The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 12 – Part 7

The heroes in the hall and out in the courtyard burst into cheers. Huang Rong turned, went back to her seat and leaned the bamboo staff beside her, leaving Huo Du standing there looking thoroughly foolish.

For all the depth of his martial learning, Huo Du could not make out how Huang Rong had taken the staff, and he thought, Can this woman work magic? He heard the crowd jeering on every side and, glancing sidelong, saw his shifu’s¹ face gone iron-grey. A pretty young woman like that, he reckoned, could have only so much real skill. So he said loudly, “Guild Chief Huang, I’ve given the staff back to you. Now come and cross hands with me. Surely you’re not afraid?”

At these words, sure enough, some people thought that Huang Rong had not snatched the staff at all, but that he had handed it back to ask for a contest. Only those of the very highest martial skill could see that Huang Rong had taken it from him by force.

Guo Fu was furious. Never in her life had she seen anyone dare to be so rude to her mother. With a swish she drew the jian at her side. “Sister Fu,” said Wu Xiuwen, “I’ll settle this for you.” Wu Dunru had the same thought, and without a word between them, the two of them leapt into the middle of the hall together.

One of them said, “Our shimu² is a lady of rank.” The other took it up, “How could she cross hands with a barbarian like you?” And the first went on, “Try your luck against your young masters here first.”

Huo Du saw that, young as they were, they held themselves steady and well balanced, and had plainly been taught by a famous master. He thought, We came here today to show off our might and blunt the edge of these Han martial artists, so the more bouts the better. But there are many of them and few of us. If it turns into a free-for-all, it’ll be very hard to handle. So he said, “Heroes under heaven, hear me. These two babes still smelling of milk want to fight me. If I raise a hand against them, I’m afraid people will say I’m bullying children, and if I refuse, it will look as if I’m afraid of two boys. So let us do it this way. We agree on three bouts, and whichever side wins two takes the leadership of the alliance. My bout with Guild Chief Lu just now doesn’t count. We’ll all start afresh. Does that seem fair to everyone?” With these few words he took the high ground entirely and made himself look most generous.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong conferred in low voices with the guests of honour, and they all felt it would be hard to refuse. Of those at the gathering, leaving aside Huang Rong, who could not fight, the three strongest were reckoned to be Guo Jing, Hao Datong and Great Master Yideng’s fourth disciple, the Scholar Zhu Ziliu. Zhu Ziliu was a high minister of Dali and no subject of the Song, but Dali and the Great Song were as close as lips and teeth, and in recent years Dali too had been much threatened by the Mongols, so they shared a common enemy. Besides, he was a good friend of Guo Jing and Huang Rong, and honour forbade him to refuse. So it was settled that Zhu Ziliu would fight Huo Du in the first bout, Hao Datong would take on Darba in the second, and Guo Jing would close the contest and challenge State Preceptor Jinlun.

Whether this line-up could win was far from certain. If State Preceptor Jinlun’s martial arts truly were of the highest order, so that even Guo Jing could not hold him off, they might well lose all three bouts, and then they would be utterly routed.

They were still debating when Huang Rong suddenly said, “I have a way that can’t fail.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed and was about to ask what it was when steel whistled through the air. Everyone turned and saw that the Wu brothers, each with a long jian, were already fighting Huo Du and his fan. Guo Jing and Huang Rong, and Great Master Yideng’s disciples Diancang Yuyin³ and Zhu Ziliu, all anxious for the young men’s safety, fixed their eyes on the fight.

The fact was that the Wu brothers had heard Prince Huo Du’s insolence, calling them babes smelling of milk to their faces, and with the girl they loved listening, how could they swallow such a loss of face? Besides, they had just seen their shimu take his staff from him as easily as picking it up. They reckoned that although he had beaten Lu Youjiao, that was because Lu Youjiao was slow-witted, clumsy and simply no good, not because this man was anything special. And they thought that since the two of them had received their shifu’s true teaching, even if one of them alone could not beat him, the two together could not possibly lose. Never mind whether he wanted three bouts or four. Truly like newborn calves that have no fear of tigers, the brothers exchanged a glance and went for him with both jians at once.

Guo Jing’s martial arts were great, but he was not much good at teaching disciples. He had grasped the deepest principles of the highest martial learning himself, yet when he tried to pass them on, he could never find the words to make them clear. The Wu brothers’ gifts were ordinary, and how much could they have learnt in a few short years? Within a few moves Huo Du had their long jians hemmed in, and they could do nothing with them.

Sure of the upper hand, Huo Du paid no heed to the two-against-one. When Wu Xiuwen’s jian came thrusting in, he flicked the forefinger of his left hand up under the flat of the blade, while his fan swept slantwise and struck the blade at its middle. With a ringing clang the long jian broke in two.

The Wu brothers were aghast. Wu Xiuwen hurriedly leapt clear, and Wu Dunru, afraid his brother would be hurt, thrust his jian straight at the middle of Huo Du’s back to stop him following up. Huo Du had foreseen just this. Without even turning his head he swung his folded fan back, and the two met exactly, the fan resting on the back of the blade. He gave his fingers two twirls. It was only his fingers that turned, but for the long jian in Wu Dunru’s hand to turn with the fan, his shoulder would have had to come out of its socket. He had no choice but to let go and leap back, and the long jian flew straight up and flashed a few times in the candlelight, high in the air, before it fell.

The Wu brothers were shocked and furious, but though they were empty-handed, they were not afraid. Wu Dunru held his left palm out flat in a stance from the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, while Wu Xiuwen let his right hand hang with the forefinger slightly crooked, ready to meet any attack with the Yiyang Finger.

Huo Du saw the gravity of their stances and did not dare make light of them. He thought, I’ve won enough. Better not push my luck and make a fool of myself. The Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing and the Yiyang Finger were both martial arts of the very first rank. The Wu brothers’ skill was shallow, but the stances they took were exactly right, and though an ordinary onlooker would have seen nothing in them, an expert like Huo Du knew they would be no easy matter. So he gave a hearty laugh, cupped his hands and said, “Please go back to your places, both of you. We’re only deciding who wins and who loses, not fighting to the death.” His tone was already a good deal more courteous.

The Wu brothers’ faces burned with shame. Fighting him bare-handed, they reckoned, would most likely end in a worse defeat still, so they withdrew to one side, crestfallen, but not to where Guo Fu was.

Guo Fu hurried over to them and said loudly, “Brothers Wu, let’s all three of us go in together and fight him again.” Every eye turned to them. Guo Fu raised her jian in her right hand, waved her left and cried, “We three, shixiongs and shimei, will all take you on.”

“Fu’er, stop this nonsense!” barked Guo Jing.

Guo Fu was more afraid of her father than of anyone, and could only fall back a few steps, glaring at Huo Du in a fury.

Huo Du saw how lovely she was and gave her a smiling nod. Guo Fu glared at him and turned her head away, ignoring him.

The Wu brothers had been dreading Guo Fu’s scorn, so to see her take their part so wholeheartedly, which surely showed she cared, was a great comfort to them.

Huo Du opened his folding fan and fanned himself a few times. “Naturally that bout doesn’t count either. Guo daxia, our three are my shifu, my shixiong⁴ and my humble self. My skills are the poorest, so I’ll fight the first bout. Who on your side will come down and give me a lesson? Who wins and who loses, that will be no game.”

Guo Jing had heard his wife say she had a way that could not fail. He knew she had a hundred schemes, and though he did not know what clever plan she had in mind, he felt quite secure. “Very well,” he said loudly. “Three bouts it is, to see who’s the better.”

Huo Du knew that the strongest on the other side was Guo Jing, and his shifu, unbeatable under heaven, was sure to beat him. Huang Rong had pulled that strange trick of seizing the staff, but to judge by how dainty and delicate she looked, she might not be much in a real fight, and the rest were not worth considering. So he ran his eye over the crowd and said, “If anyone has any objection, speak now. Once the contest is decided, you must all obey the Alliance Leader’s commands.”

The heroes were about to agree, but they had seen him beat Lu Youjiao and the Wu brothers one after another, handling each as lightly as a feather, with strength to spare, and no one knew how much more he had yet to show. So no one dared speak up, and they all turned to look at Guo Jing and Huang Rong.

Huang Rong said, “You fight the first bout, your shixiong the second and your honoured shifu the third. That is fixed and won’t change. Is that right?”

“Exactly so,” said Huo Du.

Huang Rong said quietly to those around her, “We’ve won.”

“How so?” said Guo Jing.

Huang Rong said under her breath, “Now set my lord’s worst team against his best…” She said only this much and looked at Zhu Ziliu.

Zhu Ziliu smiled and went on in a low voice, “Set my lord’s best team against his middling, and my lord’s middling team against his worst. And when the three heats were run, Tian Ji⁵ had lost one and won two, and so took the king’s thousand in gold.”⁶

Guo Jing stared at them, with no idea what they were talking about.

Huang Rong whispered in his ear, “You know the art of war so well. How could you forget the clever plan of Sun Bin,⁷ the great forefather of military strategy?”

Then Guo Jing remembered. When he was young and studying the Posthumous Writings of Duke Wu Mu,⁸ Huang Rong had told him this story. Tian Ji, a great general of the state of Qi, raced horses against the King of Qi for a stake of a thousand in gold. Sun Bin taught Tian Ji a sure way to win: race his poorest horses against the king’s best, his best against the king’s middling ones and his middling ones against the king’s poorest. The result was two wins and one loss, and the thousand in gold was his. Huang Rong was plainly borrowing that old ruse now.

Huang Rong said, “Zhu shixiong, with your Yiyang Finger it shouldn’t be hard to beat this Mongol prince.”

Zhu Ziliu had once been chief minister of the Dali Kingdom, a man of great learning and exceptional intelligence. The martial arts of the Duan family of Dali⁹ set great store by understanding. When Zhu Ziliu first joined the Southern Emperor’s school, his martial arts ranked last among the four disciples, the Fisherman, the Woodcutter, the Farmer and the Scholar. Ten years later he had risen to second, and now his martial arts were far beyond those of his three shixiongs. Great Master Yideng treated all four disciples alike and taught them everything he had, holding nothing back, but in the end it was Zhu Ziliu who had grasped the most, above all the Yiyang Finger, which he had trained to a pitch of uncanny mastery. His martial arts were still not the equal of Guo Jing’s, Ma Yu’s or Qiu Chuji’s, but he had already surpassed Wang Chuyi,¹⁰ Hao Datong and their like.

Hearing his wife say this, Guo Jing at once put in, “But it would be very dangerous to ask Daoist Elder Hao to take on State Preceptor Jinlun. Winning or losing doesn’t matter so much, but I’m afraid the enemy’s hands will be too vicious for him to withstand.” Guo Jing was frank and said what he thought, and never stopped to consider that counting himself the best team and Hao Datong the worst was rather less than polite.

Hao Datong understood very well that this contest bore on the fortunes of the nation, a very different thing from the usual wulin fights for fame. If the Mongol State Preceptor seized the place of Alliance Leader of the heroes under heaven, the Han men of valour would never obey the orders of a “foreign Alliance Leader”, but the Han fighters would lose face, and worse, their hearts would scatter, and it might be hard to unite them to resist the enemy and face the nation’s peril together. He said with spirit, “There’s no need to worry about that. So long as it serves the nation, even if this Old Daoist dies at that monk’s hands, it’s no great matter.”

Huang Rong said, “If we win the first two of the three bouts, there’ll be no need to fight the third at all.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed and agreed again and again.

Zhu Ziliu laughed. “I carry a heavy charge. If I can’t beat this Mongol prince, the heroes under heaven will curse me for the rest of my days.”

“No need to be modest,” said Huang Rong. “Please take the field.”

Zhu Ziliu walked into the middle of the hall, cupped his hands to Huo Du and said, “In this first bout, it is I who will seek your instruction. My surname is Zhu, my given name Ziliu. All my life I have loved reciting poetry and matching couplets, practising calligraphy and reading books, and in martial arts I am very rough indeed, so I must beg you to be generous with your teaching.” With that he made a deep bow, took a writing brush from his sleeve and drew a few circles in the air with it, every inch the pedantic scholar.

Huo Du thought, It’s exactly this sort who has the deepest martial arts. I mustn’t take him lightly. He cupped his fist in salute. “I seek your instruction, Senior. Please show your weapon.”

“The barbarian lands have never received the teachings of the sages,” said Zhu Ziliu. “Since you ask for instruction, I shall naturally give you a little.”

Huo Du was angry, and thought, You insult my Mongol people. I’ll show you no mercy. He flicked his folding fan open. “This is my weapon. Do you use a dao or a jian?”

Zhu Ziliu raised his brush and wrote the character for “brush”¹¹ in the air. He laughed. “I have spent my whole life in the company of the brush. What weapon would I know how to use?”

Huo Du looked hard at the brush. It had a bamboo shaft and a goat-hair tip with half an inch of ink on it, quite ordinary, and nothing like the solid steel brushes the wulin uses for striking acupoints. He was about to ask about it when a girl in white walked in from outside.

She stopped at the entrance of the hall, and her eyes travelled slowly over each face in turn, as if she were looking for someone.

Footnotes

1. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 师母 – shīmǔ. The wife of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Mǔ means mother. ↩

3. 点苍渔隐 – Diǎncāng Yúyǐn. Hermit Fisherman of Diancang; one of Great Master Yideng’s four disciples. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 师兄 – shīxiōng. Male senior. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Xiōng means older brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. Tian Ji (田忌). General of the Qi kingdom during the Warring States period, famous for winning a horse race against the King of Qi using Sun Bin’s strategy. ↩

6. Thousand Pieces of Gold (千金). Classical Chinese unit of wealth, also used metaphorically to mean “enormously valuable”. ↩

7. Sun Bin (孙膑). Legendary military strategist of the Warring States period, descendant of Sun Tzu. His strategy of matching inferior against superior, superior against middle, and middle against inferior horses is a classic example of tactical sacrifice for overall victory. ↩

8. Posthumous Writings of Duke Wu Mu (武穆遗书). Military treatise left by Yue Fei, the Song dynasty’s greatest patriot general. Guo Jing studied these writings in his youth. ↩

9. 段氏 – Duàn Shì. The Duan family, the royal house of the Dali Kingdom, known for its hereditary martial arts, above all the Yiyang Finger. ↩

10. 王处一 – Wáng Chùyī. His name meaning “dwelling in oneness”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. Brush (笔). Chinese writing brush, one of the Four Treasures of the Study. Zhu Ziliu uses it as both a calligraphy tool and a martial arts weapon. ↩