The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 31 – Part 2

Huang Rong saw the light at last and said, “Ah, I see. The child must have looked just like the Old Wild Child, ears sticking out, nose turned up, otherwise how could you have known he wasn’t yours?”

Great Master Yideng said, “There was no need to see the child to know. In those days I had not been near Consort Liu. The child could not have been mine.”

Huang Rong half-understood, half-not. Knowing that to press further would be improper, she did not ask again.

She heard Great Master Yideng go on, “My illness dragged on for more than half a year. After I recovered, I forced myself to put the matter from my mind and thought of it no more. Two years and more passed. One night I was sitting in meditation in my bedchamber when suddenly the door-curtain was thrown back and Consort Liu burst in. The eunuchs and the two guards at the door rushed to stop her, but they had no hope of it. She knocked them all aside with sweeps of her palm. I looked up and saw her with a child in the crook of her arm and terror written all over her face. She fell to her knees, sobbing aloud, knocking her head on the floor again and again, and crying, ‘Have mercy, Your Majesty, in your great compassion, and spare the child!’

“I rose and looked. The child’s face was flushed scarlet and he was gasping for breath. I took him in my arms and examined him carefully. Five ribs along his back were broken. Consort Liu wept, ‘Your Majesty, this worthless concubine deserves ten thousand deaths. I beg only that Your Majesty spare the child’s life.’ I found her words strange and asked, ‘What has happened to the child?’ She only kowtowed and begged. I asked, ‘Who injured him?’ Consort Liu did not answer, but cried only, ‘I beg Your Majesty’s mercy, spare him.’ I could make nothing of it. She said again, ‘If Your Majesty grants me death, I shall not utter a single word of complaint. But this child, this child…’ I said, ‘Who said anything about granting you death? How exactly was the child hurt?’ Consort Liu raised her head and said in a trembling voice, ‘Did Your Majesty not send guards to beat this child to death?’ I knew something was amiss and asked at once, ‘A guard did this? Which wretch would dare such a thing?’ Consort Liu cried, ‘Ah, if it was not Your Majesty’s decree, then the child can still be saved!’ With those words she fainted and fell to the ground.

“I lifted her onto the bed and laid the child beside her. After some time she came to, seized my hand and wept out her tale. She had been patting the child to sleep when a masked imperial guard leapt in through the window, snatched up the child and struck him with his palm across the back. Consort Liu rushed to stop him, but the guard shoved her aside and struck the child again on the chest, and only then did he roar with laughter and leap back out of the window. His martial arts were of the highest order, and since she was convinced I had sent him to kill her son, she had not dared give chase but had come straight to my bedchamber to beg.

“The more I heard, the more astonished I grew. I examined the child’s injuries again with care, yet could not tell what kind of skill had caused them. All I could see was that his girdle vessel¹ had been shattered, and the assassin was plainly no common hand. Yet he had also clearly held back. The child was so young and frail that even two palm-strikes should have been enough to kill him, and still he drew breath. I went at once to her chamber to look, and sure enough, on the roof tiles and the window sill there were the faintest of footprints. I said to Consort Liu, ‘This assassin is very skilled, and his qinggong² above all is quite out of the ordinary. In all Dali there is no one but me with neili³ like this.’

“Consort Liu suddenly cried out, ‘Could it be him? Why would he kill his own son?’ The moment the words left her lips, her face went the colour of ash.”

Huang Rong gave a low cry too and said, “The Old Wild Child couldn’t be that cruel, could he?”

Great Master Yideng said, “At the time I was sure it must have been my shixiong Zhou. Who else among the great masters of our day would harm a little child for no reason? I took it that he did not want to leave a child of sin behind him to shame him before the wulin.⁴ Having said what she had, Consort Liu was torn between shame and panic, shock and remorse, and did not know what to do. Then suddenly she said again, ‘No, it cannot be him! That laugh was certainly not his!’ I said, ‘In your terror, how could you have recognised it clearly?’ She said, ‘I shall remember that laugh for as long as I live. I would remember it even as a ghost! No, it was certainly not him!’”

Everyone listening felt a chill pass over them. Guo Jing and Huang Rong called to mind Yinggu’s words and appearance, and pictured her gnashing her teeth as she said those words that day, and a shiver of dread went through them.

Great Master Yideng went on, “She said it so flatly that I believed her. But I could not think who the assassin might be. I even wondered whether it could have been one of Wang the Perfected One’s disciples, Ma Yu, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, come all that long way to kill and silence, to save the good name of the Quanzhen Order…”

Guo Jing’s lips moved. He wanted to speak but did not dare interrupt Great Master Yideng’s tale. Great Master Yideng saw and said, “Whatever you wish to say, speak freely.”

Guo Jing said, “Daoist Elder⁵ Ma, Daoist Elder Qiu and the others are chivalrous heroes. They would never do anything so wicked.”

Great Master Yideng said, “Wang Chuyi I once met at Mount Hua. His character was sound. As for the others, I cannot say. But if it had been them, a single gentle palm-strike would have killed the child at once. Why leave him half-alive?”

He raised his head and gazed at the window, utterly at a loss. In more than ten years he had never untangled the riddle in his mind. For a while the meditation court was silent. After a moment Great Master Yideng said, “Very well. I shall continue…”

Huang Rong said suddenly and loudly, “There’s no doubt about it. It must have been Ouyang Feng.”

Great Master Yideng said, “Later I too suspected him. But Ouyang Feng is a man of the Western Regions, tall of stature, a full head taller than an ordinary person. According to Consort Liu, the killer was shorter than common men.”

Huang Rong said, “That is strange indeed.”

Great Master Yideng said, “At the time I could reach no conclusion. Consort Liu held the child and wept without ceasing. The child’s injuries were not as grave as those Miss Huang has just suffered, but he was so young he could not withstand them, and healing him would cost me a great deal of my vital strength. I hesitated a long while. Seeing Consort Liu weep so piteously, more than once I was about to speak and offer treatment. But each time I remembered that once I did, I could give up all hope of standing alone above the heroes at the second Huashan Sword Summit, and I would never so much as lay a finger on the Nine Yin Manual.⁶ Alas, Wang the Perfected One said this manual was a great calamity for the wulin, that it took lives and corrupted hearts, and he was not half a word wrong. For the sake of this manual, every shred of compassion in me was gone. I sat in silence for the better part of a shichen⁷ before I at last resolved to heal the child. Alas, in that shichen I was truly a vile and petty man, lower than the beasts. The most hateful part was that when I finally decided to act, it was not because I had repented. It was simply that I could not bear Consort Liu’s ceaseless entreaties.”

Huang Rong said, “Shibo,⁸ I told you that you loved her dearly in your heart. I was not wrong at all, was I?”

Great Master Yideng seemed not to hear her. He went on, “When she saw I had agreed to treat the child, she fainted for joy. First I worked her meridians and moved her blood to bring her round. Then I unfastened the child’s undershirt so that I could massage him with the Innate Skill.⁹ But the moment the garment was opened and the child’s dudou¹⁰ was exposed, I stood rooted to the spot, unable to make a sound. Upon the dudou a pair of mandarin ducks¹¹ was woven, and beside them was embroidered the ci poem ‘Four shuttles ply.’ The dudou had been made from the very brocade handkerchief¹² my shixiong Zhou had given back to her all those years before.

“Consort Liu saw the look on my face and knew the matter had turned against her. Her face went the colour of ash. She clenched her teeth, drew a dagger from her waist and pressed it to her own breast, crying, ‘Your Majesty, I have wronged you. I have no face left to live in this world. I beg only your great mercy, let me trade my life for the child’s. In the next life I shall be your dog, your horse, and repay your kindness.’ With that she brought the dagger down, straight at her heart.”

Though they all knew Consort Liu was alive to this day, none of them could hold back a low cry.

Great Master Yideng, at this point in his tale, seemed no longer to be telling the others of the past, but talking to himself. “I at once used a qinna hold to wrench the dagger from her hand. Quick as I was, the blade had already cut her flesh. Blood seeped across her breast in a great stain. Fearing she would try to kill herself again, I sealed the acupoints of her hands and feet, bound the wound on her chest, and set her in a chair to rest. She did not speak a single word. She only stared at me, her eyes full of entreaty. Neither of us said anything. In the bedchamber there was only one sound, the child’s quick, laboured breathing.

“I listened to the child’s breathing, and a flood of old memories came back to me. How she had first entered the palace. How I had taught her the martial arts. How I had doted on her. All that time she had respected me, feared me, served me with gentle obedience, never once crossing my will. Yet she had never truly loved me. I had not known it then. But that day, when I saw the way she looked at my shixiong Zhou, I understood. So that is how a woman looks at a man when she loves him with her whole heart. Her eyes never left my shixiong Zhou as he cast the brocade handkerchief to the ground. Her eyes never left him as he turned and walked out of the palace. That look of hers haunted my sleep and spoiled my food for years. And now I saw that same look again. She was heartbroken for someone once more, not for her lover this time, but for her son. The son she had borne by her lover!

“A true man, born into this world, to be humiliated like this! What sort of sovereign was I? At that thought fury filled my breast. I lashed out with my foot and kicked the round ivory stool in front of me to splinters. When I raised my head, I froze. I said, ‘You… your hair, what has happened to it?’ She seemed not to hear me. She only gazed at the child. I had never truly understood before that a single look could hold so much tenderness, so much compassion. She knew by now that I would certainly not save the child. While he still lived, every moment she spent looking at him was a moment gained.

“I took a mirror and held it up in front of her. ‘Look at your hair!’ In those few short hours she seemed to have lived through decades. She was no more than eighteen or nineteen then, and in those hours terror, grief, remorse, despair, love and heartbreak had all assailed her at once, until countless white hairs had appeared at her temples!

“She took no notice of the change in her face. She only resented the mirror for blocking her view of the child. She said, ‘Take the mirror away.’ She said it bluntly, forgetting that I was her emperor and her lord. I was puzzled, and thought, She has always prized her looks. Why does she not care now? I tossed the mirror aside and saw her gazing at the child without a blink. I had never seen anyone hope so desperately for anything as she hoped that the child would live. I knew she would have given anything for her own life to pass into his little body and take the place of the life that was ebbing out of him drop by drop.”

At this Guo Jing and Huang Rong glanced at each other, and each of them thought, When I was badly hurt and it seemed I would never recover, you looked at me just like that. Without thinking they reached out and took each other’s hand. Their hearts beat hard, and a warmth spread all through them. Hearing of someone else’s heartbreaking misfortune, they could not help thinking of their own happiness: the one they loved was sitting right beside them, the wounds had healed, and death was no longer coming. Yes, no longer coming. In the hearts of these two young people, the other would never die.

Great Master Yideng went on, “Truly I could not bear it, and several times I was on the point of reaching out to save her child. But there was the brocade handkerchief, lying smooth and flat across the child’s chest, and on it a pair of mandarin ducks nestling fondly neck to neck. The ducks’ heads were white, which ought to be a lucky sign for a couple who will grow old together until their hair is white. Yet why does the poem say, ‘Alas, before we grow old, our hair has already turned white’? I turned my head and saw the white hair at her temples, and a cold sweat broke out across my body. Then my heart hardened once more. I said, ‘Very well, you two wish to grow old together, white-haired, and leave me alone in this palace to be emperor! This is the child you two conceived. Why should I squander my neili to bring him back?’

“She gave me one look. It was the last she ever gave me, and it was full of venom and hatred. She never looked at me again, but that one look I shall not forget until the day I die. She said coldly, ‘Let me go. I want to hold my child!’ She said it so sternly that it was as if she were my sovereign, and I could not disobey. I released her acupoints. She took the child in her arms. The child must have been in unbearable pain. He tried to cry, but not a single sound came. His little face swelled and turned purple. His eyes looked up at his mother, begging her to save him. But my heart was hard. I had not a shred of mercy left. I watched her hair turn strand by strand from black to grey, from grey to white. I do not know whether it was a vision born of my heart or truly so. I heard her say softly, ‘Child, your mother has no power to save you. But your mother can end your suffering. Sleep quietly now, my child. You will never wake again!’

“Then I heard her begin to sing softly to soothe the child, and how sweetly she sang. There, just like this, just like this. Listen!”

They heard him say this, yet could hear no singing at all, and they looked at one another in alarm. The scholar said, “Shifu, you have been speaking a long while. Please rest.”

Footnotes

1. 带脉 — Dài Mài. The Girdle Vessel, one of the eight extraordinary meridians, which encircles the waist like a belt. ↩

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

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

4. 武林 — wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. The wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 道长 — dàozhǎng. Literally Daoist elder. A respectful form of address for a Daoist priest. ↩

6. 九阴真经 — Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Literally true scripture of the nine yin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

8. 师伯 — shībó. Senior lineage uncle. The shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 先天功 — Xiāntiān Gōng. Literally skill of the primordial. A neigong method. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 肚兜 — dùdōu. Literally belly pouch. An undergarment covering the chest and belly, tied with strings at the neck and waist, often worn by children. ↩

11. 鸳鸯 — yuānyāng. Mandarin ducks, always shown in pairs, an emblem of devoted love in Chinese culture. ↩

12. 锦帕 — jǐnpà. Literally brocade kerchief. A handkerchief of brocade. ↩