The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 28 – Part 1

Atop Iron Palm Peak

Lu Youjiao¹ had by now regained consciousness, and the four elders gathered to deliberate. Lu Youjiao said, “The truth has not yet been made clear. We must question both sides in detail. The most pressing matter is to find out whether the old Guild Chief is alive or dead.” But the three elders of the Clean Clothes Faction² said, “We have already installed a Guild Chief. How can we change him at whim? By the rule handed down from all the generations of our Beggars’ Guild,³ the Guild Chief’s command may never be disobeyed.” The four argued on and on. Every finger bone in both Lu Youjiao’s hands was broken, and the pain had him gritting his teeth to bear it, but in argument he gave not an inch.

The three Clean Clothes elders traded hand signals and went to stand beside Yang Kang.⁴ Elder Peng⁵ said loudly, “We believe only Guild Chief Yang’s word. This little witch helped a villain murder the old Guild Chief Hong, and now, to escape the death she has earned, she stands here talking nonsense. She is bewitching everyone with her lies, and we must not listen. Brothers, seize her, give her a sound flogging and make her confess.”

Guo Jing⁶ leapt onto the platform and shouted, “Who dares lay a hand on her?” Seeing the awesome might in his bearing, no one dared come up onto the platform.

Qiu Qianren⁷ stood well back with his followers, watching the fire from the far bank. Seeing the Beggars’ Guild at war with itself, he rejoiced in secret.

Huang Rong⁸ spoke in a clear voice, “Guild Chief Hong is alive and well at this very moment, within the forbidden palace at Lin’an.⁹ He is so fond of the food from the imperial kitchens that he cannot get away, and so he has ordered me to take his place as Chief of our Guild. When he has eaten and drunk his fill, he will come and see you all himself.” There was no one in the Beggars’ Guild who did not know that Guild Chief Hong loved his food more than his life, and all of them thought the story had eight parts in ten of the ring of truth. But that so dainty a slip of a girl should take his place as Guild Chief was altogether beyond belief.

Huang Rong went on, “This young Wanyan scoundrel of the Great Jin brought in the Iron Palm Keep¹⁰ to help him, schemed in secret to harm me, and stole the Guild Chief’s Dog-Beating Staff¹¹ to deceive you. How can you fail to tell right from wrong, and believe him so blindly? The four great elders of our Guild have seen much and know much. How is it that they cannot see through so petty a trick?” Hearing her suddenly take the elders to task, the beggars could not help looking at the four of them, doubt on every face.

Driven this far, Yang Kang could only brazen it out. He said, “You say Guild Chief Hong still lives. Why then did he send you to succeed him? If he wanted you as Guild Chief, what token did he give you?”

Huang Rong flourished the bamboo staff. “This is the Guild Chief’s Dog-Beating Staff. Is that not token enough?”

Yang Kang forced a loud laugh. “Ha ha, this is plainly my staff of office. You snatched it from my hand by force just now. Who here did not see it?”

Huang Rong smiled. “If Guild Chief Hong had given you the Dog-Beating Staff, why would he not have taught you the Dog-Beating Staff Technique?¹¹ And if he had taught you the staff technique, how could I have snatched this staff away from you?”

Hearing her name the Dog-Beating Staff in four sentences running, Yang Kang took it for a deliberate insult and said loudly, “This is the staff of office of our Guild’s chief. Dog-beating staff this and dog-beating staff that, how ugly it sounds! Stop talking nonsense and profaning a treasure.” He thought this very well put, and sure to win the beggars’ hearts. He did not know that the bamboo rod was in truth called the Dog-Beating Staff. The stout and thin beggars, out of reverence for it, had never dared speak its name aloud when travelling with Yang Kang. His words were a plain admission that he did not know the staff’s true name, and at once the beggars glared at him, anger on every face. Yang Kang knew he had said the wrong thing, but not where the mistake lay. It had never crossed his mind that so important a staff of office could bear so coarse a name.

Huang Rong gave a faint smile. “Treasure this, treasure that. If you want it, take it.” She held out the bamboo staff and waited for him to take it. Yang Kang was overjoyed. He wanted to climb the platform and claim the staff, but fear of Guo Jing held him back. Elder Peng said in a low voice, “Guild Chief, we will guard you. Get it back first, and the rest can wait.” He sprang up at once, and Yang Kang and Elders Jian¹² and Liang¹³ followed him onto the platform. Seeing Huang Rong on her own, Lu Youjiao leapt up too and stood with his hands hanging at his sides, thinking, My finger bones may be broken, but I still have a pair of feet. Do they call me Lu Youjiao, Lu Has Feet, for nothing?

Quite openly, Huang Rong held the bamboo staff out to Yang Kang. Wary of some trick, he hesitated a moment and raised his left palm to guard himself before he took it. Huang Rong let go and asked with a smile, “Got a good grip?” Yang Kang clutched the middle of the staff and demanded angrily, “What of it?” Suddenly Huang Rong’s left hand hooked on, her left foot flew up and her right hand shot out, and in the blink of an eye she had snatched the staff back.

Elders Jian, Peng and Liang started forward in alarm to save it, but the staff was already in Huang Rong’s hands. All three were masters of the martial arts, and with the three of them ringed about him they still could not protect him. They could only stand and watch while she snatched it away barehanded, as shaken as they were ashamed.

Huang Rong tossed the staff down on the platform. “So long as you can hold it steady, come and take it again.” While Yang Kang still hesitated, Elder Jian’s long sleeve swept out and furled the bamboo staff up. That sweep and furl were so clean and crisp that only a man of consummate skill could have managed them. The beggars below had seen it plainly, and some were already cheering. Elder Jian raised the staff above his head and presented it to Yang Kang. Yang Kang put all his strength into his right hand and clutched it tight, thinking, This time, unless you chop my right hand off, nothing on earth will let you snatch it again.

Huang Rong laughed. “When Guild Chief Hong gave you this staff, did he not also teach you to hold it fast and never let it be snatched away?”

Giggling merrily, she pushed off lightly with both feet, slipped sideways between Elders Jian and Liang and closed straight in on Yang Kang. Elder Jian’s left wrist turned over in a backhand seizure, but this leap of Huang Rong’s was the Carefree Wandering¹⁴ footwork Hong Qigong¹⁵ had taught her himself, quick and nimble as a swallow, and Elder Jian’s grab closed on air. To miss at such close range was something that had hardly ever happened to him in all his life. He had barely felt the jolt in his heart when he heard the swish of the staff sweeping across at his shins, and he and Elder Liang leapt into the air to avoid it. Huang Rong laughed. “Forgive me, but this move is called ‘Stick Beats Two Dogs’!” Her white clothes fluttering, she stood prettily at the eastern corner of the Xuanyuan Terrace,¹⁶ the glittering jade-green bamboo staff in her hand catching the moonlight in a faint glow. This time she had snatched the staff faster still, and no one had seen what technique she used.

Guo Jing called out loudly, “To whom has Guild Chief Hong passed the Dog-Beating Staff? Is it still not clear?” The beggars below had seen her snatch the staff three times running, each time faster than the last. Doubt welled up in them, and talk broke out on every side.

Lu Youjiao said in a loud voice, “Brothers, the moves this young lady has just made are truly the old Guild Chief’s martial arts.” Elder Jian exchanged a look with Peng and Liang. The three of them had followed Hong Qigong for many years, and they knew this was indeed the old Guild Chief’s martial art. Elder Jian said, “She is the old Guild Chief’s disciple. Naturally he taught her. What is so remarkable about that?” Lu Youjiao replied, “Since time immemorial, the Dog-Beating Staff Technique has been passed to no one who is not Guild Chief. Does Elder Jian not know this rule?”

Elder Jian gave a cold laugh. “This young lady has learned a trick or two of barehanded weapon-seizing, clever though they are. That does not make them the Dog-Beating Staff Technique.”

Lu Youjiao was himself only half convinced. He said, “Very well. Miss, please give us a demonstration of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique. If it is truly the old Guild Chief’s own teaching, every brother of the Beggars’ Guild under heaven will follow you heart and soul.”

Elder Jian said, “Every one of us has only heard of this staff technique by name. None of us has ever seen it. Who could tell the real from the false?”

Lu Youjiao asked, “What would you have us do, then?”

Elder Jian clapped his palms together and cried loudly, “If this young lady can beat this pair of bare palms of mine with her staff technique, I, Jian, will serve her as my chief with all my heart. If I ever waver after that, may ten thousand arrows pierce me and a thousand blades hack my body apart.”

Lu Youjiao said, “Hah, you are one of our Guild’s masters, famous in the jianghu¹⁷ twenty years ago already. How old is this young lady? However fine her staff technique, how can it stand against your decades of winters and summers of training?”

The two were still arguing when Elder Liang, a man of fiery temper, lost all patience with listening. He hurled himself at Huang Rong, crying, “Whether the Dog-Beating Staff Technique is real or false, one test will tell. Watch my dao!” Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, he hacked at her three times running, cold light flashing. The three cuts were fierce and fast, yet every one of them steered clear of her vital points, swift and precise, worthy of a master of the Beggars’ Guild.

Huang Rong tucked the bamboo rod into her sash without moving her feet. Her upper body swayed, evading all three cuts. She laughed, “Use the Dog-Beating Staff Technique on the likes of you? Are you worthy?” Her left hand struck, and her right went straight for the dao in his grip, to wrest it from him by force.

Elder Liang had made his name long ago. To be held so cheap by a yellow-haired chit of a girl still smelling of milk sent his fury surging. The three cuts done, he went straight into hacking crosswise and chopping down, one deadly move after another. Elder Jian was no longer as hostile to Huang Rong as before. He knew there must be something behind all this that had not come out, and fearing Elder Liang would act rashly and hurt her, he called, “Elder Liang, no killing strokes.”

Huang Rong laughed. “No need to stand on ceremony!” She flitted and darted, punching, kicking, driving with her elbows, jabbing with her fingers, and in a few breaths she had run through more than a dozen different sets of martial arts.

The beggars below watched, spellbound and dazzled. The thin beggar among the eight-bag disciples suddenly cried, “Ah, that is the Lotus Palm!¹⁸” The stout beggar cried after him, “Eh? The little girl knows the Copper Hammer Hand¹⁹ too!” Before his cry had died away, Huang Rong had changed her fist technique again, and the masters among the beggars below called the names out one by one. “Ah, that is the Guild Chief’s Carefree Wandering.” “Ah-ha, she uses the Iron Broom Leg Technique!²⁰ That move is ‘Hand Down, Foe Broken’!”

Hong Qigong was lazy by nature and had no love of taking disciples or handing on his skills. Only when a member of the Beggars’ Guild had done some great service would he teach him a move or two by way of reward. Li Sheng,²¹ for all his reckless devotion in the Guild’s work, had been given only one move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing,²² “Divine Dragon Sweeps Its Tail.” Hong Qigong had another habit besides: once he had taught a technique to one person, he would not teach it to another. So each man in the Guild had learned something different. Only Huang Rong, quick and clever and a superb cook besides, had both won his affection and kept him tied to her with fine dishes, and so at Jiangmiao Town on the bank of the Yangtze she had learned several dozen of his martial arts. But she was playful and wanted everything at once, and of each art she learned only a few moves. Hong Qigong could not be bothered to coach her closely. He saw that she understood each one only by halves and had no more than the outward form, and he let it be. Now, with a mind to show off before the beggars, she brought out one by one all the skills Hong Qigong had taught her himself, and every beggar who had learned one of them cried out before he could stop himself.

Elder Liang’s dao technique was superb, and in true skill he stood well above Huang Rong. But she kept changing to strange moves, one after another without end, and for the moment his eyes were so dazzled that he dared not attack. He only kept his single dao whirling so tightly that not even a splash of water could have got through, and held his guard close.

Amid the flash of steel and the shadow of fists, Huang Rong suddenly drew her palms back to her chest and laughed. “Do you give in?” Elder Liang had not yet shown what he could do. How could he concede? His dao flashed out from close against his chest, and he sent the edge slicing down at a slant. Huang Rong neither dodged nor gave ground, but let the cut come. The beggars cried out in alarm as one, and Elder Jian and Lu Youjiao shouted, “Stop!” Elder Liang knew too that something was wrong and jerked the dao upward, but it was too late to check it, and it came down full on Huang Rong’s left shoulder. He cried out inwardly, Disaster! He had held back his strength in mid-stroke and the cut was not heavy, but it could not fail to wound her. He was bitterly regretting it when his left wrist suddenly went numb, and with a clang his dao fell to the ground. How could he have known that Huang Rong wore the Soft Hedgehog Armour²³ and that no steel could hurt her? At that very moment, while he hung between pulling the stroke and not, shocked and sorry, the Huizong acupoint²⁴ four inches behind his wrist had already been brushed by Huang Rong’s family-inherited Orchid Acupoint-Tracing Hand.²⁵

Huang Rong set her foot on the dao and cocked her head with a smile. “Well?” Elder Liang had been sure his cut had wounded her. To find her quite unhurt left him stunned. He dared not answer, but sprang hastily back. Yang Kang said, “She is Huang Yaoshi’s²⁶ daughter. She wears the Soft Hedgehog Armour, proof against blade and spear. That is nothing to wonder at.”

Elder Jian lowered his eyes, deep in thought. Huang Rong laughed. “Well? Do you believe it or not?” Lu Youjiao kept shooting her meaningful glances, urging her to quit while she was ahead. He could see that though Huang Rong’s knowledge of martial arts was broad, her neili²⁷ was far beneath Elder Liang’s depth. Without some extraordinary trick she could at best draw level, and Elder Jian’s skill exceeded Elder Liang’s besides. Huang Rong could never defeat him. But she only went on smiling and took no notice of his signals. He was frantic and wanted to speak, but Qiu Qianren had crushed the bones of both his hands. He had borne it for half the day, and now the pain was worse than ever, and cold sweat stood out all over him. How could he get a word out?

Elder Jian slowly raised his head and said, “Miss, allow me to learn from you!”

Standing by, Guo Jing saw how calm and unruffled Elder Jian was, his hands slow and his steps heavy, and knew that Huang Rong was no match for him. He made up his mind to take the fight on himself. He picked up the rawhide rope they had been bound with, darted forward a few paces and swung it hard. The rope shot out and wound itself round Elder Jian’s steel staff, the one Qiu Qianren had driven into the rock, and he shouted, “Up!” The steel staff was wrenched free by the rope and flew into the air.

The steel staff came hurtling through the air at Elder Jian like a loosed arrow, swift as wind and thunder, unstoppable. Elder Jian knew that if he put out a hand to catch it, the bones would break at once, and he leapt aside. Afraid it would hurt the beggars below, he shouted, “Get out of the way down there!”

But Huang Rong’s bamboo staff shot out, its tip came to rest on the middle of the steel staff, and she pressed lightly down. There is a saying in the martial arts, “Four ounces deflect a thousand jin.”²⁸ There was little force in the press, but it was a subtle move of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique called “Press Flat the Dog’s Back,” with the strength judged to a nicety, and it pinned the steel staff to the platform. Huang Rong laughed. “You use a steel staff and I use a bamboo one. Let’s trade a few moves, just for fun.”

Footnotes

1. 鲁有脚 — Lǔ Yǒujiǎo. His name meaning “has feet”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 净衣派 — Jìngyī Pài. Beggars’ Guild members who wear the patched beggar’s robe but otherwise live as ordinary people; most were never beggars. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 丐帮 — Gàibāng. Literally beggars’ guild. The largest band in the jianghu, with members throughout the realm. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 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. ↩

5. 彭长老 — Péng Zhǎnglǎo. Literally Elder Peng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 郭靖 — Guō Jìng. His name meaning “to pacify”; paired with Yang Kang’s 康 it recalls the Jingkang Shame of 1127. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 裘千仞 — Qiú Qiānrèn. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 黄蓉 — Huáng Róng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 临安 — Lín’ān. Capital of Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1276) known for its cultural refinement and West Lake scenery. Modern day Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. See Wikipedia. ↩

10. 铁掌帮 — Tiězhǎng Bāng. Literally iron palm guild. Qiu Qianren’s sect, renowned for its palm techniques. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 打狗棒 — Dǎgǒu Bàng. The jade-green bamboo staff carried by the Guild Chief of the Beggars’ Guild as the token of his office. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩ ↩²

12. 简长老 — Jiǎn Zhǎnglǎo. Literally Elder Jian. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 梁长老 — Liáng Zhǎnglǎo. Literally Elder Liang. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 逍遥游 — Xiāoyáoyóu. Literally carefree wandering, after the first chapter of the Zhuangzi. A fist technique. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 洪七公 — Hóng Qīgōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 轩辕台 — Xuānyuán Tái. Literally Xuanyuan terrace, Xuanyuan being the Yellow Emperor. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

18. 莲花掌 — Liánhuā Zhǎng. A Beggars’ Guild palm art, from those Hong Qigong teaches. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 铜锤手 — Tóngchuí Shǒu. A Beggars’ Guild hand art, from those Hong Qigong teaches. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

20. 铁帚腿法 — Tiězhǒu Tuǐfǎ. Literally iron broom leg method. Kicking method used by Hong Qigong. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 黎生 — Lí Shēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

22. 降龙十八掌 — Xiánglóng Shíbā Zhǎng. Literally eighteen dragon-subduing palms. Hong Qigong’s palm technique. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

24. 会宗穴 — Huìzōng Xué. An acupoint on the outer forearm, above the wrist. ↩

25. 兰花拂穴手 — Lánhuā Fú Xuè Shǒu. Huang Rong’s hereditary art of brushing the acupoints with the fingers, prized for being fast, accurate, strange and clear. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

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

28. 四两拨千斤 — sì liǎng bō qiān jīn. Literally four liang deflect a thousand jin. A saying of the internal martial arts: a small, well-applied force can turn aside a far heavier one. ↩