The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 15 – Part 4

In the moonlight, Lu Wushuang saw the troubled look on her cousin’s face and knew she had no real confidence. She took a hand-copied booklet from her bosom and brought it inside to Yang Guo. “Fool,” she said, “this is my shifu’s Secret Manual of the Five Venoms.”¹ Yang Guo saw the booklet’s cover was red as blood and felt a slight chill in his heart. Lu Wushuang said, “I lied to her and told her the Beggars’ Guild had taken it. If she captures me later, she’ll search me and find it. Read it through carefully, memorize it, then burn it.” She had never spoken to Yang Guo with any seriousness before, but now, facing what might be her final hour, she had no heart for jokes. Yang Guo saw the sorrow in her expression and nodded, taking the book.

Lu Wushuang then drew out a brocade handkerchief from her bosom and said quietly, “If you should be so unfortunate as to fall into that witch’s hands and she tries to take your life, show her this handkerchief.” Yang Guo saw that the handkerchief was only half a piece, its edge ragged as though torn from something larger. Two corners were embroidered with red flowers. He had no idea what her meaning was. Bewildered, he did not take it. “What is this?” he asked.

Lu Wushuang said, “I’m entrusting it to you to give to her. Will you do it?” Yang Guo nodded and took it, placing it beside his pillow. But Lu Wushuang came over, picked it up, and tucked it into his clothing. Quietly she said, “Don’t let my cousin know.” Suddenly she caught the scent of his masculine presence and remembered the night on the road through the Pass and Shaanxi, how she had removed her clothes for him to set her bones, how they had shared a bed. Her heart quivered. She gazed at him with a long, lovesick look, then turned and left the room.

Yang Guo saw the boundless devotion in that backward glance, and his own heart began to pound. He opened the Secret Manual of the Five Venoms and read a few pages, memorizing the antidotes for the Scarlet Serpent Divine Palm and the Soul-freezing Silver Needles. He thought, Both antidotes are extremely difficult to prepare, but if I survive today, these two formulas will surely prove useful someday.

The door of the thatched cottage creaked open. Yang Guo looked up. Cheng Ying entered, her cheeks flushed, approaching the bedside, her forehead beaded with sweat. Her breathing was slightly quick. She said, “Brother Yang, the earthen formation I’ve set outside the door is truly too crude. It will be very hard to stop the Scarlet Serpent Immortal.” As she spoke, she drew a brocade handkerchief from her bosom and handed it to him. “If she breaks through,” she added, “show her this handkerchief.”

Yang Guo saw that this handkerchief, too, was only half a piece. Its fabric and pattern were identical to the one Lu Wushuang had given him. Startled, he lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. In the lamplight, he saw her eyes glistening with tears, at once bashful and joyful. Just as he was about to ask, Cheng Ying’s face suddenly flushed crimson. She whispered, “Whatever you do, don’t let my cousin know.” With that, she drifted out of the room.

Yang Guo drew Lu Wushuang’s half-handkerchief from his bosom and laid it together with the half in his hand. The two pieces indeed had been torn from the same cloth. The handkerchief was quite old. The white satin had yellowed with age, but the red flowers embroidered at the four corners were still as vivid as if dripping with dew. He stared at the torn handkerchief, knowing it concealed a deep significance. Why had each of them given him half? Why did both want him to give it to Li Mochou? Why did neither want the other to know? And why, when they gave the handkerchief, were both so bashful, their faces glowing with shyness?

He sat on the bed, lost in thought. From the distance came the crowing of another rooster, and then the soft, melancholy sound of a flute began. Cheng Ying, her defensive preparations complete, was playing to ease the heaviness in her heart. The piece was “Flowing Waves,”² the flute’s voice gentle and fine, yet without sorrow. There was even a hint of ease, of a heart untroubled. Yang Guo listened for a while, then softly hummed along. He could not remember the lyrics, so he merely followed the melody with improvised sounds.

Lu Wushuang sat behind an earthen mound, listening to her cousin and Yang Guo harmonizing in flute and song. In the east, the first light of dawn was appearing. She thought, Master will be here any moment. My life will not last past this hour. But I pray that when Master sees the handkerchief, she will spare my cousin and him, and that the two of them… Lu Wushuang had always been sharp and mischievous. Growing up, Cheng Ying had always yielded to her in everything, caring for her with all her heart. But now, facing death, Lu Wushuang’s one single-minded wish was for Yang Guo to be safe. Her feelings for him ran deep. She made a silent vow: if they could only escape this calamity, she would gladly accept his union with her cousin. She could die without regret.

Lost in these thoughts, she suddenly looked up and saw, standing outside the earthen mound, a woman in a yellow robe, a Daoist nun, her horsetail whisk held level, her robes billowing in the breeze. It was her shifu, Li Mochou.

Lu Wushuang’s heart convulsed. She drew her sword and stood. But Li Mochou stood perfectly still, her head tilted, listening.

She had heard the flute and song harmonizing together, and it brought back memories of her youth, when she and her beloved Lu Zhanyuan had played music together, one on the flute, one on the mouth organ. “Flowing Waves” was a piece they had often played in those days. That was twenty years ago. Now the melody was the same, but the wind and moon, heartless, had changed the people in secret.³ Hearing this answering of flute and song, so intimate and tender, a sudden, unbearable pain seized her. She could not restrain herself and burst into loud weeping.

This sudden outpouring of grief was even more unexpected to Lu Wushuang. She had always seen her shifu as stern and murderous, without a trace of softness in her heart. How could someone who had come for revenge and killing be weeping outside the door? But as she listened to the weeping, so utterly wretched, so filled with twisting anguish, she could not help feeling a pang of sorrow herself.

Li Mochou’s weeping alerted Yang Guo and Cheng Ying, and their singing and playing fell out of rhythm. A thought stirred in Li Mochou’s heart. Suddenly she lifted her voice in song, the melody plaintive and desolate:

“Ask the world: what is love, that it binds lives together in life and death? Companions flying north and south, old wings worn through how many cold and warm seasons? The joy of union, the pain of parting, among them are the most lovesick of souls. You must have words to say: across ten thousand li⁴ of layered clouds, a thousand mountains in evening snow. to whom does the lonely shadow fly?”⁵

The flute and song had originally been full of joy, but Li Mochou’s song was bitter in meaning, mournful in tone, and its rhythm and meter were completely different from “Flowing Waves.” As her voice grew softer, it climbed higher and higher. Cheng Ying’s concentration wavered. Unconsciously, she followed the phrase “the joy of union,” and when Li Mochou shifted to “the pain of parting,” Cheng Ying found herself drawn along against her will. She hastily tried to change the key, but the flute’s tone was clear and gentle, and her neili was shallow, she could not produce notes high and fierce enough to contend with Li Mochou’s singing. After a moment’s hesitation, she rushed into the cottage, set down her jade flute, and sat beside the low table to play the qin. Yang Guo also raised his voice in song to lend her strength.

Li Mochou’s singing grew ever more bitter and desolate. Cheng Ying’s qin strings climbed higher and higher in response. Zheng! The first string, the zhi string, suddenly snapped.

Cheng Ying was startled. Her fingering wavered, and the second string, the yu string, also broke. Li Mochou’s long song, now mixed with weeping, the third string, the gong string, snapped as well. Cheng Ying had learned both qin and flute from Huang Yaoshi. Though she had studied under a brilliant shifu, she was still young, and her attainments were shallow. Normally, when an opponent’s strings snap and their melody scatters, when their heart is thrown into confusion, one can advance unopposed. But Li Mochou saw that the earthen formation outside the cottage, however haphazard it appeared, clearly concealed the principles of the Five Elements’ mutual generation and destruction.⁶ She did not understand this art, and having been ambushed and wounded many times in the Ancient Tomb, she could not help feeling wary. An idea came to her. She suddenly circled around to the left side, and in the midst of her piercing song, broke through the wall and entered.

Cheng Ying’s earthen formation, mounds here, piles there, had all been designed to guard the front door. It had never occurred to her that the cottage walls were so flimsy. Li Mochou bypassed the entrance entirely, struck out with both palms, smashed through the earthen wall, and attacked from within. Lu Wushuang was horrified. Sword in hand, she rushed in after her.

Yang Guo, wounded as he was, could not rise to fight. He could only lie still. Cheng Ying knew that fighting Li Mochou would be throwing her life away for nothing. She steeled her heart, put life and death out of her mind, tuned her strings, and began to play “The Peach Tree Tender.”⁷ This melody was glorious and splendid, brimming with joy. In her heart she thought, I have been lonely and wretched all my life. To die today beside Brother Yang, it is not a wasted life. Her gaze drifted toward Yang Guo. Yang Guo gave her a faint smile. Cheng Ying’s heart filled with sweetness and joy. She sang silently to herself: “The peach tree is tender and fair, blazing bright are its blossoms…”⁷ Her qin music grew ever more expansive and free, the notes carrying the gentle warmth of spring breezes, the fragrance of blooming flowers.

The sorrow on Li Mochou’s face gradually faded. She asked Lu Wushuang, “That book, did the Beggars’ Guild take it or not?” Yang Guo tossed the Secret Manual of the Five Venoms to her, saying, “Chief Huang and Chief Lu of the Beggars’ Guild are great in benevolence and righteousness. What use would they have for a sinister book like this? They long ago issued orders that no guild member may turn a single page of this volume.” Li Mochou saw that the book was intact and felt greatly relieved. She also knew that the Beggars’ Guild had always conducted itself with integrity and strict discipline, perhaps they truly had never looked inside.

Yang Guo then drew the two half-handkerchiefs from his bosom and laid them on the low table beside the bed. “Take this handkerchief too,” he said. Li Mochou’s expression changed drastically. With a flick of her whisk, she swept up both pieces of cloth. She held them in her hands, stunned. For a moment, her thoughts surged like a stormy tide. Her mind could not settle. Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang exchanged glances, both blushing. Neither had imagined the other would give her handkerchief to Yang Guo, or that he would produce them so openly.

In that moment, as they looked at one another, hearts full of unspoken feeling, eyes glistening with emotion, the deadly atmosphere in the cottage was transformed in an instant into tenderness and deep affection. Cheng Ying’s qin played “The Peach Tree Tender” with even greater passion and joy.

Suddenly, Li Mochou tore the two brocade handkerchiefs into four pieces. “The past is past,” she said. “What more is there to say?” With both hands she tore them furiously and flung the pieces into the air. The fragments of brocade drifted down like pear blossoms scattered by the wind. Cheng Ying was startled. Zheng! Another qin string snapped.

Li Mochou shouted, “Ha! Break another one!” Amid her mournful singing, the fifth string, the jue string, indeed snapped at the sound. Li Mochou sneered. “In the space of a single breath, I shall make the three of you wish neither to live nor to die. Weep in each other’s arms while you still can.” By now only two strings remained on the qin. Cheng Ying’s skill was mediocre to begin with. She could hardly form a melody now. Li Mochou said, “Play something sorrowful! The world is full of suffering, what joy is there in living?” Cheng Ying plucked the strings twice. Though it was no proper melody, the rhythm was still that of “The Peach Tree Tender.” Li Mochou said, “Fine. I’ll kill one of you first. Let’s see if you grieve then.” With this fierce cry, another string snapped. She raised her horsetail whisk, about to bring it down on Lu Wushuang’s head.

Yang Guo laughed. “The three of us will die together today, happy and content, far better than you, living alone in lonely misery. Ying-mei, Shuang-mei, come here.” Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang came to his bedside. Yang Guo put his left arm around Cheng Ying’s shoulder and his right around Lu Wushuang’s. “The three of us dying together, chatting and laughing on the road to the Yellow Springs⁸, isn’t that ten times better than what this woman has?” Lu Wushuang laughed. “Yes, Fool. You’re absolutely right.” Cheng Ying smiled gently. With Yang Guo’s arms around their shoulders, both cousins felt their hearts drunk with bliss. Yang Guo, however, was thinking, Ah, if only Gugu were here beside me. But he forced himself to smile, gently took each of their hands in his, and drew the two young women close against him.

Li Mochou thought, This boy’s words are not wrong. If the three of them die like this, it truly is better than my being alive. She brooded: How can the world allow such a bargain? I must make you feel heartbreak before you die. So she lightly flicked her whisk, her face cold as frost, and began to sing softly, still that same melody, “Ask the world: what is love, that it binds lives together in life and death?” Her voice, now broken, now continuous, was bitter and piercing, like a discarded wife swallowing her sobs, like a vengeful ghost weeping in the night.

Footnotes

1. 五毒秘传 – Wǔdú Mìchuán. Secret Manual of the Five Venoms, a handwritten compendium recording the preparation and antidotes for various poisons used by Li Mochou. ↩

2. 流波 – “Flowing Waves”. Traditional Chinese melody. Piece’s flowing, gentle quality makes it suitable for expressing quiet contentment, which contrasts sharply with the tension of the approaching confrontation. ↩

3. 风月无情人暗换 – “The wind and moon, heartless, had changed the people in secret”. Adapted from a line by the Song dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu. Original sentiment is that time passes mercilessly, changing people before they realise it. Li Mochou hears the same melody she once played with her lover, but everything else has changed. ↩

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

5. 问世间，情是何物 – “Ask the world: what is love…”. This famous poem is “Touching the Fish” (摸鱼儿), subtitled “Wild Geese Hill” (雁丘词), by the Jin dynasty poet Yuan Haowen. ↩

6. 五行 (Wǔxíng). “Five Elements” or “Five Phases”: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. They interact through cycles of mutual generation and mutual overcoming, forming the basis of Chinese cosmology, medicine, and strategic thought. ↩

7. 桃夭 – “The Peach Tree Tender”. Wedding poem from the Book of Songs (诗经, “Zhou Nan”).” Cheng Ying plays this joyous wedding song as she faces death beside Yang Guo, her heart full of quiet happiness. ↩ ↩²

8. 黄泉 – Yellow Springs. Underworld in Chinese mythology, equivalent to the Greek Hades. “The road to the Yellow Springs” is a poetic euphemism for death. ↩