The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 9 – Part 3

A man with a clear, ringing voice laughed. “Even out in the Western Regions I’d heard of the Seven Zis of Quanzhen.¹ They can’t have won that fame for nothing. If Venerable Lingzhi hadn’t given the Daoist that ferocious Five-Finger Secret Blade² of his, the lot of us would have come to grief at his hands yesterday.”

A thick, deep voice said, “Don’t flatter this old monk, Young Master Ouyang. That Daoist and I both came off the worse. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, and neither of us won.”

Ouyang Ke said, “Either way, if it doesn’t kill him it’ll cripple him, whereas the Venerable One need only rest quietly for a while.”

After that no one spoke of it again, and from the sounds of it their host was offering wine. Presently someone said, “You have all come from afar, and this humble prince is deeply honoured. To have secured the presence of such distinguished guests is truly a blessing for the Great Jin.”

Huang Rong thought, That must be Prince Zhao, Wanyan Honglie.

The guests made a few modest replies. Wanyan Honglie went on, “Venerable Lingzhi is an eminent monk of Qinghai³ who has attained the Way. Old Mister Liang is the grand master of a school beyond the passes. Young Master Ouyang has mastered the true martial arts of his honoured uncle. Chief Peng’s name strikes awe across the Central Plains, and Guild Chief Sha rules the Yellow River alone. If only one of you five were willing to draw his blade for us, the great undertaking of the Great Jin would succeed. And with all five of you taking the field together, ha ha, ha ha, why, that is the lion using all its strength to catch a rabbit.” He sounded extremely pleased with himself.

Liang Ziweng laughed. “When Your Highness has a task for us, we must serve. I only fear that this old man’s skills have grown rusty, and if I fail the great trust Your Highness has placed in me, my old face will be put to shame. Ha ha!”

Peng Lianhu and the others each said something to the effect that they must serve. These men had long been lords of their own domains, every one of them used to his own importance, and they spoke to Wanyan Honglie quite as his equals, not at all obsequiously.

Wanyan Honglie drank another cup to them all and said, “Since I have invited you here, naturally I shall open my heart to you. Not even a matter as great as heaven could I keep from you. And once you know it, I am sure you will never breathe a word of it to anyone, lest the news leak out, the other side be put on guard, and the great enterprise of our Jin court be ruined. In that, too, I trust you.”

They all took his meaning. However tactfully he put it, he was telling them that they must keep the secret absolutely. “Your Highness may rest assured,” they said. “Not half a word of what is said here shall go any further.”

Each of them had come at a handsome fee from Wanyan Honglie, and each knew that he would never have gone to such lengths, or spent so much gold, silver and jewels on inviting them, if it were not for a matter of the first importance. Yet he had never said what it was, and it had not been fitting to ask. Now, knowing that he was about to reveal some great secret, every one of them was both curious and excited.

Wanyan Honglie said, “In the third year of the Tianhui reign of Taizong of our Great Jin, which is to say the seventh year of Xuanhe under that Zhao fellow Huizong,⁴ our Jin armies, led by the two marshals Nianmohe⁵ and Wolibu,⁶ marched against the Song and took captive the two Song emperors, Huizong and Qinzong.⁷ Never since antiquity has military might stood so high.”

They all clicked their tongues in admiration. Huang Rong thought, How shameless! Apart from that monk and this Young Master Ouyang, every one of you is Han. This Jin prince brags about carrying off two emperors of the Great Song, and you all come and cheer him on.

Wanyan Honglie said, “In those days our Great Jin had fine soldiers and generals in plenty, and we could have united the whole realm. Yet now, nearly a hundred years on, that Zhao fellow is still sitting in Lin’an playing emperor. Do you know why?”

Liang Ziweng said, “Pray enlighten us, Your Highness.”

Wanyan Honglie sighed. “In those years our Great Jin was defeated at the hands of that cur Yue Fei.⁸ All the world knows it, so there is no point in hiding it. Our Marshal Wuzhu⁹ was a fine commander, yet whenever he met Yue Fei he was beaten, time after time. Although Yue Fei was later put to death by Qin Hui¹⁰ on the orders of our Great Jin, our armies had been bled white, and from then on we never again had the strength for a great campaign in the south.”

“Yet I am ambitious, and without measuring my own strength I wish to perform a great service for His Majesty. And for this I need the help of every one of you.”

The guests looked at one another, not understanding what he meant. Each of them thought, Charging enemy lines and storming cities is not what we’re good at. Can he want us to assassinate the Southern Court’s marshals and generals?

Wanyan Honglie looked very pleased with himself, and his voice trembled slightly as he spoke. “A few months ago, in the old archives of the palace, I happened upon a document left from a former reign. It was a few ci poems written by Yue Fei, very strangely worded. I puzzled over them for some time, and at last made out their meaning. It seems that when Yue Fei was thrown into prison, he knew he had no hope of coming out alive. To say he served his country with perfect loyalty is no lie, for he wrote out, in full detail, a book of all the secrets of marching, deployment, training and attack that he had learnt in his life, hoping only that it would find a successor who would use it to hold off the Jin armies.”

“Fortunately Qin Hui was a formidable man too. Afraid that Yue Fei would get word to people outside, he took the most thorough precautions. Every officer and soldier in the prison was one of his own trusted men. You must understand that Yue Fei’s officers and men were fierce fighters, and if they had risen in revolt, no one in the Song could have stood against them. The only reason no one went to rescue Yue Fei in those days was that he himself would not defy the court’s decree. If he had suddenly changed his mind, there would have been no end of trouble, would there not? What Qin Hui never understood was that Yue Fei was loyal to the emperor and the court and would never rebel, and that what he wanted to save was not his own life but the realm of the Great Song. But it was lucky for us all the same, for Yue Fei’s book never got outside, even after his death.”

Everyone was listening intently, and all of them had forgotten their wine. Hanging outside the hall, Huang Rong felt as though she too were listening to some strange tale.

Wanyan Honglie said, “With no other way out, Yue Fei hid the book on his person and wrote four wretched ci to the tunes Pusaman,¹¹ Chounu’er, Heshengchao and Qitianle.¹² The metre was wrong, the tones did not match and the lines were jumbled, so that no one could tell what they meant. For all Qin Hui’s ocean of talent, even he could not make them out, and so he sent them to the Great Jin. For decades those four wretched ci lay in the secret archives of the Jin palace, and no one grasped their meaning. Everyone said that Yue Fei, bitter at his death, had simply scribbled any old thing, rambling nonsense. Who would have guessed that a tremendous riddle lay hidden in them?”

“I racked my brains over them until at last I solved it. The four wretched ci have to be read by stringing together every third character, first backwards and then forwards, linking them over and over, and then it is all perfectly plain. In these four ci Yue Fei charged those who came after him to study his book of war and destroy our Great Jin. He took great pains, but the Song had no one to take it up, so it was all for nothing. Ha ha!”

They all exclaimed together in amazement and vied with one another to praise Wanyan Honglie’s brilliance.

Wanyan Honglie said, “Yue Fei handled troops like a god, and he truly was a formidable fighter. If only we can get this book of his and learn his art of war, then for the Great Jin to unite the realm would be as easy as turning over a hand, would it not?”

Suddenly they all understood, and each of them thought, So Prince Zhao has invited us here to be grave robbers.

Wanyan Honglie said, “At first I thought he must have taken the book into his grave with him.” He paused, then went on, “But you are all great heroes and great men of valour. Would I ask you to go robbing graves? Besides, though Yue Fei was the sworn enemy of the Great Jin, his loyalty and martial genius are revered by everyone under heaven, and we could not disturb his tomb.”

“But going through the reports our spies in the south have sent over the years, I found another lead. After Yue Fei died at Fengbo Pavilion,¹³ he was buried near Zhong’an Bridge close by. Later Emperor Xiaozong of the Song had his remains moved to the shore of West Lake and buried there with great ceremony, and a shrine was built for him. But his clothes, his cap and the other things he left were put away somewhere else, and the book will naturally be among them. That place, too, is in Lin’an.”

As he said this, his gaze swept from one guest to the next. They were all eager to hear where the book was hidden.

Instead he turned to something else. “I did wonder whether, since someone had moved Yue Fei’s clothes and effects, they might have taken the book out as well. But on careful reflection, I knew they could not have done. The Song people revere him like a god, and not knowing what he intended, they would never dare touch his things. Once we reach that place, we shall have it in our hands. But the south is full of men of rare talent and strange skills. If we do not succeed at one stroke and word of it gets out, the Song people may get there first, and then our cleverness will have undone us. This matter touches the fortunes of two nations, and so I have taken the utmost care with it. Without the help of the very finest masters of the wulin, I would never dare make a move.”

The guests nodded again and again.

Wanyan Honglie said, “But the place where his effects are hidden is no ordinary place. So if you ask whether this is difficult, why, it is as difficult as can be, and yet to men of great ability it is the easiest thing in the world. His effects, you see, are hidden in…”

At that very moment the door of the hall was flung open, and a man burst in, his face black and blue and swollen. He ran up to Liang Ziweng, crying, “Shifu…”

When they looked, they saw that it was the page boy in the dark gown whom Liang Ziweng had sent to fetch the medicine.

Guo Jing had gone with Steward Jian and the page boy to fetch the medicine, his left hand still under Steward Jian’s arm, both to stop him collapsing and to make sure he dared not tip the boy off. The three of them went along corridors and past buildings until they came back to the guest lodge where Liang Ziweng lived. The boy opened the door, went in and lit a candle.

The moment Guo Jing stepped into the room, the smell of medicine hit him. On the table, on the couch and on the floor, every kind of medicinal herb lay everywhere, along with bottles, pots, crocks and bowls large and small. Liang Ziweng loved compounding elixirs, and even away from home he would not part with his gear. The boy knew the drugs well himself. He took out the five medicines, wrapped each in its own sheet of white paper and handed them to Steward Jian.

Steward Jian took them and turned to leave the room, with Guo Jing close beside him. But Steward Jian was very crafty. On the way out he deliberately hung back, and the moment Guo Jing and the boy were through the door, he slammed it shut, shot the bolt and shouted at the top of his voice, “Thieves, thieves!”

Guo Jing was taken aback. He turned and pushed at the door, but it was very solid and would not open at once. Steward Jian raised his hand and flung the five packets of medicine through the window into the pond beside the building.

Guo Jing was shocked and furious. He set both palms against the door and summoned his neili,¹⁴ and with a crack the bolt snapped. He burst in and punched Steward Jian on the jaw, shattering the bone at once. Fortunately Liang Ziweng liked peace and quiet, and his lodge stood well away from the other buildings, so no one else had heard Steward Jian’s shouts.

Guo Jing turned and went out, and saw that the boy was already running, thirty or forty feet away. He quickly drew breath and sprang after him, and when he was right behind him he reached out to grab the back of his collar.

The boy heard the rush of air behind his head. He dropped low and swept his right leg round. He was no mean fighter.

Guo Jing knew that if the boy raised the alarm, both his own life and Huang Rong’s would be at stake, and he struck all the harder and showed no mercy. Hook, seize, grab, strike, every move was a vicious one from the Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocating Hand.¹⁵ Two of his punches landed on the boy’s face. Guo Jing pressed in and struck him on the crown of the head with his palm, and the boy fell senseless at once.

With his foot Guo Jing shoved him into the long grass beside the path. Then he went back into the room, struck a light and lit the candle. Steward Jian lay on the floor, still unconscious.

Guo Jing silently cursed himself for a fool, thinking, I never noticed which five bottles and pots the boy took the medicine from. How am I to know where those five medicines are?

The bottles and pots were all marked with crooked symbols, without a single written character among them. At a loss, he thought, I remember he was standing here when he took them. I’ll take a little from each of the dozens of pots in this corner, and Daoist Elder Wang can pick out the right ones later.

He took a stack of white paper and made a packet of every one of the medicines, but the fear that someone had heard Steward Jian’s shouts flustered him, and he wrapped them more slowly than ever.

Footnotes

1. 全真七子 — Quánzhēn Qīzǐ. Literally the seven zi of Quanzhen, zi being an honorific for a master. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 五指秘刀 — Wǔzhǐ Mìdāo. Literally five-finger secret blade. A palm technique. ↩

3. 青海 — Qīnghǎi. Literally blue sea. The region on the Tibetan plateau named after its great lake, Kokonor. ↩

4. 徽宗 — Huīzōng. Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100—1126), renowned for his calligraphy and painting but disastrous as a ruler. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 粘没喝 — Niánmòhē. The Jurchen name of Wanyan Zonghan (完颜宗翰), one of the two supreme commanders of the Jin invasion of the Northern Song. ↩

6. 斡离不 — Wòlíbù. The Jurchen name of Wanyan Zongwang (完颜宗望), one of the two marshals who led the Jin invasion of the Song in 1125—1127. ↩

7. 钦宗 — Qīnzōng. Emperor Qinzong of Song (r. 1126—1127), captured by the Jin. ↩

8. 岳飞 — Yuè Fēi (1103—1142). The most celebrated Song general of the wars against the Jin, executed on false charges. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 兀朮 — Wùzhú. The Jurchen name of Wanyan Zongbi (完颜宗弼), Jin prince and general, fourth son of the Jin founder Aguda. He led the Jin campaigns against the Southern Song and Yue Fei. ↩

10. 秦桧 — Qín Huì. Southern Song chancellor (1091—1155) who pressed for peace with the Jin and is remembered as the traitor behind the execution of Yue Fei. See Wikipedia. ↩

11. 菩萨蛮 — Púsàmán. A well-known ci tune pattern, its name conventionally translated as Bodhisattva Barbarian. ↩

12. 丑奴儿、贺圣朝、齐天乐 — Chǒunú’ér, Hèshèngcháo, Qítiānlè. Three ci tune patterns: “Ugly Slave Boy”, “Congratulating the Sacred Court” and “Joy Equal to Heaven”. ↩

13. 风波亭 — Fēngbō Tíng. Literally wind and waves pavilion. The pavilion in the prison of the Court of Judicial Review at Lin’an where Yue Fei was put to death in 1142. ↩

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

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