The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 18 – Part 8

Valley Master Gongsun strode on with his head held high and went into a small stone chamber, where he dressed the jian wound in his belly with wound medicine. “Cut a few bundles of passion flowers,”¹ he said.

Yang Guo and Xiaolongnü had made up their minds to die, and only smiled at each other, paying no heed to anything Valley Master Gongsun did or said. Before long a scent that intoxicated the very soul came drifting in at the door of the chamber. They turned their heads and saw a riot of colour, soft reds and tender yellows: more than ten green-robed disciples were coming in with great clusters of passion flowers in their arms, their hands and arms padded with cowhide against the little thorns. Valley Master Gongsun flicked his right hand. “Pile them all on the brat,” he said coldly.

In that instant it was as though thousands upon thousands of wasps were stinging Yang Guo all over at once, and the pain in every limb and bone was more than he could bear. Seeing the agony on his face, Xiaolongnü was torn between pity and fury. “What are you doing?” she cried at Valley Master Gongsun, and darted forward to pull the passion flowers off him.

Valley Master Gongsun put out an arm and barred her way. “Sister Liu,” he said, “today was to have been the happy day of our wedding, and this brat came bursting into the valley and turned a fine day into utter chaos. He and I had never met and bore each other no grudge. What is more, he is your disciple, and had he kept to the conduct proper to a guest, I would of course have treated him with every courtesy. Now that things have come to this…” Here he waved his left hand, and the disciples withdrew from the chamber, pulling the door shut behind them. He went on, “…whether it ends in calamity or blessing rests on a single thought of yours.”

Hemmed in by the little thorns of the passion flowers, Yang Guo was in torment beyond words. But he would not have Xiaolongnü grieve for him, so he clenched his teeth and made no sound at all, and not half a word of what Valley Master Gongsun said reached his ears. Watching the agony on his face, Xiaolongnü was flooded with pity. At that very moment the passion flower poison in her own finger flared up, and a fresh wave of fierce pain went through her. She thought, I was only grazed by a passion flower, and it hurts this much. He has a thousand needles and ten thousand thorns in him all over. How can he bear it?

Valley Master Gongsun guessed what was in her mind. “Sister Liu,” he said, “I wish with all sincerity to join with you in a marriage of a hundred years. I feel nothing for you but love and devotion, and mean you no harm at all. That much you surely understand.” Xiaolongnü nodded. “You saved my life,” she said sadly, “and you have always been good to me, attentive in every way and courteous beyond measure…” She hung her head a long while, then heaved a long sigh. “Mister Gongsun, if you had never come upon me in the wild mountains that day, if you had never saved my life and had let me die there unseen and unheard, it would have been better for all three of us. You are forcing me to marry you, knowing full well I will be unhappy all my life. What good is that to you?”

Valley Master Gongsun’s brows slowly rose again. “I have always meant exactly what I say,” he said in a low, heavy voice, “and I will not be trifled with or shamed. You agreed to marry me, so marry me you shall. As for joy and sorrow, the affairs of this world are hard to foresee to begin with. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? We shall all wait and see.” He flicked his sleeve. “This man is wounded all over by the passion flowers. With every shichen² that passes the pain will grow a degree worse, and after thirty-six days he will die in agony from head to foot. Within twelve shichen I have a secret remedy of my own making that can cure him. After a day, not even the immortals could save him. Whether he lives or dies is for you to say.” With that he walked slowly to the door, pushed it open and turned his head. “If you would rather let him die slowly of the pain, that too is up to you. You may stay here and watch him for thirty-six days. I mean you no harm at all. Of that you may rest assured. If you change your mind within twelve shichen, you need only call out once, and I will bring the antidote and save his life.” And he made to step out of the chamber.

Xiaolongnü saw that Yang Guo was trembling all over and had bitten his lip till it bled, and that his eyes, once as bright as shooting stars, had gone dull and lightless. She could imagine the agony in his body. If it was this hard to bear already, and the pain grew a degree worse with every shichen for thirty-six days on end, she feared there was no torture in hell to equal it. She set her teeth. “Mister Gongsun, I will marry you, then. Release him at once, and fetch the medicine to cure him.”

Valley Master Gongsun had pressed her all along precisely to make her say this. Now that he heard it, he was glad and bitterly jealous at once. He knew that from this day on she would feel nothing for him but resentment and hatred, never the least affection. He nodded. “If you can change your mind, it is better for us all. Tonight you and I will spend our wedding night in the bridal chamber, and first thing tomorrow I will fetch the medicine and save him.” “You have gone back on your word before,” said Xiaolongnü. “Cure his wounds first.” The Valley Master sighed. “Sister Liu, you think too little of me. It cost me trouble enough to win your consent, and you are anything but willing at heart. However great a fool I may be, how could I not know that? Am I to cure him first?” He turned and went out.

Xiaolongnü and Yang Guo looked at each other in misery, and for a long while neither spoke. At last Yang Guo said slowly, “Aunt, Guoer has had your whole heart’s love. Even in the Nine Springs below, my heart will be at peace. Kill me with one blow of your palm!” Xiaolongnü thought, I will kill him first, then take my own life at once. She raised her hand and quietly summoned her neili. A faint smile came to Yang Guo’s face, and he gazed at her with soft, sweet eyes. “This moment,” he said in a low voice, “is our wedding night.”

Seeing his face so alight, Xiaolongnü thought, So handsome a young man, why must heaven be so cruel as to make him die a violent death today? An ache welled up in her breast, and suddenly she tasted sweetness in her throat, as if she were about to cough up blood again. The strength went out of her arm at once. All at once she threw herself on Yang Guo, and the thousand needles and ten thousand thorns of the passion flowers pierced her body together. “Guoer,” she said, “we will suffer this together.”

Behind them Valley Master Gongsun gave a startled cry. “You… you…” Then, coldly, he said, “Why do this to yourself? Does the pain in your body take even half of his away?” Xiaolongnü gazed at Yang Guo with boundless love and did not look round. Valley Master Gongsun said to Yang Guo, “In ten more shichen I will bring the spirit medicine and save you. For these ten shichen, so long as your heart is pure and free of desire, the pain will not be hard to bear, though pain there will be.” He took Xiaolongnü by the arm and led her out of the chamber. All the strength had gone out of her, and she could only let him draw her away.

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Yang Guo’s body was in torment and his heart in anguish, Nothing I have suffered before counts for anything beside today. This Valley Master is so base and so vicious. How can I simply die and leave Aunt in his hands to be tormented? And my father’s death is still unavenged. How can I let that pair of hypocrites, Guo Jing³ and Huang Rong,⁴ do their evil and never pay for it? At this thought his blood seethed and his spirit rose fiercely, I must not die. Whatever happens, I must not die! Even if Aunt becomes this Valley Master’s wife, I will still rescue her. And I must still train hard in the martial arts and avenge my dead parents. He set his teeth and sat up cross-legged. Caught in the net, he could not sit properly upright, but he still sank his qi to his dantian and set to work on his neili.

Two shichen later, when it was already past noon, a green-robed disciple came in with a tray holding four unleavened steamed buns. “It’s the Valley Master’s wedding day,” he said, “so you get a good meal too.” He set the tray down beside the net. His hands were wrapped in layer upon layer of coarse cloth, for fear of the passion flowers. Yang Guo reached out through the net, took the four buns and ate the lot, thinking, If I’m going to fight this scoundrel of a Valley Master to the end, I can’t go mistreating my own body. The disciple laughed. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d have such an appetite.”

Suddenly a flash of green showed at the door, and another green-robed disciple came in, stole up without a sound behind the first, and brought a fist down hard on the top of his head. The man had not even seen who it was before he was knocked senseless.

Yang Guo saw that the attacker was none other than Gongsun Lü’e. Astonished, he said, “You… you…” Gongsun Lü’e turned and shut the door first. “Quiet, Big Brother Yang,” she said under her breath. “I’ve come to rescue you.” She untied the knots of the net, moved aside the clusters of passion flowers and let Yang Guo out. Her hands too were bound in coarse cloth. Yang Guo hesitated. “If your father finds out…” “Then I’ll take whatever punishment comes,” said Gongsun Lü’e. She plucked a small spray of passion flowers and stuffed it into the green-robed disciple’s mouth, so that he could not cry out when he came round, then bound him into the net and heaped passion flowers all over him. Only then did she say softly, “Big Brother Yang, if anyone comes in, hide behind the door. You’re badly poisoned. I’ll go to the pill room and fetch you the antidote.”

Yang Guo was deeply grateful. He knew the terrible risk she was running: he had known her no more than a day, and she was betraying her own father to save him. “Miss,” he said, “I… I…” He was too moved to go on. Lü’e gave a faint smile. “Wait a little. I’ll be back directly.” And she slipped lightly from the chamber.

Gongsun Lü’e was eighteen, at just the age when a girl’s heart first opens to love. The neigong taught in the Passionless Valley⁵ was meant to make its students cast off love and cut away desire. But where there is life there is feeling. The Buddhists call all living things “sentient”: not only men and women, old and young, but oxen and horses, pigs and sheep, fish, birds, snakes and insects all have feeling, and if living things truly had none, they would die out and breed no more. What the Passionless Valley cultivated went flatly against the nature of man and beast, and was no true path at all. There were men in the valley, but every one of them spoke without savour and wore a cold face. Gongsun Lü’e had known little of a parent’s or a kinsman’s love since she was small, and everyone around her held the absence of feeling to be the highest virtue. All the world’s fine food and fine clothes, rouge, powder and jewels, everything that gladdens the heart and pleases the spirit, was shunned. Then all at once she had met Yang Guo, who not only praised her beauty to the skies but was lively and unconstrained in all he did and delightful in all he said. It was as though she had suddenly come upon the greatest joy life could hold, and heart and soul were drunk with it, past all resisting. All this day, in her quiet thoughts, there had not been a moment when her mind was not on Yang Guo. A thread of love had bound her fast to this young man, and she could no longer pull herself free. Though her longing was one-sided, she had “spun her own cocoon”, and what bound her she would hold to in life and in death, no less than if the love were returned.

Yang Guo stared blankly, lost in thought, Why is she so good to me? My lot has been an unlucky one, and I’ve been bullied and humiliated since I was small, yet there have been plenty of people in this world who have treated me with real sincerity. Aunt goes without saying. Then there are Granny Sun, Old Guild Chief Hong, my sworn father Ouyang Feng, Island Master Huang, and young women like Cheng Ying, Lu Wushuang⁶ and Miss Gongsun Lü’e here, every one of them as true to me as anyone could be. The eight characters of my birth must be very strange indeed. Why else would those who are good to me be so very good, and those who are cruel to me so very cruel? What he did not realise was that his strange fortunes, in which the people he met treated him either extremely well or extremely ill, were the work of his own headstrong, extreme nature. Those whose hearts and temperaments matched his he treated with perfect sincerity, and those who crossed him in a word he looked on as enemies. As he treated others, so others naturally treated him.

Footnotes

1. 情花 – Qínghuā. Flower of the Passionless Valley whose thorns poison those who entertain thoughts of love. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 时辰 – shíchen. Traditional Chinese double hour; one twelfth of a day, equal to two modern hours. ↩

3. 郭靖 – Guō Jìng. His name meaning “tranquillity” or “pacification”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

5. 绝情谷 – Juéqíng Gǔ. Hidden valley ruled by Gongsun Zhi, known for its deadly Passion Flowers and the Passionless Divine Palm technique. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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