Ma Xingkong (simplified: 马行空, traditional: 馬行空, pinyin: Mǎ Xíngkōng, jyutping: maa5 hang4 hung1), known in the jianghu as “Hundred Victories Divine Fist” (百胜神拳), is the Escort Chief of the Feima Armed Escort, father of Ma Chunhua and shifu of Xu Zheng in Jin Yong’s Side Story of the Flying Fox. A small, spare, sharp-eyed man of about fifty, going grey, he carries a long pipe and keeps a commanding air that his slight frame belies (SIDE ch. 1). His martial arts came to him from his own father, and he has no fellow disciples (SIDE ch. 12). Xu Zheng is the only disciple he has ever taken (SIDE ch. 3).
Biography
The old defeat
Years before the story opens, Ma crossed hands with Shang Jianming of the Eight Trigrams School on the Ganliang road. Shang cut him once and struck him once with his palm, and Ma needed three years to recover. He never travelled that road again, and treated the defeat as a disgrace to his school that his disciple was not to ask about (SIDE ch. 1, 3).
Ma is careful never to offend officials, and strict about the wulin’s rules: when a man once spied on his practice, he put out one of the man’s eyes with a sleeve arrow, telling his daughter afterwards that stealing another’s art is hated more than stealing property (SIDE ch. 1).
The robbery at Shang Family Fort
Escorting 300,000 taels of silver, Ma takes shelter from a storm at Shang Family Fort in Wuding County, Shandong, and only then notices the Eight Trigrams diagram painted on the main beam: he has walked into his old enemy’s house. He tells Xu Zheng that Shang Jianming is dead, killed by Hu Yidao and Miao Renfeng (SIDE ch. 1).
The bandit chief Yan Ji breaks the Feima banner and demands half the silver. Ma fights him with Cha Fist, then Yanqing Fist, then Lu Zhishen’s Drunken Fall, and cannot get past the dozen crude moves Yan Ji keeps repeating. He lands a kick at last, but pressing his advantage he takes a hooking back kick in the belly and falls badly hurt. Tian Guinong then shares out the silver as if it were his own; Ma throws himself at Tian and is struck into the courtyard. As Miao Renfeng arrives, Ma names him and faints (SIDE ch. 1).
Guest of the Shang family
Old Madam Shang quietly drives Yan Ji off, persuades Ma to stay and recover, and has the silver passed on to Jinling by another escort. The defeat by a common robber takes the heart out of him and he closes the escort for the time being (SIDE ch. 3). Old Madam Shang, who holds him partly to blame for her husband’s death, had meant to kill him, but finding him abject and badly hurt she stays her hand for the present, unwilling to strike a man who cannot fight back. For seven or eight months Ma teaches her son Shang Baozhen fist arts as though he were his own disciple, though she will not let the boy formally become his pupil (SIDE ch. 3).
One night Ma chases an unknown figure away from the fort and on his return finds Old Madam Shang and her son practising Eight Trigrams Dao in secret. He overhears her tell her son that the fight on the Ganliang road left Shang Jianming injured when Hu Yidao came for him, and that she will ask for Ma Chunhua as her son’s bride. Reading this as a plan to torment his daughter, Ma tells Old Madam Shang the next day that he wishes to betroth Ma Chunhua to Xu Zheng there at the fort (SIDE ch. 3).
When someone scratches out Hu Yidao’s name on the target board and carves in Shang Jianming’s, Old Madam Shang accuses Ma’s household. The culprit proves to be the servant boy “Ping Fei”, in fact Hu Fei; while he is flogged, Ma forbids his daughter and disciple to intervene and tells Old Madam Shang to question the boy thoroughly, telling his daughter afterwards that she knows nothing of how treacherous the jianghu is (SIDE ch. 3). Watching Hu Fei fight Wang Jianjie that night, he realises the boy was the figure he chased, and that the hidden master at the fort was not Old Madam Shang but this child (SIDE ch. 3).
Death
Shut in the burning iron hall with the others, Ma smashes a bench against the wall and finds granite under the plaster. Old Madam Shang taunts him through the dog hole, promising to find his daughter a thousand husbands. When Wang Jianying proposes killing Hu Fei to buy their release, Ma agrees that the matter concerns no one else (SIDE ch. 4).
Hu Fei breaks the door open and Ma gets out, dazed by the smoke. As he stops to rest, a palm strikes him in the back and a kick sends him into the burning hall; Old Madam Shang laughs and cries to her dead husband that she has at last avenged a little of his wrong (SIDE ch. 4). He dies in the fire (SIDE ch. 12). Xu Zheng and Ma Chunhua marry soon after and take over the escort, which declines without him; years later, riders sent after the couple still speak of “Old Escort Chief Ma” with respect (SIDE ch. 12).
Relationships
- Ma Chunhua (Daughter): His only child, who travels the escort roads with him and learns his fist arts (SIDE ch. 1, 3).
- Xu Zheng (Disciple): Treated like a son since boyhood; Ma betroths his daughter to him (SIDE ch. 3).
- Shang Baozhen (Pupil): Taught for seven or eight months without formal discipleship (SIDE ch. 3).
- Shang Jianming (Enemy): Defeated him years before (SIDE ch. 1, 3).
- Old Madam Shang (Host and enemy): Saves his escort, plots against his family and kills him (SIDE ch. 3, 4).
- Yan Ji (Enemy): The robber who defeats him (SIDE ch. 1).
- Wang Weiyang: Ma knew the Wang brothers’ father in his day (SIDE ch. 3).
Martial arts
Ma has every Shaolin fist style at his fingertips. At Shang Family Fort he fights with Cha Fist (查拳), Yanqing Fist (燕青拳) and Lu Zhishen’s Drunken Fall (鲁智深醉跌), and he teaches Tongbi Connected Fist (通臂连拳), stressing that what matters is reading the empty and the real in an opponent’s attack, not remembering the names of moves (SIDE ch. 1, 3). He carries a golden-wire soft whip that has gone with him on escorts for decades, and sleeve arrows (SIDE ch. 1, 3).
Hu Fei, secretly trained in his family’s arts, overhears his lessons and thinks them rigid and his skill small. The narrator corrects him: Ma’s attainments are genuinely considerable, and the boy simply does not know how high he himself has climbed (SIDE ch. 3).