The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 29 – Part 2

Huang Rong said, “Each of the Nine Palaces can in turn become a set of Eight Trigrams. Eight nines are seventy-two. Take the numbers from one to seventy-two and ring them round the Nine Palaces, eight numbers to each ring. Where they meet there are four more rings, thirteen rings in all, and the numbers in every ring add up to two hundred and ninety-two. So wondrous are the changes of the Luo Shu diagram. You may never have heard of it, but really it is nothing remarkable. Someone simply taught it to me.” With a few strokes of her hand she drew the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams diagram of seventy-two numbers in the sand.

The woman stared open-mouthed. She rose shakily to her feet and asked, “Who are you, Miss?”

Before Huang Rong could answer, the woman suddenly clutched her chest, her face contorted with acute pain. She hurriedly took a small bottle from her robe and swallowed a green pill. It was some time before her colour eased. “So be it, so be it!” she sighed, and two streams of tears ran from her eyes.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong exchanged glances, finding this person’s behaviour utterly bizarre.

The woman was about to speak when shouts and cries came to them, wave upon wave. The pursuers from the Iron Palm Keep had arrived.

The woman asked, “Friends or enemies?”

Guo Jing replied, “Enemies pursuing us.”

“The Iron Palm Keep?”

“Yes.”

The woman cocked her head and listened a while, then said, “Chief Qiu is leading the pursuit himself. Who exactly are you two?” Her voice grew stern as she asked this.

Guo Jing stepped forward to stand in front of Huang Rong, and said in a clear voice, “We are disciples of the Nine-Fingered Divine Beggar, Guild Chief Hong. My shimei was wounded by Qiu Qianren of the Iron Palm Keep, and we came here to escape them. If Senior has any ties with the Iron Palm Keep and will not shelter us, we shall take our leave.” With that he bowed to the ground, then turned and helped Huang Rong up.

The woman gave a faint smile. “So young, and so stubborn. You could stand it, but your shimei cannot, do you understand? And I wondered who you were. So you are Hong Qigong’s disciples. No wonder you are so capable.”

She listened to the shouts of the Iron Palm Keep, now far, now near, now loud, now faint, and sighed. “They cannot find the way. They will never get in, so set your minds at rest. And even if they did come here, you are my guests. How could the Divine… the Divine… how could Yinggu let anyone come to her door and bully her?” She thought, I used to be called Yinggu the Divine Mathematician. But this girl’s reckoning is a hundred times better than mine, so how can I have the face to go on calling myself the Divine Mathematician? She had said only the word “Divine” and left the rest unsaid.

Guo Jing bowed his thanks.

Yinggu opened the clothing at Huang Rong’s shoulder and looked at her wound. She frowned and said nothing, then took another green pill from the little bottle in her robe, dissolved it in water and gave it to Huang Rong to drink.

Huang Rong took the bowl, wondering whether this person was friend or foe. How could she take the woman’s medicine?

Yinggu saw her hesitation and sneered, “You have been wounded by Qiu Qianren’s Iron Palm. Do you still expect to recover? Even if I meant you harm, I would hardly need to go to such trouble. This medicine is to ease your pain. Don’t take it, then.” With that she snatched the bowl from her hand and flung its contents on the floor.

Guo Jing was outraged to see her treat Huang Rong so rudely. “My shimei is gravely hurt. How can you provoke her like this? Rong-er, let’s go.” He pulled her up and took her on his back.

Yinggu sneered, “Do you think two youngsters like you can come and go as you please through Yinggu’s two little huts?” Two bamboo counting rods in her hands, she barred the doorway.

Guo Jing thought, There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to force my way out. He called out, “Senior, forgive this humble one’s rudeness.” He sank a little, swept his arm round in a circle and, with a Proud Dragon Repents, charged straight out at the doorway. It was the deadliest move he had and the one that came most readily to his hand, and fearing Yinggu could not withstand it, he put only a fifth of his strength into it. He wanted only to get out through the door, and had no thought of hurting her.

As the wind of his palm swept upon Yinggu, Guo Jing watched to see how she would meet it before deciding whether to press home or draw back his force. To his surprise, she turned a little to one side, her left forearm pushing lightly aslant, and turned his palm force harmlessly aside.

Guo Jing had not expected her martial arts to be so formidable. Drawn on by her, he could not keep his feet and lurched half a step forward. Yinggu, in turn, had not expected his palm force to be so heavy and fierce. Her feet slipped on the sand, but she quickly steadied herself.

That one exchange left each of them secretly amazed.

Yinggu shouted, “Boy, have you learned all your shifu’s skills?” Even as she spoke, she jabbed a bamboo rod at the Quze acupoint in the crook of his right arm.

On its face the move was an acupoint strike, but a killing blow lay hidden in it. Guo Jing dared not be careless. He drew back his arm at once and struck back, bringing out the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing one move after another. Within a few moves he knew that Yinggu’s martial arts were wholly of the soft, yielding kind. Not one of her moves was an open, direct attack, yet each hid a vicious follow-up, and had Guo Jing not known the art of Ambidextrous Self-Combat, which let him split his hands to save himself in a crisis, he would long since have been hit and hurt.

The longer he fought, the less he dared underestimate her. His palm force grew heavier, but Yinggu’s martial arts were a school unto themselves. Her moves looked soft and strengthless, yet like quicksilver spilt on the ground they found their way into every crack, until there was no guarding against them all.

After several more exchanges, Guo Jing was forced back two steps. Suddenly he remembered how Hong Qigong had once taught him to defend against Huang Rong’s Peach Blossom Falling Petals Palm: however endlessly the opponent’s moves might change, he could ignore them all and simply attack hard with the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, and victory would be his.

He had reckoned this was plainly no place of good omen and the woman no kindly soul, but he had no quarrel with her and wanted only to get out of the door. He had no wish to tangle with her, still less to hurt her, and so he had held back eight parts in ten of his palm force. But the woman’s skill was formidable, and at the slightest slip, he feared, both their lives would be lost here. He drew a breath, raised both elbows slightly, and with right fist and left palm, struck straight and pushed sideways, alternating fast and slow.

This was the sixteenth palm of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing: “Treading Frost, Ice Arrives”, which Hong Qigong had taught him at Baoying. In that single move hard and soft worked together, the direct and the reverse completed each other, and its subtleties were endless. Hong Qigong’s martial arts were of the pure yang, utmost hardness school, but when hardness reached its extreme, softness arose naturally within it. This was the principle from the Classic of Changes: when old yang reaches its limit, young yin is born. In palms such as “Proud Dragon Repents” and “Treading Frost, Ice Arrives”, hard force and soft force had fused into one until they could no longer be told apart.

Yinggu let out a low “Oh!” and darted aside. She escaped Guo Jing’s straight right fist and the kick of his left foot, but she could not get clear of the sideways push of his left palm. The palm struck her right shoulder squarely.

Guo Jing’s palm landed and loosed its force, and it seemed certain to hurl her against the wall. How could the mud wall of a thatched hut withstand such force? Either the wall would collapse and bring the house down, or she would burst out through it.

Yet strange to say, the moment his palm touched her shoulder, it felt as though it were smeared thick with grease, so slippery that palm and force alike slid off to one side. Even so, she could not help being shaken violently, and the two bamboo rods flew from her hands to the floor.

Guo Jing was startled and quickly withdrew his force. But Yinggu was extraordinarily quick. She had already followed through, the fingers of each hand bunched to a point, cutting at the Shenfeng and Yushu acupoints on his chest. It was acupoint-striking of the very highest order.

Guo Jing was too late to block or dodge. He thought, Her acupoint-seizing method is somewhat like Big Brother Zhou’s. If I hadn’t traded thousands upon thousands of moves with Big Brother Zhou in that cave, she would have had me just now.

His body tilted slightly. Yinggu felt a surge of force issue from his right arm and strike towards her upper arm. She knew that once their arms crossed, the opponent held the advantage while she was at a disadvantage. Her arm would surely break. She used the same “Loach Skill” she had employed before and slid Guo Jing’s arm away.

Every one of these moves was unfathomably subtle, and each took the other wholly by surprise. Both were secretly alarmed, and with one accord they sprang several paces apart and stood on guard.

Guo Jing thought, This woman’s martial arts are truly strange! Palm force won’t take hold on her. Am I just to stand here and be beaten?

Yinggu, more astonished still, thought, So young a boy, and so formidable. It must be the teaching of a fine master. Then it came to her, I have lived here in seclusion for more than ten years, training hard, and quite by chance came to grasp the secret essence of the highest martial arts. I believed I must be a match for anyone under heaven, and meant soon to leave the forest, take my revenge and save someone. Yet my reckoning falls far short of that girl’s, and I cannot even beat a boy still smelling of his mother’s milk. And he has someone on his back, and is holding back against me on purpose. In a real fight I would have lost long ago. Are my ten years and more of bitter toil all to go down the stream? Is there to be no more talk of revenge, or of rescue?

At this thought her eyes reddened and her nose stung, and the tears welled up again in spite of her.

Guo Jing, thinking his palm force had hurt her, said hastily, “This junior was rude, but meant no offence. I beg Senior to forgive me, and let us go.”

Yinggu saw that as he spoke, he kept glancing at Huang Rong with the deepest concern. She thought of her own ill-starred life, of the one she loved so far away, and of how even the hope of being together again was now gone, and jealousy and resentment rose in her unbidden. She said coldly, “That girl has been struck by Qiu Qianren’s Iron Palm. Black qi already shows on her face. She has no more than three days to live. Why do you still protect her so desperately?”

Guo Jing was horrified. He looked carefully at Huang Rong’s face and indeed saw a faint dark haze like ink between her brows. His chest went cold, then a rush of hot blood surged upward. Reaching back, he clasped Huang Rong tightly with both arms and asked in a trembling voice, “Rong-er, how… how do you feel?”

Huang Rong felt her chest and abdomen burning as if on fire, while her limbs grew cold. She knew the woman’s words were true. She sighed and said, “Jing gege, for these three days, don’t leave me for a single step. Can you do that?”

Guo Jing’s tears burst forth, streaming down both cheeks. He sobbed, “I… I will not leave you for half a step.”

He helped her sit against the wall, then sat beside her. He took her hand and set his left palm against her right, meaning to use the healing method of the Nine Yin Manual to open her breath and treat her injury.

Whether the woman before them was friend or foe, he could not tell. If she meant mischief and interfered, however lightly or heavily, Huang Rong would die on the spot and he himself would hardly escape grave injury. It was as dangerous a position as could be, but he was driven to it and had no choice but to take the risk.

He had barely set his neigong working and sent a gentle flow of neili into her when he found there was no response from Huang Rong at all. In alarm he urged his neili a little harder, and with a retch Huang Rong brought up a mouthful of blood that spattered the front of her clothes, red blood on white, shockingly bright.

Aghast, Guo Jing cried out through his tears, “Rong-er!”

Huang Rong lowered her head. “It’s no use. I have no neili left at all. Jing gege, don’t… don’t cry…”

Yinggu sneered, “Feeding neili into her will only send her to her death the sooner. Take my advice and stop! Even if you never leave her by half a step, you will have only thirty-six shichen¹ together.”

Guo Jing looked up at her, his eyes filled with tears, his face expressing the deepest entreaty, as if begging her to speak no more cutting words to wound Huang Rong.

Grieving over her own ill fortune, Yinggu had grown exceedingly perverse in temper over these ten years and more, and to see this pair of lovers struck by such a calamity gave her a gladness she could not help. She was about to say something more, sharp enough to wound them both, when she saw the despair in Guo Jing’s face, and a thought flashed through her mind like lightning. She thought, Ah, ah, so this is why Heaven has sent these two here. It is so that I may have my revenge and my heart’s desire at last.

She raised her head and murmured to herself, “Heaven, oh Heaven!”

Beyond the forest the shouting and hallooing gradually rose again. It seemed the Iron Palm Keep had searched all round, concluded that Guo Jing and Huang Rong must be in the wood, and simply could find no way in. After a while, Qiu Qianren’s voice came to them from far beyond the trees, “Yinggu, Divine Mathematician, ho there. Iron Palm Qiu asks to see you.” He was calling against the wind, and still his words carried to them, which showed how deep his neigong ran.

Yinggu went to the window, gathered her qi in her dantian, and called in a long, carrying voice, “I never see outsiders, and whoever comes into my Black Marsh does not leave it alive. Chief Qiu, I must ask you to understand.”

Qiu Qianren’s voice replied, “A man and a woman entered your Black Marsh. Please hand them over to me.”

Yinggu called back, “Who can walk into my Black Marsh? Chief Qiu rates Yinggu far too low.”

Qiu Qianren gave a few cold, chuckling laughs and said no more, apparently believing her. The shouts of the Iron Palm Keep men gradually faded into the distance.

Yinggu turned back to Guo Jing. “Do you want to save your shimei?”

Guo Jing was startled, then immediately dropped to his knees. “If Esteemed Senior would deign to save her…”

Yinggu’s face seemed to frost over. “Esteemed Senior!” she said icily. “Am I old?”

Guo Jing hurriedly said, “No, no, not so very old.”

Yinggu’s eyes moved slowly from Guo Jing’s face to the window, and she said to herself, “Not so very old. Hm. Old all the same!”

Footnotes

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