In the Water Margin
Xu Ning is the eighteenth hero of Liangshan, born under the star Tianyou (天佑星). In the capital he is an instructor of the Golden Lance Guard, the emperor's own escort, which gives him his nickname, Golden Lancer (金枪手). He is the only man in the land who has mastered the hook-spear, a lance with a curved blade made for cutting horses down at the legs. His family's treasure is a suit of armour laced with goose-feather scales, so light and strong that it has no equal, which he keeps in a leather chest hung from a roof beam.
Liangshan needs him because of Huyan Zhuo's chained cavalry, which no one else can stop. The blacksmith Tang Long, Xu Ning's own cousin, knows both his skill and his weak spot: Xu Ning would never leave his post for money, but he would follow his armour anywhere. So the thief Shi Qian steals the chest, Tang Long leads Xu Ning in pursuit, and by the time the chase ends he is on Liangshan, with his family already brought up after him. He teaches the hook-spear, the chained horses go down, and he stays. In the war against Fang La he is hit in the neck by a poisoned arrow near Hangzhou and dies of it.
Key episodes
Theft from the roof beam. Shi Qian creeps into Xu Ning's house and waits in the rafters. Each time he works at the cords, he squeaks like a rat so that the household thinks nothing of the noise. By dawn the chest is gone.
The cousin's chase. Tang Long turns up that morning on a visit and mentions, as if by chance, that he passed a man on the road carrying just such a chest. Xu Ning follows him from inn to inn, always one step behind the thief, until a cup of drugged wine ends the journey at Liangshan.
Hook-spears in the reeds. Xu Ning drills picked men in the hook-spear's steps. When the chained horses charge again, the spearmen rise from the reeds and hook the front horses' legs; each falling horse drags down the ones chained beside it, and the whole wall collapses.
