The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 10 – Part 5

The next day Shifu called the three of us to him. I was terrified and dared not look at his face, but when at last I turned my head I saw that he looked deeply hurt, as though he were about to weep. All he asked was, “Why? Why?” Chen shige¹ said, “Eldest Shige saw that I was close to little shimei.² He was jealous and wanted to beat me to death.” Shifu³ sighed. “Lingfeng, it was fated to be so. It’s no use.” And he shook his head again and again. I burst into tears and knelt before Shifu, saying, “Shifu, it was my fault. Please don’t punish Eldest Shige.” Shifu said, “Lingfeng, why did you recite those lines, ‘How much more now’? Why did you reproach Chaofeng, saying she had deceived me, that she promised to serve me all her life and could not keep her word? Hmph, you’ve been eavesdropping on us all along! Do you think someone can eavesdrop on Old Heretic Huang without Old Heretic Huang knowing? Heh, you think far too little of me. What anger have I to vent? If I wanted to vent it, couldn’t I do it myself? I never sent you to beat anyone! If I had sent you to beat someone, that would make me the jealous one. Xuanfeng, Chaofeng, get out!” And so Shifu snapped both of Qu shige’s leg bones with a wooden staff and announced to all the disciples, “Qu Lingfeng has broken the rules of our school. From now on he is no disciple of Peach Blossom Island.” He ordered the mute servants to take him back to Lin’an Prefecture.

After that Shifu no longer spoke to me, or to Chen shige either, and he taught us no more martial arts. Before long he went off to Qingyuan Prefecture and Lin’an Prefecture, and two years later he suddenly came home with a wife, our shimu.⁴ Shimu was very young, the same age as me. We were both born in the Year of the Monkey. She was beautiful, with skin as white and soft as milk, and no wonder Shifu loved her dearly and often took her travelling with him. Shimu knew no martial arts, but she loved reading and writing. One Mid-Autumn Festival Shimu prepared wine and dishes and invited all the disciples to celebrate, and Shifu got very drunk. While Shimu was in the kitchen making soup, Shifu mumbled drunkenly, “Nobody can talk rubbish now about Old Heretic Huang wanting to marry his girl disciple, can they? Where’s Lingfeng? I don’t blame him any more! Is he well? How are his legs?”

Shimu was a few months younger than me. Her birthday was in the tenth month. She was very good to me, and one day she said, “Shifu often praises you. He says you’re a good girl and very devoted to him. He says too that you’ve had a sad life, and he wants me to be kind to you. Shifu doesn’t understand girls’ things. He brought you up from a child and there was a great deal he couldn’t see to, and he feels bad about it. If there’s anything you need, anything you want, just tell me.” I wept to hear it, and said, “Shifu has been very, very good to me already. Now that he’s married you we can see how happy he is, and all of us disciples are glad for him.” Shimu said, “On this journey Shifu and I came by a marvellous book of martial arts, the Nine Yin Manual.⁵ With your shifu’s attainments he doesn’t think much of it. But there’s one passage of strange writing in it, all gibberish and very hard to make out. Your shifu has always loved to win, and he loves to crack a riddle, so we’ve been puzzling over it together for a long time, and we still haven’t solved it. That’s why he hasn’t had time to teach you.” She pointed to two volumes of white paper on the table and said, “These are the copies of the Nine Yin Manual. Really, the martial arts of Peach Blossom Island can reach to heaven and pierce the earth, so why trouble with anyone else’s? Ah! A martial artist only has to see a new move or so and he must study it to the bottom, just as when we come across a fine lyric, or even half of one, we can’t rest until we have it by heart.”

I told thief shige all this, and he said, “That night at Mid-Autumn, Shifu let slip what he really feels. He still seems fond of our eldest shige, and he may take him back into the school. The moment Eldest Shige comes back, I’m a dead man. Little thief-sister, let’s be real thieves this time. Let’s steal Shifu’s Nine Yin Manual, master the highest martial arts, and then give it back to Shifu. By then we won’t have to fear even Shifu, let alone Eldest Shige.” I opposed it with all my might and said I would go and tell Shifu. But thief shige was truly reckless. That very night he went and stole the manual, though he only got one volume.

All those days Shifu kept lifting his head, lost in thought, and it did not seem to me he was thinking of poems or lyrics. The fingers of both his hands kept counting. When I spoke of it to Chen shige, he said Shifu had got the Nine Yin Manual and was thinking hard about the skills in it. All those days Shifu taught us nothing and hardly even spoke, as though his mind were full of cares. I watched the white hairs on his head grow more one by one, and I felt very sad for him. Chen shige said that on that night he had seen Shifu walking towards the Jian-Testing Pavilion with a copy of the manual in his hand, murmuring something to himself, his head tilted up. Chen shige came towards him and called, “Shifu!” Shifu seemed not to see him, and not to hear him either, and walked straight on. Chen shige quickly stepped aside, went to Shifu’s study and slipped in, and there was the copy of the manual lying on the table. There was only one volume of it. Shifu had the other in his hand. It was only because Shifu was so lost in the skills of the manual that Chen shige could seize his chance and steal the copy of the lower volume. Otherwise, sharp and able as Shifu was, how could Chen shige ever have got his hands on it?

He wanted to go back and steal the other volume, but nothing would make me agree. I said that stealing one had already wronged Shifu, and to steal another as well would make us hardly human. Shifu had been so good to us. A person ought to have some conscience. Thief shige said, “Of course he’s good to you. What good has he ever done me?” I said, “If you go and steal it, I’ll stand outside Shifu’s room and shout, ‘Someone’s stealing the Nine Yin Manual! Someone’s stealing the Nine Yin Manual!’”

As she thought of this, she could not help calling out softly, “Someone’s stealing the Nine Yin Manual! Shifu, Shifu!”

Guo Jing was a little startled. “Stealing what Nine Yin Manual?”

Mei Chaofeng could not help laughing at herself, and said quickly, “Nothing. I was only talking to myself.”

The scent of the plum blossom drifted faintly through the garden, and she remembered the scent of the flowers on Peach Blossom Island.

Thief shige was terrified. That very night we left Peach Blossom Island, took a seagoing boat to Mount Pudu and hid in a cave by the sea. For days on end he pored over the copy of the lower volume, frowning and thinking hard. I saw that the copy was in Shimu’s handwriting. Thief shige said, “We’ll make a copy of it and give the original back to Shifu. But how do we give it back?” I said, “Go to Peach Blossom Island!” Shige said, “Little thief-sister, are you tired of living? You’d dare go back to Peach Blossom Island?” We did not dare stay long on Mount Pudu. It was too close to Peach Blossom Island after all. After a month we took a boat to the mainland and hid here and there for several months in Qingyuan, Shangyu, Baiguan and Yuyao, and then fled to the backwaters of Lin’an, Jiaxing, Huzhou and Suzhou. In that water country there are thousands upon thousands of creeks and streams. By day we hid in the boat with the boards up tight, and Shifu and our shidis⁶ could never find us, nor would we run into Qu shige.

Shige and I studied the skills in the manual together. It was full of all kinds of fearsome martial arts, and at the very start came the Nine Yin White Bone Claw⁷ and the Heart-Crushing Palm,⁸ with the way to train in each and the way to break each. The manual said, “These two skills need no foundation of neigong. They may be entered by way of external skill. My younger brother and sister both lost their lives to these two skills. ‘Killing men like grass, without a sound’ is said of these two skills.” Shige and I were overjoyed and began to train at once. To train in these two skills you must kill living people. I told Shige so, and we went to Jiang Family Village in Shangyu. We started with that vicious woman Madam Jiang, and one by one we turned every man, woman and child of Jiang Family Village into white bones and skulls. When I thought of Shifu’s kindness in saving me, my heart ached. When Shige found out why, he was suddenly wildly jealous and blamed me for thinking of Shifu.

Later in our training, all the skills in the manual needed a foundation of neigong,⁹ but the secrets of laying that foundation and training neigong were all in the upper volume. The skills of the manual were Daoist, and quite unlike what Shifu had taught us, so we could go no further. Shige said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” So he trained by methods he thought up himself and taught me to train the same way. He worked on the skills of the hand himself, and he had a silver-plated steel whip forged for me so that I could train in the White Python Whip.¹⁰ He said he had never given me a love token or a wedding present, so he would give me a splendid weapon. We were quite rich by then, ha ha. With martial arts as fine as ours, robbing the great houses and raiding the government offices, we could have as much as we liked.

Just then a breeze stirred Mei Chaofeng’s long hair. She lifted her face to the sky and asked softly, “Are there stars in the sky?” “Yes,” said Guo Jing. Mei Chaofeng asked, “Is the Silver River there?” “Yes.” She asked again, “Are the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl there?” “Yes.” “Is the Northern Dipper there?” Guo Jing said, “I don’t know which that is.” “You’re hopelessly stupid. Look at the northern sky. There are seven bright, sparkling stars set out like a ladle. That’s the Northern Dipper.”

Guo Jing fixed his eyes on the sky and searched, and there, sure enough, in the northern sky were seven bright stars in the shape of a long water ladle. “I see them, I see them!” he said happily. Mei Chaofeng asked, “What is Seven Stars Converge?” “I don’t know,” said Guo Jing. Mei Chaofeng’s hands tightened, and she said grimly, “Did Ma Yu never teach you?” “No. The Daoist Elder¹¹ only taught me how to breathe once I’d lain down.” “How do you breathe?” “When you breathe in, your belly swells out, and when you breathe out, your belly draws in against your back.” Mei Chaofeng tried it as he said, and thought, When we train, our breathing is exactly the reverse. This, I’m afraid, is the very key to Daoist skill.

The lower volume of the Nine Yin Manual held nothing but the methods of martial arts. My rogue of a husband could get no further in his training and kept saying we should go and steal the upper volume. I said that going to Peach Blossom Island would be good, and that we should give the lower volume back to Shifu and Shimu first. Shige said, “We haven’t mastered the skills in the lower volume yet! Some of them are marked ‘five years to master’, ‘seven years to master’, ‘ten years for a first glimpse of the gate’. We needn’t bother with those. Skills like the Nine Yin White Bone Claw, the Heart-Crushing Palm and the White Python Whip can be forced through even without the foundation of neigong the upper volume teaches, and quickly too. How is your White Python Whip coming on?” I said, “So-so. It’s not ready to use yet. It’ll take another year at least.”

Because we trained in the Nine Yin White Bone Claw and those other vicious, sinister skills, we made enemies of a whole pack of dog-fart heroes who called themselves the orthodox schools and played at being good men. They kept coming to besiege the two of us, man and wife, and we trained like mad, worked very hard and killed a good many of them, but things went from bad to worse, and we hid in the east and fled to the west and could find no peace anywhere. They said they would not let us slaughter the innocent or train in those sinister skills, but what they really wanted was to get the manual out of our hands. Still, the Peach Blossom Island skills our shifu had taught us were formidable in themselves, and with Peach Blossom Island skills alone the two of us cut those dogs down until they scattered at the sight of us. They called us the Twin Evils of Dark Wind. Such an ugly name. It should have been the Twin Evils of Peach Blossom! Later the men who came after us grew stronger and stronger, and though our skill grew higher and our name greater, little by little we could not hold them off. We lived like that in fear and trembling for two years, and alone I often thought, if I’d known it would come to this, why steal that wretched manual? We’d have done better to stay quietly on Peach Blossom Island. But Chen shige and I were together now, and Shifu knew it. How could we show our faces on Peach Blossom Island? And I was afraid Qu shige would come back to the island.

We heard too that Shifu had been in a terrible temper over the two of us stealing the manual and running away, and when Lu shidi and Wu shidi tried to reason with him they said something careless, and in his fury Shifu broke the bones of their legs. Then Feng shidi said, “Only Chen shige and Mei shijie betrayed you, Shifu. The rest of us are loyal to you heart and soul. You shouldn’t vent your anger on the others and cripple Qu shige, Lu shige and Wu shige.” Shifu was enraged and shouted, “I’ll beat you too, so what? I spent so much of my heart’s blood teaching you martial arts, and in the end every one of you turns against me. I, Old Heretic Huang, had better go and die!” One stroke of his wooden staff, and he broke Feng shidi’s leg bones too.

All three shidis were driven off Peach Blossom Island. Later the story got about, and the whole jianghu¹² buzzed with it, saying Old Heretic Huang was a heretic and no mistake. When I heard that Shifu was supposed to have said “I, Old Heretic Huang, had better go and die!” it was like a knife in my heart, and I truly wanted to go and kneel before Shifu and Shimu and let them put me to death, to atone for my sins. So when Shige said we should go back to Peach Blossom Island, I did not try to stop him. I wanted to see Shifu once more. Shige said those dog-fart heroes would never stop haunting our tracks, and sooner or later Shifu would get wind of it, and if Shifu came after us too we would surely die. But once we had the upper volume we could go to Mongolia or Western Xia and flee far, far away, a thousand li, ten thousand li, where no one would ever find us. I thought he was right, and so I staked my life on it and made up my mind to go back to Peach Blossom Island. If we didn’t go, we would lose our lives sooner or later anyway. To die at Shifu’s hands would end it all at a stroke, and my heart would be at peace.

One night at last we landed on Peach Blossom Island. Just as we reached the main hall, we heard Shifu quarrelling loudly with someone. He said, “Brother Senseless, I never took your manual, so how can you ask me to give it back?” I thought Shifu was being rude, calling a man Brother Senseless to his face. Shige and I put our eyes to a crack in the window and saw that the man talking with Shifu was a middle-aged man with a long beard, rather older than Shifu. He was not angry at all, but said with a grin, “Old Heretic Huang, everything you do is heretical. Who could ever trust you?” Shifu said, “The heresy of Old Heretic Huang lies in decrying the sages and the worthies and turning against sovereign and ancestors, in refusing the teachings of the sages and the authority of lord and father. In propriety, righteousness, integrity and shame I have not fallen short by a hair. I said I never took your manual, so I never took it. And even if I had, with all that Old Heretic Huang has learned and knows, I wouldn’t stoop to practising the stinking skills in your Quanzhen Order’s¹³ dog-fart fake manual.” The man laughed heartily. “Fragrant or foul, one sniff tells. True or false, one strike shows. Old Heretic Huang, let’s you and I have a little game, brother, and see whether you’ve trained in the skills of the Nine Yin Manual or not.” He stood up, waited for Shifu to rise from his chair too, and struck at him with his left fist. Shifu answered with a move of the Peach Blossom Falling Petals Palm.¹⁴ Once they were fighting, the candlelight wavered and they moved too fast to follow. I looked at Shige, and he was looking back at me, and we both stuck out our tongues. We had never seen martial arts as fine as this.

Footnotes

1. 师哥 — shīgē. Male senior, the colloquial form of shixiong. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Gē means older brother. ↩

2. 师妹 — shīmèi. Female junior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Mèi means younger sister. ↩

3. 师父 — shīfù. Teacher responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 师母 — shīmǔ. The wife of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Mǔ means mother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 九阴真经 — Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Literally true scripture of the nine yin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 师弟 — shīdì. Male junior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Dì means younger brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 九阴白骨爪 — Jiǔyīn Báigǔ Zhǎo. Literally nine yin white bone claw. A claw technique. ↩

8. 摧心掌 — Cuīxīn Zhǎng. A palm from the Nine Yin Manual that injures the internal organs, practised by the Twin Evils of Dark Wind. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 内功 — nèigōng. Literally internal cultivation. The practice of developing neili through breathing and meditation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 白蟒鞭 — Báimǎng Biān. Literally white python whip. Mei Chaofeng’s extremely long whip. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 道长 — dàozhǎng. Literally Daoist elder. A respectful form of address for a Daoist priest. ↩

12. 江湖 — jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. The world of martial artists, outside mainstream society. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 全真教 — Quánzhēn Jiào. Literally complete truth order. Daoist martial-monastic order founded by Wang Chongyang, one of the most influential orthodox factions. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 桃华落英掌 — Táohuā Luòyīng Zhǎng. Palm technique with palm shadows like scattering peach blossoms. Originally called 落英神剑掌 (Falling Petals Divine Sword Palm) in earlier editions. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩