The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 17 – Part 2

“Madam Huang said, ‘I used to read this book for fun when I was five, and I can recite it from beginning to end. Eight or nine out of ten children in our Jiangnan know it by heart. If you don’t believe me, I’ll recite it for you.’ With that she began at the beginning and recited it, flowing on like water. I followed along in the book, and sure enough, she didn’t get a single word wrong. I went cold all over, as if I had fallen into an ice cellar. Madam Huang went on, ‘Pick out any passage you like from the middle and give me the opening words, and I expect I can still recite it.’ I did as she said and tested her on several passages from the middle, and she really did have them off pat, without the slightest hitch. Old Heretic Huang roared with laughter. Fury rose in me. I ripped the cover off the book and tore it to shreds. I was just about to tear up the pages beneath when I saw a strange look come over Old Heretic Huang’s face. I thought, This man is full of tricks. I mustn’t fall into one of his traps. So I stopped and tore no more.

“All at once Old Heretic Huang said, ‘Old Wild Child, there’s no need to throw a wild child’s tantrum. I’ll give you this Soft Hedgehog Armour¹ of mine.’ I didn’t know he had made a fool of me. I thought he felt bad about it and wanted to give me a great treasure to soothe my temper. But I was terribly upset at the time, and besides, it was the treasure that guards his island. How could I take it from him? I just thanked him and went home and shut myself away to train. I was sure Ouyang Feng had switched the manual. I knew my martial arts were no match for his then, so I made up my mind to train hard for five years and master a few formidable skills, then go to the Western Regions after the Western Venom, beat him till he couldn’t get up and make him give the manual back. My shige² had left the thing in my keeping, and the Old Wild Child couldn’t look after it. How could I face my shige?”

Guo Jing said, “With the Western Venom so sly and treacherous, there was nothing for it but to settle accounts with him. But if you had gone with Daoist Elder Ma, Daoist Elder Qiu and the others, wouldn’t you have made a far stronger showing?”

Zhou Botong said, “Ah, it’s all the fault of my love of winning. It got me fooled, and I never knew it. If only I’d talked it over with Ma Yu and the others at the time, one of them would surely have spotted the flaw in the whole business. A year or so later, word suddenly began going round the jianghu³ that the Twin Evils of Dark Wind,⁴ disciples of Peach Blossom Island, had got hold of the Nine Yin Manual,⁵ mastered several of the subtle martial arts recorded in it, and were doing evil wherever they went. At first I didn’t believe it, but the talk grew louder and louder. Another year went by, and then Qiu Chuji suddenly turned up at my home. He said he had looked into it thoroughly, and the second volume of the Nine Yin Manual really had fallen into the hands of Peach Blossom Island’s disciples. I was very angry when I heard it. I said, ‘Huang Yaoshi has not acted as a friend!’ Qiu Chuji asked me, ‘Shishu,⁶ why do you say Huang Yaoshi has not acted as a friend?’ I said, ‘He went to demand the manual from the Western Venom without a word to me beforehand. And once he had it, even if he didn’t give it back to me, he should at least have told me.’”

Guo Jing said, “Perhaps Island Master Huang did mean to give it back to you once he’d taken it, only those good-for-nothing disciples of his stole it. It seems to me he’s still furious about it. He even broke the legs of four other disciples who had done nothing wrong, and drove them from his school.”

Zhou Botong kept shaking his head. “You’re as guileless as I am. If this business had fallen into your hands, you’d have been taken in just the same and never known it. That day Qiu Chuji stayed and talked with me for a while, and we discussed martial arts for several days before he left. Two months later he came to see me again. This time he had found out that Chen Xuanfeng and Mei Chaofeng really had stolen Old Heretic Huang’s manual, and were practising two evil martial arts, the Nine Yin White Bone Claw⁷ and the Heart-Crushing Palm.⁸ He had run a great risk to eavesdrop on the Twin Evils of Dark Wind, and only then did he learn that Old Heretic Huang’s volume of the manual had never been taken from Ouyang Feng at all. It had been stolen from me.”

Guo Jing asked in astonishment, “Could it be that Madam Huang switched the books that day, and what she gave back to you was a fake?”

Zhou Botong said, “I’d guarded against that from the start. While Madam Huang was reading the manual, my eyes never left her for a moment. She knew no martial arts, and however quick her hands, they could never have slipped past the eyes of men like us who have trained in hidden weapons. She didn’t switch it. She learned it by heart, by sheer force of memory!”

Guo Jing did not understand. “How do you mean, learned it by heart?”

Zhou Botong said, “Brother, how many times do you have to read a book before you can recite it by heart?”

Guo Jing said, “If it’s easy, maybe thirty or forty times. If it’s difficult and long, then seventy or eighty times, perhaps a hundred. And even after a hundred times, I still might not get it perfectly.”

Zhou Botong said, “Just so. When it comes to natural gifts, you really can’t be called clever.”

Guo Jing said, “I’m slow-witted by nature. Whether it’s books or martial arts, I make very slow progress.”

Zhou Botong sighed. “You don’t know much about books, so let’s just talk about martial arts. When your shifu teaches you a set of fist or palm techniques, I expect he has to teach it to you dozens of times before you’ve learned it?”

Guo Jing looked ashamed. “That’s right,” he said, and then added, “Sometimes I’ve learned it and can’t remember it. Other times I’ve remembered it all right, but then I just can’t use it.”

Zhou Botong said, “Yet there are people in this world who need only watch someone go through a set of fist and foot techniques, and they remember it then and there.”

Guo Jing cried, “That’s exactly right! Island Master Huang’s daughter is just like that. When Kind Master Hong teaches her martial arts, he shows her twice at the very most, and never a third time.”

Zhou Botong said slowly, “A girl as clever as that had better not go the way of her mother, and catch the plague nobody escapes while she’s still young. That day Madam Huang borrowed my manual and read it only twice, yet she had already learned every word of it. The moment she parted from me, she wrote it all out from memory for her husband.”

Guo Jing was aghast. Only after a long pause did he say, “Madam Huang didn’t understand what the manual meant, yet she could remember it from beginning to end. How can anyone in the world be so clever?”

Zhou Botong said, “That’s what they call never forgetting a thing you’ve once seen! I dare say your little friend Miss Huang can do it too. When I heard what Qiu Chuji had to say, I was shocked and ashamed, and I called the seven senior disciples of the Quanzhen Order together to talk it over. We all agreed to go and force the Twin Evils of Dark Wind to hand over the manual. Qiu Chuji said, ‘However strong the Twin Evils of Dark Wind may be, they are not likely to beat the disciples of Quanzhen. They are of a younger generation than you, Shishu. There is no need for you, our venerable elder, to go yourself. We must not let the heroes of the jianghu say you used your seniority to crush your juniors.’ I thought he was right, so I sent Chuji and Chuyi to find the Twin Evils of Dark Wind, while the other five stood by to back them up and keep watch, in case the pair slipped through the net.”

Guo Jing nodded. “With the Seven Zis of Quanzhen⁹ all taking the field, the Twin Evils of Dark Wind could never win.” He could not help thinking back to that day on the cliff in Mongolia, when Ma Yu and the Six Eccentrics had passed themselves off as the Seven Zis of Quanzhen.

Zhou Botong said, “But by the time Chuji and Chuyi reached Henan, the Twin Evils had vanished without a trace. They made enquiries and learned that the Twin Evils had been practising their evil martial arts and harming innocent people, until the men of valour of the Central Plains could stand it no longer and went after them. The pair couldn’t hold them off, and fled no one knew where. Before they fled, they had killed several brave men as well.”

Guo Jing asked, “If you couldn’t find the Twin Evils of Dark Wind, what did you do?”

Zhou Botong said, “If we couldn’t find the Twin Evils, then naturally I had to go after Old Heretic Huang. I didn’t take Qiu Chuji and the others either. I went to Peach Blossom Island alone and took him to task. Old Heretic Huang said, ‘Brother Senseless, Huang Yaoshi has always meant exactly what he says. I said I would never so much as glance at your manual, and when did I ever look at it? The Nine Yin Manual I read was the copy my wife wrote out. It was not your manual.’ When I heard him twist things like that, of course I lost my temper, and in a few words we were at deadlock. I said I wanted his wife to judge between us. A bitter smile came over his face. ‘My wife is dead. You’ll never find her now.’ I got a terrible shock and tried to comfort him. Old Heretic Huang gave a cold laugh. ‘Brother Senseless, you needn’t put on this show of sympathy. If you hadn’t gone boasting about your blasted manual, my wife would never have left me.’ I said, ‘What?’ He didn’t answer. He just glared at me, his face full of fury, and then all of a sudden tears ran from his eyes. Only after a long while did he tell me how his wife had died.

“It turned out that Madam Huang had memorised the text to help her husband. Huang Yaoshi was a very proud man. He said that Chongyang the Perfected One¹⁰ had won the manual and never practised it, so if he, Huang Yaoshi, practised it, wouldn’t that make him far inferior to my shige? So he didn’t practise it either. He only wanted to work out the meaning of one long, outlandish passage in it. But then Chen Xuanfeng and Mei Chaofeng stole the second volume. To console her husband, Madam Huang tried to write out the second volume again from memory. She had never understood a word of it in the first place. She had crammed it into her head that one time and written it down, and by now it was long ago, and she had read a great deal of poetry and other books in between. How could she remember it? She was more than eight months with child by then. She racked her brains for days and nights on end and wrote down seven or eight thousand characters, but she could no longer make it whole. Her mind and strength were spent, and she went into labour early and gave birth to a baby girl, while she herself was like a lamp whose oil has burned dry. For all Huang Yaoshi’s matchless cleverness and his mastery of medicine, in the end he could not save his beloved wife’s life.

“Old Heretic Huang was always one to vent his anger on others, and now, with his beloved wife dead, he was out of his mind. He wept aloud, tears streaming down his face, and raved at me. In his Zhejiang accent he turned my name, Zhou Botong, into Zhou Butong, Zhou the Senseless. Since he had just lost his wife, I let it pass and only smiled and said, ‘You’re a martial artist. Making so much of the love between husband and wife, aren’t you afraid people will laugh at you?’ He said, ‘This wife of mine was not like other women.’ I said, ‘With your wife dead, you can give all your mind to training. If it were me, why, I’d ask for nothing better! The sooner a wife dies the better. Congratulations, congratulations!’”

Guo Jing let out a cry of dismay. “How could you say such a thing?”

Zhou Botong rolled up his eyes. “I meant every word. What was wrong with saying it? But the moment Old Heretic Huang heard it, he flew into a rage and hacked at me with his palm, and the two of us came to blows. That fight has kept me stuck here for fifteen years.”

Guo Jing said, “So you lost to him?”

Zhou Botong laughed. “If I’d won, I wouldn’t be here. He broke both my legs and told me to hand over the second volume of the Nine Yin Manual. He said he would burn it as an offering to his wife. I hid the manual inside the cave here and sat at the mouth to guard it. If he tried to take it by force, I’d destroy it. He said, ‘There’s always some way to get you out of that cave.’ I said, ‘We’ll see about that!’

“And so we have held out against each other for fifteen years. He’s a very proud man. He has never starved me or forced me, and of course he would never put poison in my food. He has only tried every trick there is to lure me out of the cave. When I come out to relieve myself, he doesn’t take the chance to slip in and grab that stinking advantage. Sometimes I’ve pretended to be at my business for a whole shichen,¹¹ and though he must be itching unbearably, he still keeps his nerve.” He roared with laughter as he said it.

Guo Jing found it funny too. Here was his sworn brother, locked in a trial of strength even over a thing like this.

Zhou Botong said, “For fifteen years he has racked his brains and never once got the better of me. But last night I was in real danger. If you hadn’t turned up to help me, Brother, the manual would be in Old Heretic Huang’s hands by now. Ah, I’d heard that Azure Sea Surging Melody¹² of his before, and I thought nothing of it. Who’d have guessed he had suddenly worked a lot of strange new tricks into it? I was caught off guard and very nearly fell for it. Good brother, I have you to thank for this.”

Guo Jing’s thoughts were in a turmoil as he listened to this tale of old feuds and favours. He asked, “Big Brother, what will you do now?”

Zhou Botong laughed. “Keep holding out against him, of course, and see whether Old Heretic Huang lives longer or I last a few more years. I told you just now the story of Huang Shang. He outlived all his enemies, and that was how he won.”

Guo Jing thought that this was hardly a plan, but he had no idea himself how to get out of the cave or off the island. He asked, “Why haven’t Daoist Elder Ma and the others come to rescue you?”

Zhou Botong said, “They most likely do not know I am here. And even if they did, this island’s trees and rocks are strange and bewildering. Unless Old Heretic Huang deliberately lets them in, no outsider can hope to reach the heart of Peach Blossom Island. Besides, even if they came to rescue me, I would not go. This contest with Old Heretic Huang is not finished yet.”

Guo Jing had talked with him for half the day. He found that the man, for all his years, was a child at heart, his talk innocent and artless, without the slightest guile, and the two of them got on famously. But he kept thinking of Huang Rong, and had no idea how he could find her.

When the red sun stood high overhead, the mute servant brought food again. After they had eaten, Zhou Botong said, “I have spent fifteen years on Peach Blossom Island, but the time was not wasted. Here in the cave I had nothing to distract me. What I have trained would have taken twenty-five years in any other place. The trouble with training alone is that, although I know I have improved greatly, I have no one to spar with. So I had no choice but to make my left hand fight my right hand.”

Guo Jing asked in astonishment, “How can your left hand fight your right hand?”

Zhou Botong said, “I pretend my right hand is Old Heretic Huang and my left hand is Old Wild Child. My right hand strikes out with a palm, my left hand deflects it and returns a punch, and just like that we fight.” As he spoke, he actually began to demonstrate, his left hand attacking while his right defended, and the exchange grew fierce.

Footnotes

1. 软猬甲 — Ruǎnwèijiǎ. A vest set with tiny barbs, proof against blades and fists, treasured on Peach Blossom Island. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

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

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

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

6. 师叔 — shīshū. Junior lineage uncle. The shidi or shimei of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Shū means father’s 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. 全真七子 — Quánzhēn Qīzǐ. Literally the seven zi of Quanzhen, zi being an honorific for a master. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 真人 — zhēnrén. Literally true person. An honorific title for a Daoist master who has attained a high level of cultivation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 时辰 — shíchén. Traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two hours; the day was divided into twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 碧海潮生曲 — Bìhǎi Cháoshēng Qǔ. Musical technique that can disturb opponents’ minds through qi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩