Sha Gu shook her head; running over to the door, she closed it and then furtively took peep after peep through the crack in the doorway, throwing a few punching moves. But as the punches came and went, they were all of the same six or seven unpolished moves from the ‘Blue Wave Palm’ form, and nothing else.
“Dad,” Huang Rong commented, “she taught herself by spying when Martial Brother Qu was practicing martial arts.”
Huang Yaoshi nodded his head, murmuring: “I expected Lingfeng wouldn’t have such a nerve as to dare pass one’s martial arts to others after having left my tutelage.” He added: “Rong’er, try attacking her footwork. Trip her up.”
Huang Rong stepped up, giggling. “Sha Gu,” she said, “let’s practice some martial arts. Look out!”
Throwing a feint with her left palm, she immediately followed with a ‘Matching Ducks Joined by a Ring’, launching two kicks with unrivalled speed. Sha Gu, dumbstruck, had already taken Huang Rong’s left kick on her right hip before she hurriedly stepped back. But she didn’t know that Huang Rong’s right leg, placed in advance, was waiting behind her; she was still unsteady from her step back when her momentum made her trip and she toppled face-up.
Leaping up immediately, she shouted: “You cheated! Little sister, let’s go again.”
Huang Yaoshi’s face darkened. “Who’s the ‘little sister’?” he said. “It’s ‘auntie’!”
Sha Gu, who didn’t know the difference between “sister” and “auntie” anyway, laughed. “Auntie! Auntie!” she said, obediently.
Huang Rong had already understood. She thought: “Daddy basically wanted me to test her footwork. Both of Martial Brother Qu’s legs were broken, so when he was practicing martial arts by himself, he obviously didn’t practice using his legs and feet; therefore, Sha Gu wouldn’t have been able to spy on any footwork. If he had trained her personally, then he’d have taught her skills for all areas: upper-body, mid-section, and footwork.”
By calling out the word “auntie”, Huang Yaoshi was finally accepting Sha Gu back under his tutelage. “Why the heck are you so silly?” he asked her.
She laughed: “I’m Sha Gu!”
Huang Yaoshi scowled. “Where’s your mum?”
Sha Gu put on a crying face, answering: “Gone to granny’s place.”
Huang Yaoshi then asked seven or eight questions in a row, but he didn’t get anything that mattered. He could only give a sigh and leave it at that. When Qu Lingfeng was still in his tutelage, he was aware that he had a silly daughter who wasn’t very bright. That, for sure, was Sha Gu.
There and then, they buried Mei Chaofeng in the back garden. Guo Jing and Huang Rong carried out the skeleton of Qu Lingfeng and buried it next to Mei Chaofeng. Although the Six Freaks were mortal enemies with the ‘Twin Spectres of the Black Winds’, the death of a person was what was important; they too all kowtowed before the grave, offering wishes and dismissing their prior grievance.
Huang Yaoshi, gazing at the two new graves for a long while, felt a hundred feelings mixed together. “Rong’er,” he said, sadly, “let’s go and look at your Martial Brother Qu’s treasures.” At that, father and daughter walked back into the secret room.
Looking at the things Qu Lingfeng had left behind, Huang Yaoshi was silent for a long time. Shedding tears, he said: “Among the disciples under my tutelage, Lingfeng had the strongest martial arts and the brightest mind. If his legs hadn’t been broken, even one hundred palace guards wouldn’t have been able to hurt him.”
“That’s a matter of course,” said Huang Rong. “Dad, are you going to teach Sha Gu martial arts personally?”
“I’ll teach her martial arts,” he murmured. “And I’ll teach her verse-writing, qin-playing, the mysteries of the five elements…All the skills that back then your Martial Brother Qu wanted to learn but didn’t learn – I’ll teach her, comprehensively.”
Huang Rong stuck out her tongue, and thought: “Heretical thoughts from a heretical man! Daddy’s letting himself in for a lot of stress.”
Huang Yaoshi opened the iron chest, looking through it layer by layer. The more valuable the treasures, the more sorrow he felt. Seeing rolled-up paintings and calligraphy, he sighed, remarking: “No doubt it’s great to use this stuff as a pleasing diversion from frustration, but as for expending one’s will over playthings – that must never happen. How fine were the pictures of flowers, birds and figures painted by the Taoist ruler, Emperor Huizong! Yet having depicted the rivers and mountains in all their splendour, he rolled them up and gifted them to the Jins.” As he spoke, he furled and unfurled the scrolls. “Eh?” he said, suddenly.
Huang Rong asked: “Dad, what is it?”
Huang Yaoshi pointed out a landscape in splash-ink, saying: “Look here!”
In the painting was a towering mountain, with a total of five steep peaks. Among them, one peak was outstandingly tall – bolt upright and pointing to the heavens, it pierced the clouds with its colossal height and overlooked a deep chasm below. A row of pine trees grew by the mountainside. Twigs tipped with snow, each winding trunk curved to the south, suggesting the utter ferocity of the north wind. To the west of the summit was a lone pine: old, but stiff and upstanding, and rising with an elegant majesty. Beneath this pine, vermilion brushstrokes profiled a general, twirling his sword in the face of the wind. The figure’s features were hard to discern, but the sleeves of his clothes rose in a flutter, and his bearing escaped the ordinary. The entire picture was a monochromatic landscape, but this man alone was a firey, blackish red – making him seem all the more outstanding and exceptional.
The painting was without a signature. It was annotated only with the following poem:
My clothing covered with the marks of many years,
In special search of em’rald haven’s fragrant heights,
I’ve never seen enough of hills and rivers fine,
As cavalry by moonlight hurries to retreat.
A few days ago, Huang Rong had seen this poem as written down by Han Shizhong on the Emerald Haven Pavilion in Lin’an, and recognised the handwriting. “Dad,” she said, “this was written by Han Shizhong. The verses are of the late, mighty Yue.”
Huang Yaoshi nodded. “That’s right, my clever Rong’er!” he said. “But this poem of the late Yue was actually describing the ‘emerald haven’ of the mountains in Chizhou. The mountains in the painting make a treacherous scene; they’re no ‘emerald haven’ at all. Although this painting’s style has a fine firmness, it’s short on implication and tasteful accent; it’s not by the hand of a master.”
That day at the Emerald Haven Pavilion, Huang Rong had seen Guo Jing – reluctant to leave – tracing his fingers along the stone inscription and brushing over the remains of Han Shizhong’s handwriting. Knowing that he’d be fond of it, she said: “Dad, let Guo Jing have this painting.”
Huang Yaoshi laughed. “Girls, by birth, are extroverts,” he said. “What else is there to say?”
Handing it over to her freely, he reached into the iron chest again and picked up a necklace, remarking: “This string of pearls is each and every one of the same size; that’s truly hard to come by.” After he gave it to Huang Rong to wear around her neck, she threw herself into his arms, and he reached out and held her in a hug. Father and daughter smiled at each other, nestling cheek against cheek, both feeling a never-ending warmth.