The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 33 – Part 3

“My story?” said Hong Qigong. “Well now. In the Imperial Kitchen I ate Mandarin Duck Five-Treasure Mince four times running, and that cured my craving well and truly. Then I had lychee and white kidney, quail broth, lamb’s tongue skewers, ginger-and-vinegar whelks, lamb tripe stuffed with oysters…” On and on he went without a pause, reeling off the famous dishes of the Imperial Kitchen, gulping down mouthfuls of saliva as he spoke and relishing every one of them in memory.

Huang Rong broke in. “And how was it Old Wild Child couldn’t find you afterwards?”

Hong Qigong laughed. “When the cooks of the Imperial Kitchen saw one perfectly cooked dish after another vanish, they all said the Great Fox Immortal was up to his tricks again, and they lit incense and candles and came to worship me. Then the captain of the guards got to hear of it and sent eight palace guards to the kitchen to catch the fox. This old beggar thought, my oh my, this is getting serious, and with Old Wild Child nowhere to be seen, the only thing for it was to slip away and hide in some quiet out-of-the-way spot. The place was called something like the Hall of Green-Flowered Immortals.¹ It was planted all over with plum trees, and by the look of it, that was where the boy emperor went to admire the plum blossom in winter. In this sweltering weather there wasn’t so much as the shadow of a ghost there, apart from a few old eunuchs who came to sweep up every morning, so this old beggar had the place to himself and lived free and easy. There was food all over the palace, enough that a hundred more old beggars wouldn’t go hungry, and it was just the place to nurse my injuries in peace. I ate well and lived well every day, with more leisure than the emperor himself.

“I don’t know how many days went by. Then one night, in the small hours, I suddenly heard Old Wild Child wailing like a ghost, then barking like a dog and yowling like a cat, and turning the whole palace upside down with his racket. Then I heard several men shouting, ‘Hong Qigong, Old Hong, Hong Qigong, Old Hong!’ I went out to take a look, and who should it be but Peng Lianhu,² Sha Tongtian,³ Liang Ziweng⁴ and the rest of that crew of rogues.”

“Eh?” said Huang Rong, surprised. “What did they want with you?”

“I thought it very strange myself,” said Hong Qigong. “The moment I saw them I ducked back out of sight, but Old Wild Child caught sight of me. He was delighted. He ran up, threw his arms round me and said, ‘Thank Heaven and Earth, Old Wild Child has found you at last.’ Then and there he ordered Liang Ziweng and his lot to bring up the rear…”

“How could Liang Ziweng and the others take orders from Old Wild Child?” asked Huang Rong in surprise.

Hong Qigong laughed. “At the time I was just as baffled as you. Anyway, that pack of villains were terrified of Old Wild Child, and whatever he said, none of them dared cross him. He ordered Liang Ziweng and the others to bring up the rear and carried me on his back to Niu Family Village⁵ to look for the two of you. Only on the way did he tell me that he’d searched high and low for me without finding me and was growing frantic, when he ran into Liang Ziweng and his lot in the city. At his wits’ end, he grabbed the whole lot of them, gave every one a sound thrashing, and made them search the streets and alleys day and night without stopping. He said they’d combed through the palace several times already, but the place was so big and I was so well hidden that they never found me.”

Huang Rong laughed. “Who’d have thought Old Wild Child had it in him, bringing that whole pack of fiends meekly to heel? But why didn’t they just run away?”

Hong Qigong laughed. “Old Wild Child has his own mischievous ways. He rubbed a lot of grime off his body, rolled it into a dozen or so pills and made each of them swallow three. He told them it was a poison that would take effect after seven times seven, forty-nine days, deadly beyond compare, and that no one in the world but he could cure it. If they did as they were told, on the forty-eighth day he would give them the antidote. Those villains half believed it and half didn’t, but a life is no laughing matter, and in the end they decided it was safer to believe it than not. So they meekly let Old Wild Child order them about and never dared defy him.”

Guo Jing had been sick at heart, but at this point in Hong Qigong’s tale he could not help laughing.

Hong Qigong went on. “When we got to Niu Family Village and couldn’t find you two, Old Wild Child made them fan out and search. Last night they all came trailing back with their heads hanging, and Old Wild Child gave them a good cursing. He was in full flow when out it came, ‘If we still can’t find those two youngsters Guo Jing and Huang Rong tomorrow, I’ll piss another puddle and roll you some more mud pills to eat!’ That made them suspicious, and they kept trying to worm it out of him. The more Old Wild Child said, the more he gave himself away, until they knew they’d been tricked and the pills they’d swallowed were no poison at all. I knew how dangerous things had become, and that leaving those villains alive would only store up trouble, so I told Old Wild Child to kill the lot of them and be done with it. But Peng Lianhu had seen which way the wind was blowing too, and he played a trick. He had that fat monk from Qinghai challenge Old Wild Child to a contest of sitting still. I couldn’t stop it, so I had to get out of Niu Family Village, and outside the village I met Ke daxia.⁶ He shielded me and got me away here, with Peng Lianhu and the others on our heels all the way. Muddle-headed as he is, Old Wild Child knew it wouldn’t do to leave me, so he hurried here too. The villains kept goading him, until in the end he couldn’t hold back and took the monk on.”

Hearing all this, Huang Rong did not know whether to be angry or amused. “If you hadn’t had that stroke of luck, Shifu,” she said, “Old Wild Child would have cost you your life.”

“My life is one I picked up off the ground anyway,” said Hong Qigong. “It makes no difference whose hands I lose it in.”

Something suddenly came back to Huang Rong. “Shifu, that day when we came back from Mingxia Island⁷…” she said.

“Not Mingxia Island,” said Hong Qigong. “Ghost-Suppressing Island.”

Huang Rong gave a faint smile. “Very well, Ghost-Suppressing Island it is. And Ouyang Ke really has become a ghost now, no mistake. That day on the raft, when we rescued Ouyang Feng and his nephew, we heard Old Venom say that only one man in the world could heal your injury, but that his martial arts were peerless, so forcing him was out of the question, and you weren’t willing to profit at someone else’s cost by begging him to save you. You wouldn’t tell us his name then, but now that Jing gege and I have been to western Hunan, we know of course that he can be none other than the Emperor Duan⁸ of years past, today’s Great Master Yideng.⁹”

Hong Qigong sighed. “If he used the Innate Skill¹⁰ and the One Yang Finger¹¹ to open up my Eight Extraordinary Meridians,¹² he could indeed heal my injury. But do that and his own vitality would be gravely sapped, and it would take him five years at most and three at least to recover. Even if he has come to care little for the world and nothing for who wins the second Huashan Sword Summit, he’s a man of fifty or sixty already. How many more years has he got? How could this old beggar bring himself to ask?”

Guo Jing said happily, “Shifu, so you don’t need anyone’s help after all. The Eight Extraordinary Meridians can be opened by oneself.”

“What?” said Hong Qigong in surprise.

“That jibber-jabber, jabber-jibber passage Jing gege learnt by heart,” said Huang Rong. “Great Master Yideng translated it and taught it to us. He told us to tell you that you could use this method to open up your own Eight Extraordinary Meridians.” And she recited the gist of Yideng’s translation.

Hong Qigong listened closely and thought for a long time. Then he leapt up in delight, crying again and again, “Wonderful, wonderful! This method will work, sure enough, though it’ll take a year or so at the very least before it shows any effect.”

“At the contest at Misty Rain Pavilion,”¹³ said Huang Rong, “the other side are sure to ask Ouyang Feng along to back them. Old Wild Child’s martial arts are no weaker than his, but he’s so scatterbrained that there’s no telling he won’t make a mess of things when it counts. We must go to Peach Blossom Island and ask my father to help us fight. Only then can we be sure of winning.”

“Quite right,” said Hong Qigong. “I’ll go on ahead to Jiaxing, and you two go to Peach Blossom Island together.”

Guo Jing was uneasy and insisted on escorting Hong Qigong to Jiaxing first. “I’ll ride your little red horse,”¹⁴ said Hong Qigong. “If there’s any trouble on the road, this old beggar will give it the whip and be off, and nobody will catch him.”

At first light the next morning Hong Qigong ate a big bowl of noodles, glugged down a big bowl of wine, mounted the horse and pressed with his knees. The little red horse gave Guo Jing and Huang Rong a long neigh, as if bidding them farewell, and sped away north like the wind.

Guo Jing watched until Hong Qigong was lost to sight. Then he thought again of how Ke Zhen’e had tried to kill Huang Rong, and his mind filled with doubts and his heart grew heavy. Huang Rong made no attempt to comfort him. She went off and hired a boat herself, and they set sail straight for Peach Blossom Island.

When they reached the island and had sent the boatman away, Huang Rong said, “Jing gege, there’s something I want to ask of you. Will you agree or not?”

“Tell me what it is first,” said Guo Jing, “so it isn’t another thing I can’t do.”

Huang Rong laughed. “I’m not asking you to cut off your six shifus’ heads.”

“Rong-er,” said Guo Jing, displeased, “why bring that up again?”

“Why shouldn’t I bring it up?” said Huang Rong. “You may be able to forget it, but I can’t. Fond of you as I am, I’ve no wish to have my head cut off by you.”

Guo Jing sighed. “I really don’t understand why Eldest Shifu is so terribly angry. He knows you’re the one I love most. I’d sooner die a thousand times, ten thousand times, I’d sooner let you cut off my head seventeen or eighteen times, than ever do you the least harm.”

Hearing how sincerely he spoke, Huang Rong was moved. She took his hand and leaned gently against him, and pointing to a row of willows by the water, she asked softly, “Jing gege, do you think Peach Blossom Island is beautiful?”

“It’s just like a place where immortals live,” said Guo Jing.

Huang Rong sighed. “All I want is to go on living here. I don’t want you to kill me.”

Guo Jing stroked her hair. “Good Rong-er, how could I kill you?”

“If your six shifus, your mother and your good friends all pressed you to kill me,” said Huang Rong, “would you do it?”

Guo Jing raised his head proudly. “Even if everyone under Heaven turned on you at once, I’d still protect you, always.”

Huang Rong gripped his hand tighter. “For my sake, would you give up all of them?”

Guo Jing hesitated and did not answer.

Huang Rong tilted her face up a little and looked into his eyes, waiting anxiously for his answer.

“Rong-er,” said Guo Jing, “I said I would stay with you on Peach Blossom Island all my life, and when I said it my mind was already made up. It wasn’t a sudden whim, or something I said without thinking.”

“Good!” said Huang Rong. “Then from today on, you won’t leave this island.”

“From today on?” said Guo Jing, surprised.

“Mm, from today on!” said Huang Rong. “I’ll ask Papa to help at Misty Rain Pavilion. Papa and I will go and kill Wanyan Honglie to avenge you, and Papa and I will go to Mongolia and fetch your mother. I’ll even ask Papa to go and apologise to your six shifus. I’m going to see to it there isn’t a single thing left in your heart that you can’t let go of.”

Guo Jing saw the strange look on her face. “Rong-er,” he said, “I’ve never said anything to you that I didn’t mean. You can rest easy. What need is there for all this?”

Huang Rong sighed. “There’s no telling how things will turn out in this world. When you agreed to marry that Mongol princess, did you ever think you would want to go back on it one day? I used to know only that I’d do whatever I pleased. Only now do I know… Ah! However well you plan, Heaven will go out of its way to thwart you.” As she said this her eyes reddened despite herself, and she hung her head.

Guo Jing said nothing, but his thoughts surged and ebbed. Seeing how deeply Huang Rong loved him, he knew that by rights he ought to stay on this island with her all his life. Yet to cast aside the affairs of the world and leave everyone else in it behind was the one thing he could never do, though why he could not, for the moment he could not work out.

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you,” said Huang Rong softly, “and it isn’t that I’m set on keeping you here by force. It’s only, it’s only… I’m so terribly afraid.” At this she suddenly laid her head on his shoulder and began to sob, her body trembling slightly.

This was the last thing Guo Jing had expected. He was taken aback for a moment, then said quickly, “Rong-er, what are you afraid of?”

Huang Rong said nothing, only wept with her head bowed. In all the time Guo Jing had known her they had been through no end of dangers and hardships together, and she had always kept her smile and her easy chatter. Now she was back in her old home and could see her father at any moment, so why should she suddenly be afraid? “Are you afraid something might happen to your father?” he asked.

Huang Rong shook her head.

“Are you afraid that once I leave this island I’ll never come back?” he asked again.

Huang Rong shook her head again.

Guo Jing asked four or five questions in a row, and each time she shook her head.

After a good while Huang Rong raised her head. “Jing gege, I can’t say what it is I’m afraid of. It’s only that when I think of the look on your Eldest Shifu’s face when he wanted to kill me, I can’t help panicking. I keep feeling that one day you’ll do as he says and kill me. That’s why I’m begging you not to leave this place again. Promise me!”

Guo Jing laughed. “I thought it was something serious, and it’s only this. That time in Zhongdu, didn’t my six shifus call you a little demoness and all sorts? Afterwards I went off with you, and nothing came of it in the end. My six shifus may seem stern and fierce, but at heart there’s no one kinder. Once you know them, they’ll be sure to like you. Second Shifu’s knack for picking pockets is simply marvellous. If you learnt it from him it would be the greatest fun. And Seventh Shifu is gentler and kinder still…”

Huang Rong cut him short. “So you’re set on leaving here after all?”

“We’ll leave together,” said Guo Jing, “go to Mongolia together to fetch my mother, go together to kill Wanyan Honglie, and then come back together. Wouldn’t that be fine?”

Huang Rong said in a daze, “If that’s how it is, we’ll never come back together. We’ll never spend our lives side by side.”

“Why not?” said Guo Jing, surprised.

Huang Rong shook her head. “I don’t know. But I saw the look on your Eldest Shifu’s face, and I can guess. Merely killing me wouldn’t be enough for him. He hates me to the very marrow of his bones.”

As she said this, Guo Jing saw that her heart seemed to be breaking. Her face still had a little girl’s childishness about it, but the look at the tips of her brows and the corners of her eyes was that of someone who had already seen some terrible calamity in the days to come. He thought, She has always been right about how things will turn out. If I don’t listen to her this time, and some disaster befalls her later on, what then? At this thought a pang went through his heart and he could think of nothing else, and the words burst out of him. “Very well! I won’t leave here, then!”

Huang Rong gazed at him blankly for a long while, and two streams of tears ran slowly down her cheeks.

Footnotes

1. 萼绿华堂 — Èlǜhuá Táng. A hall of the imperial palace at Lin’an, planted with plum trees. ↩

2. 彭连虎 — Péng Liánhǔ. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 沙通天 — Shā Tōngtiān. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 梁子翁 — Liáng Zǐwēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 牛家村 — Niújiā Cūn. Literally Niu Family Village. A village outside Lin’an. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 柯镇恶 — Kē Zhèn’è. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 明霞岛 — Míngxiá Dǎo. Literally island of bright rosy clouds. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

9. 一灯大师 — Yīdēng Dàshī. Literally Great Master One Lamp. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

11. 一阳指 — Yīyáng Zhǐ. The finger art of the Duan family of Dali. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 奇经八脉 — Qíjīng Bāmài. The eight meridians that stand apart from the twelve principal meridians and serve as reservoirs of qi and blood. ↩

13. 烟雨楼 — Yānyǔ Lóu. Misty Rain Pavilion, on South Lake in Jiaxing. ↩

14. 小红马 — xiǎo hóng mǎ. The red horse Guo Jing tames on the steppe, a sweat-blood steed. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩