The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 10

Valiant young xia

Yelü Qi¹ said, “Watch closely, Third Sister. I strike at her Biru² acupoint, and she has to step back on the slant to avoid it. I follow up at her Jugu³ acupoint, and she has no choice but to raise her dao and cut back at me. That is the moment to move fast, and her weapon is mine.” The black-clad girl said angrily, “Pah! It won’t be that easy.”

Yelü Qi said, “Like this.” As he spoke, his right palm swept towards her Biru acupoint. The blow came crooked and slanting, yet it closed off every way out, front and back, left and right, leaving only a single gap on the diagonal behind her to the left. To escape it the girl had to step back two paces on the slant. Yelü Qi nodded and, just as he had said, reached for her Jugu acupoint. All along the girl had been telling herself, Whatever you do, don’t raise the dao and cut back. But she was hemmed in on every side, and a rising cut was the one stroke that would parry and strike in a single move. There was no time to think further. Up came the dao, and she cut.

Yelü Qi said, “That’s it!” Everyone expected him to reach out and seize the dao. Instead his right hand drew back as well, met his left in a clasp, and both hands slid into his sleeves. The girl’s stroke cut empty air, and at the sight of his hands tucked away in his sleeves she faltered for an instant. Yelü Qi’s right hand shot out. Two fingers pinched the back of the blade and lifted, the girl could not keep her hold, and the dao was his.

The onlookers stood stunned by this feat of skill for a long moment, and then the whole room roared its applause. The black-clad girl stood rooted to the spot, crestfallen. Everyone was thinking, The Second Young Master hasn’t laid a hand on you to take you. He’s plainly giving you a way out. If you don’t leave now, what are you waiting for?

Yelü Qi stepped back unhurriedly and said to Yelü Yan,⁴ “Now she has no weapon either. Try her again. Be bolder this time, and watch for the kick hidden in her palm work.” Yelü Yan took two paces forward. “Wanyan Ping,⁵ we have spared you again and again, and still you hound us without let-up. Even now, have you not given up?”

Wanyan Ping made no answer. She stood with her head bowed, brooding. “If you’re so set on settling it with me,” said Yelü Yan, “then let’s fight it out and have done!” She rushed in and threw two punches straight at Wanyan Ping’s face. Wanyan Ping leapt back out of reach. “Give me back my dao,” she said bleakly. Yelü Yan was taken aback, and thought, My brother took your weapon precisely so you would fight me on even terms. Why ask for it back now? “Very well!” she said, and she took the willow-leaf dao from her brother and tossed it over. One of the guards turned his own dao hilt-first and held it out. “Third Young Mistress, you should use a weapon too.” “No need,” said Yelü Yan. But then she thought again, Bare-handed I can’t beat her. We’ll match daos instead. She took the dao and made two feints through the air. It felt a little heavy, but it would do.

Wanyan Ping’s face was ashen. Dao in her left hand, she pointed at Yelü Chucai⁶ with her right. “Yelü Chucai, you helped the Mongols and brought about the deaths of my father and mother. I cannot take my revenge on you in this life. We will settle our account in the world below!” The words were barely out of her mouth when her left hand swept the dao across towards her own throat.

Yang Guo,⁷ seeing the anguish in her eyes as she spoke, felt his heart give a great thump and a pain stab through his chest. Before he could stop himself, he cried out, “Aunt!”⁸

At that very instant Wanyan Ping drew the dao across her throat. Yelü Qi sprang forward two paces, his right arm shot out, and once again two fingers plucked the willow-leaf dao from her hand. In the same movement he sealed an acupoint on her arm. “Why throw your life away,” he said, “when nothing is wrong?”

Dao to throat, two fingers to dao: it had all happened in the blink of an eye. By the time the onlookers saw clearly what had passed, the dao was back in Yelü Qi’s hand.

The whole room had cried out in alarm as one, and no one marked Yang Guo’s cry of “Aunt”. But Lu Wushuang,⁹ beside him, heard it clearly. “What did you call out?” she asked under her breath. “Is she your aunt?” “No, no!” Yang Guo said hastily. “She isn’t.” The truth was that he had seen in Wanyan Ping’s eyes a look of sorrow and heartbreak, of every hope turned to ash, exactly the look in Xiaolongnü’s¹⁰ eyes when she had broken with him for good. Coming upon it so suddenly, he was dazed and half out of his mind, and forgot where he was.

Yelü Chucai spoke slowly. “Miss Wanyan, you have tried to assassinate me three times now. As Grand Chancellor of the Great Mongol Empire, I destroyed your Great Jin and brought about your parents’ deaths. But do you know who destroyed my own ancestors?”

Wanyan Ping shook her head slightly. “I do not.”

Yelü Chucai said, “Yelü is the royal surname of the Great Liao, and the Great Liao was destroyed by your Jin. Of the Yelü clan, the descendants of the Great Liao, your Wanyan clan slaughtered all but a handful. As a boy I swore revenge, and that is why I helped the Mongol Khan destroy your Jin. Ah, vengeance repaid with vengeance, when will it ever end?” As he spoke these last words he raised his eyes to the window, thinking how, merely because a few families were fighting over the throne, great cities and the homes of the people had been reduced to rubble, and for ten thousand li¹¹ the corpses were heaped into mountains and the blood ran in rivers.

Wanyan Ping stood mute and lost. Baring a few gleaming white teeth, she bit down on her upper lip, gave a snort, and said to Yelü Qi, “Three times I have tried for revenge and failed. I blame my own lack of skill, and there’s an end of it. But if I choose to die, what business is that of yours?”

Yelü Qi said, “Only promise me you will seek no more vengeance, miss, and you may go this moment!” Wanyan Ping snorted again and glared at him. Yelü Qi turned the willow-leaf dao round, tapped her lightly at the waist several times with the hilt to unseal her acupoints, and held it out to her.

Wanyan Ping half reached for it and half held back. She hesitated a moment, then took it. “Young Master Yelü,” she said, “time and again you have stayed your hand and treated me with courtesy. Do you think I don’t know it? But the feud between my Wanyan Family and your Yelü Family is deeper than the sea. However generous and high-minded you may be, the blood of my father and mother must be avenged.”

Yelü Qi thought, This woman will never let it go. Her martial skill is no mean thing, and I can’t stay at my father’s side every moment. If anything were to go wrong, what then? Hmm. Better to pin her with words, so that I’m the only one she can come after. He said in a ringing voice, “Miss Wanyan, your resolve to avenge your parents does you credit. But the old generation’s accounts are for the old generation to settle. We of the younger generation have our own debts of kindness and grudge. As for the blood debt between your family and mine, bring it to me and me alone. If you go after my father again, then the next time we meet, things will go very hard between us.”

Wanyan Ping said, “Hmph. My martial skill is nowhere near yours. How could I ever take my revenge on you? Enough. Enough.” She covered her face and turned to go.

Yelü Qi knew that once she walked out she would try to kill herself again. Meaning to save her life, he sneered. “Heh heh. The women of the Wanyan Family have no backbone!”

Wanyan Ping spun round. “What do you mean, no backbone?”

Yelü Qi sneered. “My martial skill is better than yours, true. But what is so rare about that? It is only that I had a wise teacher to guide me, not that there is anything out of the ordinary about me. The Iron Palm¹² skill you have learned is a formidable art in its own right. It is simply that the shifu who taught you never fully mastered it, and you have not practised long, so for now you fall short of others, which is only to be expected. If you take pains to seek out another wise teacher, do you really think you won’t find one?”

Wanyan Ping had been brimming with resentment and anger, but at these words she could not help nodding to herself.

Yelü Qi went on, “Each time I have crossed hands with you I have used only my right hand. That is not arrogance or discourtesy. My left hand is heavy, and when I strike with it I tend to hurt people. So let us agree on this: once you have studied under a wise teacher, come and find me whenever you like. Force me to use my left hand, and I will stretch out my neck for your blade and not utter a word of complaint.” He knew that Wanyan Ping’s skill fell far short of his own. Even with an expert to coach her, she would struggle to beat his single hand. A person bent on suicide, he reasoned, was only acting on a moment’s bitterness. Once she went off to find a teacher and learn, her mind would be fixed on that, and after a time the thought of killing herself would leave her of its own accord.

Wanyan Ping thought, You are no immortal. If I train with all my might, can my two hands really never beat your one? She made a feint through the air with the dao and said in a low, steady voice, “Good! A gentleman’s word…”

“A swift horse’s whip!”¹³ Yelü Qi finished.

Without another glance at anyone, Wanyan Ping walked out with her head held high, but her face could not hide its desolation.

Seeing that the Second Young Master had let her go, the guards naturally did not dare stop her. One after another they begged Yelü Chucai’s pardon for the alarm, asked after his welfare and withdrew. Yelü Zhu¹⁴ found it strange: the place had been turned upside down, yet Yang Guo had never once shown himself. Yelü Yan said, “Second Brother, why did you let her go again?”

Yelü Qi said, “What else? Should I have killed her?”

Yelü Yan pressed her lips together and smiled. “Letting her go was wrong, all the same.”

“What do you mean?”

Yelü Yan laughed. “If you want her to be my sister-in-law, you shouldn’t have let her go.”

Yelü Qi’s face turned stern. “Don’t talk nonsense!” Seeing that he was in earnest, and afraid of angering him, Yelü Yan made no more jokes.

---

Outside the window, when Yang Guo heard Yelü Yan say “want her to be my sister-in-law”, a sourness rose in his heart for no reason at all. Seeing Wanyan Ping set off to the south-east, he said to Lu Wushuang, “I’m going to take a look.”

“Look at what?” Lu Wushuang asked.

Yang Guo did not answer. He deployed his qinggong¹⁵ and gave chase.

Wanyan Ping’s martial skill was nothing special, but her qinggong was excellent. Yang Guo drew up his breath and chased her hard, and only outside the town of Longju Fort¹⁶ did he catch sight of her back. He watched her drop into the courtyard of a house, push open a door and go into a room. Yang Guo leapt in after her and hid by the wall. After a long while lamplight showed in the west wing, and then came a long sigh, a sigh that held a thousand grievances and ten thousand sorrows.

Footnotes

1. 耶律齐 – Yēlǜ Qí. His name meaning “equal” or “together”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 臂儒穴 – Bìrú Xué. Literally arm scholar. Acupoint on the arm used in combat point-striking; the name is a fictionalised form found in martial arts fiction. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 巨骨穴 – Jùgǔ Xué. Literally great bone. Acupoint in the hollow of the shoulder on the large intestine meridian; striking it can numb the limb. See Wikipedia. ↩

4. 耶律燕 – Yēlǜ Yàn. Her name meaning “swallow”, the bird. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 完颜萍 – Wányán Píng. Her name meaning “duckweed”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 耶律楚材 – Yēlǜ Chǔcái. (1190–1244) Historical Khitan statesman who served as Grand Chancellor of the Mongol Empire. See Wikipedia. ↩

7. 杨过 – Yáng Guò. His name meaning “fault or transgression”; his courtesy name Gaizhi means “to correct it”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 姑姑 – gūgu. Literally paternal aunt, used here as a term of respectful address for a young woman of the older generation. Yang Guo uses this to address Xiaolongnü, his shifu. ↩

9. 陆无双 – Lù Wúshuāng. Her name meaning “peerless” or “without equal”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 小龙女 – Xiǎolóngnǚ. Literally little dragon maiden. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

12. 铁掌 – Tiězhǎng. Literally iron palm. A powerful palm technique associated with Iron Palm Keep, emphasising hardening the palms through conditioning and striking with devastating force. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. Gentleman’s word, a swift horse’s whip (君子一言，快马一鞭). Chinese proverb equivalent to “a gentleman’s word is his bond,” implying that once spoken, a promise is as irreversible as a whip-crack from a galloping horse. ↩

14. 耶律铸 – Yēlǜ Zhù. His name meaning “to cast or forge”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

16. 龙驹寨 – Lóngjū Zhài. Historical garrison town in present-day Shaanxi Province, situated on the strategic route between the Central Plains and the northwest. ↩