The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 30 – Part 1

Great Master Yideng

The two of them followed the mountain path onward. Before long, the path came to an end. Ahead of them lay a stone beam about a foot wide, spanning the gap between two peaks. Cloud and mist shrouded it, and its far end was lost to sight. On level ground a foot-wide track would have been nothing, but this beam hung over a deep gorge. Never mind walking it, a single glance down was enough to make the heart quake.

Huang Rong sighed. “This Emperor Duan¹ has hidden himself well. Even a man with a grudge against him as vast as the sky would have lost half his rage by the time he found his way here.”

Guo Jing said, “But why did the fisherman say Emperor Duan has left this mortal world? It leaves me uneasy.”

Huang Rong said, “I cannot fathom it either. From the look of him, he was not lying. And he said Shifu saw Emperor Duan die with his own eyes.”

Guo Jing said, “We have come this far. There is nothing for it but to press on.” He crouched low, took Huang Rong upon his back, and called upon his qinggong² to bound onto the stone beam.

The beam was pitted and uneven, and since it lay year-round shrouded in cloud and mist, the damp had soaked into the stone until it was treacherously slick. Going slowly would only make a fall more likely. Guo Jing drew a breath and sped on. He had run seventy or eighty feet when Huang Rong cried out, “Careful, it breaks off ahead.”

Guo Jing had seen it too: the beam broke off abruptly, leaving a gap some seven or eight feet long. He ran all the faster, and on the momentum of his rush he sprang into the air.

Huang Rong had passed through so many perils that she had long since set life and death aside. She laughed. “Jing gege, you don’t fly half as steadily as the white eagles.”

A stretch of running, a leap over a gap, and again, until they had crossed seven breaks in the cliff. On the mountain opposite lay a broad stretch of level ground. Suddenly they heard someone reading aloud in a clear, ringing voice. The stone beam had come to its end, but at the very end was a gap far longer than the rest, surely more than ten feet across. On the far side of the gap a scholar sat cross-legged, a scroll in his left hand, reading aloud, his right hand idly waving a folding fan. Behind the scholar lay yet another short gap.

Guo Jing checked his stride and steadied himself. He was at a loss. To leap across would not be difficult, but the scholar holds the only foothold on the beam. Save for the narrow patch where he sits, there is nowhere else to land. He called out loudly, “This junior has come to seek an audience with your honoured shifu. Might I trouble you to announce us, Uncle?”

The scholar wagged his head and rocked over his book, savouring every word, and seemed not to have heard Guo Jing at all. Guo Jing raised his voice and repeated himself. The scholar remained as though deaf. Guo Jing lowered his voice. “Rong-er, what do we do?”

Huang Rong frowned and did not answer. One look at where the scholar sat had told her this would be a thorny business. On a beam no more than a foot wide, the moment it came to blows it would be life or death, and even if Guo Jing won, they had come here to ask a favour. How could he strike to kill? The scholar paid them no heed at all, and she grew quietly anxious. Then she listened to what he was reading. It was the most ordinary book there is, the Analects.³ She heard him intone: “In the late spring, when the spring garments are all made ready, accompanied by five or six young men and six or seven boys, let us bathe in the Yi, take the breeze at the Rain Dance Altar, and come home singing.” He read with high glee, sighing with pleasure over every line, as if he himself were singing and dancing in the spring breeze, in joy without end.

Huang Rong thought to herself, If I want him to speak, I must goad him. She gave a cold laugh and said, “You may have read the Analects a thousand times, but if you do not understand the Master’s subtle meaning, it is all for nothing.”

The scholar stopped short in surprise, raised his head, and said, “What subtle meaning? I should like to hear you explain.”

Huang Rong studied him. He looked to be about forty, with a scholar’s carefree scarf on his head, a folding fan in his hand and a long jet-black beard under his chin, every inch the learned old Confucian. She said with a cold smile, “Do you know, sir, how many disciples Confucius had?”

The scholar laughed. “That is easy enough. Confucius had three thousand disciples, seventy-two of whom truly mastered his teaching.”

Huang Rong asked, “Among those seventy-two, some were older and some younger. Do you know how many were young men, and how many were boys?”

The scholar was taken aback. “The Analects do not say, nor is it recorded in any other classic.”

Huang Rong said, “I said you do not grasp the subtle meaning of the classics. Was I wrong? Just now I distinctly heard you read, five or six young men and six or seven boys. Five sixes are thirty, so thirty were grown men. Six sevens are forty-two, so forty-two were boys. Add them together and you have seventy-two, not one more, not one less. Look at you, learning without thinking. Hah, perilous, perilous!”

The scholar could not help laughing at her brazen twisting of the text, yet he admired her quick wit all the same. He said, “Little girl, you are full of learning indeed. I am impressed, most impressed. And what business brings you to see my shifu?”

Huang Rong thought to herself, If I say we have come to be healed, he will put every obstacle in our way. But I cannot leave the question unanswered. Very well. Since he is reading the Analects, I will trot out a few of Confucius’s sayings to fob him off. So she said, “A sage I cannot hope to see! It will suffice if I may see a junzi.⁴ When friends come from afar, is it not a joy?”

The scholar threw back his head and laughed, and only stopped after a good while. “Good, good. I shall set you three tests. If you pass them all, I will lead you to my shifu. If you fail even one, I am afraid I must ask you both to go back the way you came.”

Huang Rong said, “Oh dear, I have not read very much. If the questions are too hard, I shall not be able to answer.”

The scholar smiled. “They will not be hard, not hard at all. I have a poem here that hides four characters. See if you can guess them.”

Huang Rong said, “Oh, a riddle? What fun. Do recite it!”

The scholar stroked his beard and intoned:

“The Six Classics long held within the breast, A jian ten years honed, ever in the hand…”

Huang Rong put out her tongue. “Master of both letters and arms. How very impressive!”

The scholar smiled and continued:

“Above the apricot branch a single stroke lies across, Lest Heaven’s secret seep out, do not show the mouth. One dot hangs heavy, big as a peck measure, Yet it covers half a bed, and nothing there. The name made whole, the cap hung up, I came home, Do you know the face that was there from the start?”

Huang Rong thought to herself, This is a riddle older than the hills, and hard to guess, but luckily Daddy told it to me long ago. “The name made whole, the cap hung up, I came home. Do you know the face that was there from the start?” By the look of him, he must have been one of Emperor Duan’s ministers at court, who hung up his cap with him, left the court and withdrew to live among the mountains. So she said, “Under ‘six’ put a ‘one’ and a ‘ten’, and you have xin.⁵ Put a stroke across the top of ‘apricot’ and take away its ‘mouth’, and you have wei.⁶ Half of ‘bed’, with ‘great’ and a dot, gives zhuang.⁷ Take the cap off wan, and you have yuan.⁸ Xinwei zhuangyuan. Forgive my discourtesy, forgive me. So you are the Top Scholar of the xinwei examinations.”

The scholar was startled. He had supposed the riddle difficult. Even if they guessed it, it should take them a good while, and all the while the young man stood on that narrow beam, however great his martial prowess, he could hardly keep his footing for long. The idea had been to make the two of them give up and meekly go back. Instead the girl had answered offhand, as if without a moment’s thought. He said in surprise, “That is a riddle from the ancients. It does not refer to my humble self. The little miss is remarkably well read.” He thought to himself that the girl was clever indeed, and he must set her something truly difficult. He glanced about and noticed a row of palm trees at the mountainside, their leaves stirring in the wind like waving fans. The sight gave him an idea. He shook his own folding fan and said, “I have a first line of a couplet. Let the little miss match it.”

Huang Rong said, “Matching couplets is not half so amusing as guessing riddles, but very well. If I do not answer, I daresay you will not let us pass. Go on, then.”

The scholar waved his fan at the row of palms and said, “Wind sways the palms, a thousand-handed Buddha waving folding fans.” The couplet drew upon the scene, and at the same time slyly elevated his own station.

Huang Rong thought to herself, If I merely match one object against another with no double meaning, I shall not win the bout. She cast her eyes about, and on the far side of the level ground she saw a small temple. Before the temple lay a lotus pond. The seventh month was nearly over, and high in the mountains the cold came early, so that more than half the lotus leaves had already withered. An idea struck her, and she said with a smile, “I have a line, but it would offend you, Uncle, so I hardly like to say it.”

The scholar said, “Speak freely.”

Huang Rong said, “You must not be angry.”

The scholar said, “Of course I shall not be angry.”

Huang Rong pointed at the carefree scarf on his head. “Very well. My second line is this: Frost withers the lotus, a one-legged ghost wearing a carefree scarf.”

As soon as she had spoken, the scholar burst out laughing. “Superb, superb! Not only is the pairing exact, it is quick beyond belief.”

Guo Jing looked at the lotus stalk propping up a withered leaf, and it did look for all the world like a one-legged ghost in a carefree scarf. He could not help laughing too.

Huang Rong said, “Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. One slip and the pair of us will be two little ghosts with no carefree scarves!”

The scholar thought to himself, An ordinary couplet will never stump her. I must set her an absolute.⁹ All at once he remembered an absolute his teacher had spoken of when he was a boy at school, one that in decades no one had been able to match properly. There was nothing else for it. He would have to stump her with that. He said, “I have another first line. Let the little miss match it: Qin, se, pipa, eight kings all of one face.”

Huang Rong was overjoyed, and thought, The four characters qin, se, pipa contain eight ‘king’ radicals, and indeed they are very hard to match. But this is an old first line, not one you thought of yourself. Daddy worked out the answer years ago on Peach Blossom Island, with nothing better to do. Let me pretend to struggle, and tease him a little. She knitted her brows and put on a doleful expression.

The scholar, seeing her stumped, was well pleased. Afraid she might turn the tables and ask him something, he spoke first. “That couplet is indeed extremely difficult. I myself cannot match it properly. But we agreed beforehand: since the little miss cannot match it, I am afraid I must ask you to go back.”

Huang Rong said with a smile, “If it is only a matter of matching it, what is hard about that? The trouble is, my last line offended you, Uncle, and this one would offend all four of you at a stroke, fisherman, woodcutter, farmer and scholar. That is why I dare not say it.”

The scholar did not believe her, and thought, Matching it at all would be a near impossibility. How could she mock the four of us brothers at the same time? He said, “So long as the match is well turned, what harm in a little teasing?”

Huang Rong said, “Very well. I beg your forgiveness in advance. My second line is this: Chi, mei, wang, liang, four little ghosts, each with his own scheme inside.”¹⁰

The scholar was astounded. He rose to his feet, swept back his long sleeve and bowed to Huang Rong to the very ground. “I yield to you, utterly.”

Huang Rong returned the courtesy and said, “If the four of you had not each tried your wits to bar our way up the mountain, this second line would have been hard to find.”

Years before, when Huang Yaoshi¹¹ composed this line, his four disciples Chen Xuanfeng,¹² Lu Chengfeng,¹³ Wu Gangfeng and Feng Mofeng were standing in attendance, and he had made it a joke at their expense. Huang Rong had not yet been born in those days. She heard it from her father later, and now she borrowed it and set it upon the fisherman, woodcutter, farmer, and scholar.

The scholar gave a snort, turned, and leapt across the narrow gap. “This way, please.”

Guo Jing had stood still the whole time, listening quietly as the two of them matched wits, fearing that if Huang Rong failed in a single answer, all their effort would be wasted. Now, seeing the scholar give way, he was overjoyed. He drew breath, leapt across the gap, touched down for a single step where the scholar had been sitting, and sprang across the last short break beyond.

Footnotes

1. 段皇爷 — Duàn Huángyé. Literally Imperial Lord Duan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 轻功 — qīnggōng. The martial art of body lightness. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 论语 — Lúnyǔ. The Analects, a collection of the sayings of Confucius and his disciples. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 君子 — jūnzǐ. Literally noble man. The Confucian ideal of the morally cultivated man. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 辛 — xīn. The eighth of the Ten Heavenly Stems. ↩

6. 未 — wèi. The eighth of the twelve Earthly Branches. ↩

7. 状 — zhuàng. With 元 it forms 状元 (zhuàngyuán), the title of the top graduate of the palace examination, the Top Scholar. ↩

8. 元 — yuán. Literally first. The second character of 状元 (zhuàngyuán), the top graduate of the palace examination. ↩

9. 绝对 — juéduì. Literally unmatchable pair. A first line of a couplet so contrived that no fitting second line can be found. ↩

10. 魑魅魍魉 — chīmèi wǎngliǎng. Demons and goblins of mountain and stream; each of the four characters carries the 鬼 (ghost) radical. ↩

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

12. 陈玄风 — Chén Xuánfēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 陆乘风 — Lù Chéngfēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩