The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 10 – Part 7

The horse was astonishingly fast. Its hoofbeats had barely reached them before it was upon them, long in the body and high in the leg, red all over, a magnificent beast. Li Mochou and Yelü Qi were both startled. How can a horse be so fast? Astride it rode a girl dressed in red, and horse and rider together came hurtling at them like a great live coal, with only her snow-white face not red. When he saw the eagles and the red horse, Yang Guo had already guessed that the girl on its back was Guo Jing and Huang Rong’s¹ daughter, Guo Fu.² She drew rein, and the red horse stopped dead. In full gallop it halted the instant it was bidden, neither rearing nor neighing, perfectly calm and at ease. Yelü Qi had grown up in Mongolia and seen more fine horses than he could count, but never such a creature as this, and he was more astonished still. He did not know that this was the treasured blood-sweating horse Guo Jing had won in the Mongolian desert. It had been a little red colt then. Now it was long in the tooth, past its middle years by any reckoning. But a divine creature is not like an ordinary horse, and though it had grown old, its sinews and bones were as strong and its legs as powerful as they had ever been in its prime.

Yang Guo had not seen Guo Fu for many years. Whenever he happened to think of her, he remembered a spoilt, high-handed little girl. He had never imagined that she would have grown into a beautiful young woman with a face like a spring flower. After her hard ride a faint sweat beaded her brow, and her cheeks, lit by her red dress, looked lovelier than ever. She looked at the eagles for a moment, then glanced at Yelü Qi and the others. When her eyes swept over Yang Guo’s face and she saw his Mongol dress and his strange masked features, her delicate brows knitted slightly, and her look was full of disdain.

Yang Guo had never got on with her since childhood, and to meet her again now and find that she still despised him made him feel his worthlessness and hurt all the more. He thought, You look down on me. Must I have you look up to me? Your father is the great daxia of the age, your mother is the Guild Chief of the Beggars’ Guild, your grandfather is a grandmaster of the martial arts. Every martial man under heaven holds your Guo Family in respect. But my parents? My mother was a country woman. I’ve never even seen my father, and how he died nobody knows… Hmph. Of course I can’t compare with you. I was born to a bitter lot, to be trampled on by others. If you trample on me too, that’s just one more person who looks down on me. Do you think I care? He stood to one side, grieving in secret. It seemed to him that no one in the world thought anything of him, and that living was utterly pointless. Only his shifu, Xiaolongnü, had ever cared for him with a true heart, and now where had she gone? Would he ever, in this life, see her again?

He was still lost in his misery when he heard more hoofbeats, and two more horses came galloping up. One was a grey, the other a dun, both of good breeding, but next to Guo Fu’s red horse they fell far short. On each rode a young man, both of them dressed in yellow.

Guo Fu called, “Brothers Wu, we’ve run into that evil woman again.” The two young men were Wu Dunru³ and Wu Xiuwen.⁴ At the sight of Li Mochou, the great enemy who had killed their mother and whom they had not forgotten for a single day or night in all these years, they leapt from their horses, each drew his jian, and they went for her from left and right. “I’m coming too,” cried Guo Fu. She took her treasured jian from beside the saddle, dismounted and ran forward to join the fight.

Li Mochou saw her enemies growing in number, and every one of them young. The two young men came at her red in the face and wild-eyed, as savage as if they were fighting for their lives, and their jian technique was pure and orthodox, plainly that of disciples of some famous house. Then the beautiful girl in red joined the attack too. As her first stroke came, the point of her jian quivered and flashed dazzlingly. It came in on the slant and arrived dead on target, with a deadly follow-up hidden behind it. Her power was shallow, but her jian technique was deep and subtle. Li Mochou’s heart chilled. “Are you Miss Guo of Peach Blossom Island?” she cried.

Guo Fu laughed. “So you know who I am.” She flicked out two quick thrusts, both at the vital points between chest and belly. Li Mochou parried with her whisk and thought, What an arrogant little girl. With your paltry skill, you dare to be so rude to me? If I weren’t wary of your parents, I’d kill ten of you at once. She brought her whisk round, meaning to snatch the girl’s jian, when suddenly the wind whistled at both her flanks. The jians of the two Wu brothers were thrusting at her together. The brothers and Guo Fu had all been taught by Guo Jing himself. The three had spent every day together on Peach Blossom Island and practised the same jian technique, so their moves meshed seamlessly, one retreating as another advanced, one rising as another dropped. It was no formal battle array, but with three jians at work and each covering the others, they made a formidable show.

Three fighters and two eagles attacked by turns, hemming Li Mochou in at the centre. Going by their true skill, if the fight went on a little longer, Li Mochou would surely find a chance to wound one of them, and then the other two could never protect themselves. But she saw that her enemies had numbers on their side. If they all rushed her at once, they would be hard to fight off, and if she provoked Guo Jing and his wife into joining in, she would certainly come off worse. So she swept her whisk round and laughed. “Little children, watch the Scarlet Serpent Immortal’s monkey-trainer’s tricks!” Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, she launched six moves in a row, each straight at a vital point, and Guo Fu and the Wu brothers were thrown into such a flurry, hopping and dodging without pause, that they really did look rather like monkeys. Li Mochou stood on her left foot, and amid a long peal of laughter she spun right round. “Lingbo, let’s go!” she cried. Shifu and disciple ran off to the north-west.

“She’s scared of us, after her!” shouted Guo Fu. Jian in hand, she dashed after them, and the Wu brothers put forth their qinggong⁵ and followed behind. Li Mochou flicked her whisk behind her with easy grace. Not a speck of dust rose under her feet, and she drifted along as lightly as if she were strolling. Hong Lingbo, on the other hand, ran flat out. Guo Fu and the Wu brothers ran with every ounce of their strength, yet they fell further and further behind the shifu and her disciple. Only the two great eagles were faster than Li Mochou, and they kept diving down to strike at her. Seeing that there would be no revenge today, Wu Dunru whistled the eagles back.

Afraid that the three of them might come to harm, Yelü Qi and the others had followed to support them. When they saw Guo Fu and the others coming back, they stepped forward to greet them. They were all young, and within a few words they were getting on famously. Suddenly Yelü Qi remembered, and cried, “Where is Brother Yang?”

Wanyan Ping said, “He went off on his own. I asked him where he was going, and he didn’t even answer.” As she spoke, she hung her head.

Yelü Qi ran up a small hillock and looked all round. He saw the girl in green walking side by side with Lu Wushuang, already far off, but of Yang Guo there was no trace at all. Yelü Qi felt strangely lost. This was the first time he had met Yang Guo, and they had joined hands against the enemy. It had been only a short while, but several times their lives had hung on a single breath, and they had attacked and defended together and saved each other. It was a friendship forged in a fight, and to have him suddenly go without a word of farewell was like losing a good friend of many years.

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As it turned out, when Yang Guo saw the Wu brothers arrive and join Guo Fu in attacking Li Mochou, the three of them so close, their jian technique so fine, driving Li Mochou off in just a few moves, he had misread it all. He did not know that Li Mochou had left only because she was wary of Guo Jing and his wife. He supposed that the three of them had some formidable neili hidden in their moves which had forced her to flee. Years ago, when Guo Jing had taken him to Mount Zhongnan⁶ to learn the martial arts, he had shown his power to the full and beaten countless Quanzhen Daoists, and the height of his skill had left a deep mark on Yang Guo’s young mind. He thought that the disciples Guo Jing had trained must naturally be ten times better than himself. With this notion already fixed in his head, even an ordinary jian move from Guo Fu and the others looked to him as if it hid some profound follow-up. The more he watched, the more resentful he grew. He remembered how, as a boy on Peach Blossom Island, the Wu brothers had beaten him twice while Guo Fu stood by shouting, “Well hit! Hit him harder!” He remembered too how Huang Rong had deliberately refused to teach him martial arts, and how Guo Jing, whose martial arts were so formidable, would not pass them on to him, but had sent him to the Chongyang Palace to be tormented by a pack of villainous Daoists. All at once a breastful of bitter resentment surged up in him.

What Yang Guo did not know was that after Guo Jing had sent him to the Chongyang Palace to study, he had often thought of him with concern. He would bring it up with Huang Rong, wondering how Yang Guo’s martial arts were coming along, and on Peach Blossom Island, where the days were long and idle, he often meant to take Huang Rong with him to Mount Zhongnan to visit Yang Guo. But Huang Rong could never forget how Yang Guo’s father, Yang Kang,⁷ had had a vicious hand in the murder of the Five Freaks of Jiangnan,⁸ the bitter affair that had made Guo Jing look on her and her father as enemies. She also saw that Yang Guo was sly and never content to keep still, and she did not want to see much of him. “Jing gege,” she said, “if we go to the Quanzhen Order to see Yang Guo, I’m afraid those old Daoists will take offence. They’ll say we suspect them of not teaching him properly and have come to check up on them ourselves.” Guo Jing shook his head. “Daoist Elder Ma, Daoist Elder Qiu, Daoist Elder Wang, they’ve always been very warm to me. They would never take offence.” Huang Rong said, “The older generation wouldn’t, of course. But last time you broke a dozen or so of their Big Dipper Formations single-handed, and the Quanzhen Order lost a great deal of face. From the third generation of disciples down, surely not every one of them has let it go?” Guo Jing turned it over carefully and thought his wife was quite right. If he saw Yang Guo, he would be bound to look into his martial arts, and once he did, he feared someone in the Chongyang Palace really might take offence. After that the matter was never raised again. Yang Guo knew that Guo Jing had treated him well enough, but he knew nothing of these feelings.

Yang Guo also saw that Wanyan Ping, Lu Wushuang, the girl in green and Yelü Yan were all looking at him with surprise on their faces. He thought, Li Mochou slandered my aunt with her filthy words, and you all believed her. You look down on me, and so be it, but how dare you slight my aunt? If my face looks ugly now, it’s because I can’t stomach the Wu brothers and Guo Fu, and I can’t stomach Uncle Guo and Auntie Guo. And you all take it that I’ve done something shameful with my aunt and have a guilty conscience? All at once he broke into a headlong run. He kept to no road, but went charging wildly across the open country. His mind was not in its normal state, and he imagined that everyone under heaven was set against him. It never occurred to him that, wearing the human-skin mask, however full of jealousy and resentment his face might be, Wanyan Ping and the others could not possibly have seen it. His features were strange, so naturally people looked surprised. And Li Mochou’s evil name filled the jianghu and she was everyone’s enemy. Who would believe a word she said?

He had been travelling from the north-west towards the south-east. Now, wanting to get as far away from these people as he could, he turned back towards the north-west. His mind was in chaos, and he loathed the world of men. He took off his mask and wandered at random among wild hills and desolate ridges, and when he was hungry he picked wild fruit and wild greens to fill his belly. On and on he went, and in less than a month he was gaunt and haggard, his clothes in rags, and he had come among a range of high mountains. He did not know that this was Mount Hua,⁹ “the most perilous of the Five Peaks under heaven”. He only saw that the mountain was steep and sheer, and in his bitterness he set out to climb to the very summit.

His qinggong was excellent, but Mount Hua is the most perilous mountain under heaven, and even he could not simply climb it at will. By the time he was halfway up, the weather had turned suddenly cold. Leaden clouds pressed low, the north wind was rising, and then snowflakes began to drift down from the sky. He meant to torment himself as much as he could, so he looked for no shelter from the snow. The harder the wind and snow, the more he picked his way along the sheerest cliffs and crags. Towards evening the snow fell more heavily than ever. The footing was slippery and the path harder than ever to make out. One false step and he would fall into a bottomless gorge and be smashed to pieces. He did not care. Since Aunt had left him, his own life was worth nothing at all, and life and death meant nothing to him. With his head held high he climbed on.

He had gone a little further when he suddenly heard a very faint swishing behind him, as though some wild animal were moving through the snow. Yang Guo turned at once and saw a human figure flicker behind him and leap down into the gorge.

Yang Guo was badly startled. He hurried over and looked down into the gorge. A man was hanging in mid-air, holding on to the rock by three hooked fingers. Seeing him bear his whole weight on the strength of three fingers above a gorge that seemed to have no bottom, Yang Guo knew that his martial skill had reached a level past imagining. He bowed with great respect and said, “Esteemed Senior, please come up!”

The man gave a great roar of laughter that set the gorge ringing. With a press of his fingers he sprang up from the cliffside. Then suddenly he barked, “Are you in league with the Five Ugly Men of Sichuan¹⁰ or not? In a great wind and snowstorm, in the dead of night, what are you doing sneaking about up here?”

Scolded like this for no reason at all, Yang Guo thought, In a great wind and snowstorm, in the dead of night, what am I doing sneaking about up here? It touched the sore place in his heart, and suddenly he burst into loud sobs. He thought of all the misfortunes of his life and how he had been held cheap by everyone, and how his beloved aunt, whom he revered above all, had blamed him for no reason and left him for good, so that most likely he would never see her again in this life. When the grief was at its worst, his weeping seemed to fill heaven and earth with sorrow, and all the bitterness and humiliation of his whole life came welling up in his heart.

Footnotes

1. 黄蓉 – Huáng Róng. Her name meaning “lotus” or “hibiscus”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 郭芙 – Guō Fú. Her name meaning “lotus”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 武敦儒 – Wǔ Dūnrú. His name meaning “earnest scholar”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 武修文 – Wǔ Xiūwén. His name meaning “cultivate literature”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 轻功 – qīnggōng. Literally lightness skill. The martial art of body lightness; practitioners leap great heights and move with extraordinary speed. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 终南山 – Zhōngnán Shān. Sacred Daoist mountain housing both Quanzhen Order and Ancient Tomb School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 杨康 – Yáng Kāng. His name meaning “health” or “peace”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. Five Freaks of Jiangnan (江南五怪). Also known as the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan (before two deaths). Group of eccentric martial artists from the Jiangnan region who were Guo Jing’s first teachers. Yang Kang poisoned and killed five of them, framing Huang Yaoshi — an act that created a bitter rift between Guo Jing and Huang Rong. ↩

9. 华山 – Huáshān. One of China’s Five Sacred Mountains, site of martial arts competitions. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. Five Ugly Men of Sichuan (川边五丑). Five martial artists from the Sichuan border region, known for their villainy. “ugliness” in their name refers more to their evil conduct than their physical appearance. ↩