The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 17 – Part 3

Xiaoxiangzi paid no attention. From under his long robe he brought out an enormous pair of shears. “Do you know what these shears are for?” The others merely found the great shears a curiosity, but Yang Guo got a nasty shock. He did not even need to feel in his pack. He straightened his back a little and knew at once that the great shears were gone from it. Blacksmith Feng made these shears for me, to cut through Li Mochou’s¹ horsetail whisk, he thought. How did this corpse sneak them away in the night without my feeling a thing?

Fan Yiweng² took the staff and stamped it on the floor. The great hall of the stone house was vast, and the stamp set up a humming boom that echoed back from the four walls, a most imposing sound.

Xiaoxiangzi took the shears in his right hand, spreading his fingers to the full just to open and close them. “Hey, Short-Beard,” he called, “you don’t know the name of my treasured shears. Shall I tell you?” “A crank’s weapon like that,” said Fan Yiweng angrily, “what fine name could it have?” Xiaoxiangzi roared with laughter. “Quite right, it’s no fine name. They’re called the Dog-Fur Shears.” Yang Guo was annoyed. A perfectly good pair of shears, and who asked you to give them such an ugly name? Xiaoxiangzi went on, “I knew long ago there was a long-bearded freak here, so I had these Dog-Fur Shears made specially, to cut your beard.”

Ma Guangzuo and Nimoxing guffawed, and even Yin Kexi and Yang Guo could not help laughing aloud. Only State Preceptor Jinlun kept his solemn composure. He and the Valley Master sat facing each other across the hall, and neither seemed to have heard a thing.

Fan Yiweng lifted the steel staff and gave it a slight swing that stirred up a rush of wind. “My beard is too long as it is. If you fancy playing the barber, nothing could be better. Go on, then!”

Xiaoxiangzi gazed up at the crossbeam of the hall, lost in a trance, as though he had not heard a word. Then his right arm shot out like lightning, and with a snick the great shears went for the beard. Fan Yiweng had never dreamt that a man sitting in a chair would strike so suddenly. With no time to dodge, he planted the staff hard and vaulted up, somersaulting more than ten feet into the air, the staff still braced on the floor. Xiaoxiangzi had struck with great speed, and Fan Yiweng had dodged as swiftly. In that single cut and dodge, both masters had shown martial skill of the highest order in the blink of an eye. But Fan Yiweng had been taken by surprise, and he paid for it. He had escaped the cut, yet the tips of the shears had snipped off three hairs of his beard.

Xiaoxiangzi was very pleased with himself. He picked up the hairs in his left hand and blew. The three hairs flew towards his own bowl of tea on the table, and with a crash the bowl fell to the floor and smashed to pieces. Yang Guo and the others all knew Xiaoxiangzi was just making a mystery of it, and that what had knocked the bowl off was the force of his breath. But Ma Guangzuo did not see how it was done and thought three hairs, blown like that, had somehow produced all that force. “Xiaoxiangzi,” he shouted, “those hairs of yours are something!” Xiaoxiangzi laughed and snapped the shears open and shut. “Short-Beard, care to try my Dog-Fur Shears again?”

Though he laughed long and loud, the flesh of his face never moved, and the others grew more and more astonished. When neigong³ reaches the highest level, a man can indeed keep joy and anger from his face, or even rise beyond joy and anger altogether. But to laugh so heartily with a face so grim and ghastly, that we have never seen. His face was truly too hideous. Each of them took one glance and turned away.

Fooled twice over, Fan Yiweng blazed with anger. He bowed to the Valley Master. “Shifu,⁴ I can no longer treat this man with the courtesy due to a guest.” Yang Guo was much puzzled. The little man is far older than the Valley Master. Why does he call him shifu? The Valley Master nodded slightly and gave a little wave of his left hand. Fan Yiweng swung the steel staff, and it swept whooshing at Xiaoxiangzi’s chair. Short as he was, his strength was prodigious, and the staff, well over a hundred jin⁵ in weight, came round with a howling wind.

Though Yang Guo and the others had come with Xiaoxiangzi, they had no clear idea how good he really was, and they watched the fight intently. When the staff was less than half a foot from the chair legs, Xiaoxiangzi let his left arm drop and reached out to grab the head of the staff, at the same time opening the shears to cut at his opponent’s long beard again. Fan Yiweng was furious. You dare make so light of me! He jerked his head aside to swing his beard clear and kept the staff sweeping on at the hand. The blow landed squarely on the palm. The onlookers gave a cry and rose to their feet as one, each sure Xiaoxiangzi’s hand must be badly hurt. But Fan Yiweng felt the staff strike as if into water, soft as nothing. Knowing something was wrong, he hastily drew the staff back, but Xiaoxiangzi had already turned his wrist and seized its head.

Feeling his opponent tug, Fan Yiweng drove the staff forward hard. The thrust was so powerful that it looked as if Xiaoxiangzi must be forced out of his chair. But suddenly he leapt again, chair and all, and dodged to the left. The staff hit nothing, though he had to let go of its head. Fan Yiweng whirled his left hand above his head, and the staff swung round in a circle and came swinging at his enemy’s head. Showing off, Xiaoxiangzi sprang ten feet or so into the air, chair and all, and passed clean over the staff. The onlookers had never seen anything so strange and so nimble. Sitting in that chair, he moved as freely as if he had nothing under him at all, and none of them could help shouting their applause.

Fan Yiweng threw himself into the fight, the steel staff whistling round him. He knew it would be very hard to hit the man himself, but if he could smash the chair he would at least have the upper hand. Xiaoxiangzi, however, kept snapping the shears in his right hand open and shut at the long beard, while his left hand used grappling holds to snatch at the staff whenever an opening came. The State Preceptor and the others were secretly alarmed. We’d never have guessed this corpse-faced freak had such remarkable skill.

A few more passes, and every stroke of Fan Yiweng’s staff was a low sweep along the floor, while Xiaoxiangzi leapt and dodged chair and all, the chair legs drumming up and down, faster and faster. Suddenly the Valley Master called out, “Leave the chair alone, or you’ll be no match for him.” Fan Yiweng started, and understood at once. With him in the chair, I can barely hold him to a draw. Once his feet are on the ground, he’ll have my beard off in a few moves. He changed his staff work, whirling and lashing wildly, until a ball of silver light enclosed a little long-bearded man in a green robe, and outside the light a corpse-like figure sat in a chair, bouncing and hopping without pause. It was a rare sight indeed.

The Valley Master could see that Xiaoxiangzi was toying with his man, and that if the fight went on Fan Yiweng was bound to come off worse. He rose unhurriedly from his seat. “Yiweng, you are no match for this eminent master. Stand down.” Hearing his shifu’s order, Fan Yiweng answered loudly, “Yes!” He thrust out the staff, about to break off and leap clear, when Xiaoxiangzi cried, “Not so fast, not so fast!” He flew up out of the chair and pounced straight down on the staff. There was a crack, and the chair was smashed to pieces by the staff, but Xiaoxiangzi’s left hand had caught hold of it and his left foot was planted on it. At the same moment the great shears gaped wide and caught the long beard under Fan Yiweng’s chin between the blades. One snap, and that fine beard would be gone.

What no one knew was that the long beard Fan Yiweng had grown was in fact a deadly soft weapon, used on the same principles as a soft whip, a cloud whisk or a chain hammer. A slight shake of his head, and the beard curled back and slipped out of the blades, then wound itself round the shears instead. He jerked his head back, and a great force wrenched the shears upwards. “Oho,” cried Xiaoxiangzi, “Old Shorty, your beard’s a terror. I give in.” One with his long beard wrapped round the shears, the other with his left hand clamped on the staff, the two were locked together, neither able to break free. Xiaoxiangzi roared with laughter. “What fun, what fun!”

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Suddenly a grey shape flickered in the doorway, and a figure darted in with amazing speed and drove both palms at Xiaoxiangzi’s back. “Who’s that?” shouted the Valley Master. Xiaoxiangzi let go of the staff, swung his left palm round and caught the attacker under the elbow, turning aside the force of the blow at once. “You thieving swine,” the man roared, “I’ll fight you to the death!”

Yang Guo and the others looked at him in utter amazement and cried out together, “Xiaoxiangzi!” The man who had burst in and attacked was Xiaoxiangzi too. How had one man become two? And why was he attacking his own double? For a moment none of them could make head or tail of it.

Looking more carefully, they saw that the man tangled up with Fan Yiweng was certainly wearing Xiaoxiangzi’s clothes, robe, shoes and hat, correct in every detail, and his face was corpse-like too, but its features were quite unlike Xiaoxiangzi’s own. The man who had come in last had the right face, but he wore the green jacket and trousers of the valley’s people. His hands hooked like a bird’s talons, he clawed once more at the back of the other Xiaoxiangzi, the one with the shears. “Swine! You struck from behind!”

Seeing help arrive so suddenly, a man in the valley’s dress yet a stranger to him, Fan Yiweng took his staff and stepped aside in surprise, and the two corpse-faced men went at each other, thud and crash.

By now Yang Guo had guessed it. The man with the shears must have stolen his human-skin mask,⁶ put it on, changed into Xiaoxiangzi’s clothes and slipped into the hall to make mischief. Because Xiaoxiangzi’s everyday face looked like a dead man’s anyway, no one had seen through it at first. Yang Guo often wore the mask himself, but he had no idea what he looked like in it, and he had never dared look long at Cheng Ying in hers, so the man had fooled even him. After watching intently for a while, he recognised the martial style of the man with the shears. “Zhou Botong, give me back my mask and shears!” he shouted, and leapt into the middle of the hall to snatch the great shears from his hand.

Footnotes

1. 李莫愁 – Lǐ Mòchóu. Her name meaning “do not sorrow”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 樊一翁 – Fán Yīwēng. His name meaning “Fan, the one old man”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 内功 – nèigōng. Literally internal skill. Practice of developing neili through breathing, meditation and qi cultivation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

5. 斤 – jīn. Traditional Chinese unit of weight, approximately 500 grams or 1.1 pounds. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 人皮面具 – Human-skin mask. Rénpí miànjù. Disguise mask crafted to look like real human skin, capable of transforming the wearer’s appearance completely. Huang Yaoshi is known for crafting these. Yang Guo received his from Cheng Ying. ↩