The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 9 – Part 7

Huang Rong countered with one of Wanyan Kang’s Quanzhen palm moves¹ and parried with one from Guo Jing’s Southern Mountain Palm Technique,² both picked up the day before while she watched the two of them fight. For her seventh move she actually used Three Thrusts Linked, learning it and putting it to use on the spot, the very first move Peng Lianhu had used himself. But she was hard pressed on every side, and danger came at her thick and fast. On their true skill, Huang Rong could not have held him off even with everything she had, let alone while deliberately teasing him like this. Only because Peng Lianhu did not, after all, really mean to kill her with his ferocious neili,³ and wanted only to tell her school from her moves, had he let her last seven moves.

Ouyang Ke, the Young Master of White Camel Mountain,⁴ laughed. “The little wench is very clever. She’s using Chief Peng’s own fistwork. Oh dear, no good, no good. Go left, why don’t you?”

Peng Lianhu’s fistwork was nimble and shifting, feint and substance used in turn. On the eighth move his left hand feinted and his right fist shot out. Huang Rong judged that his left hand, which seemed a feint, was the real attack, and his right fist, which seemed real, was the feint, and she was about to dodge to the right when she heard Ouyang Ke give the game away. A thought came to her, and at once she slanted her body and floated lightly away to the left. It was a lovely movement, and not one person in the hall could tell what it was.

Hearing Ouyang Ke coaching her from the side, Peng Lianhu grew angry. He thought, Do you think I can’t kill you, you little wench? He was called the Butcher of a Thousand Hands,⁵ and he was as cruel by nature as a man could be. At first, seeing that Huang Rong was so young, and a girl besides, he had felt it beneath him to kill her, but now, after eight moves, he still could not detect the faintest clue to where she came from. How could he not be furious? For his ninth move, Pushing the Window to Gaze at the Moon, he used his full strength, left palm yin and right palm yang, hard and soft together, both thrusting at her at once.

Huang Rong cried out silently, This is bad. She was about to fall back and dodge, but it was too late. Seeing the force of his fist and palm bearing down on her face, she quickly ducked her head, bent both arms inward and drove her elbows forward, shooting like an arrow at her opponent’s chest.

Fierce as this move was, Peng Lianhu knew she could still deal with it, but he reckoned she could never parry the tenth that followed it. Then suddenly he saw her make attack her defence and strike at his vital points. His tenth move, Stars Falling from the Sky, was already half launched, but at once he held back his neili, like reining in a horse at the edge of a cliff, and stopped the move by main force. “You’re a disciple of the Twin Evils of Dark Wind!”⁶ he cried, and his voice actually trembled. With a jerk of his right arm he sent Huang Rong flying back seven or eight steps.

At these words everyone was visibly shaken. Apart from Prince Zhao, Wanyan Honglie,⁷ everyone in the hall dreaded the Twin Evils of Dark Wind. Peng Lianhu’s tenth move had been meant to kill, or at the very least to leave the little wench badly hurt and coughing blood, but at the ninth he had suddenly seen that her martial arts were of the same line as the Twin Evils’, and in his alarm this fiend, who could kill a hundred men without turning a hair, had held his hand and leapt away.

Thrust back by him, Huang Rong nearly fell. When at last she managed to steady herself, her whole body ached dully from the shock, and her arms seemed to have lost all feeling. She was about to answer when a great shout came from far off in the quiet night. It was Guo Jing’s voice, full of alarm and anger, as though he were in terrible danger. Her concern for him was so keen that Huang Rong turned pale.

Liang Ziweng⁸ had Guo Jing pinned to the ground, the pulse points of his wrist and leg seized at the same time, so that he could not move at all. Suddenly he felt Liang Ziweng open his mouth to bite his throat. There was no way to fend it off, so he did just as he had done with the snake’s neck, meeting a bite with a bite, and opened his mouth to bite Liang Ziweng on the lips. Startled, Liang Ziweng slackened his grip a little, and Guo Jing struggled with all his might and sprang to his feet with a carp’s leap. Liang Ziweng struck out backhanded. Guo Jing leapt forward, but Liang Ziweng’s palm was as swift as the wind. How could he dodge it? With a smack, it caught him full in the back. This was nothing like Wanyan Kang’s fists, and at once the pain went right through to his bones. Terrified out of his wits, Guo Jing dared not stay, and ran for it. His qinggong⁹ was good, and he dodged east and west among the rockeries, flowers and trees of the garden, so that for the moment Liang Ziweng could not catch him. After running for a while, he slowed a little, and with a rip a great piece of the cloth on his back was torn away. His back stung, and he knew his flesh had been clawed.

Guo Jing ran for his life in terror. Seeing that the cottage where the Princess Consort¹⁰ lived lay just ahead, he leapt inside, hoping only that in the dark his enemy would not find him and he could escape. He crouched behind the wall, not daring to stir. He heard Liang Ziweng and Wanyan Kang questioning and answering each other as they slowly came closer, Liang Ziweng gruff and harsh, plainly beside himself with rage. Guo Jing thought, If I hide by the wall, he’ll find me in the end. The Princess Consort is kind. She may save me. In such danger there was no time to think further, and he burst straight into the room. The candle there was still burning, but the Princess Consort was in the other room.

He looked round and saw a plank cupboard on the east side. At once he opened it, squeezed himself in and shut the door again, holding the golden dao¹¹ in his hand. He had barely let out his breath when footsteps sounded and someone came into the room. Peering out through a crack in the cupboard, Guo Jing saw that it was the Princess Consort. She walked slowly to the table, sat down and gazed blankly at the candle flame, lost in thought.

Before long Wanyan Kang came in. “Mother, no bad men have come in and frightened you, have they?”

The Princess Consort shook her head. Wanyan Kang went out again and went off with Liang Ziweng to search elsewhere.

The Princess Consort shut the door and made ready for bed. Guo Jing thought, When she blows out the candle, I’ll escape through the window. No, I’d better wait a little longer, or I’ll run into the Young Prince and that white-haired old man again. That old man tried to bite my throat just now. What a strange move. My shifus¹² never taught me that. Next time I see them, I must ask them properly. If someone bites at your throat, how are you supposed to counter it? Just now I met bite with bite, the way I did with the snake. Perhaps that’s the proper move. Then he thought, All this has gone on so long, Rong-er must have gone back by now. I’d better hurry out, or she’ll be worried.

Suddenly the window lattice rattled and someone pushed the window open and jumped in. Guo Jing and the Princess Consort both got a great fright, and the Princess Consort cried out. Guo Jing looked at the man and saw that it was Yang Tiexin,¹³ who called himself Mu Yi. This was the last thing he had expected. He had thought Yang Tiexin had escaped from the estate with his daughter long ago, yet here he still was.

The Princess Consort collected herself a little and saw that it was Mu Yi. “Go, quickly,” she said. “Don’t let them see you.”

Yang Tiexin said, “Many thanks for your kindness, Princess Consort! If I hadn’t come to thank you in person, I could never have died in peace.” But his words were laced with mockery, full of sour, bitter pain.

The Princess Consort sighed. “Never mind that. It was my son’s fault, and you and your daughter have been wronged.”

Yang Tiexin looked all round the room. Table, stools, cupboard, bed, every single thing was an old acquaintance. A pang went through his heart, his eyes reddened and he was close to tears. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, went to the wall and took down the iron spear¹⁴ that hung there, thick with rust. Holding it close, he saw, seven inches from the point, the four characters Tiexin of the Yang Clan plainly carved. He stroked the shaft gently and sighed. “The iron spear has rusted. It hasn’t been used for a long time.”

The Princess Consort said gently, “Please don’t touch that spear.”

“Why not?” said Yang Tiexin.

“It’s the most precious thing I have,” said the Princess Consort.

“Is it, now?” Yang Tiexin said drily. He paused, then went on, “There used to be a pair of iron spears. Now there’s only one left.”

“What?” said the Princess Consort.

Yang Tiexin did not answer. He hung the iron spear back on the wall, gazed for a moment at the broken plough beside it, and said, “The ploughshare’s damaged. Tomorrow get Zhang Mu-er from the east village to add a jin¹⁵ and a half of iron and beat it into shape.”

At these words the Princess Consort trembled all over, and for a long while she could not speak. Staring at Yang Tiexin, she said, “You… what did you say?” Slowly Yang Tiexin said, “I said the ploughshare’s damaged. Tomorrow get Zhang Mu-er from the east village to add a jin and a half of iron and beat it into shape.”

The strength went out of the Princess Consort’s legs and she sank into a chair. “You… who are you?” she said, trembling. “How… how do you know what my husband said the night he died… that night?”

This Princess Consort was, of course, none other than Yang Tiexin’s wife, Bao Xiruo.¹⁶ At Niu Family Village near Lin’an,¹⁷ Wanyan Honglie, Sixth Prince of the Jin, had been struck by an arrow flung by Qiu Chuji’s hand, and Bao Xiruo had saved him. For one thing, he was a bold man of the north, and having once seen the soft, delicate loveliness of a southern beauty from Suzhou and Hangzhou, he could not get her out of his mind. For another, feelings are easily stirred at the brink of life and death, and they sink deep and are not forgotten. So he had bribed Duan Tiande with gold and silver to lead his soldiers in a night raid on Niu Family Village, while he himself played the gallant and came to Bao Xiruo’s rescue in her hour of peril. With her home destroyed and her family gone, Bao Xiruo had no one to turn to, and believing her husband dead, she had no choice but to go north with Wanyan Honglie. He humbled himself before her and wore her down with endless patient attentions, until after a year or more, with no other way open to her, she at last gave herself to him in marriage.

Footnotes

1. 全真派掌法 — Quánzhēn Pài Zhǎngfǎ. Literally palm method of the Quanzhen School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 南山掌法 — Nánshān Zhǎngfǎ. Literally southern mountain palm method. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

4. 白驼山少主 — Báituó Shān Shàozhǔ. Literally young master of White Camel Mountain. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 千手人屠 — Qiānshǒu Réntú. Literally thousand-handed butcher of men. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

7. 完颜洪烈 — Wányán Hóngliè. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 梁子翁 — Liáng Zǐwēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

10. 王妃 — wángfēi. The consort of a prince. ↩

11. 金刀 — jīndāo. The golden dao Genghis Khan bestows on Guo Jing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

13. 杨铁心 — Yáng Tiěxīn. His name meaning “iron heart”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 铁枪 — tiě qiāng. Yang Tiexin’s iron spear, the Yang family’s hereditary weapon. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 斤 — jīn. A unit of weight, about 590 grams in the Song dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 包惜弱 — Bāo Xīruò. Her name meaning “cherishing the weak”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 牛家村 — Niújiā Cūn. Literally Niu Family Village. A village outside Lin’an. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩