The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 5 – Part 5

Guo Jing and Huazheng watched with pounding hearts, each thinking, One slip, and won’t he be smashed to a pulp? But the Daoist’s figure grew smaller and smaller, until it seemed to have vanished into the clouds and mist. Huazheng covered her eyes and dared not look. “What is happening?” she asked.

Guo Jing said, “He’s nearly at the top… That’s it, that’s it!”

Huazheng dropped her hands and caught sight of the Daoist launching himself into the air, as though about to fall, and cried out in alarm. But the Daoist had already alighted upon the cliff’s summit. His robe’s broad sleeves stretched and fluttered in the fierce wind atop the cliff. Seen from below, he looked just like a great bird.

The Daoist reached into the cleft and pulled out the two baby eagles, tucked them inside his robe, then pressed his back against the cliff face and slid straight down. Where the rock protruded, a hook of the hand or a brace of the foot checked his descent for a moment. Where the stone was smooth, he simply slid straight down. In the blink of an eye his feet had touched the ground.

Guo Jing and Huazheng ran to him. The Daoist took the white eagles from his robe and said to Huazheng in Mongolian, “Can you raise them well?”

Huazheng, between astonishment and delight, cried, “Yes, yes, yes!” She reached out to take them.

The Daoist said, “Be careful not to let them peck you. Small as they are, a peck from these two is still fierce enough.”

Huazheng unwound her sash and tied one foot of each baby eagle, then cradled them happily. “I’ll go and catch bugs to feed the little eagles.”

The Daoist said, “Wait! You must promise me one thing before I give them to you.”

Huazheng said, “What thing?”

The Daoist said, “You two must not tell anyone that I climbed the cliff to catch the eagles.”

Huazheng laughed. “All right, what could be easier? I just won’t tell.”

The Daoist smiled. “When these white eagles grow up they will be fierce indeed. First feed them grubs, then meat when they are bigger. Take care when you do.”

Huazheng was brimming with joy. She said to Guo Jing, “One each for us. I’ll take them and look after yours for you for now, all right?” Guo Jing nodded. Huazheng swung onto her horse and galloped away.

Guo Jing stood there in a stupor, thinking only of the Daoist’s skill, as though he had lost his wits. The Daoist picked up the long jian¹ from the ground and held it out to him, then smiled and turned to leave.

Guo Jing, seeing him about to go, said urgently, “You… please, you, don’t go.”

The Daoist laughed. “What for?”

Guo Jing scratched his head and tugged his ear, not knowing what to do. Then suddenly he threw himself to the ground and kowtowed, bang, bang, bang, without stopping, who knew how many dozen times in one go.

The Daoist laughed. “What are you kowtowing to me for?”

Guo Jing felt a pang of sorrow. The Daoist’s face was kind, and he felt as though he had met a member of his own family, someone he could pour everything out to, no matter what. Two great tears rolled down his cheeks, and he said, choking, “I, I… I’m so stupid. I can never learn the martial arts, and I make my six kind shifus² angry.”

The Daoist smiled. “What do you wish to do?”

“I practise day and night, as hard as I can, but it’s no good. Whatever I do, it’s no good…”

“You want me to teach you a method?”

“Exactly!” He lay flat on the ground and kowtowed another dozen times in quick succession. Among the Mongols, as among the Han, kowtowing was the most reverent way to show respect to one’s elders.

The Daoist smiled again. “I can see you are sincere. Very well, then. In three days it will be the fifteenth of the month, when the moon is fullest. I will wait for you on top of the cliff. But you must not tell a soul!” He pointed towards the cliff as he spoke, then drifted away.

Guo Jing cried, “I… I cannot get up there!”

The Daoist took no notice. His feet seemed not to touch the ground as he vanished into the distance.

Guo Jing thought, He is deliberately making things hard for me. He clearly does not want to teach me at all. Then another thought came to him, It isn’t as if I had no shifus. My six shifus have taken such pains to teach me. It is my own stupidity that is to blame, and what can be done about that? However great this Uncle Daoist’s skill may be, it’s no use if I can’t learn. With this he gazed up at the cliff top for a while, then put the matter from his mind. He lifted his jian and practised the move “Branch Strikes the White Ape”³ again and again, until the sun went down. He never did get it right. His stomach growled with hunger, and only then did he go home.

Three days passed in a flash. That afternoon Han Baoju⁴ was teaching him the Golden Dragon Whip Technique.⁵ A soft weapon was unlike any other. Unless one’s clever force⁶ was exact, not only would it fail to harm the enemy, it would rebound and injure oneself. Suddenly Guo Jing misapplied his strength, and the soft whip lashed back with a crack, right across his own head, raising a great lump.

Han Baoju had a fiery temper. He backhanded him across the face at once. Guo Jing dared not make a sound. He picked up the whip and practised on. Han Baoju, seeing how hard he tried, felt rather sorry for his own outburst. Though Guo Jing made several more muddles in succession, Han Baoju did not scold him again. He taught him five moves of the whip technique, encouraged him warmly, and told him to practise on his own, then mounted his horse and left.

The hardships of practising the Golden Dragon Whip Technique were considerable. After only a dozen or so runs, his forehead, arms and thighs were black and blue all over. Guo Jing, aching and spent, lay down on the grassland and fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, a full moon had climbed out from behind the hills. The whip-welts throbbed in pulses of pain, and his face still stung from Third Shifu’s slap.

He gazed at the cliff top, and a sudden fierce resolve surged through him. He set his teeth and said, “If Uncle Daoist can climb up, why can’t I?”

He ran to the foot of the cliff and began to haul himself up by vines and creepers, step by step. He had climbed only sixty or seventy feet when the rock above turned smooth as a wall, without a blade of grass to grip. How could he take another step?

He clenched his teeth and tried twice. Each time, the moment he climbed a step, his foot slipped and he nearly fell to his death. Seeing that there was no hope, he breathed out and prepared to go back down. But when he looked below, terror seized him. The way up he had managed by sheer stubbornness, but now the places his feet had found were blocked by protruding rock. He could not find them again. And if he jumped, he would surely dash himself to pieces against the stone.

Trapped beyond hope, he suddenly remembered the saying his Fourth Shifu used to quote, “Nothing under heaven is hard for one who sets his heart on it.” He thought, I’m dead either way. Better to fight my way up than stay stuck here, unable to go up or down. He drew his short dao⁷ and slowly chipped two holes in the cliff face. Gently he shifted his left foot up and stood in one of them. A careful test showed it could bear his weight, so he brought his right foot up too. That gained him several feet. He went on hacking holes above.

Forcing his way up like this, he grew dizzy, his arms and legs weak and aching.

He steadied himself and clung flat against the rock, breathing evenly. He thought that to reach the top he would have to cut who knew how many more holes, and after another dozen, sharp as the short dao was, the blade would surely snap. But he had come this far. There was nothing for it but to climb. He rested a while, and was about to raise the dao to cut another hole, when a long laugh drifted down from the cliff top.

Guo Jing dared not lean back at all. Before him was nothing but smooth, bare rock. The laughter astonished him, but he could not look up. After the laughter died, a thick rope suddenly dropped from above and stopped right before his eyes.

Then he heard the three-topknot Daoist say, “Tie the rope around your waist. I will pull you up.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed. He slid the dao back into its sheath, reached his left hand into a small crevice and locked his fingers tight, then wrapped the rope twice around his waist and tied two fixed knots.

The Daoist called down, “Is it tied?”

Guo Jing answered, “It is tied.”

The Daoist seemed not to have heard, and asked again, “Is it tied?”

Guo Jing raised his voice and answered again, “It’s tied.”

The Daoist still seemed not to hear. After a pause, he laughed. “Ah, I forgot, your zhongqi⁸ is not strong enough for your voice to carry. When you have finished tying the rope, give it three tugs.”

Guo Jing tugged the rope three times as instructed. Suddenly his waist tightened and he shot upward as though riding the clouds. He had known the Daoist would haul him up, but he had never imagined it would be so fast. His waist jerked again, he soared, dropped, and his feet struck solid ground. He had landed right before the Daoist.

Guo Jing, escaped from the jaws of death, dropped to his knees and was about to kowtow. The Daoist caught his arm and pulled him up, laughing. “You kowtowed a hundred times three days ago. Enough, enough! Good, good, you’re a boy of spirit.”

The cliff top was a vast, flat platform, covered in white snow. The Daoist pointed to two round stones like drums. “Sit down.”

Guo Jing said, “This disciple will stand and wait upon Shifu.”

The Daoist laughed. “You are not of my school. I am not your shifu, and you are not my disciple. Sit down.”

Guo Jing, bewildered, sat as he was told.

The Daoist said, “Your six shifus are all first-rate figures in the wulin.⁹ I have never met them, but I have long respected their names. If you could learn even one of their six arts, it would be enough to make your name in the jianghu.¹⁰ You are not lazy, so why, in ten years, have you not advanced far? Do you know the reason?”

Guo Jing said, “That is because I am too stupid. However hard my shifus try, they cannot teach me.”

The Daoist smiled. “That is not entirely so. The fault lies in teaching without the right method, and learning without the right way.”

Guo Jing said, “Please, Shi… Shi… I really don’t understand what you mean.”

The Daoist said, “As for ordinary martial arts, your present skill is not bad at all. After you learned your art, the very first time you used it you were beaten by a young Daoist. After that you lost your nerve and thought yourself no good. Ha ha, that’s quite wrong.”

Guo Jing wondered, How does he know about that?

The Daoist went on, “The young Daoist sent you head over heels, but he won entirely by clever technique. As for the foundation of your martial arts, he is not necessarily stronger than you. Besides, your six shifus’ skill is no less than mine. So I cannot teach you martial arts.”

Guo Jing said, “Yes.” He thought, That is fair enough. My six shifus’ martial arts are very high. It is simply that I am too stupid.

Footnotes

1. 剑 — jiàn. A straight, double-edged blade. ↩

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

3. 枝击白猿 — zhī jī bái yuán. Literally the branch strikes the white ape. A jian move. ↩

4. 韩宝驹 — Hán Bǎojū. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 金龙鞭 — Jīnlóng Biān. Han Baoju’s whip. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 巧劲 — qiǎo jìn. Literally clever force. Strength applied at the right angle and moment rather than through brute power. ↩

7. 刀 — dāo. A single-edged blade, usually curved and broad. ↩

8. 中气 — zhōngqì. Literally central qi. The breath held in the body’s core, on which the strength of the voice depends. ↩

9. 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. ↩

10. 江湖 — jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. The world of martial artists, outside mainstream society. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩