.

Zuo Shang did not trust Leng Tu either. In secret he gave Lei Dang a pain draught and told him: if Leng Tu truly made him swallow the real Seven-Wits Exquisite, then Leng Tu was a traitor, and the last blow struck at Soul-Severing Cliff must never fall on Soul — it must fall on Leng Tu.

Before long Leng Tu came to give Lei Dang his dose, and Lei Dang — who had taken the pain draught beforehand — felt a dull ache stirring through his organs. He knew then that Leng Tu was the traitor.

In the first quarter of the chou hour on the sixteenth day of the sixth month, Lei Dang and Leng Tu fought at Soul-Severing Cliff. Poisoned, Lei Dang was losing when Soul appeared. Just as Leng Tu bound Soul fast with his blood-threads, Lei Dang dragged his body step by step behind Soul and drove his fist into Leng Tu. Facing a stunned Soul, the dying Lei Dang finally laid out the whole plot that had been set in Pangzhen Township, and with his last breath told him that Zuo Shang and Xuan Yu were both in Yecheng. Then the poison took him, and he died.

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