The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 16 – Part 8
Translation by Jenxi Seow
There was only one mountain path, so they could not go astray, but it climbed ever higher and grew ever rougher. Night was falling, and still there was no sign of the four in green. They were growing impatient when they suddenly saw several fires burning in the distance. Everyone was delighted, and each of them thought, In wild hills and a godforsaken valley like this, where there’s firelight there must be people living. Apart from those green-clad folk, no ordinary person would live in such a forbidding place. They broke into a run, each on his guard, knowing he had entered dangerous ground. But every one of them had roamed the jianghu alone in his time and come through many perils, and now that six great masters were entering the mountains side by side, who under heaven could stop them? So though they were wary, they were not afraid.
Before long they came to a broad, level stretch on the summit, where a huge bonfire was blazing. When they had gone several hundred feet closer, they could see clearly by its light that behind the fire stood a stone house.
Nimoxing called out loudly, “Hey, hey, guests are coming! You come out quick.” The door of the stone house slowly opened and four people came out, three men and a woman: the very same people in green who had captured Zhou Botong that day. The four bowed in greeting, and the one on the right said, “Honoured guests have come from afar and we failed to come out and greet you. We are truly sorry.” “Not at all, not at all,” said the State Preceptor. The man said, “Please, all of you, come in.”
State Preceptor Jinlun and the other five went into the stone house. It was bare inside, with nothing in it but a few tables and chairs. The four in green came in after them and sat down in the hosts’ places. The first of them said, “May I make so bold as to ask the honoured names of our six guests?” Yin Kexi, the best talker among them, smilingly told him who the other five were, and finished, “My own name is Yin Kexi. I’m a Persian, a westerner, and apart from eating, my only skill is knowing a bit about pearls, jade and treasures. I’m not like these friends of mine, every one of them master of some peerless art.”
The man in green said, “Our home is very remote and lonely, and no outsider has ever come to call. It is our great good fortune that honoured guests should visit us today. But may I ask what business brings the six of you here?” Yin Kexi laughed. “We saw the four of you catch that Old Urchin Zhou Botong and bring him here, and our curiosity got the better of us, so we came to have a look. The scenery here is so secluded and lovely, it has truly opened our eyes. The journey was well worth it.”
The first man in green said, “So that troublemaking old fellow’s surname is Zhou? He well deserves to be called the Old Urchin.” He spoke with deep resentment. The second man in green said, “Are you all travelling with him?” The State Preceptor broke in, “We only met him today ourselves. There’s no friendship to speak of between us.” Yang Guo said, “He is my friend. Please let him go.”
The first man in green said, “That Old Urchin barged into our valley and ran riot without any reason at all.” The State Preceptor asked, “What did he do? Did he really tear up books and set fire to the house, as you said?” The man in green said indignantly, “That’s exactly what he did. Our shifu had set me to watch the elixir furnace. I’ve no idea how the old man got into the elixir room, but he started babbling nonsense at me without end. He wanted to tell me stories, then he wanted me to bet him at somersaults. Not quite mad and not quite sane. The furnace was at its most critical point and I couldn’t attend to him, so I had to pretend I hadn’t heard. Then all of a sudden he kicked out and knocked the whole furnace of elixir over. The ingredients for that batch are very hard to come by. Heaven knows how many months and years it will be before we can gather them all again.” He was still seething as he spoke.
Yang Guo laughed. “And then he blamed you for ignoring him and said it was all your fault, didn’t he?” The girl in green said, “Exactly. I was in the lingzhi1 room when I heard a great commotion in the elixir room, and I knew something had gone wrong. I was just about to go and see when this strange old man darted in and snapped a four-hundred-year-old lingzhi in two.” Yang Guo saw that the girl was about seventeen or eighteen, with a delicate complexion, translucent and snow-white, clear eyes and a tiny black mole beside her mouth. She was very lovely. “That Old Urchin really did go too far,” he said. “A lingzhi that has grown for over four hundred years must be rare and precious indeed.” The girl sighed. “My father meant to share it with my stepmother on their wedding day, and the Old Urchin ruined it. My father flew into a towering rage, of course. And after breaking the lingzhi, the Old Urchin put it inside his robe and wouldn’t give it back to me for anything. He just laughed and laughed. I hadn’t done anything to offend him. I don’t know why he picked on me like that for no reason at all.” As she spoke the rims of her eyes reddened, and she looked very hurt. Yang Guo thought, It’s not right for the Old Urchin to bully this young lady for no reason. “Later on I’ll help you get it back from him, Miss,” he said to comfort her.
Yin Kexi said, “May I ask your honoured father’s name? We have blundered in uninvited without even knowing our host’s name, which is a sad lapse of manners.” The girl hesitated and did not answer. The first man in green said, “Without the Valley Master’s leave we cannot tell you. We beg our honoured guests’ pardon.”
Yang Guo thought, These people live hidden in a remote valley and keep their doings so secret. Of course they don’t want outsiders to know who they are. “After the Old Urchin took the lingzhi,” he asked, “what happened then?”
The third man in green said, “Not content with running riot in the elixir room and the lingzhi room, this fellow Zhou burst into the library too, grabbed a book and started reading. It was my duty, so I had no choice but to stop him. But he said, ‘This stuff’s for fooling little children. Nothing to make a fuss about!’ and in one go he tore up three Daoist books. By then our eldest shixiong, our second shixiong and our shimei had all come running. Even the four of us together couldn’t hold him.” The State Preceptor smiled faintly. “This Old Urchin has an outlandish nature, but his martial arts truly are formidable. He would never be easy to hold.”
The second man in green said, “He wrecked the elixir room, the lingzhi room and the library, and still he wouldn’t leave the sword chamber alone. The moment he set foot inside, he flew into a temper, saying there were too many weapons… too many weapons in there, hanging and lying about everywhere, and one had nearly stabbed him. He set a fire then and there and burned every painting and scroll of calligraphy on the walls of the sword chamber. While we were busy putting the fire out, he seized his chance and got away. Then we realised how serious this was, so we chased him out of the valley, caught him and brought him back for the Valley Master to deal with.”
Yang Guo said, “I wonder what the Valley Master will do with him. I only hope he won’t take his life.” The third man in green said, “Our shifu is soon to be married and will not lightly kill anyone. But if the old fellow goes on talking nonsense and saying unpleasant things to offend our shifu, he’ll only have himself to blame and no one else.”
Yin Kexi laughed. “I wonder why the Old Urchin went out of his way to make trouble for your honoured shifu? Mischievous as he is, he doesn’t seem to me to have a bad temper.” The girl in green said, “He said my father was so old, and still marrying…” Her shixiong suddenly broke in, “That Old Urchin talks such drivel, how can anyone take it seriously? You have all come a long way and must be hungry. Allow me to serve you a meal.” “Splendid, splendid!” Ma Guangzuo bellowed, his face lighting up at once.
The four in green went into the kitchen to fetch rice and dishes, and soon they had laid out a meal: four big bowls of food, green for greens, white for beancurd and radish, yellow for bean sprouts, black for dried mushrooms. There was not a single dish of meat or fish among them.
Since he was less than three months old, Ma Guangzuo had never enjoyed a meal without meat, and the four great bowls of vegetables before him had not so much as a speck of oil. He was bitterly disappointed. The first man in green said, “In our valley we forswear meat and fish entirely. We must ask our honoured guests to forgive us. Please, eat.” With that he brought out a large porcelain jar and filled the bowl before each of them with clear, limpid water. Ma Guangzuo thought, If there’s no meat to eat, a few bowls of wine will be better than nothing. He raised his bowl and gulped down two mouthfuls, glug, glug, but it tasted of nothing at all: it was plain water. “Our host is a miserable skinflint,” he bawled. “Not even a bowl of wine.”
The first man in green said, “No wine of any kind may be used in the valley. That has been our ancestral rule for several hundred years. We must ask our honoured guests to forgive us.” The girl in green said, “We have only ever seen the words ‘fine wine’ in books. What fine wine actually looks like, we have never seen. The books say wine leads a man astray, so I suppose it can’t be anything good.”
The State Preceptor, Yin Kexi and the others saw that, young as these four in green were, they spoke and behaved in the most pedantic, starchy way, and since the moment they met, not one of the four had shown the ghost of a smile. Not that their faces were hateful, but their talk was truly insipid. It was just as the saying goes: when talk does not agree, half a sentence is too much. No one said any more, and they bent their heads over their food. The four in green withdrew and did not come back.
When the meal was over, Ma Guangzuo clamoured to go back that very night. But the other five, seeing something uncanny everywhere in the valley, had their curiosity roused and all wanted to get to the bottom of it. Besides, the State Preceptor was under Kublai’s orders to win Zhou Botong over. “Brother Ma,” he said, “we still have to meet the Valley Master tomorrow. How can we go back now?” “No wine and no meat,” Ma Guangzuo shouted. “I can’t stand a life like this for half a day.” Xiaoxiangzi said, stony-faced, “Everyone says we’re not going. What are you making all this noise for on your own?”
Ma Guangzuo had always been secretly afraid of Xiaoxiangzi’s corpse-like looks, and when he spoke like that, Ma Guangzuo did not dare say another word.
That night the six of them slept in the stone house, with nothing but a few straw mats on the floor. Everything in the valley seemed to them utterly unnatural, stricter and drearier even than a monastery. Monks in a monastery might keep a vegetarian table, but they would never treat people so coldly and never once crack a smile. Only Yang Guo, who was used to living in the Ancient Tomb and used to Xiaolongnü’s icy coldness, did not mind in the least.
Nimoxing said indignantly, “Old Urchin pull down house, set fire, very very good!” At this Ma Guangzuo heartily agreed and cheered aloud. Nimoxing said, “Brother Jinlun, you are head of us six. What you say this Valley Master is? Good man or not good? Tomorrow we be polite to him, or beat him like falling flowers… falling flowers and something water?”2 The State Preceptor said, “Like the rest of you, I can’t make out what sort of man this Valley Master is. We’ll act as the moment allows tomorrow.” Yin Kexi said quietly, “These four disciples in green are no weaklings at martial arts, and there are surely greater masters in the valley. We must all be very careful. The least slip, and all six of us could be trapped here, and that would be very bad indeed.”
Ma Guangzuo was still grumbling on and on about how the food would not go down, and had not heard a word of it. Yang Guo said, “If you don’t listen and go about in a muddle, and tomorrow you get careless and they catch you and lock you up for life, feeding you nothing but plain water and plain rice, greens and beancurd all day long, I’m afraid even the worms in your belly will die of rage…” Ma Guangzuo was badly alarmed. “Good brother,” he said quickly, “I’m listening, I’m listening.”
That night, in that dangerous place, none of them slept easy, except Ma Guangzuo, who snored like thunder and now and then shouted in his sleep, “Come on, come on! Bottoms up! What a big piece of beef, nice and fat!”