The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 15

The Eastern Heretic's Disciples.

Outside the stone formation, Da’erba¹ and the Mongol warriors were stunned. Inside, Guo Fu² and the Wu brothers were equally alarmed. All rushed forward to help. Da’erba possessed astonishing strength, and among the Mongol warriors were several skilled fighters. How could Guo Fu and the two Wus stand against them? Suddenly they saw the Golden Wheel National Preceptor³ rise unsteadily, swing his iron wheel with a ringing clang that shook the heart, his face deathly pale. He threw back his head and laughed to the heavens, but the laughter was filled with desolation and bitter anguish. Everyone stared at one another in horror and halted their advance.

The National Preceptor rasped, “In all my years, I have never suffered even the slightest wound at an opponent’s hand. Today I have wounded myself, is this Heaven’s will?” He reached out with a large hand to seize Huang Rong⁴.

Yang Guo⁵ had been thrown to the ground by the Preceptor’s palm force, his chest injured, unable to rise. Seeing Huang Rong in danger, he still mustered his strength to swing his staff across, deflecting the grasping hand. But the exertion made him cough up a mouthful of fresh blood. Huang Rong said sorrowfully, “Guoer, we accept defeat. Don’t fight anymore. Take care of yourself.” Guo Fu raised her longsword and stood protectively before her mother. Yang Guo said quietly, “Fu-mei, you must flee. Getting word to your father is what matters most.”

Guo Fu’s mind was in chaos. She knew her martial skills were meagre, but how could she bear to leave her mother? The Golden Wheel National Preceptor flicked his iron wheel, striking her longsword. With a clang, a flash of white light, the sword flew through the air and landed in the woods.

Just as the National Preceptor was about to push Guo Fu aside and seize Huang Rong, a woman’s voice called out: “Hold!” From the woods sprang a figure in green, who caught the falling sword midair. In three bounds, she had entered the stone formation. The Preceptor saw her face, dreadful beyond words, three parts human, seven parts ghost. Never in his life had he seen such a bizarre countenance. He froze, demanding, “Who are you?” The woman did not answer. She bent to push a boulder, placing it between him and Huang Rong, and said, “You must be the renowned Golden Wheel National Preceptor?” Her face was hideous, yet her voice was remarkably sweet and tender. The Preceptor replied, “Indeed. And who might you be?” The woman said, “I am a nameless girl. You could not possibly know me.” As she spoke, she shifted another boulder three feet.

By now the sun had set, and the woods were dim with twilight. A thought stirred in the Preceptor’s mind, and he shouted, “What are you doing?” He moved to stop her from shifting more stones, but the woman called out, “Horned Wood Dragon transforms to Golden Dragon of the East!”⁶ Guo Fu and the two Wus were startled. “How does she know the formation’s changes?” they thought. But her commands carried an air of authority, and they obeyed at once, moving the stones. With four or five boulders shifted, the scattered formation stirred to life once more.

The Golden Wheel National Preceptor was both startled and enraged. He bellowed, “A mere slip of a girl dares to interfere!” But she continued calling: “Heart Moon Fox shifts to Sun Rabbit of the Chamber,” “Net Moon Bird moves to Wood Wolf of the Legs,” “Earth Bat of the Maiden enters Fire Pig of the Room.”⁶ Every command she gave named the positions of the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions. Guo Fu and the two Wus heard her calling the formations as smoothly as Huang Rong herself had done, and their hearts swelled with joy. They strained to move the stones, and before their eyes the National Preceptor was about to be trapped once more.

The Preceptor had been struck on the back by a boulder. He had forcibly circulated his neili⁷ to protect himself, and though he showed no sign of it yet, his internal injuries were far from light. He no longer had the strength to kick stones aside. He knew that if he delayed even a moment longer, he would be trapped in the formation. Da’erba, for all his brute strength, understood nothing of formations and could not help. The Preceptor saw Huang Rong struggling to rise, still unable to stand steady, only a few steps and he could seize her with ease. Yet escape was more pressing. He feinted with his iron wheel, aiming for Wu Xiuwen’s head. Wounded as he was, his arm was limp and weak. Merely lifting the iron wheel was a struggle. If Wu Xiuwen had drawn his sword to parry, he could have knocked the wheel from the Preceptor’s grip. But the Preceptor’s presence was so fearsome that even a feint seemed irresistible. Wu Xiuwen dared not meet it head-on and shrank back into the formation.

The Golden Wheel National Preceptor slowly withdrew from the stone formation. He stood still for a long moment, his heart churning with emotion. “Today I let slip this golden opportunity. I fear I shall never meet with such fortune again. Does Heaven truly protect the Great Song, thwarting my great cause? That I should be wounded today is purely Heaven’s will. The Central Plains jianghu⁸ produces talents in every generation, even these few young men and women possess both civil and martial virtues. One cannot take them lightly. We foreign heroes pale in comparison.” He pressed his chest and sighed deeply, then turned to leave. After ten paces, there was a sudden clatter, the iron wheel fell to the ground. His body swayed. He believed deeply in fate, and felt that since his schemes had failed, they could not be forced.

Da’erba, horrified, cried out, “Shifu!” He rushed forward to support him. “Shifu, what is wrong?” The Golden Wheel National Preceptor furrowed his brow in silence, placed a hand on his disciple’s shoulder, and said quietly, “A pity, a pity. Let us go.” A Mongol warrior brought over a horse. The Preceptor, too severely wounded to mount, was lifted onto the saddle by Da’erba, who supported his shifu’s waist with one palm. The party rode eastward.

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The young woman in green walked slowly to Yang Guo’s side. She paused, then bent to examine his face, checking the severity of his injuries. By now night had deepened. Even at a foot’s distance it was hard to see clearly. She leaned close to Yang Guo’s face and saw his eyes wide open, vacant and unfocused, his cheeks flushed, his breathing rapid, he was badly hurt.

In his daze, Yang Guo saw only a pair of gentle, tender eyes drawing close to his face, looking at him the way Xiaolongnü⁹ always did, soft, full of pity. He threw his arms around her and cried, “Gugu, Guoer is hurt. Don’t go away and leave me.”

The young woman in green was both mortified and anxious. She struggled slightly, and at once a searing pain shot through Yang Guo’s chest. He could not help crying out. The young woman dared not struggle harder. She whispered, “I am not your Gugu. Let go of me.” Yang Guo gazed into her eyes and pleaded, “Gugu, don’t abandon me. I… I am your Guoer.” The young woman’s heart softened, and she said gently, “I am not your Gugu.” By now the sky was even darker, and her terrible, ugly face was wholly hidden in the blackness. Only her eyes shone with bright, clear light. Yang Guo clutched her hand, begging without cease: “Yes, you are! You… don’t leave me again.” The young woman, held in his embrace, was so mortified her whole body burned with embarrassment. She did not know what to do. Seeing her warm, gentle gaze, Yang Guo cried, “You’re not Gugu, then you must be my wife! Are you… are you my wife?” The young woman shrank back and involuntarily pushed him away. “No, no! I am not your wi… wife!”

Suddenly Yang Guo’s mind cleared. He realised with a shock that the person before him was not Xiaolongnü. The disappointment was crushing. The world spun around him, and he fainted.

The young woman was alarmed. She saw Guo Fu and the two Wus gathered around Huang Rong, tending to her, and no one attending to Yang Guo. Seeing how gravely he was wounded, she supported him by the waist and half-dragged, half-carried him out of the stone formation. Turning to Guo Fu, she said, “Miss Guo, this Master Yang is badly hurt. I will try to find treatment for him. Please tell your mother I shall pay my respects another day.” Guo Fu asked, “Who are you, Jiejie? Do you know my mother?” The young woman replied, “I believe I do.” Supporting Yang Guo, she slowly made her way out of the woods. The lean horse, being clever and knowing its master, trotted up to them. The young woman lifted Yang Guo onto the horse’s back but did not ride with him. Instead, she walked alongside, holding the reins.

Yang Guo drifted between clarity and confusion. Sometimes he thought the woman beside him was Xiaolongnü and would cry out with joy. Other times he realised she was not, and his entire body felt as though plunged into an ice pit. He had no idea how much time passed. He only knew that a clear, fragrant sensation seeped into his mouth and penetrated the wound in his chest, indescribably soothing and pleasant. Slowly he opened his eyes and could not help being startled. He was lying on a cot, a thin blanket covering him. When he tried to turn and sit up, a sharp pain shot through his breastbone. He could not move at all.

He turned his head and saw, by the window, a young woman in green. Her left hand held down a sheet of paper while her right gripped a brush. She was writing. Her back was to the bed, so he could not see her face, but her silhouette was slender, her waist a delicate curve, exceedingly graceful. Looking around, he saw he was in a small room in a thatched cottage: plank bed, wooden stool, simple utensils, bare walls on all sides, yet spotlessly clean, serene and utterly refined. On a bamboo stand beside the bed sat a jade qin zither and a jade xiao flute, side by side.

He remembered only the fierce battle with the Golden Wheel National Preceptor in the forest stone formation. How had he come to this place? His mind was a blank. Straining to think, he vaguely recalled lying across a horse’s back while someone led the horse, a woman. Now, thinking back, he dimly remembered this young woman’s silhouette. She was absorbed in her writing, her right arm moving gently with an air of graceful ease. The room was perfectly silent. Compared to the fierce struggle in the stone formation earlier, it seemed he had entered another world entirely. He dared not disturb her by making a sound. He simply lay still. It was exactly as the verse describes: After the dream, the tower stands locked and high. Waking from wine, the curtain hangs low.¹⁰ He truly could not tell what world or age he was in.

Suddenly a thought stirred: this young woman in green was the same person who had warned him on the Chang’an road and later joined him to rescue Lu Wushuang¹¹. He had no connection to her, no ties of kinship or friendship. Why was she so good to him? The words escaped his lips before he could stop them: “Jiejie, so it was you who saved my life again.”

The young woman stopped writing but did not turn around. Softly she said, “I can hardly claim to have saved your life. I happened to be passing by and saw that Mongol monk being so brutish, and you were wounded…” She lowered her head slightly. Yang Guo said, “Jiejie, I… I…” His heart was full of gratitude, and for a moment his throat was choked. He could not speak. The young woman said, “Your heart is good, you risked your own life to save others. That I lent a little strength hardly counts for anything.” Yang Guo said, “Auntie Guo raised me. When she was in danger, of course I had to do all I could. But you and I…” The young woman said, “I wasn’t speaking of your Auntie Guo. I meant Lu Wushuang, the Lu family girl, your wife.”

Footnotes

1. 达尔巴 – Dá’ěrbā. Golden Wheel National Preceptor’s second disciple. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 郭芙 – Guō Fú. Her name meaning “lotus”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 金轮国师 – Jīnlún Guóshī. Mongol Empire’s national teacher and martial arts adept. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

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

6. 二十八宿 – Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions. Ancient Chinese system dividing the celestial sphere into twenty-eight segments, each named after a constellation. These mansions were used in traditional Chinese astronomy, astrology, and in the qimen dunjia formation arts. Names follow a pattern of animal and element associations: Horned Wood Dragon (角木蛟), Golden Dragon of the East (亢金龙), Heart Moon Fox (心月狐), Sun Rabbit of the Chamber (房日兔), Net Moon Bird (毕月乌), Wood Wolf of the Legs (奎木狼), Earth Bat of the Maiden (女土蝠), Fire Pig of the Room (室火猪). ↩ ↩²

7. 内力 – nèilì. Literally internal force. Kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi; generates tangible effects such as deflecting weapons or scaling walls. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 江湖 – jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. Itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach, holding not only martial artists but the trades that travel with them, including pedlars, physicians, fortune-tellers, entertainers, boatmen, beggars, outlaws and the like. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

10. “After the dream, the tower stands locked and high…”. From the Song dynasty poet Yan Jidao’s lyric poem to the tune “Immortal by the River” (临江仙). Full couplet evokes the disorientation of waking from a dream or from drunkenness, not knowing what world one inhabits. Verse perfectly captures Yang Guo’s bewildered state. ↩

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