The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 39 – Part 4

Hot blood surged in Guo Jing’s chest. He nodded, turned, and strode towards the cliff edge. This was one of the most perilous spots on Mount Hua, a place called the Cliff of Self-Sacrifice.¹ One leap from here would mean a shattered body and broken bones. Huang Rong knew how simple and headstrong he was, and feared he would do exactly as he said. She darted forward and caught hold of the back of his shirt, and with a heave of her arm she sprang clean over his shoulder and landed on the brink. Angry and frantic at once, she said through her tears, “Fine. I know you have no feeling for me at all. I say one thing in a temper, without thinking, and you won’t let it pass. I tell you, you needn’t be as angry with me as all that. Just never see me again, and have done with it.”

She trembled, her face white as snow, standing at the very brink over empty air, swaying like a white camellia in the wind. A moment ago Guo Jing had lost all hold on himself and, on sheer blind impulse, had truly meant to leap. Now he was afraid she might slip, and he said quickly, “Come in a little from the edge.”

Hearing the concern in his voice, Huang Rong felt only the more wretched. She sobbed, “Who wants you saying things you don’t mean? I fell ill in Shandong and nobody cared. You didn’t come to see me then, did you? That old scoundrel Ouyang Feng caught me, and try as I might I couldn’t escape his grasp. You didn’t come to save me, did you? My mother didn’t want me. She left me behind and died. My father didn’t want me either. He never came looking. And you certainly want me even less! Nobody in this world wants me. Nobody loves me!” She stamped her feet again and again, sobbing aloud, all the loneliness and grief of these past days pouring out at last.

Guo Jing’s heart overflowed with tenderness. He felt that every word she said was right, and the more he listened the angrier he grew with himself. A gust of wind blew across the cliff. Huang Rong shivered and drew herself in. Guo Jing had already unfastened his outer robe and was about to drape it over her shoulders when a great shout rang out from the edge of the cliff. “Who has the nerve to bully our Miss Huang?” A man with a long beard and long hair came up round the cliff. It was Old Wild Child Zhou Botong.

Guo Jing stared only at Huang Rong, taking no notice of who had arrived. Huang Rong was in a foul temper already. She snapped, “Old Wild Child, I told you to go and kill Qiu Qianren. Where’s his head?”

Zhou Botong giggled. He had no account to give of himself, and for fear she would scold him he cast about for some way to coax her into a better humour. “Miss Huang, who’s made you angry? Old Wild Child will pay them back for you.”

Huang Rong pointed at Guo Jing. “Who else but him?”

Zhou Botong was bent on currying favour with Huang Rong, and he said not another word. One backhand, one forehand, smack, smack, and two heavy slaps landed on Guo Jing’s face. Guo Jing was in a daze and wholly off his guard, and Old Wild Child struck hard. Everything went dark before his eyes, and at once both his cheeks swelled up red. Zhou Botong said, “Miss Huang, is that enough? If not, I’ll hit him some more for you.”

Huang Rong saw five red fingerprints swollen on each of Guo Jing’s cheeks. Her anger melted at once into tenderness, and the tenderness turned to fury directed at Zhou Botong. She scolded, “If I’m angry with him, that’s my own affair. What’s it to do with you? Who told you to go hitting people? I told you to go and kill Qiu Qianren. Why didn’t you do as I said?”

Zhou Botong stuck out his tongue and couldn’t pull it back in. He thought, Old Wild Child went to pat the horse’s rump and slapped its hoof instead. He was at his wits’ end when he heard the clash of weapons from the cliff behind him, with shouts faintly mixed in. If this was not the moment to slip away, when would be? He called out, “That’s most likely old Qiu Qianren coming. I’ll go and kill him now.” The words were barely out before he had shot off like a puff of smoke round behind the cliff.

Had Qiu Qianren really come, Zhou Botong would have been only too anxious to keep out of his way, let alone go and provoke him. That day, he, Qiu Qianren, Ouyang Feng and Guo Jing had fought blindly in the stone hut in the Western Regions. Guo Jing and Ouyang Feng had got clear one after the other, and at last Qiu Qianren had also seized his chance and burst out. Zhou Botong had pursued him relentlessly. Qiu Qianren was hounded to the point of exhaustion, burning with rage and hatred. That he, Chief of one of the great guilds of the wulin,² should be brought to such disgrace was more than he could bear, and he wanted only to find some quick way to take his own life rather than fall into Zhou Botong’s hands and be tormented. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted several venomous snakes coiled among the rocks. He knew snakes of this kind were deadly beyond compare. One bite, and the whole body went numb at once, the most painless death there was. He snatched one up, pinched it tight at its vital spot below the head, and shouted, “Zhou Botong, you old villain, I hope you’re satisfied!” He was about to press the snake’s mouth against his own wrist, when Zhou Botong, who had a mortal terror of snakes all his life, let out a great shriek and turned to flee.

Qiu Qianren was taken aback, and only after a long moment did he grasp that the man was afraid of snakes. Now the tables were turned. He caught another snake in his left hand and came chasing after Zhou Botong, shouting and yelling. Zhou Botong was scared out of his wits and ran for his life. Qiu Qianren was called Iron Palm Skims the Water,³ and his qinggong surpassed even Zhou Botong’s. Had he not been wary of Zhou Botong and afraid to press him too closely, he would have caught him long before. One fled and the other chased until nightfall, when at last Zhou Botong seized his chance and got away. In truth Qiu Qianren was attacking only to make his own escape. He was laughing up his sleeve all the while, but he dared not really give chase. The next day Zhou Botong seized a fast horse and rode hard for the east, terrified Qiu Qianren might catch up.

Huang Rong watched Zhou Botong disappear. She stared at Guo Jing for a long moment, then sighed and lowered her head without another word.

Guo Jing said, “Rong-er!”

Huang Rong gave a faint “Mm.”

Guo Jing wanted to say something to apologise and beg her forgiveness, but he knew himself to be clumsy with words and feared that one wrong syllable would only anger her afresh. The two of them stood facing the wind. Huang Rong suddenly sneezed. Guo Jing, who had already unfastened his outer robe, draped it at once over her shoulders. Huang Rong bowed her head and took no notice.

Suddenly there came a roar of laughter from Zhou Botong and a shout of “Wonderful, wonderful!” Huang Rong reached out and took Guo Jing’s hand. “Jing gege,”⁴ she whispered, “let’s go and have a look.”

Guo Jing was so overjoyed he could not speak, tears rising to his eyes. Huang Rong dabbed his tears away with her sleeve and laughed. “Your face is all tears and fingerprints. People will think I was the one who beat you till you cried.”

Guo Jing said, “Best of all if it was you who beat me till I cried!”

Huang Rong smiled sweetly, and so the two of them were reconciled.

Hand in hand they went around the cliff. Zhou Botong sat on a great boulder, hugging his belly, one leg cocked over the other, thoroughly pleased with himself. Qiu Chuji stood in attendance beside him, his hand on his jian. Sha Tongtian, Peng Lianhu, Venerable Lingzhi and Hou Tonghai were frozen in various poses, some lunging with weapons, some crouched in retreat. All four were as still as figures of clay or wood. Zhou Botong had sealed their acupoints, every one.

Zhou Botong said, “Back then I scraped the dirt off my body and made pills for you lot to eat. You stinking thieves are sharp enough, I’ll give you that. You saw there was no poison and wouldn’t listen to your grandpa. Hmph, hmph, and how do you like it now?” He had subdued these four, but had not yet decided what to do with them. Seeing Guo Jing and Huang Rong approach, he said, “Miss Huang, you can have these four stinking thieves as a present!”

Huang Rong said, “What use are they to me? Hmph, you don’t want to kill anyone, and you don’t want to let anyone go. You’ve caught these stinking thieves and you don’t know what to do with them. Call me ‘good sister’ three times, and I’ll give you a clever idea.”

Zhou Botong was delighted and called out twice, “Good sister! Good sister!”, with a bow for each. The third time he laid it on thicker still and called, “Good auntie!”

Huang Rong pressed her lips together and smiled. She pointed at Peng Lianhu. “Search him.”

Zhou Botong did as she said. On Peng Lianhu he found a finger ring fitted with poisoned needles and two bottles of antidote. Huang Rong said, “He once pricked your shizhi⁵ Ma Yu with these needles. Give him a few jabs with them yourself.”

Peng Lianhu and the rest heard every word. They were frightened out of their wits, but their acupoints were sealed and they could not move. Time and again they felt sharp pains as Zhou Botong took the ring’s poisoned needles and pricked each of them in turn.

Huang Rong said, “The antidote is in your hand. You tell them what to do. See if they dare disobey.”

Zhou Botong was delighted. He tilted his head in thought, then scraped more dirt from his body, poured the antidote into it, and rolled the mixture into small pills. He handed them to Qiu Chuji. “You escort these four stinking thieves to Chongyang Palace in the Zhongnan Mountains. Lock them up for twenty years. If they behave on the way, give them one of my miraculous pills. If they don’t, let the poison take them. That’s called reaping what you sow. No mercy!”

Qiu Chuji bowed and accepted the order.

Huang Rong laughed. “Old Wild Child, you put that very well. I haven’t seen you in a year and you’ve improved enormously!”

Zhou Botong had always admired Huang Rong, and her praise filled him with pride. He released the four men’s acupoints and said, “You go to Chongyang Palace. Live there quietly for twenty years. If you truly mend your ways, you may still make decent men one day. If you still don’t learn, hmph, hmph, every one of the Daoist sirs of my Quanzhen Order is an old hand who kills without blinking and rips out sinews without a frown. They’ll cure you four stinking thieves of the poison with the antidote first, then make you into meatballs of human flesh and share you out to eat. And what mischief will you get up to then?”

Peng Lianhu and the rest dared not say another word. They murmured their assent over and over. Qiu Chuji suppressed a smile, bowed to Zhou Botong in farewell, and set off down the mountain, jian in hand, escorting the four prisoners.

Huang Rong laughed. “Old Wild Child, when did you learn to lecture people? The first part made sense, but the further you went, the more outrageous it got.”

Zhou Botong threw back his head and laughed loudly. Suddenly he caught a flash of white light on the peak to the left, plainly the reflection of sunlight off a weapon. He cried, “Eh, what’s that?” Guo Jing and Huang Rong looked up, but the flash was already gone.

Zhou Botong, afraid Huang Rong would press him about Qiu Qianren, said, “I’ll go and have a look.” His steps were as swift as flight as he dashed up the peak.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong had a thousand things to say to each other. They found a cave and spoke of all that had passed since they parted. They talked on until the sun sank behind the western mountains, and still they had not finished. Guo Jing carried dried rations in his pack. He took them out and shared them with Huang Rong.

Laughing as she ate, she said, “That old scoundrel Ouyang Feng forced me to teach him the Nine Yin Manual. The text you wrote out for him was a jumble to begin with, and then I gave him a load of nonsense to explain it. He believed every word and has been practising hard for months. I told him this supreme skill had to be practised upside down, and sure enough he stood on his head to train, forcing himself to circulate his neili⁶ so that the meridians all through his body ran backwards. The man’s skill is genuinely formidable. He has already trained the yinwei, yangwei, yinqiao and yangqiao⁷ vessels until he can run them forwards or backwards at will. If he gets every meridian in his body running backwards, I wonder what he’ll turn into?” She giggled as she spoke.

Guo Jing laughed too. “No wonder I saw him walking upside down. That can’t be easy to train.” (For centuries Sindhu⁸ has possessed a discipline called yoga, which includes an inverted method of training with the head below the feet. This practice has spread across the world and is widely valued for its benefits to health and fitness. Readers of The Legend of the Condor Heroes have claimed that this art was handed down from Ouyang Feng of the Western Regions, in the Song dynasty. The origins of such strange arts are hard to trace with certainty, and need not be examined too closely.)

Huang Rong said, “I suppose you came to Mount Hua to compete for the title of ‘greatest in martial arts under heaven’?”

Guo Jing said, “Rong-er, why are you teasing me again? I wanted to ask Big Brother Zhou⁹ for a way to forget all the martial arts I’ve learned.” He told her everything he had been thinking these past days, one by one.

Footnotes

1. 舍身崖 — Shēshēn Yá. Literally cliff of casting away the body. A precipice on Mount Hua. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 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. ↩

3. 铁掌水上飘 — Tiězhǎng Shuǐshàng Piāo. Literally iron palm floating on water. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 哥哥 — gēge. Literally elder brother. After a given name it marks intimacy, not kinship. ↩

5. 师侄 — shīzhí. Lineage nephew. The disciple of one’s shixiong, shidi, shijie or shimei. Shī means teacher. Zhí means nephew. ↩

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

7. 阴维、阳维、阴跷、阳跷 — Yīnwéi, Yángwéi, Yīnqiāo, Yángqiāo. Four of the eight extraordinary vessels (奇经八脉) of traditional Chinese medicine, channels through which qi flows. ↩

8. 天竺 — Tiānzhú. The ancient Chinese name for India. ↩

9. 大哥 — dàgē. Literally big brother. The address to an elder brother or an elder sworn brother. ↩