The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 4 – Part 7
Translation by Jenxi Seow
Ke Zhen’e was seized with alarm and sprang backwards, releasing his staff. But Chen Xuanfeng, having landed a blow, would not let the chance slip. His claw had already torn open the other’s robe. In an instant he shifted from claw to fist, his body motionless, his right arm suddenly lengthening as he secretly channelled his neili.1 His fist struck Ke Zhen’e square in the chest. Feeling the man fly backwards, he swung his left hand and hurled the captured iron staff like a javelin at his retreating figure. Every move in that chain of attacks was one of the finest techniques of his life. He was overcome with glee, and threw back his head with an eerie howl. At that moment thunder rolled across the sky.
Amid the crashes of thunder the lightning flashed twice more. Han Baoju2 saw to his horror that the iron staff was flying straight towards Big Brother, and Ke Zhen’e seemed quite unaware of it. The fright was no small thing. His Golden Dragon Whip lashed out and coiled around the staff in mid-air.
Chen Xuanfeng shouted, “Now for your dog’s life, you squat little fatty!” He set off running towards him. Suddenly his foot caught on something that seemed to be a human body. He bent and snatched it up. It was small and light. It was Guo Jing.3
Guo Jing yelled, “Put me down!”
Chen Xuanfeng grunted. Another flash of lightning lit the hilltop. Guo Jing saw that the man holding him had a sallow face and murderous eyes, terrifying beyond description. In his terror he drew the short jian at his waist and drove it into the man’s body. The blade struck true in Chen Xuanfeng’s navel, and the ten-inch blade sank to the hilt.
Chen Xuanfeng let out a great howl and fell backwards. He had trained his whole body in External Hard Training, and its coverage gate lay precisely in his navel.4 Never mind a short jian of peerless sharpness, even an ordinary dao or jian touching his coverage gate would have killed him outright. When fighting a skilled opponent he guarded his navel with the utmost care, never allowing fist, foot or weapon anywhere near his belly. But now he held a child in his hand and had not a single thought of defence against him. He had grabbed the boy before and knew that he knew no martial arts at all. Yet as the saying goes, “The good swimmer drowns, and the carriage overturns on level ground.” This Chen Xuanfeng, mighty in martial arts, was done to death by a child who could not fight at all.
Having stabbed the man down, Guo Jing was frightened out of his wits. He stood there in a daze, mouth open, wanting to cry but no sound coming out.
Mei Chaofeng5 heard her husband’s long, agonised scream. Their bond was deep, and she came plunging down from the hilltop. Her foot slipped and she tumbled, rolling head over heels several times. She crawled to her husband’s side and cried, “Good shixiong, you… what has happened to you!”
Chen Xuanfeng whispered, “It’s no good. Little… shimei… run for your life.”
Mei Chaofeng ground her teeth and said, “I will avenge you.”
Chen Xuanfeng said, “Little shimei, I cannot bear to leave you… I… I can no longer look after you… from now on you will be alone all your days… take care of yourself…” His breath would not come again, and he died.
Mei Chaofeng felt her husband’s last breath leave him. Grief choked her so that she could not even weep. She clutched his body and would not release it, moaning, “Good… good shixiong, I cannot bear to leave you either… don’t die…”
Han Baoju, Han Xiaoying and Quan Jinfa6 had already seized the moment when faint light showed in the sky, enough to make out a figure, and rushed in to attack.
Mei Chaofeng was blind, and her head swam, the poison from the hidden weapon having taken hold. She and her husband had practised the Nine Yin White Bone Claw,7 but knowing none of the complementary neigong, they had been forced over the years to swallow small doses of arsenic and then circulate their neili to force the poison out again, a clumsy, desperate method of forcibly strengthening their neili.8 The long accumulation had given their bodies a natural resistance to venom. Otherwise, how could she have survived this long after being struck by the iron caltrops of the Flying Bat? She brought her qinna9 into play, striking ferociously whenever an enemy came within reach. The three Eccentrics of Jiangnan not only failed to wound her, but found themselves time and again in peril.
Han Baoju grew frantic. He thought, The three of us cannot even finish off one wounded, blind she-devil. The Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan have truly lost all their name. His whip-work shifted, and he lashed out three blows in swift succession at Mei Chaofeng’s back.
Han Xiaoying saw that the woman’s steps were stumbling and she could not hold out much longer. She thrust her jian in for a quick strike, and Quan Jinfa also threw himself forward with fierce blows.
They were on the verge of finishing her when suddenly a great wind rose. The black clouds thickened and the three fighters were plunged into utter darkness. Sand and stones whirled up in the gale and lashed wildly about the air.
Han Baoju and the others scattered and flung themselves flat on the ground. After a long while the wind eased and the rain lessened. Threads of moonlight pushed through the layered clouds.
Han Baoju leapt to his feet and could not help crying out. Not only was Mei Chaofeng gone, Chen Xuanfeng’s corpse and her long whip on the ground had vanished as well. He saw only Ke Zhen’e, Zhu Cong, Nan Xiren and Zhang Asheng lying on the ground. Guo Jing’s small head peered cautiously from behind a rock. Every one of them had been soaked to the skin by the downpour.
Quan Jinfa and the other two hastened to aid their four injured brothers. Nan Xiren’s arm was broken, but fortunately he had suffered no internal injury. Ke Zhen’e and Zhu Cong,10 both deep in neigong, had met the Copper Corpse’s savage blows with force against force, and their organs too had escaped grave harm. Only Zhang Asheng11 had taken two full strikes of the Nine Yin White Bone Claw, and a heavy punch to the head. Though he had regained consciousness, his life hung by a thread.
The Six Eccentrics of Jiangnan saw his breath fading, his wound past saving, and each was stricken with grief. Han Xiaoying’s heart was wrung most of all. Fifth Brother had long cherished deep feelings for her, and how could she not know it? But her nature was bold and forthright, her mind set wholly on martial arts. She had always thought little of matters of the heart, and Zhang Asheng had spent his days grinning foolishly with his mouth wide open. Between them they had never once spoken what lay inside them. Now she thought how he had deliberately thrown his body under the enemy’s claws to save her life, and grief and gratitude overwhelmed her. She clutched Zhang Asheng and wept aloud.
Zhang Asheng’s round face, so used to smiling, still wore the faintest trace of a grin. He reached out a hand as broad as a fan, the great hand that had butchered oxen, and gently stroked Han Xiaoying’s hair. “Don’t cry, Seventh Sister,” he said. “I’m all right.”
Han Xiaoying wept, “Fifth Brother, let me marry you and be your wife. What do you say?”
Zhang Asheng chuckled twice. To hear the one he loved say such a thing filled him with wild joy. But the pain of his wounds was terrible, and his mind was slowly clouding.
Han Xiaoying said, “Fifth Brother, do not worry. I belong to the Zhang family now. In this life I will never marry another. After I die, I will stay with you forever.”
Zhang Asheng laughed twice more and said in a low voice, “Seventh Sister, I never treated you well enough. I… I was never worthy of you.”
Han Xiaoying wept, “You treated me well. Very well. I always knew it. In my heart I have always loved you.”
Zhang Asheng was overjoyed. His mouth split into a grin so wide he could not close it.
Zhu Cong’s eyes were wet. He turned to Guo Jing and said, “You came here because you wanted to learn our skills?”
Guo Jing said, “Yes.”
Zhu Cong said, “Then from now on you must do as we say.”
Guo Jing nodded.
Zhu Cong’s voice broke. “We seven brothers are all your shifu. Your Fifth Shifu is about to return to Heaven.12 Kowtow and take him as your shifu first.”
Guo Jing did not know what “return to Heaven” meant, but hearing Zhu Cong’s instruction, he threw himself to the ground and kowtowed before Zhang Asheng, thud, thud, thud, without stopping.
Zhang Asheng gave a ghastly smile. “Enough!” he said, forcing back the pain. “Good boy. I never got to teach you anything… Ah, in truth, even if you had learned my skills, they wouldn’t have been much use. I was slow-witted by nature and lazy besides when it came to training. I only ever relied on a few jin13 of ox-strength… if I’d put in more hard work back then, I wouldn’t be dying here today…” His eyes rolled up, his face deathly pale. He drew a breath and said, “Your talent isn’t great either. But you must work hard, no matter what. When you feel like being lazy, remember what your Fifth Shifu looks like now… And all your life, whatever you do, put… put chivalry and honour first…” He tried to say more, but his breath was a thread.
Han Xiaoying bent her ear to his lips. She heard him say, “Teach the boy well. Don’t let him lose to… that stinking Daoist…”
Han Xiaoying said, “Don’t worry. We Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan will never lose.”
Zhang Asheng laughed his foolish laugh a few times more, closed his eyes, and was gone.
The six threw themselves to the ground and wept. The seven of them had sworn an oath as brothers, and their bond was as flesh and blood. In these years spent searching the desert for Guo Jing and his mother, not a day had passed when they were apart. Now one brother lay struck down by the enemy, dying wretchedly in a foreign land. How could they not grieve? The six wept their fill, and then they dug a grave on the barren hill and laid Zhang Asheng to rest.
When they had set a great stone in place as a marker, day had fully broken.
Quan Jinfa and Han Baoju went down the mountain to search for traces of Mei Chaofeng. But after the gale and the rain, every footprint in the desert had been wiped clean. There was no telling which way she had fled. The two pursued for several li,14 hoping to find some sign in the sand, but there was nothing. They returned to the hill and reported.
Zhu Cong said, “In the middle of this desert, that blind… that woman cannot have got far. She was hit by Big Brother’s poisoned caltrops. Most likely the poison has already finished her. Let us take the boy home first. Those of us who are hurt should take medicine and rest, and then Third Brother, Sixth Brother and Seventh Sister, the three of you can go searching again.”
The rest nodded. With tears they took their leave of Zhang Asheng’s grave.
Footnotes
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内力 — nèilì. Literally internal force. The kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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韩宝驹 — Hán Bǎojū. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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郭靖 — Guō Jìng. His name meaning “to pacify”; paired with Yang Kang’s 康 it recalls the Jingkang Shame of 1127. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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罩门 — zhàomén. Literally covering gate. The one weak spot that external hard training leaves unprotected. ↩
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梅超风 — Méi Chāofēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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全金发 — Quán Jīnfā. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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九阴白骨爪 — Jiǔyīn Báigǔ Zhǎo. Literally nine yin white bone claw. A claw technique. ↩
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砒霜 — pīshuāng. Arsenic trioxide, a deadly poison. ↩
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擒拿 — qínná. Literally seize and hold. Techniques for seizing and locking an opponent’s joints. ↩
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朱聪 — Zhū Cōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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张阿生 — Zhāng Āshēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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归天 — guītiān. Literally return to Heaven, a euphemism for death. ↩
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斤 — jīn. A unit of weight, about 590 grams in the Song dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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里 — lǐ. A traditional unit of distance, about 500 metres or one-third of a mile. ↩