The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 11 – Part 3

To his surprise, the thrust cost him no effort at all. The two men’s neili came through the tree trunk, and the moment he blocked it with his own, it melted away. An arrow at the end of its flight cannot pierce even the thin silk of Lu.¹ The Northern Beggar and the Western Venom were both giants of their age, but they had worn each other down for days on end until both were all but spent. Thrown back by the recoil of Yang Guo’s neili, they slumped to the ground together, breathing out more than they could breathe in, unable to move. “Papa, Esteemed Senior Hong,” Yang Guo cried in alarm, “are you all right?” Both men were fighting for breath, and neither answered.

Yang Guo wanted to help them into the cave to rest, but Hong Qigong gave a faint shake of his head. Only then did Yang Guo understand how badly they were hurt. They could not be moved. That night he slept between them, afraid they might get up in the middle of the night and go at each other again. In truth, neither could even work his neigong to heal himself, so how could they fight? The next morning Yang Guo found them barely breathing, weaker even than the day before, and he was frightened. He dug up yams, roasted them and fed them to the two men. Not until the third day did they show a little life again. Yang Guo helped them into the cave, laid them down on either side, and lay in the middle himself to keep them apart.

The next day the two men got up and sat facing each other. “Our neili is too evenly matched,” said Ouyang Feng. “There is no more point testing it. But when it comes to moves, you are no match for me in the end.” Hong Qigong shook his head. “Not necessarily, not necessarily. If I used the Dog-Beating Staff Technique, the treasure that guards the Beggars’ Guild, you could not break it even without a scrap of neili behind the staff. We will not fight to the death. We will only trade moves, and it makes no odds who wins or loses.” “Very well,” said Ouyang Feng. “No neili, only moves!”

An idea came to Hong Qigong. He beckoned Yang Guo to bend his ear close and said, “I was chief of the Beggars’ Guild before. Did you know that?” Yang Guo nodded. In the Chongyang Palace of the Quanzhen Order he had heard his shixiongs talking about the great figures of the day, and all of them said that the former chief of the Beggars’ Guild, the Nine-Fingered Divine Beggar Hong Qigong, had martial arts without equal in the world and a heart that was loyal and true, every inch a hero and a brave man. “I have a set of martial arts to pass on to you now,” Hong Qigong went on. “It has only ever been handed down to the chief of our Guild, never to anyone else. But I have no strength left in my body to perform it, so I want you to act it out for your sworn father to see.”

“Esteemed Senior,” Yang Guo said, “since your art is not passed to outsiders, I had better not learn it. My sworn father has not got his wits back. Esteemed Senior, you need not stoop to his level.” Hong Qigong shook his head. “Even if you learn the forms, you will not know the secret of putting force behind them, and against a real enemy they will be no use at all. I am not asking you to fight your sworn father. Just strike a few poses, and he will understand at a glance. So it cannot even be called teaching you.” Yang Guo thought, If this is the Beggars’ Guild’s guardian treasure, my sworn father may not be able to stand up to it. Why should I help you beat him? So he kept making excuses, saying he did not dare learn the Beggars’ Guild’s secret art.

Hong Qigong saw straight through him. “Stinking Toad,” he said loudly, “your sworn son knows you are no match for my Dog-Beating Staff Technique, so he will not show you the moves.” Ouyang Feng flew into a rage. “Boy,” he shouted, “I still have plenty of marvellous martial arts I haven’t used yet. Why should I fear him? Show me the moves, quickly.” With the two of them pressing him so hard, Yang Guo had no choice but to go over to Hong Qigong.

Hong Qigong had him fetch a branch, then explained to him in detail a move from the Dog-Beating Staff Technique, Striking Two Dogs with One Staff.² Yang Guo picked it up at once and performed it as instructed.

Ouyang Feng saw how wonderful the staff move was and for a while could find no way to break it. After thinking long and hard, he described a staff move of his own to Yang Guo, and Yang Guo performed it as he said. Hong Qigong gave a faint smile and said, “Good!” Then he described another staff move.

Fighting like this, every move spelled out in long explanations, they had got through only a dozen or so moves by evening, and Yang Guo was already drenched in sweat. The next morning they went on, and it was three full days before all thirty-six forms of the staff technique had been described. There were only thirty-six forms, but their subtle variations were endlessly profound. The further they went, the longer Ouyang Feng took to think, but every counter he came back with was a gem of its own, attack and defence in one, fierce and keen, and even Hong Qigong could not help admiring it.

Towards evening that day Hong Qigong described the sixth variation of the thirty-sixth form, No Dogs Under Heaven.³ This was the last variation of the last move of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique, its crowning stroke. When it was unleashed there was staff on every side, and wherever its force reached, a pack of dozens of vicious dogs would all be beaten to death at once. That was what “No Dogs Under Heaven” meant. The subtlety of the technique had reached the very summit of the martial arts, and Ouyang Feng, naturally, could find no answer to it. That night he tossed and turned and wore himself out until morning.

The next morning, before Yang Guo was up, he suddenly heard Ouyang Feng shouting, “I have it, I have it. Boy, use this staff move to break him.” The shout was excited and urgent. Yang Guo heard something strange in his voice and looked over, and he was horrified.

Old as he was, Ouyang Feng’s neigong was so refined that his hair and beard had shown only a touch of grey. But he had taxed his mind so hard that in a single night his beard and eyebrows had turned completely white, and he looked suddenly more than ten years older. Yang Guo was stricken. He wanted to speak up and beg Hong Qigong to stop the contest, but Ouyang Feng kept hurrying him on, and he could only do as he was told. The move was very complicated. Ouyang Feng had to explain it over and over before Yang Guo grasped it, and then he performed it accordingly.

The moment Hong Qigong saw it, the colour drained from his face, and then he shouted his praise. “I had to think for so long before I could answer it,” said Ouyang Feng. “The Dog-Beating Staff Technique is the better art after all!” Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and struck out with his palm with all his strength. Hong Qigong met it with his own, and once again they were locked in a contest of neili.

As Hong Qigong drove out his force, he suddenly felt the immense power he had sent forth start to turn back on itself and strike at him instead. He was badly alarmed, but then he felt that Ouyang Feng’s force was not following up its advantage. It too was slowly turning back, to strike at Ouyang Feng himself. Both men cried out at once. “Huh! How very strange! Stinking Toad, what are you playing at?” “Old Beggar, why are you hitting yourself? No need to be so polite!”

In a moment Hong Qigong understood. The neigong of the Nine Yin Manual that the two of them used was practised the right way round by one and in reverse by the other, but both rested on the ultimate principle of the Book of Changes:⁴ “When a thing reaches its extreme, it turns into its opposite.” Old yin, risen to its limit, turns into young yang; old yang, risen to its peak, turns into young yin. The two of them had drawn the full power of the Manual out of their arts, so that Hong Qigong’s practice, the right way round, was gradually turning to the reverse, and Ouyang Feng’s reversed practice was gradually turning the right way round. After they had driven their force a few more times, the two streams of neili became one, mingling like milk in water. They no longer fought each other but merged and flowed through each other, soothing each other, just like a taiji⁵ diagram, yin and yang circling and embracing, turning round and round at will.

Both men felt their whole bodies at ease. First they were chilled to the bone, but as the other’s neili flowed in, it was like basking in spring sunshine, like soaking in warm water, and from the channels of their inner breath to every limb and joint, everything felt wonderful. A moment later they were burning all over, as if they had been put in an oven, and the heat was unbearable, but then the other’s neili came surging in and at once they were cool through and through, the scorching heat all gone.

The two of them roared with laughter. “Good, good, good!” they both said. “No need to fight any more.”

Hong Qigong sprang to his feet and shouted, “Old Venom, Ouyang Feng! We took different roads and came to the same place. We’ve ended up ‘best of brothers’ after all!” With that he threw himself forward and hugged Ouyang Feng tight. Yang Guo was horrified. Thinking he meant to harm his sworn father, he hurriedly pulled at the back of his jacket, but Hong Qigong held on so tightly that he could not budge him.

Ouyang Feng’s spirit was failing and his strength was spent, but suddenly there came the last bright flare before the end, and his mind was all at once as clear as a mirror. Every event of the past decades stood vivid before his eyes. He too roared with laughter.

The two white-haired old men held each other and laughed with abandon. They laughed for a while, and the sound grew lower and lower, then suddenly the laughter stopped, and neither of them moved again.

Yang Guo was horrified. “Papa! Esteemed Senior!” he called again and again, but no one answered. He reached out and pulled at Hong Qigong’s arm, and at the pull the old man toppled over. He was dead. In shock and terror Yang Guo bent down to look at Ouyang Feng, and he too had stopped breathing. Their laughter had stopped, but the smiles were still on their faces, and the faint echo of their great laughter was still coming back from the valleys.

For decades the Northern Beggar and the Western Venom had fought bitter battle after battle, neither ever getting the better of the other, and who would have thought they would die together on the summit of Mount Hua? All their lives they had been tangled in hatred, yet at the end they had died laughing in each other’s arms. Decades of deep hatred, ended with a laugh!

In that moment Yang Guo was stunned and stricken, and he did not know what to do. He remembered how Hong Qigong had played dead for three days and three nights. Could the two old men be playing dead again? But it did not look like that at all. Maybe after they have been dead a while, he thought, they will come back to life. Two old men with martial arts as great as theirs, and their bodies not yet worn out, cannot just die like that. Maybe they are having another contest, to see who can play dead the longest.

He kept watch beside the two bodies for seven days and seven nights, and with each day that passed his hope grew a little less, until he saw the faces of the corpses change colour and black spots appear on them, and knew that they were truly dead. Then he wept bitterly, dug two pits side by side next to the cave, and buried the two extraordinary men of the wulin. Hong Qigong’s wine gourd and the staff and club they had fought with went into the ground with them. He saw that the footprints the old men had stamped into the snow during their savage fight had frozen into hard ice. The footprints were still there, but the bodies had gone into the yellow earth. Yang Guo stood in the footprints, remembering how it had been that day, and grief welled up in him again. He thought how two old men whose martial arts had astounded the world had needed, in the end, a boy whom everyone despised to bury them. Fame and glory, power and prestige, were nothing but a great dream after all.

He stood in awe of the wonders of the two old men’s martial arts. After he had buried them, he went over all their marvellous skills in his mind and practised them move by move. He stayed on in the cave for more than twenty days, until he had committed every one of their great martial arts to memory and could try each move without a mistake. The old men’s lofty neigong, though, he had no way of copying, and he had to let it go. He kowtowed eight times before their graves with deep reverence and only then took his leave. My sworn father was formidable, he thought, but in the end he was a step behind Esteemed Senior Hong. That last move of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique, No Dogs Under Heaven, was so wonderful that my sworn father had to rack his brains all night before he could break it. His answer was a wonderful one too, but against a real enemy, who would give him time to sit and think it through? He would have lost on the spot. He sighed for a while, then found a path and set off down the mountain.

Once off the mountain he wandered on wherever his feet took him. The earth is vast and empty, and I am all alone in it, he thought. I can drift wherever the four seas carry me, and when my years run out, I will lie down wherever I am and die. When he climbed the mountain, he had been full of wounded fury at the contempt of others. Coming down it, he felt that the affairs of the world were nothing but floating clouds. Let others think well of him or think nothing of him, what did it matter to him? Young as he was, he had turned bitter towards the world and mocking of it. Even his bone-deep longing for Xiaolongnü seemed to have faded a little.

Footnotes

1. 鲁缟 – lǔgǎo. Literally Lu silk, the fine thin silk of the state of Lu. From the saying 强弩之末不能穿鲁缟, “an arrow at the end of its flight cannot pierce Lu silk”, in the Records of the Grand Historian. ↩

2. 棒打双犬 – Bàng Dǎ Shuāng Quǎn. Literally staff strikes two dogs. First stance of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique. ↩

3. 天下无狗 – Tiānxià Wú Gǒu. Literally no dogs under heaven. Ultimate stance of the Dog-Beating Staff Technique. ↩

4. 易经 – Yìjīng. The Book of Changes, an ancient divination classic and one of the Five Classics. ↩

5. 太极 – tàijí. Literally supreme ultimate. The taiji diagram shows yin and yang curled round each other in a circle. ↩