Nine Yin White Bone Claw (simplified: 九阴白骨爪, traditional: 九陰白骨爪, pinyin: Jiǔyīn Báigǔ Zhǎo, jyutping: gau2 jam1 baak6 gwat1 zaau2) is a sinister technique derived from the Nine Yin Manual. It is characterised by cruel, destructive claw strikes capable of crushing skulls and breaking bones. Zhou Zhiruo mastered it and used it as her signature technique after inheriting the Emei Order leadership from Miejue. She won the title of Number One Martial Artist Under Heaven at the Slaying Lion Conference.
In The Legend of the Condor Heroes
The claw came from the second volume of the Nine Yin Manual, which Chen Xuanfeng and Mei Chaofeng, the Twin Evils of Dark Wind, stole from Huang Yaoshi. With the Heart-Crushing Palm, it stood at the head of that volume; the couple trained it because it needed no neigong foundation and could be learnt quickly by external methods, and they killed many with it (ch. 10, 16). Mei Chaofeng drove her fingers into living men’s skulls to train, and nine skulls stacked on a Mongolian clifftop marked her practice (ch. 6, 17). Her claws carried a poison that entered any wound they opened (ch. 14).
Zhou Botong held that the name was Mei Chaofeng’s own invention. The manual’s line “shatter the enemy’s head as if piercing rotten earth” meant striking at an enemy’s vital points and leader, but she took it literally; the passage described the Hardness-Shattering Divine Claw, set down so that its counter could be known. When he taught Guo Jing from the manual, he kept to its orthodox arts and left the claw out (ch. 17). Huang Yaoshi likewise told Mei Chaofeng that the techniques she and Chen Xuanfeng had learnt were in the end useless, since the rest of the manual could break them (ch. 14).
Mei Chaofeng secretly taught the claw to Yang Kang in Prince Zhao’s garden (ch. 10). He used it against Lu Guanying at Returning Clouds Manor, where Lu Chengfeng recognised it as the Twin Evils’ art and judged it not yet mastered (ch. 13). He killed two palace guards with it (ch. 23) and killed Han Baoju with it on Peach Blossom Island, a death that Guo Jing first blamed on Huang Yaoshi (ch. 34–35). When he struck at Huang Rong with it in the dark, his fingers drove into the spikes of her Soft Hedgehog Armour (ch. 36).