The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 24 – Part 1

Recuperating in a secret chamber

Huang Rong took two steps towards the door, then looked back. Seeing the doubt in Guo Jing’s eyes, she guessed that the killing intent on her face had given her away, and thought, Killing Silly Girl¹ hardly matters, but once Jing gege is well again, he’s sure to have it out with me. Then she thought, Having it out with me I could bear. I’d admit I was wrong and beg his pardon, and that would be that. What I fear most is that he’d never say a word about it, all his life, and yet carry it in his heart for decades to come. That would take the savour out of everything. Enough, enough. We’ll run this great risk, then.

She shut the cupboard door and looked all about the chamber. In the western corner of the roof was a skylight one foot square, and the daylight that came through its clamshell panes was just enough to make out the room by day. The air holes beside the skylight, though, were choked with dust. She cleared them with her short jian, yet the air in the room stayed foul, and there was nothing more to be done about it. When she thought back to how frantic she had been only a little while ago, sick to death with worry, this cramped, dust-choked room seemed like heaven itself.

Guo Jing leaned against the wall and smiled. “There couldn’t be a better place to heal. Only, we’ll have two dead men for company. Aren’t you afraid?”

Huang Rong was afraid, but she made a show of not caring in the least, and laughed. “One is my shige.² He would never harm me. The other is a good-for-nothing officer. I wasn’t afraid of him alive, and his ghost won’t frighten anyone now.” She carried the two skeletons to the northern corner of the room and heaped them there, spread the straw that had been under the watermelons over the floor, then set a dozen or more melons in a ring about the two of them, within arm’s reach. “Will this do?”

“Good,” said Guo Jing. “Let’s begin.” Huang Rong helped him sit down on the straw and sat cross-legged on his left. Raising her head, she saw a tiny hole in the wall in front of her, no bigger than the hole in a copper cash. She put her eye to it and could not help being delighted. Set into the wall was a small mirror, and everything in the hall outside showed in it. Whoever had built this secret chamber had thought of everything, so that someone hiding here from enemies could still watch what went on outside in the mirror. But over the years the glass had gathered a coat of dust. She took out her handkerchief, wrapped it round her forefinger, reached into the hole and wiped the little mirror clean.

In it she saw Silly Girl sitting on the floor tossing pebbles, her lips moving, saying who knew what. Huang Rong put her ear to the hole and heard every word. The girl was singing a lullaby, the kind that rocks a child to sleep: “Rock, rock, rock, rock to Granny’s bridge, Granny calls me her precious babe…” At first Huang Rong thought it funny, but as she listened on, she heard such lingering tenderness in the song, such brimming love, that she fell into a reverie, thinking, Is this what her mother used to sing to her? … If my own mother hadn’t died so young, she would have sung me to sleep like this too. At the thought, to her surprise, her eyes grew wet.

Seeing the sorrow in her face, Guo Jing said, “What are you thinking about? My injury’s nothing much. Don’t be sad.”

Huang Rong wiped her eyes. “Quick, teach me the exercise that will heal you.”

Guo Jing slowly recited the Healing Chapter from the Nine Yin Manual.³

In the martial arts there is a saying: “Before you learn to hit, learn to be hit.” When one first learns the rudiments, one’s shifu must teach one how to take a beating without being badly hurt, and once one’s martial arts run deep, one must study the arts of guarding the body and saving one’s life, unsealing acupoints and treating wounds, setting bones and drawing poison. For there is always someone stronger than the strong, and though your martial arts be peerless, you can never be sure the day won’t come when you slip. The Healing Chapter of the Nine Yin Manual taught how a man wounded by the qigong of a master might use qigong to restore his zhenyuan⁴ and heal the internal injury. As for treating external injuries such as broken bones and blade wounds, that was of use only to beginners, and anyone studying the Manual naturally had no need to learn it.

Huang Rong had it by heart after a single hearing. A few passages of the text were not quite clear, and the two of them worked them out together. One had a solid grounding in Quanzhen Order neigong,⁵ the other was quick-witted beyond the ordinary, and after a little study they understood it all. Huang Rong held out her right palm against Guo Jing’s left, each of them circulated their neili,⁶ and they began to practise according to the method. The injured party drives his own breath round the jingmai⁷ to clear what is blocked, the helper lends neili in support, and the injured party’s breath, urged on, flows all the more freely.

After two shichen⁸ of practice, when the breath had made several circuits, they parted their palms to rest a little. Huang Rong cut open a watermelon and shared it with Guo Jing, and then they practised again until the hour of Wei.⁹ Little by little Guo Jing felt the tightness weighing on his chest begin to loosen. The warmth flowing from Huang Rong’s palm spread slowly through the hundred acupoints of his body, and even the pain at his waist had eased a little. The method in the Manual, he thought, was truly marvellous beyond compare, and he dared not slacken in the least, but kept at it.

By their third rest, the sunlight through the skylight was fading and dusk was near. Guo Jing’s chest felt much easier, and even Huang Rong felt wonderfully fresh and clear-headed.

They had chatted a little and were about to begin again when there came a rush of running feet that stopped dead in front of the inn, and several people walked into the hall. A coarse voice bawled, “Bring food, quick, we’re starving to death!” It was the voice of Hou Tonghai the Three-Headed Dragon.¹⁰ Guo Jing and Huang Rong stared at each other, utterly taken aback.

Huang Rong quickly put her eye to the hole. Truly, foes are fated to meet. The figures in the little mirror were none other than Wanyan Honglie, Ouyang Feng and his nephew, Yang Kang, Peng Lianhu and the rest. Silly Girl had gone off to play somewhere by now, and though Hou Tonghai pounded the table till it rang, nobody came.

Liang Ziweng circled the hall, frowning. “There’s no one living here.”

Hou Tonghai offered to go into the village and buy food and wine. Ouyang Feng spread straw in the inner hall, out of the draught, lifted up his nephew, whose broken legs had not yet healed, and laid him on it to lie still and recover.

Peng Lianhu laughed. “Those Imperial Guards and Palace Guards may be useless milksops, but they’ve been crawling in and out of every hole like ghosts that won’t be laid, and we haven’t had a decent meal all day. You’re a northerner, Your Highness, yet you knew there was a lonely village out here by the Qiantang River, and led us all to it. Truly there’s nothing a man of talent can’t do.”

Wanyan Honglie took the flattery without the least sign of pleasure. He gave a soft sigh. “I came here once, nineteen years ago.”

Seeing how sad he looked, the others were a little puzzled, not knowing that he was thinking of the time Bao Xiruo had saved his life in this village. The lonely village was just as it had been, but the gentle woman with the thorn hairpin and the plain blue gown, who had fed him chicken broth, was gone, never to be seen again.

While they were talking, Hou Tonghai came back with food and wine bought from the villagers. Peng Lianhu filled everyone’s bowl and said to Wanyan Honglie, “Today Your Highness has won a marvellous book of war. We shall soon see the Great Jin’s might shake the world and bring every land to heel. Let us all drink to Your Highness.” He raised his bowl and drained it at a draught.

His voice was loud, and though there was a wall between them, Guo Jing heard every word. He was badly shaken, and thought, So Grandfather Yue’s book has fallen into his hands after all! In his distress, the breath in his chest suddenly turned back on itself. Huang Rong felt jolt after jolt in her palm and knew he had heard the dreadful news and that it had disturbed the breath in his dantian.¹¹ If he could not keep hold of it, his life would be in danger at once. She put her lips to his ear and whispered, “If he could steal the book, can’t we steal it back? Once your second shifu, the Swift-Handed Scholar,¹² takes a hand, he could steal back ten books.”

Guo Jing thought she was right. He quickly closed his eyes to calm his mind, and listened no more to what was said beyond the wall.

Huang Rong put her eye to the hole again. Wanyan Honglie was raising his bowl, and when he had drained it he said happily, “This time we owe everything to the help of all of you. And the greatest share is Mister Ouyang’s. If he hadn’t driven off that brat surnamed Guo, we’d have had a great deal more trouble.”

Ouyang Feng gave a few dry laughs that rang like a cracked cymbal. When Guo Jing heard them, his heart gave another jolt. Huang Rong thought, Heaven help us. Don’t let the Old Venom play his devilish zheng here, or Jing gege’s life is lost.

Ouyang Feng said, “This place is well out of the way. The Song soldiers will never find us here. Let’s all have a look at what this book Yue Fei left behind is really like.” He took the stone box from the breast of his robe and set it on the table. He meant to see what was in the Wumu’s Art of War.¹³ If it held marvellous martial arts, he would of course help himself to them without ceremony. If it held nothing but the strategy and tactics of war, which were no use to him, he would be glad to do Wanyan Honglie a favour and let him have it.

For a moment every eye was on the stone box. Huang Rong thought, If only I could think of some way to destroy that book. Even that would be better than letting it fall into this traitor’s hands.

Then she heard Wanyan Honglie say, “I studied the few riddling poems Yue Fei left behind, and went through the records of how the Zhao emperors built and rebuilt their palace, reign after reign, and worked out that the book must be hidden fifteen paces east of the Cuihan Hall. Today it seems that, by good fortune, I reasoned rightly. The Song really has no one worth the name. Not one of them knew that such a treasure lay hidden deep in the palace. After all the uproar we made last night, I doubt anyone even knows what it was for.” He was very pleased with himself, and the others seized the chance to sing his praises again.

Wanyan Honglie stroked his beard and smiled. “Kang-er, open the stone box.”

Yang Kang answered and stepped forward, tore off the seals and lifted the lid. Every eye darted into the box, and all at once every face changed. They were all thunderstruck, unable to utter a sound.

The box was empty. There was no book of war in it, not so much as a blank sheet of paper.

Though Huang Rong could not see into the box, one look at their faces told her it was empty, and she was both glad and amused.

Wanyan Honglie, bitterly dismayed, steadied himself on the table and sat down. He propped his chin on his hand and racked his brains, thinking, I worked it out a thousand ways, ten thousand ways, and Yue Fei’s book had to be in this box. How can it have vanished into thin air? Suddenly his face lit up. He snatched up the stone box, strode out into the courtyard and dashed it down on the flagstones with all his strength.

With a crash, the box broke into several pieces. At the sound of shattering stone, Huang Rong at once thought, Ah, the box has a false bottom. She was desperate to see whether the book was hidden in it, and it was agony that she could not go out. But in a moment Wanyan Honglie came back to his seat, crestfallen. “I was sure the box had a hidden compartment,” he said, “but it hasn’t.”

They all fell to arguing, with one wild guess after another. Hearing their absurd theories, Huang Rong could not help laughing to herself, and she told Guo Jing straight away. When he heard that the Wumu’s Art of War had not been stolen after all, he was greatly relieved.

Huang Rong thought, These villains won’t let it go at that. They’re sure to go into the palace again. Then she thought of her shifu, who was still in the palace and might suffer for it. Zhou Botong was there to protect him, but the Old Wild Child was so scatterbrained that he couldn’t be trusted with anything serious, and she grew very anxious. Sure enough, she heard Ouyang Feng say, “That’s nothing much to worry about. We’ll go back to the palace tonight and search again.”

Wanyan Honglie said, “We can’t go tonight. After the commotion we caused last night, the palace is sure to be closely guarded.”

“Guarded it will be, of course,” Ouyang Feng said, “but what does that matter? Your Highness and the young prince needn’t come tonight. Stay here and rest with my nephew.”

Wanyan Honglie cupped his hands. “Then I must put you to trouble once more, Mister Ouyang. I shall wait here for good news.”

They spread straw in the hall and lay down to rest. After a little over a shichen, Ouyang Feng led the fighters back into the city again.

Footnotes

1. 傻姑 — Shǎgū. Literally silly girl. 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. 九阴真经 — Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Literally true scripture of the nine yin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 真元 — zhēnyuán. Literally true origin. The primal vital essence of the body. ↩

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

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

7. 经脉 — jīngmài. Literally meridians. Energy channels through which qi flows. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

9. 未牌 — wèipái. The hour of Wei, about 1 to 3 p.m., the eighth of the twelve shichen. ↩

10. 侯通海 — Hóu Tōnghǎi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 丹田 — dāntián. Literally cinnabar field. The primary energy centre below the navel in internal cultivation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 朱聪 — Zhū Cōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 武穆遗书 — Wǔmù Yíshū. The military treatise left by Yue Fei (1103—1142), the Song general posthumously titled Wumu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩