The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 17 – Part 3

At first Guo Jing found it very funny, but after watching a few moves he saw that the fist techniques of those two hands were strange and subtle beyond imagining, and he stood staring, lost in fascination. Every martial artist in the world, whether his hands throw fists or strike palms, whirl a dao or wield a spear, uses them either to attack the enemy or to protect himself. The two hands may be used differently, but they always work together, each answering the other. Zhou Botong’s two hands, however, attacked, defended and parried against each other. Every move went for the wrist, the back of the hand or the vital points of the palm of his other hand, while at the same time breaking the move his other hand was launching, so that the techniques of his left hand and his right were entirely separate.

After Zhou Botong had been at it for a while, Guo Jing suddenly said, “Big Brother, why didn’t you put your full force into that move of your right hand?”

Zhou Botong stopped and laughed. “You’ve a good eye, to see I didn’t put my full force into it. Come, come, come, you try it.” He held out his palm, and Guo Jing put his own palm against it.

Zhou Botong said, “Careful now. I’m going to push you to the left.” The words were hardly out before his force was unleashed. Guo Jing, warned beforehand and on his guard, answered with a move from the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing.¹ The force of their palms met, and Guo Jing was driven back seven or eight paces, his arm aching and numb.

Zhou Botong said, “That time I used full force, and merely pushed you away. Now I won’t use it fully. Try again.”

Guo Jing met his palm once more, and suddenly felt the force of it surge out and pull back in the same instant. He lost his footing completely and pitched straight forward. With a thump his forehead struck the ground. He scrambled to his feet and stood there, dazed.

Zhou Botong laughed. “Do you understand now?”

Guo Jing shook his head. “I don’t!”

Zhou Botong said, “It came to me all of a sudden, after ten years of hard training in the cave here. While my shige² was alive, he told me of the subtle teaching of striking the solid with the empty, of the lacking overcoming the abundant.

“At the time I thought it was only the Daoist way of cultivating the heart and nourishing one’s nature, and I paid it no attention. Then five years ago, as my two hands were sparring, it suddenly all became clear. Its deepest subtleties can only be felt, and I can’t explain them myself. Even after I’d worked it out, I didn’t dare be sure of it. So you sparring with me, Brother, is the best thing that could happen. Don’t be afraid of a few knocks. I’m going to throw you a few more times.” Seeing the reluctance on Guo Jing’s face, he pleaded, “Good brother, I’ve been here fifteen years, longing for someone to come and spar with me. A few months ago Old Heretic Huang’s³ daughter came to chat with me and cheer me up. I was just thinking of tempting her into a bout, though her palm strength isn’t great and sparring with her wouldn’t have had much bite. But the very next day she stopped coming. Good brother, I promise I won’t throw you down too hard.”

Guo Jing saw his hands twitching to begin and his face the very picture of itching impatience, and said, “What do a few falls matter?” He put out his palm and traded a few moves with him. Suddenly Zhou Botong’s palm force went hollow. Guo Jing could not hold himself back in time and went sprawling again. Zhou Botong’s left hand swept out at once, Guo Jing’s body turned a helpless somersault in mid-air, and he came down on his left shoulder. It was a painful fall.

Zhou Botong looked apologetic. “Good brother, I can’t let you take that fall for nothing. I’ll tell you the trick I used to throw you.”

Guo Jing got up, gritting his teeth against the pain, and went over to him.

Zhou Botong said, “Laozi’s Dao De Jing⁴ has a passage: ‘Mould clay to make a vessel. It is the emptiness within that makes the vessel useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. It is the emptiness within that makes the room habitable.’ Do you understand those words?”

Guo Jing had no idea how those characters were written, let alone their meaning, and shook his head with a smile.

Zhou Botong picked up the rice bowl that had just held their meal and said, “This bowl is useful only because its centre is empty. If it were a solid lump of porcelain, what rice could it hold?”

Guo Jing nodded, thinking, The principle seems shallow enough, yet I’ve never thought of it before.

Zhou Botong continued, “When building a house, one cuts doors and windows, and it is the empty space within the four walls that allows people to live there. If the house were solid, if the doors and windows had no openings, if bricks and timber were simply stacked in a great square pile, it would be utterly useless.”

Guo Jing nodded again, as if something were dawning on him.

Zhou Botong said, “The highest martial art of our Quanzhen Order⁵ lies in the two characters ‘empty’ and ‘soft’. That is what is meant by ‘Great perfection seems flawed, yet its use never fails. Great fullness seems empty, yet its use never runs dry.’” He went on to explain the meaning of these four phrases.

Guo Jing listened in silent thought.

Zhou Botong went on, “Your shifu Hong Qigong’s skill is the very best there is among external techniques. I may know a little of the Quanzhen Order’s internal cultivation, but I doubt I’m a match for him. Yet once external techniques are trained as far as he has trained them, I fear they have reached their end, whereas the martial arts of the Quanzhen Order have no limit. Someone like me can only be said to have just glimpsed the way in. When my shige won the title of ‘Finest Martial Arts Under Heaven’, it was no lucky chance. If he were still here today, with the progress of these ten years and more on top, and fought the Eastern Heretic, the Western Venom and the others again, he would never need another seven days and seven nights. To my mind, he would have them beaten inside half a day.”

Guo Jing said, “Wang the Perfected One’s⁶ martial arts reached the very mysteries. My only regret is that I never had the good fortune to meet him. Kind Master Hong’s Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing are the hardest thing under heaven, so the technique you used just now to throw me, Big Brother, must be the softest thing under heaven. Is that so?”

Zhou Botong laughed. “Exactly, exactly. Though softness can overcome hardness, if your Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing were trained to Hong Qigong’s level, I could not overcome you either. The way I threw you just now was like this. Watch carefully.” He explained in minute detail how to launch the move and apply the force, and how to use his neili.⁷ He knew Guo Jing was slow to understand, and he taught him with great care.

Guo Jing tried it dozens of times, and thanks to the excellent grounding he already had in the neigong⁸ of the Quanzhen Order, he slowly came to understand it.

Zhou Botong was overjoyed. “Brother, if you’ve stopped aching, I’ll throw you down again.”

Guo Jing laughed. “It doesn’t hurt any more, but I haven’t got that move you taught me fixed in my memory yet.” He concentrated hard, silently going over it.

Zhou Botong kept urging him on. “All right, have you got it yet? Hurry up, come on!” With his concentration broken like this, Guo Jing learned it even more slowly. It was as long again as it takes to eat a meal before he had the move firmly in his memory. Then he sparred with Zhou Botong again and was thrown once more. With that fall it suddenly came clear to him why, that day at Returning Clouds Manor⁹ when he struck at Huang Yaoshi, Huang Yaoshi had not struck back, yet had twisted his wrist out of joint with empty force.

The two of them sparred and traded blows like this day and night, without stopping. Zhou Botong also explained the sixteen-character secret of this Void Clarity Fist¹⁰ to him in detail. Guo Jing was young and had to have his full sleep. Had it not been for that, Zhou Botong would gladly have gone without sleep himself to keep on sparring with him. Guo Jing was thrown until he was black and blue and swollen all over. He took seven or eight hundred falls in all, and only his tough constitution let him grit his teeth and hold out. But all seventy-two moves of the Void Clarity Fist that Zhou Botong had worked out in fifteen years in the cave had now been passed on to him. Meeting emptiness with emptiness and softness with softness, Guo Jing could no longer be thrown.

Suddenly something dawned on Guo Jing, and he said, “When Kind Master Hong taught me the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, he said I must put out little force and hold much in reserve. So it isn’t all hardness and ferocity.”

Zhou Botong said, “Yes, yes. Hong Qigong’s martial arts have softness within the hardness. That is what makes them so formidable. This Void Clarity Fist of mine could never beat them.”

The two of them were so absorbed in their martial arts that they lost count of the days. Guo Jing thought of Huang Rong morning and night, but there was no way of looking for her, and all he could do was wait and fret. Several times he tried to follow the mute servant who brought their meals, but Zhou Botong always called him back.

One day after the midday meal, Zhou Botong said, “You’ve learned the whole of the Void Clarity Fist now, so I can’t throw you any more. Let’s find a new game to play.”

Guo Jing laughed. “Good. What shall we play?”

Zhou Botong said, “Let’s play a four-man fight.”

Guo Jing asked in wonder, “Four people?”

Zhou Botong said, “That’s right, four men. My left hand is one man, my right hand is another, and your two hands make two more. None of the four helps anyone else. We split four ways and have a free-for-all. It’s bound to be terrific fun.”

Guo Jing was tickled. He laughed. “It would be fun all right, only I don’t know how to make my hands fight separately.”

Zhou Botong said, “I’ll teach you in a while. For now, let’s play a three-man fight.” He split his two hands into two men and sparred with Guo Jing. He had made two men out of one, yet each hand fought every bit as well as both hands together. Only, whenever his left hand had Guo Jing pressed beyond defending himself, his right hand was sure to come to the rescue, and the left did the same for the right. Then, when it was two against one and Guo Jing had the upper hand, Zhou Botong’s two hands would join forces again, like the shifting struggles of the Three Kingdoms.

They fought for a while, then stopped to rest. Guo Jing thought it great fun, and his mind went to Huang Rong again. He thought, If Rong-er were here, the three of us could play a great war of the Six Kingdoms. She would love it.

Zhou Botong was brimming with enthusiasm. As soon as Guo Jing had caught his breath, he began teaching him the Ambidextrous Self-Combat.¹¹

This skill was harder again than the Void Clarity Fist. As the saying goes, “The mind cannot be put to two uses at once.” And another: “Draw a square with the left hand and a circle with the right, and neither will come out true.” Yet this art of Ambidextrous Self-Combat demanded precisely that the mind be put to two uses at once, and the training began with “drawing a square with the left hand and a circle with the right.”

At first, whenever Guo Jing practised, both hands drew squares, or both drew circles, or neither shape was true. After long, hard practice, without knowing quite how, he suddenly caught the knack of it, and without even trying, his two hands could each draw a square or a circle as he pleased. He thought, It is like eating a meal. The left hand holds the bowl, the right hand wields the chopsticks. The two hands move differently, yet they work together for the meal. Having worked this out, he understood the great principle of the technique.

Zhou Botong was delighted and gratified. “If you hadn’t trained in the neigong of our Quanzhen Order, so that one part of your spirit can keep watch within while another roams outside, how could you have mastered this square-and-circle skill so quickly? Now your left hand shall use the Southern Mountain Fist,¹² and your right hand the Yue Maiden Swordplay.”¹³ These were martial arts Guo Jing had learned from Nan Xiren and Han Xiaoying since childhood, so that when he used them, no conscious thought was needed. Yet to use them separately, each hand its own technique, was extremely difficult.

Zhou Botong was in a great hurry to play his four-man fight with him, and did all he could to teach him every clever trick and secret of it.

Footnotes

1. 降龙十八掌 — Xiánglóng Shíbā Zhǎng. Literally eighteen dragon-subduing palms. Hong Qigong’s palm technique. 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. 黄老邪 — Huáng Lǎoxié. Literally old heretic Huang. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 道德经 — Dàodéjīng. The Classic of the Way and Its Virtue, attributed to Laozi, the foundational text of Daoism. ↩

5. 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. ↩

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

7. 内力 — nèilì. Literally internal force. The kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

9. 归云庄 — Guīyún Zhuāng. Literally returning clouds manor. The Lu family manor on Lake Tai. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 空明拳 — Kōngmíng Quán. The softest fist art in the world, which Zhou Botong drew from the Daodejing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 双手互搏 — Shuāngshǒu Hùbó. Fighting technique where both hands operate independently, allowing each hand to perform different techniques simultaneously. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 南山拳 — Nánshān Quán. Literally southern mountain fist. Taught by Nan Xiren. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 越女剑法 — Yuè Nǚ Jiànfǎ. Literally Yue maiden jian method, after the swordswoman of Yue in the Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩