The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 25 – Part 3

Seeing her husband in the enemy’s hands and quite unable to move, Cheng Yaojia said hastily, “He has done you no wrong and bears you no grudge. I beg you, let him go. Just now, when you were starving, wasn’t it I who filled a bowl of rice for you?”

Ouyang Ke laughed. “How can two bowls of rice buy a man’s life? Heh heh. To think that even your Quanzhen Order¹ would live to see the day it had to beg.”

Cheng Yaojia said, “He… he is a disciple of the Master of Peach Blossom Island.² Don’t hurt him.”

Ouyang Ke laughed. “Who told him to cut at me with his dao?³ If I hadn’t dodged so fast, would this head of mine still be sitting on my neck? You needn’t try to frighten me with Peach Blossom Island. Huang Yaoshi⁴ is my father-in-law.”

Cheng Yaojia had no way of telling whether this was true or false. She said quickly, “Then he is your junior. If you let him go, he can make you his apologies?”

Ouyang Ke laughed. “Ha ha, is anything in this world so easy? If you want me to let him go, that’s not impossible, but you must do one thing for me.”

Seeing the lecherous look on his face, Cheng Yaojia knew he meant her no good. She lowered her head and said nothing.

Ouyang Ke said, “Watch!” He raised his palm and brought it down on the square table with a crack, knocking off one corner. The break was clean and even, as if a dao or an axe had cut it.

Cheng Yaojia was aghast. She thought, Even my shifu might not have such skill. Ouyang Ke, it should be said, had been taught by his uncle in person since childhood, and his martial arts were indeed purer than those of Sun Buer,⁵ who had only begun to learn in middle age. Seeing the terror plain on Cheng Yaojia’s face, he swelled with self-satisfaction and said, “Whatever I tell you to do, you do. If you disobey, I’ll give his neck a little of this.” He made a chopping motion with his hand.

Cheng Yaojia shuddered and gave a cry of fright.

Ouyang Ke asked, “Will you obey or not?”

Cheng Yaojia reluctantly nodded.

Ouyang Ke laughed. “Good. Now that’s a good girl. Go and shut the front door.”

Cheng Yaojia hesitated, not moving.

Ouyang Ke said angrily, “You won’t obey?”

Shaking with fear, Cheng Yaojia had no choice but to go and push the door shut.

Ouyang Ke laughed. “Last night the two of you were married, and I heard it all quite clearly from next door. A wedding night, candles and all, and you never even loosened your clothes? There was never such a husband and wife in the world. You don’t know how to be a bride, so I’ll teach you. Strip off every stitch you have on. If so much as a single thread is left on you, I’ll send your husband up to Heaven this instant, and you’ll be a merry little widow!”

Lu Guanying could not move, but he heard every word, and was so furious that his eyes seemed fit to burst from their sockets. He longed to tell his wife to forget him and run for her life, but he could not move his lips.

When Ouyang Ke seized Lu Guanying, Huang Rong had already closed the secret door. She gripped her short jian⁶ and waited for him to attack again. Now she heard him order Cheng Yaojia to undress, and was angry and amused at once. She was a child at heart, and though she loathed Ouyang Ke’s vileness, she could not help wanting to see whether the prim and bashful Young Mistress Cheng would really strip.

Ouyang Ke laughed. “What harm is there in taking your clothes off? When you came out of your mother’s belly, were you wearing any? Which do you want, your own face or his life?”

Cheng Yaojia pondered for a moment, then said wretchedly, “Kill him, then!”

Of all things, Ouyang Ke had never imagined she would say that. He was taken aback for an instant, and then he saw her turn her long jian and draw it towards her throat. Quickly he flicked his hand and sent a Bone-Penetrating Nail⁷ flying. With a clang, it knocked her jian to the floor.

Cheng Yaojia bent to pick up her jian, and just then she heard someone pounding on the door and calling, “Innkeeper, innkeeper!” It was a woman’s voice. Her heart leapt, and she thought, Someone is here. Now things may change. She snatched up her jian and sprang across to open the door.

Outside stood a girl in the flower of youth, dressed all in plain mourning white, a white cloth bound about her head and a dao at her waist. Her face was drawn and weary, yet it could not hide her natural beauty.

Cheng Yaojia did not care what sort of person she was. Anyone who came now, in so desperate a pass, was a saviour. She said quickly, “Please come in, Miss.”

The girl saw Cheng Yaojia’s rich clothes and lovely face, and the keen jian in her hand. She had never dreamed that the plank door of an inn in a deserted village would open to reveal such a person, and she stared, taken aback. “There are two coffins outside. May they be brought in?”

Cheng Yaojia wanted nothing more than to have her come in. Never mind two coffins, a hundred or a thousand would have been more welcome still. She said quickly, “Excellent, excellent!”

The girl was more puzzled than ever. She thought, To carry coffins in through the door is the worst of bad luck. Why “excellent”? She beckoned to those outside, and eight porters carried two black-lacquered coffins into the hall.

The girl turned her head and came face to face with Ouyang Ke. She gave a great start, and with a ring of steel her waist dao leapt from its sheath.

Ouyang Ke roared with laughter. “Heaven has decreed that you and I are fated, and there’s truly no escaping it. When such good fortune delivers itself to my door, to refuse it would cost me dear in hidden merit.”

The girl was none other than Mu Nianci,⁸ who had once been his captive.

At Baoying she had broken with Yang Kang, cut off her hair in her grief, and lost all hope of anything. But one task in the world remained unfinished. So she had hurried to the Central Capital to collect the coffins of Yang Tiexin and his wife, which lay lodged in a temple, and was escorting them south to bury them at the old home of her foster parents in Niu Family Village near Lin’an. After that she would become a nun.

At that time the Mongol armies were attacking in force and the Central Capital faced siege. Amid all the turmoil of war, it had cost a lone girl with two coffins untold hardship on the road to bring them home.

She had never been to Niu Family Village. Seeing nothing in it but broken-down cottages, and only Silly Girl’s⁹ little wineshop that looked worth asking at, she went in to inquire, and who would have thought she would run straight into Ouyang Ke?

She did not know that this beauty in brocade was also suffering at the fiend’s hands. When Cheng Yaojia was abducted that day, Ouyang Ke had hidden Mu Nianci in an empty coffin, so the two had never met. Taking Cheng Yaojia for one of his concubines, Mu Nianci feinted at her with her dao and dashed for the door.

Then she heard the swish of clothing through the air, and a figure leapt over her head.

Mu Nianci swept her dao upwards. Ouyang Ke was still in mid-air, but the thumb and forefinger of his left hand had already pinched the back of the dao and tugged, while his right hand caught her wrist. The dao flew from Mu Nianci’s grasp and she was lifted off her feet, and the two of them landed together on the coffin that was halfway through the door.

The four porters cried out together, “Aiya!” The coffin dropped, and of the four porters’ eight feet, five or six were crushed beneath it.

Ouyang Ke held Mu Nianci clasped in his right arm and lashed about at the porters with the back of the dao in his left. The four of them howled in pain, scrambled over the coffin and fled outside. The other four dropped their coffin and ran for it, not even daring to ask for their wages.

Freed from his enemy’s grip, Lu Guanying collapsed on the floor. Cheng Yaojia rushed over to help him up. She was utterly at a loss as to what was happening, and was still casting about for a way to escape when Ouyang Ke pressed his left hand on the coffin and, with Mu Nianci in his right arm, leapt to the table. With a backward sweep of his arm he caught Cheng Yaojia into the crook of his left elbow. He sealed the acupoints of both women and sat down on the bench, one in each arm, and roared with laughter. “Huang meizi,¹⁰ you come too.”

He was revelling in his triumph when a figure flickered at the door, and in came a young master. It was Yang Kang.¹¹

He, Wanyan Honglie, Peng Lianhu and the rest had crawled between Huang Yaoshi’s legs to escape from Niu Family Village. After so monstrous a humiliation, they had walked on with heads bowed, not a word among them. Yang Kang reckoned that to avenge it he would have to get Ouyang Feng to act. Ouyang Feng had gone to the palace to fetch the book and was not yet back, so Yang Kang told Wanyan Honglie and came back alone, to wait in the woods outside the village.

That night Zhou Botong, Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi had come and gone so fast that with Yang Kang’s meagre skill he could never have followed them in the dark. But the next morning he saw Mu Nianci escorting the coffins into the village. His heart leapt, and he crept along behind her. He watched her go into the inn and the porters run off in a panic, and he thought it very strange. Peering through a crack in the door, he saw that Huang Yaoshi had long since gone, and that Mu Nianci was in Ouyang Ke’s arms, and Ouyang Ke was about to take great liberties with her.

Ouyang Ke saw him enter and called, “Young Prince, you’re back!”

Yang Kang nodded.

Ouyang Ke saw that something was wrong with his face and tried to console him. “Long ago Han Xin¹² also suffered the humiliation of crawling between a man’s legs. A true man can bend as well as stand tall. It’s nothing. When my uncle comes back, he’ll settle the score for you.”

Yang Kang nodded again, his eyes fixed on Mu Nianci.

Ouyang Ke laughed, “Young Prince, aren’t my two beauties rather fine?”

Yang Kang nodded once more. When Mu Nianci and Yang Kang had fought their contest in the streets of the Central Capital, Ouyang Ke had not been there, and he knew nothing of what lay between them.

At first Yang Kang had thought little of Mu Nianci. Later, seeing how wholly she had given her heart to him, he had been moved, and she was uncommonly beautiful besides. After several meetings they had pledged to marry. Several times Yang Kang had tried to be intimate with her, and each time she had refused him, which only made him love her the more. Now, seeing her in Ouyang Ke’s arms, he hated the man bitterly, though his face showed nothing.

Ouyang Ke laughed. “There was a wedding here last night, and there’s wine and chicken in the kitchen. Young Prince, would you be so good as to fetch them? We’ll drink a few cups together. I’ll have these two beauties take off their clothes and dance for you, to go with the wine.”

Yang Kang laughed. “Nothing could be better.”

Seeing Yang Kang so suddenly, Mu Nianci had been both shocked and overjoyed. But he paid her not the slightest attention, and she was already furious. When she saw his lewd air, as though he meant to join Ouyang Ke in shaming her, her heart turned to ice. The moment her hands and feet were free, she resolved, she would cut her own throat before this faithless man. It would be her release, and she would never again know the sorrows of this world.

She watched him turn away into the kitchen and come back with the wine and food, and sit down beside Ouyang Ke to drink. Ouyang Ke poured two bowls of wine and held them to the lips of Mu Nianci and Cheng Yaojia. He laughed. “First a bowl of wine, to put you in the mood for singing and dancing.”

Both women were so furious they nearly fainted, but their acupoints were sealed. When the bowls touched their lips they could not turn their heads away, and he poured half a bowl down each of them.

Yang Kang said, “House Brother¹³ Ouyang, I truly envy you your superb martial arts. Let me drink to you first, and then we’ll enjoy the singing and dancing.”

Ouyang Ke took the bowl Yang Kang handed him and drained it at a gulp. Then he released the two women’s acupoints, though he kept his hands pressed on the vital points of their backs. He laughed. “Be good girls and do as I say, and far from suffering, you’ll have some fun!” He said to Yang Kang, “Young Prince, whichever girl you fancy, you take your pick first!”

Yang Kang smiled. “Many thanks indeed.”

Mu Nianci pointed at the two coffins by the door and said sternly, “Yang Kang, look. Whose coffins are these?”

Yang Kang turned his head. On the first coffin a line of words was written in vermilion lacquer: Coffin of Yang Tiexin, Righteous Man of the Great Song. His heart quailed, but his face showed not the least concern, and he said, “House Brother Ouyang, hold these two girls tight and let me feel their little feet. Whichever has the smaller feet, she’s the one I’ll choose.”

Ouyang Ke laughed. “The Young Prince is a man of delightful taste! I’d say hers are surely the smaller.” He gave Cheng Yaojia’s chin a stroke. “I have a certain skill. I need only look at a girl’s face to know how she’s made from top to toe.”

Yang Kang laughed. “Admirable, admirable. I’ll take you as my shifu, and you must pass this matchless art on to me.” With that he bent down under the table.

Mu Nianci and Cheng Yaojia had both made up their minds. The moment he reached for them, each would kick him squarely on the temple, where a blow could kill.

Yang Kang laughed. “House Brother Ouyang, drink another bowl of wine, and then I’ll tell you whether you guessed right.”

Ouyang Ke laughed. “Good!” He raised his bowl.

From under the table Yang Kang glanced up and saw him tip back his head to drink. In a flash he took from his robe the head of an iron spear. Strength surged through his arm and from his arm into his wrist, and with his teeth clenched he drove it forward. There was a soft thud, and it plunged into Ouyang Ke’s lower belly, five or six inches deep. At once Yang Kang turned a somersault out from under the table.

It happened so suddenly that Huang Rong, Mu Nianci, Lu Guanying and Cheng Yaojia all started. They knew only that something had happened. None of them had seen what went on under the table.

Ouyang Ke flung out both arms, sending Mu Nianci and Cheng Yaojia tumbling off the bench, and at once hurled the wine bowl in his hand. Yang Kang ducked his head. With a crash the bowl shattered into a thousand fragments on the floor, which showed the astonishing force behind the throw.

Yang Kang rolled across the floor, meaning to roll out of the door, but the coffin was blocking the doorway. He sprang to his feet and turned, and saw Ouyang Ke propped on the bench with both hands, leaning forward, a smile that was not quite a smile on his face, his eyes fixed on Yang Kang with a most peculiar look.

Yang Kang shivered in spite of himself. He wanted with every fibre of his being to run out of the inn. But under that unwavering stare his body seemed to have turned rigid, and he could not move at all.

Ouyang Ke threw back his head and gave a great guffaw. “I, Ouyang, have ranged the world unchecked for half my life, and never thought to die today at the hands of a boy like you. Only, there is one thing I truly do not understand. Young Prince, why did you want to kill me?”

Footnotes

1. 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. ↩

2. 桃花岛 — Táohuā Dǎo. Huang Yaoshi’s island in the East China Sea. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 刀 — dāo. A single-edged blade, usually curved and broad. ↩

4. 黄药师 — Huáng Yàoshī. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 孙不二 — Sūn Bù’èr. Her name meaning “not two”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 剑 — jiàn. A straight, double-edged blade. ↩

7. 透骨钉 — Tòugǔ Dīng. A small iron nail flung with neili, named for how deep it bites. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 穆念慈 — Mù Niàncí. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 傻姑 — Shǎgū. Literally silly girl. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 妹子 — mèizi. The colloquial form of 妹妹, little sister; after a name it marks affection, not kinship. ↩

11. 杨康 — Yáng Kāng. His name meaning “well-being”; paired with Guo Jing’s 靖 it recalls the Jingkang Shame of 1127. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 韩信 — Hán Xìn. A famous general of the early Han dynasty who, before his rise, endured the humiliation of crawling between a butcher’s legs rather than fight. See Wikipedia. ↩

13. 世兄 — shìxiōng. Literally elder brother of the family line. A courtesy address for the son of a family friend or of an allied house. ↩