The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 16 – Part 2

Seeing the sorry plight she was in, Yang Guo at once picked up the shabby old gown Feng Mofeng had thrown off and, with a surge of neili,¹ flung it at her back. The gown opened its arms like a man and folded her in them. Li Mochou hurriedly thrust her arms into the sleeves and pulled the front closed. For all the great battles and grand occasions she had seen in her life, she could not help feeling shock and shame together, and her face went red and white by turns. Should she go on fighting? She thought, If I close with him again, this gown will burn too. I’ll have to swallow this for now. She nodded to Yang Guo in thanks for the gown, then turned to Feng Mofeng. “Using freakish weapons like these,” she said, “you truly are heir to Old Heretic Huang’s crooked ways. Tell me honestly, hand on heart: if we fought with true martial skill, could you beat me? If one of Old Heretic Huang’s disciples met me fairly, one against one, could he get the upper hand?”

“If you hadn’t lost your weapon,” Feng Mofeng said frankly, “you would have beaten me, given time.” Li Mochou said haughtily, “As long as you know it. What I wrote on that paper, that the disciples of Peach Blossom Island win by weight of numbers, was no lie.”

Feng Mofeng bowed his head in thought. After a while he said, “Whoever insults my Kind Master,² I’ll fight him to the death! If my four shixiongs Qu, Chen, Mei and Lu were here, any one of them would be more than a match for you. Never mind Qu shixiong and Chen shixiong with their peerless martial arts. Even Mei Chaofeng shijie, who was only a woman, you could never have beaten.”

Li Mochou laughed coldly. “Those people are dead, and the dead can’t bear witness. What more is there to say? Old Heretic Huang’s martial arts amount to no more than this. I had meant to try the marvellous skills of his own daughter, Madam Guo, but one corner shows me the other three, so there’s no need.” With that she turned to go.

An idea stirred in Yang Guo. “Wait!” he said. Li Mochou’s fine brows rose. “What is it?” Yang Guo said, “If you think the Master of Peach Blossom Island’s martial arts amount to no more than this, you are wrong. I have heard him describe a Jade Flute Swordplay³ that can break your whisk technique completely.” He picked up an iron bar and began sketching figures on the ground, explaining as he went. “Look. This head-on strike of yours is swift and deadly, true enough. But his long jian slashes across from here, and you can’t pull back in time. If you strike back the other way, the jian darts in from here. If you sweep at his acupoints head-on with your whisk, he catches its tail with the Tiger Form Claw, reverses his jian and drives the hilt up into your Jianzhen acupoint.⁴ Could you have foreseen that move?” The move was beyond anything she could have imagined, and yet it was exquisitely brilliant. The head-on sweep at the acupoints was one of the deadliest moves in Li Mochou’s whisk technique, and the move Yang Guo described left her no way of answering it at all. She could only drop her whisk and admit defeat.

Gesturing as he spoke, Yang Guo went on, “As for your Scarlet Serpent Palm, the Master of Peach Blossom Island keeps his fingernails long. He turns your palm aside like this, and when your hand comes in, he uses the Divine Finger Flick⁵ and flicks a nail into the centre of your palm, like so. Wouldn’t that hand be crippled on the spot? Then he need only pare the nail off at once, and the deadly poison on your palm can never reach him.” He went on to describe a dozen or more ways in which Huang Yaoshi’s arts could master hers.

Li Mochou’s face turned the colour of earth as she listened. Every word he said rang true, every skill he described was ingenious beyond compare, and none of them, she knew, was anything she could withstand.

Yang Guo went on, “The Master of Peach Blossom Island is angered by your insolent talk. But he is a great grandmaster and will not stoop to fight you himself, so he has passed these methods to me and told me to deal with you in his place. Still, I remembered that you and my shifu are fellow disciples, which makes you my shibo,⁶ so today I am only telling you how formidable the Master of Peach Blossom Island is. The next time you meet one of his disciples, you had better keep well away.”

Li Mochou was silent for a long while. “So be it, so be it!” she said. She turned and left, and in the blink of an eye she had vanished behind the mountain. Few in the world could move as fast as she did.

In truth, though Huang Yaoshi had indeed passed these methods to Yang Guo, it would be three years at the very least before he could train them to the point of using them to beat a real enemy. Yet with nothing but talk, without lifting a finger, he had frightened her into submission heart and soul, and never again as long as she lived would she dare say one slighting word about Huang Yaoshi.

Lu Wushuang had lived so long under the weight of Li Mochou’s authority that the mere sound of her voice set her heart pounding. Seeing her go, she felt a great load lifted from her. She clapped her hands and laughed. “Fool! What a tongue you have. You’ve even scared my shifu away.”

While Yang Guo was explaining the moves to Li Mochou, gesturing and sketching as his body swayed this way and that, Cheng Ying had glimpsed, beneath the new robe she had sewn for him, the same tattered old robe as before. Plainly, because that one had been sewn by Xiaolongnü,⁷ he knew whom he held closer and would never cast off the old. Cheng Ying felt a small pang, but she pretended not to care in the least.

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Yang Guo said softly to Cheng Ying, “Cheng shijie, Li Mochou couldn’t stand up to Feng shixiong’s matchless courage and his do-or-die attack, so she saw how things stood and withdrew. But if you run into her again on your own, you’ll still be in danger. Shall we practise the two arts Shifu passed on?” Cheng Ying nodded.

The two of them went to a clearing at the edge of the wood beside the smithy and worked through Huang Yaoshi’s Divine Finger Flick and Jade Flute Swordplay. The Divine Finger Flick needed long years of accumulated skill, training the fingers to an almost supernatural strength, before it could beat an enemy. It was nothing that could be used in a short time, and Cheng Ying already knew the method of training it. What Yang Guo relied on against the Scarlet Serpent Divine Palm were the matchless speed and unfathomable changes of the Jade Maiden Divine Palm,⁸ a secret art of the Ancient Tomb School that could not be taught to outsiders. So the two of them studied the Jade Flute Swordplay. Move by move, Yang Guo broke down for Cheng Ying the clever tricks and strokes of the swordplay Huang Yaoshi had taught him, playing Li Mochou himself and letting her counter with the jade flute. He swung his belt as if it were the whisk and swept it at her face. Cheng Ying, who was very quick, suddenly turned and jabbed the flute into the small of his back. She was using a dummy flute made of hard bamboo, and in truth Yang Guo felt little pain. But to please her he hammed it up, yelling “Ouch!” and leaping high into the air with his face screwed up in agony.

Lu Wushuang, watching from the side, clapped her hands and laughed out loud. “Cousin, well done, hit the Fool again!” Cheng Ying smiled. “You think that was real! Big Brother Yang let me do it.” “Fine,” said Lu Wushuang. “The two of you can play your real-and-pretend games here. Will you play at bowing to Heaven and Earth too?”⁹ “Better leave that game to the little wife!” said Cheng Ying. Lu Wushuang pouted. “I bet he’d rather play it with you.” Cheng Ying raised her bamboo to hit her, and Lu Wushuang stuck out her tongue. “I’ll go and see how the Fool’s dear elder sister is getting on.”

She had barely turned when from beyond the hill came a din of men shouting and horses neighing, rumbling faintly like thunder.

“I’ll go and look,” said Yang Guo. He sprang onto his horse, rode out of the fold in the hills and galloped several li¹⁰ to the high road. Dust was flying and banners blotted out the sky: a great column of Mongol troops was marching south, iron bows and long daos rolling on like the waves of the sea. Yang Guo had never seen a great army set out, and the heart-stopping spectacle held him spellbound.

Two common soldiers flourished their long daos and bawled, “You there, southern barbarian, what are you gawping at?” and came charging at him. Yang Guo wheeled his horse and fled. The two soldiers bent their bows and set arrows to the string, and with two whistling hisses the shafts flew at the middle of his back. Yang Guo reached behind him and caught them. He could feel how hard and fast they had been driven. Had he not known martial arts, they would have gone clean through his chest. Seeing such skill, the two soldiers took fright, reined in their horses and dared not chase him further.

Yang Guo went back to the smithy and told them what he had seen. Feng Mofeng sighed. “So the great Mongol army is coming south after all. The common people of our China are in for bitter times!” Yang Guo said, “Song soldiers truly can’t stand against Mongol horsemanship and archery. This will be no small calamity.” Feng Mofeng said, “Young Master Yang, you are in the prime of youth. Why not go back south and join the army to fight off the invaders?” Yang Guo was taken aback. “No,” he said. “I must go north to look for my aunt. The Mongol army is so vast. What could one man do?” Feng Mofeng shook his head. “One man’s strength is small, but the strength of many is great. If everyone thought as you do, Young Master, who would ever stand up to the foreign invaders?”

Yang Guo knew there was nothing wrong in what he said, but nothing in the world could matter more than finding Xiaolongnü. He had drifted about the jianghu since he was a child and suffered much at the hands of petty officials and minor clerks, and it seemed to him that, cruel as the Mongols might be, the Song emperor and his ministers were not necessarily good men either, and not worth exerting himself for. So he only smiled and let the matter drop.

Feng Mofeng bound his hammer, tongs, bellows and the rest into a bundle and slung it on his back. To Cheng Ying he said, “Shimei, when you see Shifu again, tell him that his disciple Feng Mofeng has never dared forget his teaching. Today I go to the Mongol army, and if it costs me my life, I will still assassinate one or two of the princes and generals who are invading our land. Take good care of yourself, shimei. To have met one of Shifu’s new heirs today makes me truly glad.” With that, leaning on his iron crutch, he went off without once looking back, and he never spared Yang Guo another glance.

Yang Guo glanced at Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang. “Who would have thought I’d come to know so remarkable a man in a place like this?” Lu Wushuang, whose heart was on Yang Guo’s side, said, “Cousin, apart from you, everyone who studied under your shifu is either half-witted or half-mad.” Cheng Ying laughed and said lightly, “Feng shige¹¹ is a loyal and righteous man who has never forgotten his shifu’s kindness. He is a model for all of us. You call him half-mad, but he might well say that we have no feeling for our homeland at all. Besides, am I not a little half-witted and half-mad myself?” At these words Yang Guo’s heart gave a jolt. He studied her face, but it was as calm as ever, and he could not make out whether she meant something more by it.

Suddenly there was a thud: Shagu¹² had toppled off her stool. The three of them started and hurried to lift her onto the kang.¹³ Her face was flushed scarlet and her eyes stared fixedly, and they knew the poison of the Scarlet Serpent Divine Palm had flared up again. Cheng Ying gave her medicine while Yang Guo pressed and kneaded her acupoints. Shagu stared at him, dazed, her face full of terror. “Brother Yang,” she cried, “don’t come for my life. It wasn’t me who hurt you…” “Don’t be afraid, Sister,” Cheng Ying said gently. “He isn’t…”

A thought flashed into Yang Guo’s mind, Her wits are wandering. Now’s the moment to force the truth out of her. With a turn of both hands he locked her wrists. “Who killed me?” he said harshly. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have your life for it.” “Brother Yang,” Shagu pleaded, “it wasn’t me.” “You won’t tell!” Yang Guo said furiously. “Very well, I’ll throttle you.” He reached out and clamped a hand round her throat. Shagu shrieked in terror. Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang had no idea what Yang Guo meant by it, and both cried out to stop him, one calling “Big Brother Yang” and the other “Fool”, one saying, “Don’t frighten her,” and the other, “How can you play about at a time like this?”

Footnotes

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

2. 恩师 – ēnshī. Kind Master. A disciple’s address to his shifu, stressing gratitude for the teacher’s kindness and instruction. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 玉箫剑法 – Yùxiāo Jiànfǎ. Huang Yaoshi’s sword technique, so named because he created it while playing the jade flute, merging music with swordsmanship. ↩

4. 肩贞穴 – Jiānzhēn Xué. Acupoint on the Small Intestine meridian, located at the back of the shoulder joint. ↩

5. 弹指神通 – Tánzhǐ Shéntōng. Huang Yaoshi’s signature finger technique. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. Shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

8. 玉女神掌 – Yùnǚ Shénzhǎng. Palm technique of the Ancient Tomb School, characterised by lightning speed and unpredictable variations. ↩

9. 拜天地 – Bowing to Heaven and Earth. Central ritual of a traditional Chinese wedding, in which the couple bows to Heaven and Earth, to their parents, and to each other. Lu Wushuang is teasingly asking if they’re going to get married. ↩

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

11. 师哥 – shīgē. Male senior, the colloquial form of shixiong. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Gē means older brother. ↩

12. 曲傻姑 – Qū Shǎgū. Daughter of Qu Lingfeng; mentally impaired but possesses formidable martial arts taught by Huang Yaoshi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 炕 – kàng. Traditional heated brick bed platform common in northern China, built with a flue system that channels heat from a cooking stove or fire underneath. ↩