The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 5 – Part 2

The Six Eccentrics of Jiangnan¹ followed slowly behind, talking things over among themselves. Han Baoju the Divine Horse King² said, “It must have been Mei Chaofeng³ who buried Chen Xuanfeng’s body. So she has been here. Where can she have gone?”

Ke Zhen’e the Flying Bat⁴ replied, “The most urgent thing now is to find out where the Iron Corpse⁵ has gone.”

Zhu Cong the Swift-Handed Scholar⁶ said, “Just so. Until she is done away with, she will always be a danger. I fear the poison may not have killed her after all.”

Han Xiaoying the Yue Maiden Swordswoman⁷ said, weeping, “How can Fifth Brother’s blood debt go unavenged?”

Han Baoju, Han Xiaoying and Quan Jinfa,⁸ the Hidden Xia of the Busy City,⁹ mounted swift horses and searched in every direction, but several days passed and they found not a trace. Han Baoju said, “That woman has gone to ground somewhere. With luck, Big Brother’s poison caltrops¹⁰ in her eyes have done their work and she has fallen to her death in some deep ravine.”

The rest agreed that this would be for the best. Ke Zhen’e knew well the ferocity of the Twin Evils of Dark Wind,¹¹ and worried privately. Though the Copper Corpse¹² was dead, until he had felt the Iron Corpse’s body with his own hands, it would weigh on his mind. But he said nothing of it, unwilling to trouble his brothers and sister.

Once their quarters were in order, the Six Eccentrics had Guo Jing take them to see his mother, meaning to question her closely about where Duan Tiande¹³ might be. When Li Ping¹⁴ met the six and heard the dialect of home on their lips the moment they spoke, the tears came pouring down her face. Lin’an and Jiaxing were neighbouring prefectures, their speech near alike, and in the six or seven years since Li Ping had come to the great desert, she had scarcely met a Han, let alone a fellow provincial from the Hang-Jia-Hu country of western Zhejiang. She and Han Xiaoying spoke of the past, two women who had each lost the man she loved and been cast adrift in a strange land, and they talked on and on, weeping and sniffling.

That evening Li Ping cooked red-braised mutton, white-cut lamb and mutton meatballs, Suzhou-style dishes prepared with Mongolian ingredients, to entertain the Six Eccentrics. They ate in high good humour, then discussed returning to Jiangnan with Guo Jing and his mother. Quan Jinfa said, “We gave the Great Khan¹⁵ our word that we would stay and teach his youngest son martial arts. We must keep our promise. We can leave after a month or two of teaching.”

The six returned to their tent. Ke Zhen’e told Han Xiaoying not yet to go back to the tent she shared with a Mongolian woman. They must first decide what to do. Nan Xiren the Southern Woodcutter¹⁶ said, “Back to Jiangnan, no good!”

Han Xiaoying said, “Fourth Brother, we’ve endured these bitter years in this frozen land. Now that we’ve found Guo Jing, let’s take him back to Lin’an and Jiaxing and teach him martial arts at our leisure. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Nan Xiren said, “I miss home too! Seventh Sister, what would Jing-er do in Lin’an?”

Han Xiaoying said after a pause, “Like his father, I suppose. Plough, grow vegetables, cut firewood, hunt! We could keep him easily enough, but we mustn’t raise him to be idle.”

Nan Xiren said, “Farmers are busy. Time to train?”

Han Xiaoying said, “There’s ploughing, sowing, transplanting the seedlings, ploughing again, and when there’s drought, working the water wheel, then reaping, threshing, stacking straw, winnowing, minding the oxen. Busy from dawn to dusk. If he had one shichen¹⁷ a day free to train, that would be the most of it.”

Ke Zhen’e said, “Not enough! Jing-er is not clever.”

Quan Jinfa sighed. “The young men of Jiaxing, at fifteen or sixteen, if they’re not busy tending fields, and the family has money, then it’s singing tunes, chasing girls, gambling. Or reading, writing, playing weiqi. Anyone who practises fighting is looked down on. If you ask me, if none of them learnt martial arts, five of our soft, delicate Jiangnan lads together couldn’t beat one Mongol youth from here.”

Nan Xiren said, “For training, here is good. Jiangnan’s too comfortable, no good!”

The other five all agreed with him. Jiangnan was a land of gentle hills and warm waters, where even the men moved and spoke with a soft, scholarly grace. The Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan,¹⁸ with their superb martial arts, were rare exceptions, and most men there were no material for fighting at all. All six reflected that, with an aptitude like Guo Jing’s, tempering in the desert, where wind and frost cut like blades, would serve him far better than the paradise of Jiangnan. Homesick as they were, they thought of the wager with Qiu Chuji¹⁹ and resolved to stay in the desert and teach the boy.

The next day Han Xiaoying went and told Li Ping. Li Ping missed home, but with the Six Eccentrics not returning south, she could hardly take her son back alone.

So the Six Eccentrics settled in the great desert, teaching martial arts to Guo Jing and Tolui.²⁰ Temüjin knew that the Han arts of close combat, though clever, served only for self-defence and were no aid to conquest, so he told Tolui and Guo Jing to learn no more than a little fist and foot work, spending most of their time on horsemanship, archery and the arts of the battlefield, charging and cutting through enemy lines. Those skills were not the Six Eccentrics’ strength, and so their instructors remained chiefly the Divine Archer²¹ Jebe²² and Boroqul.²³

Each evening the Six Eccentrics took Guo Jing aside and taught him fist techniques, swordplay, hidden weapons and qinggong,²⁴ one discipline at a time. Guo Jing’s natural aptitude was rather dull, but he had one virtue: he knew that avenging his father’s great wrong depended wholly on these arts, and so he set his teeth and trained in grim earnest. He grasped little of the nimble, darting skills of Zhu Cong, Quan Jinfa and Han Xiaoying, and he could not learn the hard, forceful arts of Ke Zhen’e’s hidden weapons and iron staff. But the groundwork that Han Baoju and Nan Xiren taught he followed movement by movement, exactly as shown, and in it he grew surprisingly solid. Yet such groundwork could only build up the body. It was no means of beating an enemy. Han Baoju would often say, “Train till you’re like a camel and you’ll be strong, all right. But can a camel beat a cheetah?” Guo Jing would only grin foolishly in reply.

Tireless as the Six Eccentrics were in teaching and urging, they saw that of ten moves they taught, Guo Jing could seldom learn one, and their spirits flagged. In private discussion they shook their heads and sighed, each knowing that the chance of surpassing Qiu Chuji’s pupil was not one in a hundred. But the wager had been made, and they could not give up halfway. Quan Jinfa was a merchant by trade, skilled in calculation, and would often say, “Qiu Chuji’s chance of finding Yang’s wife is eight in ten at most, so we’ve already won two parts of the profit. Yang’s wife may have borne a daughter, and the chance of a son is only one in two, and we earn another four parts. Even if it’s a son, he may not live to grow up, and we earn one part more. And even if he does grow up, he may be even slower than Guo Jing. So, I’d say we already hold eight chances in ten of winning.” The five others thought this reasoning fair enough, though they knew that claiming the Yang child would be duller than Guo Jing was nothing but Quan Jinfa’s comfort. At the least, Guo Jing’s nature was honest and he was obedient, and the Six Eccentrics were well pleased with his character.

On the northern grasslands the summer grasses grew green, the winter snows lay white, and in the blinking of an eye ten years passed. Guo Jing was now a strapping youth of sixteen, and only two years remained until the contest. The Six Eccentrics pressed him harder than ever, commanding him to set aside horsemanship and archery, and from dawn to dusk he trained at fist and jian.

In those ten years Temüjin had waged war without ceasing, swallowing countless tribes upon the desert. He gathered heroes about him, ruled his followers with strict discipline, and every man fought brave and well. He himself had both courage and wits, attacking with force or taking his foes by cunning as the need arose. He rode across the northern lands, and nowhere could he be withstood. His herds multiplied, his people increased, and his power grew until it rivalled Wang Khan’s²⁵ own.

The north wind softened, the great snows ceased, yet the northern desert was still bitter with cold.

That day was Qingming.²⁶ The Six Eccentrics rose early, taking offerings of cattle and sheep, and went with Guo Jing to sweep Zhang Asheng’s²⁷ grave. The Mongols’ dwellings shifted without fixed place, and their present camp stood far from Zhang Asheng’s burial mound, the better part of a day’s hard riding. The seven of them climbed the barren hill, brushed the gathered snow from the grave, lit incense and candles, and knelt before the mound.

Han Xiaoying prayed silently, Fifth Brother, for ten years we have given our hearts and our strength to teaching this child, but his aptitude is not high and he has not learnt our arts well. I pray that Fifth Brother’s spirit in Heaven will watch over him, and that when the contest comes in Jiaxing the year after next, this boy will not bring shame upon the Seven Eccentrics of Jiangnan!

The Six Eccentrics had long dwelt in Jiangnan’s warm waters and gentle hills. Now sixteen years in the desert, where the north wind cut like a blade, had weathered them. Frost had touched their temples and their hair had gone to streaks of grey. Han Xiaoying’s grace was undiminished, but she was no longer the girl whose face had been bright with youth.

Zhu Cong gazed at the several piles of bones scattered near the grave. Ten years of wind and snow, and they had not yet crumbled away. A feeling he could not put into words stirred in him. Over these years he and Quan Jinfa had explored every valley and cave within a radius of several hundred li,²⁸ searching for the Iron Corpse Mei Chaofeng. Had she died of the poison, her skeleton must lie somewhere. Had she lived, a blind woman could not have hidden for so long without leaving the slightest trace. Yet she had vanished like a spectre, leaving nothing but a grave on this barren hill and a few piles of white bones, the last remnant of the evil the Twin Evils of Dark Wind had wrought.

The seven ate and drank before the grave, then returned to their dwelling. After a short rest the Six Eccentrics took Guo Jing to the mountainside to train.

That day his Fourth Shifu Nan Xiren the Southern Woodcutter worked with him on the Mountain-Cleaving Palm Technique,²⁹ matching move against move. Nan Xiren meant to draw out the boy’s skill and let him show his best, and they exchanged seventy or eighty moves in turn. Then Nan Xiren suddenly swept his left palm wide, spun on his heel, and with the move called “Goshawk Seizing the Hare” struck at the middle of Guo Jing’s back. Guo Jing ducked low to avoid it, and with “Autumn Wind Sweeping the Fallen Leaves” swung his left leg in a wide arc at his shifu’s lower body. Nan Xiren dropped into “Iron Ox Ploughing the Field”, his palm-edge slicing down to intercept. Guo Jing was drawing his leg back to shift into a new move when Nan Xiren called out, “Remember this one!” His left hand shot out, slapping towards Guo Jing’s chest.

Guo Jing’s right palm rose at once to block, and the parry was quick enough. Then Nan Xiren’s left palm flew out with a sharp crack, and the two palms met. Even at only three parts in ten of his strength, Guo Jing was sent stumbling backwards against his will. He braced himself against the ground with both hands and sprang up at once, his face hot with shame.

Nan Xiren was about to point out the essential principle of the move when, from among the bushes, came two peals of laughter, followed by a girl who pushed through the undergrowth, clapping her hands. “Guo Jing, beaten by your shifu again?”

Guo Jing’s face went red. “I’m practising forms. Don’t come pestering me!”

The girl laughed. “I just love watching you get hit!”

This girl was Huazheng,³⁰ Temüjin’s youngest daughter. She was much the same age as Tolui and Guo Jing, and they had played together since childhood. Spoilt by her doting parents, she could be rather wilful. Guo Jing, by nature slow and straightforward, would never yield when she was being unreasonable, but after each quarrel they made it up before long, and each time it was Huazheng who knew she had been in the wrong and came to him with soft words. Temüjin saw to it that the Six Eccentrics and Guo Jing’s mother were supplied with everything they needed. Huazheng’s mother, remembering how Guo Jing had risked his life under a cheetah’s jaws to save her daughter, looked on him with special favour and often sent his mother and him clothing and livestock.

Guo Jing said, “I’m sparring with Shifu. Go away!”

Huazheng laughed. “What sparring? You’re getting beaten!”

Even as she spoke, several Mongol soldiers came riding over. The lead officer, a commander of ten, dismounted as he drew near, bowed slightly to Huazheng and said, “Huazheng, the Great Khan wants you.”

The Mongols of that time were plain, unlettered folk, with none of the many forms of respectful address the Han used, and though Huazheng was the Great Khan’s daughter, everyone called her by her name.

Huazheng said, “What for?”

The commander of ten said, “Wang Khan’s envoy has arrived.”

Huazheng frowned at once and said angrily, “I’m not going.”

The commander of ten said, “If you don’t go, the Great Khan will be angry.”

Huazheng had been betrothed in childhood to Tusakha,³¹ Wang Khan’s grandson, but in recent years had grown close to Guo Jing. Though they were young and no true affection could yet be spoken of, whenever she thought that she must one day part from Guo Jing and marry the notoriously arrogant Tusakha, she was always miserable. Now she pouted and said nothing. She lingered a while, but in the end she dared not defy her father and went off with the commander of ten. Wang Khan and Senggum,³² it turned out, judging the boy grown, meant to fix a day for the wedding and had sent gifts, and Temüjin wanted her to meet the envoy.

That night Guo Jing had slept till the middle of the night when he heard three soft claps outside the tent. He sat up, and a voice said softly in the Han tongue, “Guo Jing, come out.”

Guo Jing was slightly surprised. The voice was unfamiliar. He lifted a corner of the tent flap and peered out. In the moonlight a figure stood beside a great tree ahead and to his left.

Guo Jing stepped out and drew near. The figure wore a loose robe with wide sleeves, the hair gathered in a topknot, the features neither wholly masculine nor wholly feminine, the face still young. The figure was in fact a Daoist, though Guo Jing had never seen a Daoist of the Central Plains. He asked, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

The man said, “You are Guo Jing, yes?”

Guo Jing said, “I am.”

The man said, “That short jian of yours, the one that cuts iron like clay. Bring it out and let me see!”

His body swayed, and in a flash he had closed the distance, his palm striking straight for Guo Jing’s chest.

Guo Jing, seeing the man attack without provocation and with vicious force, was greatly taken aback. He twisted aside and shouted, “What are you doing?”

The man laughed. “Testing your skill.” His left fist drove straight at Guo Jing’s face, with fierce force behind it.

Guo Jing’s anger flared. He slanted his body aside, shot out a hand to seize the man’s wrist and went for the elbow with his left. The move was “The Strong Man Severs His Own Wrist” from the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating Hand.³³ Once the enemy’s wrist was caught, the elbow could not escape. A push forward, a twist below, a sharp crack, and the wrist joint would pop free on the spot. This was the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating art that his Second Shifu Zhu Cong had taught him.

Zhu Cong’s words and ways were witty and free, but his mind was thorough. He and Ke Zhen’e had consulted in private many times, reasoning that though Mei Chaofeng’s eyes had been struck by the poison caltrops, her martial arts were so strange that she might yet find an antidote. If she lived, she would surely come for revenge, and the later she came, the more thorough her preparations, the more vicious her methods. Through ten years Mei Chaofeng had never appeared, yet far from growing slack the Six Eccentrics had redoubled their watch. Each time Zhu Cong looked at the five scar-lines on the back of his hand, the marks of Mei Chaofeng’s claws, a chill would pass through him. Her whole body was toughened by hard external training, so she could not easily be hurt, and the best defence against the Nine Yin White Bone Claw³⁴ was the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating Hand. That art specialised in dislocating joints and breaking bones, attacking the limbs, skull and neck with extreme speed and never striking at the torso. Zhu Cong regretted that back in the Central Plains he had not taken the chance to seek instruction from the masters of the art, and none of his six sworn brothers and sister knew it. Later another thought came to him, Every martial art under heaven was created by someone. If there is no one to teach me, why can’t I create it myself? His nickname was the Swift-Handed Scholar, and his hands were preternaturally deft. Add to this his mastery of dianxue³⁵ and his thorough knowledge of the body’s acupoints and joints. With these two advantages, his study of the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating art gave him no great difficulty. After some years he had plumbed its subtleties. His methods, though lacking the settled ruthlessness of a master’s teaching, carried real force nonetheless, and after drilling them to fluency with Quan Jinfa, he taught them all to Guo Jing.

Footnotes

1. 江南六怪 — Jiāngnán Liù Guài. Literally six eccentrics of Jiangnan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 韩宝驹 — Hán Bǎojū. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 梅超风 — Méi Chāofēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 柯镇恶 — Kē Zhèn’è. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 铁尸 — Tiě Shī. Literally iron corpse. ↩

6. 朱聪 — Zhū Cōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 韩小莹 — Hán Xiǎoyíng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 全金发 — Quán Jīnfā. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 闹市侠隐 — Nàoshì Xiáyǐn. Literally the xia hidden in the busy market. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 毒菱 — dú líng. Ke Zhen’e’s hidden weapon, a small iron caltrop coated with poison. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 黑风双煞 — Hēifēng Shuāngshà. Literally twin evils of the dark wind. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 铜尸 — Tóngshī. Literally copper corpse. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 段天德 — Duàn Tiāndé. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 李萍 — Lǐ Píng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 大汗 — dàhán. Literally great khan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 南希仁 — Nán Xīrén. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

18. 江南七怪 — Jiāngnán Qī Guài. Literally seven eccentrics of Jiangnan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

19. 丘处机 — Qiū Chǔjī. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

20. 拖雷 — Tuōléi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

21. 神箭手 — shén jiàn shǒu. Literally divine arrow hand. ↩

22. 哲别 — Zhébié. Literally spear and divine archer, in Mongolian. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

23. 博尔忽 — Bó’ěrhū. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

25. 王罕 — Wáng Hǎn. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

26. 清明 — Qīngmíng. Literally clear and bright. The festival in early April when families sweep the graves of their ancestors. ↩

27. 张阿生 — Zhāng Āshēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

28. 里 — lǐ. A traditional unit of distance, about 500 metres or one-third of a mile. ↩

29. 开山掌法 — Kāishān Zhǎngfǎ. Literally mountain-cleaving palm method. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

30. 华筝 — Huázhēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

31. 都史 — Dūshǐ. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

32. 桑昆 — Sāngkūn. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

33. 分筋错骨手 — Fēnjīn Cuògǔ Shǒu. A method of seizing the joints and wrenching them out of place. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

34. 九阴白骨爪 — Jiǔyīn Báigǔ Zhǎo. Literally nine yin white bone claw. A claw technique. ↩

35. 点穴 — diǎnxué. Literally touching the acupoints. The art of striking acupoints to seal or release the flow of qi through the meridians. ↩