The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 11

Hardship on the road

By the second day, Yang Guo¹ was still holding the mouth of the gorge. The Second Ugly Man fetched food, and the five of them tore into it, chomping noisily. Hunger burned in Yang Guo’s belly. He turned to look at Hong Qigong.² The old man lay exactly as he had the day before, not shifted by a hair. If he were really asleep, Yang Guo thought, he would at least have turned over in his sleep. Lying so utterly still, I fear he truly is dead. If I hold out another day, hunger will sap my strength and I will be even less able to fight them off. Better to break out now, while I still can. He rose slowly to his feet, then thought again, He said he would sleep for three days and told me to keep watch over him, and I gave my word with my own mouth. A brave man’s word stands like a mountain. How can I abandon him now? He forced down his hunger, closed his eyes and rested.

By the third day, Hong Qigong still lay as stiff and still as he had two days before, and the longer Yang Guo looked, the more his doubts grew. He is plainly dead, he thought. Am I not a fool to keep standing guard? Half a day more without food and these five ugly wretches will not need to lift a hand. I will starve to death on my own. He scooped up snow from the rocks and swallowed a few lumps of it, and the hollowness in his belly eased a little. I could not do my duty as a son to my father and mother, he thought, and Aunt³ is angry with me. I have no brothers or sisters, not one good friend, so the word ‘loyalty’ is not even worth mentioning. But this word ‘faith’ I must keep, come what may. Then he thought, Years ago, when Auntie Guo⁴ was teaching me my books, she told me of Wei Sheng⁵ in ancient times, who agreed to meet a girl beneath a bridge. The girl never came, and the river rose in flood. Wei Sheng would not break his word, and he clung to a pillar of the bridge until he drowned. His name has been honoured for a hundred generations since. I, Yang Guo, am scorned and slighted by the whole world. If I break this promise, people will despise me all the more. Even if it kills me, I will keep the full three days.

One night and one day went by in the blink of an eye. Early on the fourth morning, Yang Guo went up to Hong Qigong and felt for his breath. There was still none at all, and he could not help feeling grieved. He sighed, bowed to him with clasped hands and said, “Esteemed Senior Hong, I have kept our three-day pact. Sadly, Senior, you have passed away. This disciple has no strength to guard your remains. All I can do is cast you into the deep valley, so that no villain may defile you.” With that he lifted the body in his arms and made for the narrow path.

The Five Ugly Men thought hunger had beaten him and he meant to run for it. They shouted as one and came racing over. Yang Guo gave a great shout, set Hong Qigong down on the ground behind him and roared, “I’ll fight you to the death!” Then he charged straight at the Eldest Ugly Man.

He had gone only two steps when a hard gust of wind swept over his head. Someone shot past above him and landed between him and the Five Ugly Men, laughing. “Now that was a good sleep!” It was the Nine-Fingered Divine Beggar, Hong Qigong.

Yang Guo was beside himself with joy, and the Five Ugly Men went white with terror. Hong Qigong, as it turned out, had at first been genuinely asleep in the snow, and when one of the Five Ugly Men trod on him he had naturally woken. He had set out to test the boy, to see whether he could keep a three-day promise, and every time Yang Guo came to feel for his breath he had held it and played dead. Watching the boy go hungry and keep faith, never leaving in three whole days, he judged that the youth had a chivalrous spirit, and he thought very well of him. Only now had he risen, to stand at the narrow pass on the mountain path in all his awesome might.

His left hand traced a half-circle and his right palm drove out: Dragon Sees Regret,⁶ from the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, the proudest work of his life. The Eldest Ugly Man had no time to dodge. He knew this blow could not be met head-on, yet he had no choice but to bring his palms together and resist with all his might.

Hong Qigong could loose and recall his palm force at will. He used only a tenth of his strength, and already the Eldest Ugly Man’s arms were numb and his chest ached. The Second Ugly Man saw him in danger and, afraid he would be hurled into the deep valley by Hong Qigong’s palm, quickly pushed both hands against his back. Hong Qigong increased his force, and the Second Ugly Man reeled backwards and almost fell. The Fourth Ugly Man, behind him, put out his arms to hold him up. Hong Qigong’s force came surging on after him, from the Fourth Ugly Man to the Third, and from the Third to the Fifth at the very end. The five had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In another moment Hong Qigong would strike all five of them dead with the power of a single palm.

Hong Qigong laughed. “You five scoundrels have done evil enough. Struck dead today by one palm from this old beggar, I dare say you can die content.” The five sank into their horse stances, drew in their breath and glared, pitting their combined strength against his single palm. But the pressure grew heavier and heavier. Their chests churned with nausea, and soon every breath was a struggle.

Then Hong Qigong said “Huh?”, sounding quite surprised, and drew back eight-tenths of his palm force. “There is something to your neigong,” he said. “Who is your shifu?”

The Eldest Ugly Man, his palms still locked against Hong Qigong’s, panted, “We… are… are disciples… of our shifu Darba⁷… of his… his school.” Hong Qigong shook his head. “Darba? Never heard of him. Hmm, your neili passes from one of you to the next. That is a remarkable skill.” Yang Guo thought, If Esteemed Senior Hong calls a thing ‘remarkable’, it truly is remarkable. Yet these five fellows look quite ordinary to me. Not one of them could beat me.

Then Hong Qigong asked, “What school are you from?” The Eldest Ugly Man said, “Our shifu is… is the Esoteric School’s Sa, Sa… Sage Monk… State Preceptor Jinlun’s⁸ second… second disciple…” Hong Qigong shook his head again. “An Esoteric Sage Monk? State Preceptor Jinlun? Never heard of him. There is a monk in Qinghai, a Venerable Lingzhi⁹ or some such, whom I have met. His martial arts are better than yours, but what he learned is not of the first rank. What you have learned is very good. Hmm, there is real sense in it. Go and fetch your Patriarch, and let him try a few moves with me.”

The Eldest Ugly Man said, “Our Patriarch is a Sage Monk… a living bodhisattva, the foremost State Preceptor of the Mongols, his divine powers boundless, unmatched under heaven. How… how could he…” The Second Ugly Man had heard in Hong Qigong’s tone a willingness to spare their lives, and the Eldest was talking them straight out of it. He said quickly, “Yes, yes. We will go and ask our Patriarch to come and trade pointers with Esteemed Senior Hong… trade… trade… Only our Patriarch is fit to cross hands with Esteemed Senior Hong. We juniors… to carry… carry… your wine… wine gourd… we are… are… not…”

At that very moment there came a tock, tock, tock from round the shoulder of the mountain, and a man appeared, upside down, a stone in each hand, propelling himself along on his hands. It was the Western Venom, Ouyang Feng.¹⁰ Yang Guo, wild with joy, shouted “Papa!” three times. Ouyang Feng seemed not to hear. He leapt behind the Five Ugly Men and braced his right foot against the Fifth Ugly Man’s back, and a great force went driving through the bodies of all five.

Ouyang Feng’s sudden appearance gave Hong Qigong a start too. Hearing Yang Guo call him “Papa”, he thought, So the boy is his son. No wonder his skills are so good. But the boy keeps faith and values loyalty, and he is a far better man than the Western Venom. Here the father falls short of the son. Then he felt his hand grow heavy as the other man’s force came surging in, and he hurriedly put more strength into his counter.

Since the second Huashan Sword Summit,¹¹ more than ten years had gone by without Hong Qigong and Ouyang Feng meeting. Ouyang Feng’s mind was muddled, but he had been practising the Nine Yin Manual¹² in reverse, and the more he practised, the stranger his martial arts grew, and the stranger they grew, the stronger. On Zhongnan Mountain Yang Guo had reminded him that his name was “Ouyang Feng”, but whether he really was Ouyang Feng he still could not make out. He only felt that “Ouyang Feng” was someone familiar. He muttered the name to himself without end, yet could never join it to himself. That day he had come to Huayin. Mount Hua was where he had twice contended at the Sword Summit, and its paths and peaks seemed dimly familiar, so that day he had groped his way up again.

Hong Qigong had once heard Guo Jing¹³ and Huang Rong¹⁴ recite a small part of the Manual, and by testing it against his own martial arts he too had made great strides. The true path, after all, prevails over the reversed one, and though he knew only a little of it, he was no weaker than the Western Venom. Decades ago the two had been too close to call. Each had since gone his own way and met his own fortunes, and now, meeting on Mount Hua for the third time and matching their strength, they were still dead even.

And the pitiful Five Ugly Men of Sichuan, caught between the two greatest masters of the age, became the pad for their trial blows and the sandbag for their fists. They ran hot, then cold; their breath came tight, then slack; every bone in their bodies creaked and cracked. It was a hundred times worse than any torture.

Ouyang Feng suddenly asked, “The neigong these five fellows have learned is very good. What school are they?” Yang Guo thought, Even my sworn father says their neigong is very good. These Five Ugly Men really are no ordinary men. Then he heard Hong Qigong say, “They claim to be the grand-disciples of some Esoteric Sage Monk, State Preceptor Jinlun.” “And this State Preceptor Jinlun,” said Ouyang Feng, “is he stronger than you?” “I do not know,” said Hong Qigong. “We are probably about even.” “And against me?” “A little stronger than you.” Ouyang Feng stopped short. “I don’t believe it!” he cried.

Even as they talked, hand and foot were still straining against each other. Hong Qigong sent out several different kinds of palm force one after another, and each was dissolved by Ouyang Feng’s foot at the far end. Then Ouyang Feng put more force into his foot, but he could not make Hong Qigong give half an inch either. After this bout each man thought the world of the other. They burst out laughing together and sprang back.

With the pressure suddenly gone, the Five Ugly Men of Sichuan swayed and staggered like drunken men. The two great masters’ neili had driven back and forth through their bodies, and their inner organs were gravely injured. Their sinews were limp, their bones soft. They were crippled men now, no match even for a child of seven or eight. “You five villains,” Hong Qigong shouted. “It seems your appointed hour has not yet come, and in any case you will never harm anyone again. Get out of my sight. And remember to tell your Patriarch, State Preceptor Jinlun, to hurry to the Central Plains and try his hand against me.” “And against me too,” said Ouyang Feng. The Five Ugly Men of Sichuan promised over and over, then went tottering down the peak, propping one another up, in a sorry state.

Footnotes

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

2. 洪七公 – Hóng Qīgōng. Literally Hong the Seventh Lord; the numeral seven marks seniority among sworn brothers. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 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. ↩

4. 郭伯母 – Guō Bómǔ. Yang Guo’s term of respect for Huang Rong, wife of Guo Jing. ↩

5. 尾生 – Wěi Shēng. Figure from ancient lore who drowned rather than break a rendezvous beneath a bridge when floodwaters rose. ↩

6. 亢龙有悔 – Kànglóng Yǒuhuǐ. Literally the soaring dragon has regrets. First stance of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 达尔巴 – Dá’ěrbā. Tibetan personal name. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 金轮国师 – Jīnlún Guóshī. Literally Golden Wheel State Preceptor. The Mongol Empire’s State Preceptor and a martial arts adept. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 灵智上人 – Língzhì Shàngrén. A Tibetan monk from Qinghai who appears in The Legend of the Condor Heroes. ↩

10. 欧阳锋 – Ōuyáng Fēng. His name meaning “blade” or “cutting edge”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 华山论剑 – Huàshān Lùnjiàn. Literally sword discussion at Huashan. Use of discussion is key as the participants were engaged in a martial arts exchange and a philosophical debate on mastery, rather than just a physical contest. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 九阴真经 – Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Legendary martial arts compendium compiled by Huang Shang during the Northern Song dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 郭靖 – Guō Jìng. His name meaning “tranquillity” or “pacification”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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