The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 37 – Part 5

Huang Rong said, “But in the end you were the clever one, knowing to press Lu Youjiao for a plan.” Guo Jing said, “Rong-er, it was you who taught me.” Huang Rong asked in surprise, “I taught you?” Guo Jing said, “You taught me in a dream.” He then recounted the dream to her in full.

This time Huang Rong did not laugh. Her heart was stirred, and she said softly, “The ancients said, ‘When sincerity reaches its limit, even gold and stone will yield.’¹ If you thought of me with such devotion, I truly should have come to see you long ago.”

Guo Jing said, “Rong-er, from now on you must never leave me again. Will you?”

Huang Rong gazed at the sea of clouds encircling the peak and was lost in thought for a while. Then she said suddenly, “Jing gege, I’m cold.”

Guo Jing at once untied his fur coat from his shoulders and draped it over her. “Let us go down.”

“Very well. We will come back here tomorrow night, and I will explain the essential meaning of the Nine Yin Manual² to you in full detail.”

Guo Jing was taken aback. “What?”

Huang Rong’s right hand had been clasping his left. She gave it a hard squeeze and said, “My father has translated all that gibberish in the last chapter of the Manual. Tomorrow night I will explain it to you.”

Guo Jing thought, That last section of Sanskrit was plainly translated by Great Master Yideng,³ so how can she say it was her father? Puzzled, he was about to ask again when Huang Rong squeezed his hand once more.

He understood there must be a reason for it. He answered absently, and the two of them descended the peak together.

Back in the tent, Huang Rong whispered in his ear, “Ouyang Feng has also climbed Bare Trunk Peak. While we were talking, he was hiding behind us, listening.”

Guo Jing was startled. “Ah, I never noticed him at all.”

Huang Rong said, “He was hiding behind a boulder of ice. The Old Venom⁴ is as wily as they come, but this time he forgot that ice is clear and cannot hide a man. Even I only caught the faint shape of him through the ice once the moonlight slanted across it.”

Guo Jing said, “So when you mentioned the Nine Yin Manual, you were speaking for his benefit.”

“Mm. I want to lure him to the very summit. Then we take the goat ladder away and leave him up there to seek immortality and refine his qi, a living immortal for the rest of his days.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed, and clapped his hands and cheered.

The next day Genghis Khan ordered another assault and lost over a thousand more elite troops. The defenders on the battlements hooted and hurled insults. Genghis Khan stamped and raged. Then, looking out, he saw the whole plain strewn with the frozen carcasses of cattle, sheep and horses, and his alarm grew. He thought, If this bitter cold continues and the city does not fall within ten days, half my Mongol host will perish beneath these walls. Racking his brains in vain for a plan, he thought, I, Genghis Khan, have been a hero all my life. Am I to meet my end here after all?

That night Guo Jing, Huang Rong and the three elders of the Beggars’ Guild⁵ made their preparations. Once Ouyang Feng climbed the peak, they would destroy the ladder below. But Ouyang Feng was cunning beyond measure. He too had foreseen this possibility, and kept watch from far away, refusing to show himself unless Guo Jing and Huang Rong had already gone up.

Huang Rong thought for a moment, then conceived another scheme. She ordered several long ropes prepared and soaked them through with petroleum. Petroleum lay everywhere beneath the soil of Khwarezm.⁶ Over a thousand years before, the local people, digging wells for water, had struck oil instead. It burned on contact with fire, and from then on they used it for cooking and heating, calling it fire oil.⁷ The Mongol army had seized petroleum from the Khwarezmian people and used it as fuel.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong each carried an oil-soaked rope up the peak and hid them behind the rocks. Then they sat in the crystal palace and talked. Before long, the faint outline of Ouyang Feng’s figure appeared behind the ice boulder. His qinggong⁸ had reached the pinnacle of perfection. He scaled the peak and trod on ice without the slightest sound, certain that the two could not possibly detect him.

Huang Rong at once recited several passages of the Manual, and the two pretended to discuss them. The discussion was a pretence, but every essential point they spoke of was genuine. Ouyang Feng listened, and found the principles so marvellous that his heart swelled with delight. He thought, If I forced that girl, she might tell me because she had no choice, but never in such thorough detail. To eavesdrop like this is truly beyond anything I could have hoped for.

Huang Rong explained at a leisurely pace while Guo Jing asked questions he pretended not to understand. Ouyang Feng thought, He cannot grasp even such simple principles. He is dense beyond belief. Then came the sound of an army horn from below the peak, urgent and insistent.

Guo Jing leapt to his feet. “The Great Khan is mustering his generals. I must go down.” In truth the horn was part of their arrangement.

Huang Rong said, “Then we will come back tomorrow.”

Guo Jing said, “It is a great deal of trouble, climbing up and down. Could we not talk in the tent?”

“No. That old man Ouyang Feng has been hunting for me everywhere. He is so sly that there is no hiding from him. But clever as he is, he would never dream of our coming to the very summit of this peak.”

Ouyang Feng was privately pleased. Heh, never mind a paltry peak. Even if you fled to the edge of the world, I would still catch up with you.

Guo Jing said, “Then you wait here. Within half a shichen⁹ I will be back.” Huang Rong nodded.

Guo Jing descended the peak directly. Leaving Huang Rong alone on the summit troubled him, but he reasoned that Ouyang Feng was bent on overhearing the Manual and would not show himself to do harm. As he climbed down, he wound the oil-soaked rope around each frozen goat leg in turn.

After the time it takes to eat a meal, Huang Rong rose and said to herself, “Why has Jing gege not come back yet? I wonder if there are ghosts on this peak? Thinking of Yang Kang and Ouyang Ke makes me frightened. I will go down for a while, then come back up with Jing gege.”

Ouyang Feng, afraid she would discover him, cowered behind the ice rock without daring to move a muscle. He watched her climb down the peak.

Guo Jing and the three elders waited at the foot of the peak. The moment Huang Rong appeared, they thrust torches to the rope. The oil-soaked cord blazed upwards along its length. The goat legs, heated by the fire, melted the frozen blood that bound them to the rock face, and one by one the steps tumbled from bottom to top. A serpent of flame writhed upward, gleaming against the ice and snow in the darkness, a striking sight.

Huang Rong clapped her hands and cheered. “Jing gege, tell me, are you going to spare him this time too?”

Guo Jing said, “This is the third time. We cannot break our word.”

Huang Rong laughed. “I have a way for you to keep your word and still kill him to avenge your shifus.”¹⁰

Guo Jing was overjoyed. “Rong-er, you really are made of schemes from head to toe. How can there be such a wonderful way?”

Huang Rong laughed. “It is not hard at all. We let the Old Venom drink the north-west wind on the peak for ten days and ten nights, till he is frozen and starved and worn to the bone. Then we build the goat ladder and bring him down. That is the third reprieve, is it not?”

Guo Jing said, “True.”

Huang Rong said, “You have spared him three times, so there is no need for further courtesy. The moment he sets foot on level ground, the two of us strike together, with the three elders lending their aid. Five of us against one half-dead invalid. Tell me, can we kill him or not?”

Guo Jing said, “Of course we can. But to kill him this way would be a victory without honour.”

“Hah, with a villain so vicious and cruel as this, what honour do you suppose you owe him? When he murdered our five shifus, did he show a shred of mercy? When he killed Fourth Shifu, was the method he used open and upright?”

At the thought of the blood debt he owed his beloved shifus, Guo Jing glared until his eyes seemed fit to split. He thought too that Ouyang Feng’s martial arts were formidable, and if they let him go this time they might never have another chance for vengeance. He set his jaw. “Very well. That is what we will do.”

The two returned to the tent, and this time they truly studied the martial arts in the Nine Yin Manual. In the course of their discussion, both realised that the other’s skills had improved greatly over the past year, and both were pleased. Huang Rong could not recite the Sanskrit from memory, and the translation into Han was in Guo Jing’s keeping. Her knowledge of the Manual’s general principles had been incomplete. Only now did she see the whole of it, and her delight put fresh life into her.

After a time Guo Jing said, “That villain Wanyan Honglie¹¹ is inside this city, and we can only look on, powerless to touch him. Think of some clever plan to take the city.”

Huang Rong said, “These past few days I have been thinking of nothing else. I have planned over a dozen stratagems, and not one of them would truly work.”

Guo Jing said, “Among the Beggars’ Guild brothers there are at least a dozen with superb qinggong. Add the two of us. Could we try scaling the walls?”

Huang Rong shook her head. “Every ten feet of that wall is guarded by a dozen strong bows. Climbing it is hard enough, and even if every one of those dozen men got into the city, the hundred thousand or more defenders inside would fight to the death. There would be no way to smash the gates.”

They talked through the long night and did not sleep at all.

At dawn the next day Genghis Khan ordered another assault. Over ten thousand Mongol troops manned the stone-launching engines, and a rain of stone shot into the city. Several cannon seized from the Jin and Song armies also fired. But the defenders sheltered in their blockhouses, and though the stone and cannonballs demolished many houses, the garrison suffered few casualties. For three days running the Mongols tried every means of attack, without success.

On the fourth day the sky filled once more with goose-feather snow. Guo Jing looked up at the summit. “I am afraid Ouyang Feng will be half-dead with cold before the ten days are up.”

Huang Rong said, “His neigong is profound. He can endure ten days.”

The words had barely left her lips when they both cried out in alarm. Something was falling from the summit. It was Ouyang Feng.

Huang Rong clapped her hands with delight. “The Old Venom could not bear it and has thrown himself to his death!” Then she cried in wonder, “Eh? Strange! How can this be?”

He was not plummeting straight down. His body drifted and swayed in the air, just like a kite. Guo Jing and Huang Rong were astonished. A fall from a peak ten thousand feet high should smash a man to pieces, so why was he coming down so slowly? Could the Old Venom truly practise sorcery?

In moments Ouyang Feng had fallen further, and now they could see clearly. He was naked to the skin, and above his head were tied two things like great round balls. A moment’s thought, and Huang Rong understood. “What a pity!” she cried, again and again.

For Ouyang Feng, trapped atop Bare Trunk Peak, had found that despite his supreme martial arts he could not slide down a cliff that rose sheer for ten thousand feet. After days of cold and hunger, desperation had sharpened his wit, and suddenly he had thought of a method. He had removed his trousers, tied the two leg-holes tight in a knot, and then, fearing the cloth would not hold, stripped off his upper garments as well and bound them to the trousers. Gripping the waistband with both hands, he caught the wind and filled them with air. Then, gritting his teeth, he leapt from the summit.

It was a desperate gamble, a bid for life from the jaws of death, for there was no other course. Sure enough, the trousers swelled with air, and his fall slowed greatly. Without a stitch on him, his hands nearly frozen stiff, he relied on his superb neigong and forced his neili to circulate through his whole body, holding the cold and the ice at bay.

Huang Rong was torn between fury and laughter, unable at once to think of a way to deal with him. By now both armies, inside the city and outside, had seen the spectacle. Hundreds of thousands of faces turned upward to watch the flying man. Many common soldiers believed an immortal had descended from Heaven, and fell to their knees, kowtowing in worship.

Guo Jing watched the direction of Ouyang Feng’s fall. He would surely land inside the city. When he was still several hundred feet above the ground, Guo Jing snatched an iron-backed bow and fired arrow after arrow in rapid succession, aiming at him. He thought, He is suspended in mid-air, with nowhere to dodge. Yet mindful of their pact to spare him three times, he aimed at Ouyang Feng’s thighs rather than at mortal places.

Ouyang Feng, hanging in the air, saw in every direction. Seeing that the arrows flew at his lower body, he bent his back and arched his body, lashing out with both feet in turn, and knocked every arrow Guo Jing sent aside.

Amid the clamour of the three armies, Genghis Khan had received Guo Jing’s rough report and ordered a volley. In an instant ten thousand crossbows bent as one, and arrows flew like a shower of shooting stars, all aimed at Ouyang Feng. Even had he a thousand hands and ten thousand legs, he could not have deflected them all. Naked and exposed, with no room to dodge in mid-air, he would be pierced like a hedgehog.

Ouyang Feng saw that his situation was desperate. He let go with his hands, and at once he plunged head-first, upside down.

Hundreds of thousands of voices cried out as one. The sound shook heaven and earth.

Halfway down, he twisted at the waist and dived towards a great banner on the battlements. The north-westerly gale held the banner stretched taut from west to east. Ouyang Feng reached forward with his left hand and caught the corner of the banner. With that slight purchase, the great standard split in two down its length. Ouyang Feng somersaulted, hooked both feet around the banner-pole, and slid down, vanishing behind the city wall.

Both armies were astounded at this extraordinary sight. For a time there was nothing but talk of it, and the fighting itself was forgotten.

Guo Jing thought, This time cannot count as sparing him, so won’t I have to spare him once more next time? Rong-er will be most displeased. But when he turned, he was surprised to see Huang Rong’s eyes bright with amusement. “Rong-er, what are you so happy about?” he asked quickly.

Huang Rong clapped her palms together. “I have a great gift for you. Would you like it?”

Guo Jing said, “What gift?”

“The city of Samarkand.”

Guo Jing stared at her, not understanding.

Huang Rong said, “The Old Venom has taught me a marvellous plan for taking the city. Go and deploy your troops and generals. Tonight the great work will be done.” She whispered a few words in his ear, and Guo Jing was so delighted he clapped his hands again and again.

Footnotes

1. 精诚所至，金石为开 — jīngchéng suǒ zhì, jīnshí wéi kāi. Literally where utmost sincerity reaches, metal and stone open. An old saying: true sincerity can move even the hardest thing. ↩

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

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

4. 老毒物 — lǎo dúwù. Literally old venomous thing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

6. 花剌子模国 — Huālàzǐmó Guó. Central Asian empire destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1220, spanning modern Iran/Uzbekistan. See Wikipedia. ↩

7. 火油 — huǒyóu. Literally fire oil. Petroleum from natural deposits, burned as fuel. ↩

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

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

10. 师父 — shīfù. Teacher responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 完颜洪烈 — Wányán Hóngliè. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩