The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 16 – Part 6

Zhou Botong said, “Once Huang Shang had mastered all those martial arts, he still went on being an official. Then one year a very odd religion suddenly appeared in the lands he governed, called the ‘Mani Order’ or some such, also known as the ‘Ming Order’.¹ It was said to have been brought from the Western Regions by Persian foreigners. They worshipped neither Taishang Laojun,² nor the Supreme Sage Confucius, nor the Tathagata Buddha. Instead they worshipped some old foreign demon, and yet they ate no meat, only vegetables. Emperor Huizong³ believed in Daoism and nothing else, and when he learned of it, he issued an imperial edict ordering Huang Shang to send troops and wipe out these devilish heretics.

“But among the followers of the Ming Order there were a good many masters of martial arts, and when it came to fighting, not one of them was afraid to die. They weren’t useless like the government troops. After a few battles, the troops Huang Shang led were badly beaten. He was furious, and went in person to challenge the Ming Order’s masters, and killed several of their Dharma Kings and Envoys or whatever they were called, one after another. But who would have thought it? A few of the men he killed were disciples of great and famous schools of the wulin.⁴

“So out came their shibos⁵ and shishus, shixiongs⁶ and shidis,⁷ shijies⁸ and shimeis,⁹ their shigus¹⁰ and shiyis,¹¹ their lineage godfathers and lineage godmothers, the whole lot of them, and they brought in a crowd of good fighters from other schools as well, and came to make trouble for him, cursing him for not keeping to the rules of the wulin. Huang Shang said, ‘I’m an official, not a man of the wulin. How should I know your wulin rules or whatever they are?’ Those aunties and godfathers all started yelling at once. ‘If you’re not of the wulin, how do you know martial arts? Don’t tell us your shifu taught you martial arts and not the rules that go with them?’ Huang Shang said, ‘I have no shifu.’ They wouldn’t believe it for a moment, and the quarrel went on until, well, what do you think happened?”

Guo Jing said, “They must have started fighting.”

Zhou Botong said, “What else? Once it came to blows, Huang Shang’s martial arts were so strange that none of them had ever seen the like, and he killed several more of them there and then. But he was one against many, and he was wounded too, and fled for his life. They were so enraged that they killed his whole family, his parents, his wife and his children, every last one.”

Guo Jing sighed. Wherever martial arts were concerned, it seemed to him, killing always followed sooner or later, and he had a vague feeling that if Huang Shang had never learned martial arts, this tragedy would most likely never have happened.

Zhou Botong went on, “Huang Shang fled to some remote, desolate wilderness and hid there. He had every move those dozens of enemies used fixed in his memory, and he racked his brains over how to defeat them, because he meant to work out the answers and then go and kill them all for his revenge. Who knows how long it took, but at last he had found a way to defeat every strange and vicious move any of his enemies had used. He was delighted, and reckoned that even if all those enemies came at him together, he could deal with them single-handed. So he came down from the mountains to take his revenge. But to his surprise, his enemies had all vanished, every one. Can you guess why?”

Guo Jing said, “His enemies must have heard that his martial arts had greatly improved and were afraid of him, so they all went into hiding.”

Zhou Botong shook his head. “No, no. When my shige¹² told me this story, he asked me to guess too. I guessed seven or eight times and got it wrong every time. You try.”

Guo Jing said, “If Big Brother couldn’t guess it in seven or eight tries, then I won’t bother guessing. I’m afraid even seventy or eighty guesses wouldn’t hit it.”

Zhou Botong roared with laughter. “Feeble, feeble. All right, since you admit defeat, I won’t make you guess my riddle. The answer is, all those dozens of enemies of his were dead.”

Guo Jing exclaimed in surprise. “That’s strange. Could it be that his friends or his disciples avenged him and killed them all?”

Zhou Botong shook his head. “No, no! You’re a hundred and eight thousand li¹³ out. He never took disciples. He was a civil official, and the friends he kept were all scholars and literati. They could write poems, compose couplets and write essays, but how could they kill people and avenge him?”

Guo Jing scratched his head and said, “Could a plague have broken out suddenly, and all his enemies caught the disease?”

Zhou Botong said, “Not that either. Some of his enemies were in Shandong, some in Huguang, some in Hebei and Liangzhe. There’s no reason they’d all catch the same plague. Ah, yes, yes! There is one plague that everyone catches. Flee to the ends of the earth and you still can’t escape it. Can you guess what plague that is?”

Guo Jing tried typhoid, smallpox, measles, dysentery, six or seven in all, but Zhou Botong only shook his head. Finally Guo Jing said, “Foot-and-mouth disease!” The moment he said it, he knew it was wrong. He quickly clapped his hand over his mouth and laughed, slapping his own head with his left hand. “How stupid of me. Foot-and-mouth is a plague of cattle and sheep in Mongolia. People don’t catch it.”

Zhou Botong roared with laughter. “Your guesses are getting wilder and wilder. That Huang Shang searched everywhere and finally found one of his enemies. It was a woman. When she’d fought him all those years ago, she was just a girl of sixteen or seventeen. But when Huang Shang found her, she had turned into an old woman of sixty or so…”

Guo Jing was astonished. “That really is strange. Ah, I see. She disguised herself as an old woman, hoping Huang Shang wouldn’t recognise her.”

Zhou Botong said, “It wasn’t a disguise. Think about it. Huang Shang had dozens of enemies, every one of them a master, and between them their martial arts took in every school and lineage. How profound, how intricate must that have been? To work out the answer to the finest move of every one of them, how much time and heart’s blood would it cost him? As it turned out, he had hidden alone deep in the mountains studying martial arts, thinking of martial arts day and night and nothing else, and without his noticing, more than forty years had gone by.”

Guo Jing said in astonishment, “More than forty years?”

Zhou Botong said, “Yes. When you devote yourself to studying martial arts, forty years pass easily enough. I’ve lived here fifteen years myself, and it’s nothing much. When Huang Shang saw that the pretty young girl had become an old woman, it moved him deeply. But she was nothing but sick skin and bone, lying in bed, gasping for breath. There was no need for him to lift a finger. In a few days she would die on her own. The deep hatred that had lain in his heart for decades suddenly vanished without a trace, and he even fed the old woman porridge and gave her medicine.

“Brother, everyone has to die. That plague I said nobody can escape is simply when your time comes. No one gets away from it.”

Guo Jing nodded silently.

Zhou Botong said, “My shige and his seven disciples always talked about cultivating their nature and preserving their lives, but could they really make themselves into immortals who never die? Living for ever, becoming an immortal and the rest of it, I don’t believe a word, and that’s why I won’t be one of those ox-nosed Daoists.”

Guo Jing stared blankly into space, lost in thought.

Zhou Botong said, “Those enemies of his were already forty or fifty years old, and after another forty-plus years, how could they not all be dead, every one of them? Ha ha, ha ha. In fact, he didn’t need to rack his brains thinking of counters or studying martial arts at all. He only needed to race those enemies to see who’d live longest. After forty-plus years, Heaven would have settled accounts with all his enemies for him.”

Guo Jing nodded, and thought, Then should I be seeking out Wanyan Honglie¹⁴ to avenge my father’s death, or not?

Zhou Botong went on, “But then again, there’s no end to the fun in studying martial arts. Born into this world, if you don’t study martial arts, what more interesting thing is there to do? There are plenty of pastimes under heaven, but play at them long enough and in the end they lose their savour. Only martial arts get more fun the more you play at them. Brother, don’t you agree?”

Guo Jing gave a vague “Mm.” He could not see anything fun about martial arts. Training had cost him no end of hardship all his life. It was only that ever since he was small he had gritted his teeth and endured it, never once letting himself slack.

Seeing he wasn’t very enthusiastic, Zhou Botong said, “Why don’t you ask me what happened next?”

Guo Jing said, “Right, what happened next?”

Zhou Botong said, “If you don’t ask what happened next, I won’t have much spirit to tell the story.”

Guo Jing said, “Yes, yes. Big Brother, what happened next?”

Zhou Botong said, “Huang Shang thought to himself, ‘So I’m old too. I don’t have many years left to live.’ He’d spent these decades working out a martial art that encompassed the techniques of every school and lineage under heaven. In a few more years, he too would catch that plague no one escapes. Would all this effort simply be lost? So he wrote down everything he’d worked out in two volumes, a first and a second. What do you think that was?”

Guo Jing said, “What?”

Zhou Botong said, “Ai, can’t you even guess that?”

Guo Jing thought for a moment and asked, “Is it the Nine Yin Manual?”

Zhou Botong said, “We’ve been talking all this time about the origin of the Nine Yin Manual, and you’re still asking what?”

Guo Jing laughed. “I was only afraid of guessing wrong.”

Zhou Botong said, “Huang Shang set down why he wrote the Nine Yin Manual in the preface to it, and that’s how my shige knew. Huang Shang hid the manual in an extremely secret place, and for decades no one ever saw it. Then one year, somehow, the book suddenly appeared in the world. Naturally everyone under heaven who studied martial arts wanted it, and they fought and snatched over it until everything was in an utter muddle. My shige said that, first and last, more than a hundred heroes and brave men lost their lives fighting over this manual. Whoever got hold of it wanted to train in the martial arts it set down, but before he had practised a year or even half a year, someone would always find out and come after him to seize it. It was grabbed this way and that, and who knows how many died. Whoever had the book tried every trick to hide, but with so many hunting him, they never let him be. And as for the plots and schemes, the robbery and the cozening, who knows how many tricks were played over this manual.”

Guo Jing said, “In that case, this manual is the most harmful thing under heaven. If Chen Xuanfeng¹⁵ had never got the manual, he could have lived out his life in hiding in the countryside with Mei Chaofeng,¹⁶ happy and content, and Island Master Huang might never have found him. If Mei Chaofeng had never got the manual, she would not have come to the state she is in today.”

Zhou Botong said, “Brother, how can you be so poor-spirited? The martial arts in the Nine Yin Manual are marvellous and mysterious, wonderful beyond words. Let anyone who studies martial arts learn the least little bit of them, and how could he not lose his heart and soul to them? Even if it costs him his life, what of it? Didn’t we say just now that nobody in the world escapes dying?”

Guo Jing said, “Then you’re bewitched by martial arts, Big Brother.”

Zhou Botong laughed. “Need you ask? There’s no end to the joy of training in martial arts. People are terribly stupid. Some love books and becoming officials, some love gold and jade, and some love great beauties, but how can the joy in any of those come within a ten-thousandth part of the joy of martial arts?”

Guo Jing said, “I’ve learned a few rough skills myself, but I’ve never felt any endless joy in them.”

Zhou Botong sighed. “Silly child, silly child. Then why did you learn martial arts at all?”

Guo Jing said, “My shifus told me to train, so I trained.”

Zhou Botong shook his head. “You really are dense. Let me tell you. A man can go without food, he can do without his life, but he must never stop training.”

Guo Jing said he would, and thought, My sworn brother has most likely gone so mad because martial arts became a craving with him. He said, “I’ve seen the Twin Evils of Dark Wind¹⁷ practise the martial arts from the Nine Yin Manual. They were extremely vicious and evil. Those absolutely cannot be practised.”

Zhou Botong shook his head. “The Twin Evils of Dark Wind must have practised it wrong. The Nine Yin Manual is upright and open as daylight. How could it be vicious and evil?”

Guo Jing had seen Mei Chaofeng’s martial arts with his own eyes, and nothing would make him believe it.

Zhou Botong suddenly understood. “Ah, I see. The Nine Yin Manual records many vicious and evil martial arts, but those are the techniques used by Huang Shang’s enemies. Huang Shang wanted to know how to counter them, so he first had to know how they were practised. That’s why he wrote both the practice methods and the counter methods into the manual. The point of the manual lies in the ways to defeat evil martial arts, not in how to practise them.

“Most of Old Heretic Huang’s¹⁸ disciples are big heretics and little heretics. They didn’t learn the counter methods. They went and learned the evil ones instead.” The evil methods are easy to learn and counter methods hard to master, and the counters have to be built on the neigong of the first volume. Chen Xuanfeng had stolen only the second volume, so from the start he practised the easier skills, the Nine Yin White Bone Claw,¹⁹ the Heart-Crushing Palm,²⁰ the White Python Whip²¹ and so on, and the hard counter methods, which he could not practise, he simply left alone. But this Zhou Botong did not know.

Footnotes

1. 明教 — Míng Jiào. Literally religion of light. The Chinese name of Manichaeism, the faith founded by the prophet Mani in third-century Persia. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 太上老君 — Tài Shàng Lǎo Jūn. The Most Venerable Sovereign, the deified Laozi of Daoism and one of the Three Pure Ones. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 徽宗 — Huīzōng. Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100—1126), renowned for his calligraphy and painting but disastrous as a ruler. See Wikipedia. ↩

4. 武林 — wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. The wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 师伯 — shībó. Senior lineage uncle. The shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 师兄 — shīxiōng. Male senior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

8. 师姐 — shījiě. Female senior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Jiě means older sister. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

10. 师姑 — shīgū. Female lineage aunt. A shijie or shimei of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Gū means father’s sister. ↩

11. 师姨 — shīyí. Female lineage aunt. The wife of one’s shibo or shishu, or a woman of one’s shifu’s generation. Shī means teacher. Yí means maternal aunt. ↩

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

13. 里 — lǐ. A traditional unit of distance, about 500 metres or one-third of a mile. ↩

14. 完颜洪烈 — Wányán Hóngliè. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 陈玄风 — Chén Xuánfēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 梅超风 — Méi Chāofēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 黑风双煞 — Hēifēng Shuāngshà. Literally twin evils of the dark wind. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 黄老邪 — Huáng Lǎoxié. Literally old heretic Huang. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

20. 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. ↩

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