What do you think?
Rate this book
Seven Killers
Dragon 5th is a powerful lord with incredible martial arts, and yet is wasting away from a fatal disease. The only medicine which can cure his sickness lies in the clutches of his venemous ex-wife, Madam Lovesickness, and is guarded by 7 dangerous killers, fugitives of the martial world. To retrieve the antidote, Dragon 5th hires Liu Changjie, a skilled martial artist who loves drinking and women, but has a mysterious past. All is not what it seems in this wuxia heist story.
253 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1973
1 person is currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Gu Long
512 books86 followersalso known as: 古龍
Xiong Yaohua (Chinese: 熊耀華) (7 June 1938 – 21 September 1985), better known by his pen name Gu Long, was a Chinese novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director. Xiong is best known for writing wuxia novels and serials, which include Juedai Shuangjiao, Xiaoli Feidao Series, Chu Liuxiang Series, Lu Xiaofeng Series and Xiao Shiyilang. Some of these works have been adapted into films and television series for numerous times. In the 1980s Xiong started his own film studio, Bao Sian, to focus on adaptations of his works. He graduated from Cheng Kung Senior High School in Taipei and from the Foreign Language Department of Tamkang University.
Xiong was born on 7 June 1938 in Hong Kong but his registered identity claimed that he was born in 1941. His ancestral home was in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, and he lived in Hankou in his childhood. He moved to Taipei, Taiwan in 1952 with his parents, who divorced in 1956. With help from his friends and using the money he earned from part-time work to fund his education, Xiong graduated from the Foreign Language Department of Tamkang University. He found a job in the United States Army Advisory in Taipei later.
In 1960, Xiong published his first wuxia novel, Cangqiong Shenjian (蒼穹神劍), under the pen name "Gu Long". From 1960 to 1961, Xiong published eight novels but did not achieve the results he desired. He moved to Ruifang Town (瑞芳鎮) and lived there for three years, after which he changed his perspective and adopted a new writing style. Between 1967 and the late 1970s, Xiong rose to prominence in the genre of modern wuxia fiction for his works. As the sole representative of excellence in the wuxia genre from Taiwan for an entire decade, Xiong was named along with Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng as the "Three Legs of the Tripod of Wuxia".
While he was still in university, Xiong lived with a dance hostess, Zheng Yuexia (鄭月霞), and had a son, Zheng Xiaolong (鄭小龍), with her. However, later, he started a relationship with another dance hostess, Ye Xue (葉雪), who also bore him a son, Ye Yikuan (葉怡寬). Shortly after that, Xiong met a senior middle school graduate, Mei Baozhu (梅寶珠), who became his first legal spouse and bore him his third son, Xiong Zhengda (熊正達). Xiong's extramarital affairs with other women caused him to break up with Mei later.
In the later part of his life, Xiong suffered from depression and the quality of his works declined rapidly. He had to employ ghostwriters to co-write many of his later works because of his ailing health. He died on 21 September 1985 at the age of 48 due to illness wrought by alcoholism, namely cirrhosis and esophageal hemorrhage, at around 6pm. Xiong's friends brought him 48 bottles of XO at his funeral.
Xiong was said to be influenced not only by wuxia fiction, but also by the works of Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, John Steinbeck and Friedrich Nietzsche. His novels are usually made up of short sentences and paragraphs, and mostly dialogues between characters like a play script.
In contrast with Xiong, other writers such as Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng take an alternative route in writing wuxia fiction, incorporating Chinese history, culture and philosophical ideas in their works. Xiong initially intended to follow them but changed his decision after exposure to western works such as the James Bond series and The Godfather novels. The influence of these works, which relied on the idiosyncrasies of human life, razor-sharp wit, poetic philosophies, mysterious plots and spine-tingling thrills to achieve success, enabled Xiong to come up with a unique way of writing.
(source: wiki)
Gu Long and Khu Lung are the same person, the latter is the Hokkien pronunciation in Indonesia.
Xiong Yaohua (Chinese: 熊耀華) (7 June 1938 – 21 September 1985), better known by his pen name Gu Long, was a Chinese novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director. Xiong is best known for writing wuxia novels and serials, which include Juedai Shuangjiao, Xiaoli Feidao Series, Chu Liuxiang Series, Lu Xiaofeng Series and Xiao Shiyilang. Some of these works have been adapted into films and television series for numerous times. In the 1980s Xiong started his own film studio, Bao Sian, to focus on adaptations of his works. He graduated from Cheng Kung Senior High School in Taipei and from the Foreign Language Department of Tamkang University.
Xiong was born on 7 June 1938 in Hong Kong but his registered identity claimed that he was born in 1941. His ancestral home was in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, and he lived in Hankou in his childhood. He moved to Taipei, Taiwan in 1952 with his parents, who divorced in 1956. With help from his friends and using the money he earned from part-time work to fund his education, Xiong graduated from the Foreign Language Department of Tamkang University. He found a job in the United States Army Advisory in Taipei later.
In 1960, Xiong published his first wuxia novel, Cangqiong Shenjian (蒼穹神劍), under the pen name "Gu Long". From 1960 to 1961, Xiong published eight novels but did not achieve the results he desired. He moved to Ruifang Town (瑞芳鎮) and lived there for three years, after which he changed his perspective and adopted a new writing style. Between 1967 and the late 1970s, Xiong rose to prominence in the genre of modern wuxia fiction for his works. As the sole representative of excellence in the wuxia genre from Taiwan for an entire decade, Xiong was named along with Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng as the "Three Legs of the Tripod of Wuxia".
While he was still in university, Xiong lived with a dance hostess, Zheng Yuexia (鄭月霞), and had a son, Zheng Xiaolong (鄭小龍), with her. However, later, he started a relationship with another dance hostess, Ye Xue (葉雪), who also bore him a son, Ye Yikuan (葉怡寬). Shortly after that, Xiong met a senior middle school graduate, Mei Baozhu (梅寶珠), who became his first legal spouse and bore him his third son, Xiong Zhengda (熊正達). Xiong's extramarital affairs with other women caused him to break up with Mei later.
In the later part of his life, Xiong suffered from depression and the quality of his works declined rapidly. He had to employ ghostwriters to co-write many of his later works because of his ailing health. He died on 21 September 1985 at the age of 48 due to illness wrought by alcoholism, namely cirrhosis and esophageal hemorrhage, at around 6pm. Xiong's friends brought him 48 bottles of XO at his funeral.
Xiong was said to be influenced not only by wuxia fiction, but also by the works of Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, John Steinbeck and Friedrich Nietzsche. His novels are usually made up of short sentences and paragraphs, and mostly dialogues between characters like a play script.
In contrast with Xiong, other writers such as Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng take an alternative route in writing wuxia fiction, incorporating Chinese history, culture and philosophical ideas in their works. Xiong initially intended to follow them but changed his decision after exposure to western works such as the James Bond series and The Godfather novels. The influence of these works, which relied on the idiosyncrasies of human life, razor-sharp wit, poetic philosophies, mysterious plots and spine-tingling thrills to achieve success, enabled Xiong to come up with a unique way of writing.
(source: wiki)
Gu Long and Khu Lung are the same person, the latter is the Hokkien pronunciation in Indonesia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 20, 2018
I am sorry to say, Gu Long (GL) was already lazy when he wrote this. The plots are formulaic and similar with GL's previous novels, and even executed with less vigor than his previous works. The style that basically only dialogues between characters are stale although filled with smart plot twists (reminding me of Isaac Asimov stories that full ideas but stale in execution). If this story is your earlier read of GL, you might be entertained with the plot twists. If you are a seasoned GL's reader, you could easily guessed the surprises.
I felt cheated from the beginning of Chapter one.
I felt cheated from the beginning of Chapter one.
November 30, 2020
I've read enough fantasy at this point to know what to expect, but I wanted to try something different this time and this came as a unique discovery, or multiple discoveries into the genre of Chinese Fantasy. Originally I had been experienced with it mainly through movies like
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(which itself is based on a book series) and
House of Flying Daggers
, they left a profound effect on me and so I attempted to delve deeper. Then I found out these movies were part of a sub-genre known as Wuxia, which is basically fantasy with Martial Arts. Then I stumbled across Deathblade's Youtube channel where he explained the backbone of Wuxia and it's accompanying genres known as Xianxia and Xuanhuan, very interesting stuff, and through it I found out that there were some very well known series and authors for each of these genres. But I decided it was best to start with Gu Long's 7 Killers.
For my first foray into the genre it was an interesting experience. and not exactly a bad place to start. The novel is short and simple enough to read, but what made it so unusual was the amount of twists and turns that it opened up with, for instance the first person we focus on you assume will be the main character of the story, I mean he must be because he's fighting ghosts with jade swords, he must have some part to play in it. But then it switches to the hero's perspective in the next chapter, and soon after you find out this was a minor character who gets killed off screen, which is kind of narrative whiplash for the first time reader.
But if you stick with it things start to get a bit more coherent. We're then introduced to our protagonist Liu Changjie, a roguish wine drinking, womanising, martial arts master who is sent on a task to break into a safe and steal a macguffin box, but he has to get past seven guards. All fairly straightforward stuff, but the elements of the plot get quite convoluted fairly quickly as we are introduced to many supporting characters, and also the sheer amount of double crossing. Sometimes it's fun to see but other times it can feel formulaic, especially when a character says "I didn't fall for your hidden trap because I knew that ___ was ____ so that you could _____". You'd think after a while people would just start to not trust our hero or vice versa once encountering them on their adventures. But hey, what's trust when you have superpowered martial arts that can send your opponent through a stone wall?
Surprisingly there's not that much action, most of the scenes feature characters talking about and to each other in the hopes that it'll benefit them in some way (there's quite a few scenes where Liu Changjie challenges someone because he doesn't care, for very much the same reasons) The characters themselves are unique and colourful even if they don't seem particularly deep, but they work well and it's written quite clearly so even if some of the dialogue does get a bit melodramatic at times I wouldn't be lying if I said I was still very much entertained by it. On top of that there's plenty of lore around Chinese culture and history that it makes quite a simple story more interesting, with a few references to myths that I had not even heard about before, now it has made me very interested to check them out too. What the story lacks in plot it more than makes up for in style.
There's no official copy of this book, but Deathblade's translation (along with the annotated footnotes) is very informative and easy to understand for a westerner like me, I just wish there was a licence for him to do a physical copy because I think more people need to experience these types of books just once in their life. It's thanks to him that I have discovered this somewhat niche genre and also why I plan to read the rest of Gu Long's other books.
P.S The novel is free to read in the same place I did if you want to see what the deal is, I hope my review piqued your curiosity a little bit. : https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/7-ki...
For my first foray into the genre it was an interesting experience. and not exactly a bad place to start. The novel is short and simple enough to read, but what made it so unusual was the amount of twists and turns that it opened up with, for instance the first person we focus on you assume will be the main character of the story, I mean he must be because he's fighting ghosts with jade swords, he must have some part to play in it. But then it switches to the hero's perspective in the next chapter, and soon after you find out this was a minor character who gets killed off screen, which is kind of narrative whiplash for the first time reader.
But if you stick with it things start to get a bit more coherent. We're then introduced to our protagonist Liu Changjie, a roguish wine drinking, womanising, martial arts master who is sent on a task to break into a safe and steal a macguffin box, but he has to get past seven guards. All fairly straightforward stuff, but the elements of the plot get quite convoluted fairly quickly as we are introduced to many supporting characters, and also the sheer amount of double crossing. Sometimes it's fun to see but other times it can feel formulaic, especially when a character says "I didn't fall for your hidden trap because I knew that ___ was ____ so that you could _____". You'd think after a while people would just start to not trust our hero or vice versa once encountering them on their adventures. But hey, what's trust when you have superpowered martial arts that can send your opponent through a stone wall?
Surprisingly there's not that much action, most of the scenes feature characters talking about and to each other in the hopes that it'll benefit them in some way (there's quite a few scenes where Liu Changjie challenges someone because he doesn't care, for very much the same reasons) The characters themselves are unique and colourful even if they don't seem particularly deep, but they work well and it's written quite clearly so even if some of the dialogue does get a bit melodramatic at times I wouldn't be lying if I said I was still very much entertained by it. On top of that there's plenty of lore around Chinese culture and history that it makes quite a simple story more interesting, with a few references to myths that I had not even heard about before, now it has made me very interested to check them out too. What the story lacks in plot it more than makes up for in style.
There's no official copy of this book, but Deathblade's translation (along with the annotated footnotes) is very informative and easy to understand for a westerner like me, I just wish there was a licence for him to do a physical copy because I think more people need to experience these types of books just once in their life. It's thanks to him that I have discovered this somewhat niche genre and also why I plan to read the rest of Gu Long's other books.
P.S The novel is free to read in the same place I did if you want to see what the deal is, I hope my review piqued your curiosity a little bit. : https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/7-ki...
January 20, 2026
A fan-based translation of a wuxia heist novel that's centered on a dangerous mission to retrieve a life-saving antidote from a venomous adversary. This novel was originally published in serialized form in the early 1970s.
Dragon Fifth, a powerful lord who is suffering from a fatal illness, hires the mysterious but deadly Liu Changjie to steal a healing elixir from his ex-wife, Madam Lovesickness. The elixir is stored in a box in a cave, but the cave is guarded by seven dangerous killers, fugitives from the martial arts world. But nothing is as it seems, and no one is who they seem to be.
This is a short and fairly straightforward wuxia novel (for Gu, that is) that is both playful and quirky and features Gu's minimalist prose style. The story is set in the Jianghu, a parallel society of martial artists, outlaws, and wanderers familiar to lovers of wuxia fiction. Gu practices clever misdirection, much like a magician, but his tricks often collapse into nonsense. It's unpredictable and entertaining, but not very meaningful or memorable. But even Gu's lesser works provide fans the familiar charms of the wuxia genre.
Dragon Fifth, a powerful lord who is suffering from a fatal illness, hires the mysterious but deadly Liu Changjie to steal a healing elixir from his ex-wife, Madam Lovesickness. The elixir is stored in a box in a cave, but the cave is guarded by seven dangerous killers, fugitives from the martial arts world. But nothing is as it seems, and no one is who they seem to be.
This is a short and fairly straightforward wuxia novel (for Gu, that is) that is both playful and quirky and features Gu's minimalist prose style. The story is set in the Jianghu, a parallel society of martial artists, outlaws, and wanderers familiar to lovers of wuxia fiction. Gu practices clever misdirection, much like a magician, but his tricks often collapse into nonsense. It's unpredictable and entertaining, but not very meaningful or memorable. But even Gu's lesser works provide fans the familiar charms of the wuxia genre.
February 23, 2023
This one disappointed me. I come to it with a great love of wuxia films and in particular the work of the Shaw Brothers studio, and I was hoping for more of the same. I got it, superficially, but superficial is the main detraction here. Maybe it was the translation I read, but something felt off. The story is lightweight and although driven by fighting and killing it has very little action. The writing style is terse - the author makes Hemingway look verbose - and dialogue-heavy, but none of it particularly impresses. The most notable thing about it are the constant twists thrown into the mix, but after a while you come to both expect and predict them.
February 28, 2017
Very good.
Very good indeed!
This Wuxia heist chinese novel take turns and turns of unexpected! Satisfying closing the plot with very little unfinished stuff.
This time the martial arts are not the focus, just part of the scenario.
A short novel, with only 8 chapters, can be a little difficult for people used to the literary english since it is a translation from chinese, which Deathblade does very well, keeping the chinese feel in the text.
Very good indeed!
This Wuxia heist chinese novel take turns and turns of unexpected! Satisfying closing the plot with very little unfinished stuff.
This time the martial arts are not the focus, just part of the scenario.
A short novel, with only 8 chapters, can be a little difficult for people used to the literary english since it is a translation from chinese, which Deathblade does very well, keeping the chinese feel in the text.
November 12, 2019
Unexpected and very insightful. Short book but it's very refreshing to see clever plot playing me along and it gives some sense of satisfaction when they give you a push towards a certain instinct and suspicion and then proved it right at the very end!
January 31, 2019
lumayan. klo narasinya lebih bagus mungkin aku bakal lebih bisa menikmati.
January 24, 2017
It was a good novel to begin my 2017 challenge with. The first 4 chapters were kinda boring with little amazement, but at the beginning of the 5th chapter everything changed drastically. The ending was as mysterious as Liu Changjie was through the story.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews