The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 19 – Part 4

Lü’e, though, had eyes only for the old woman. Her hair was thin, she was nearly bald, and her face was a mass of wrinkles, but her eyes were bright and piercing. The old woman stared back at Lü’e without blinking, and the two of them looked and looked at each other, leaving Yang Guo ignored to one side. After a while the old woman asked suddenly, “How old are you this year?” “I’m eighteen,” said Lü’e. The old woman sighed. “Eighteen already. You have a cinnabar-red mark on the left side of your waist, don’t you?”

Lü’e was startled again. She thought, Even Father may not know about this red mark on me. How can an old woman hidden deep under the earth know it so well? And she knows the eight characters of my birth too. She must be very closely bound up with my family. So she asked gently, “Granny, you must know my father, and my mother who died too. Don’t you?” The old woman started. “Your mother who died? Haha, of course I know her.” Suddenly her voice turned harsh. “Have you a red mark on your waist or not? Undo your clothes and show me, quick. If there’s half a word of a lie in it, I’ll have your life where you stand.”

Lü’e glanced back at Yang Guo, her cheeks flushing crimson. Yang Guo quickly turned his back on her. Lü’e opened the long gown and lifted her inner garment, baring a waist of glistening snowy white, and there, sure enough, was a deep red mark the size of a thumb-tip, red against white like a red plum blossom in snow, very lovely.

The old woman took one look and began to tremble all over, her eyes brimming with tears. Suddenly she spread her arms wide and cried, “My own darling treasure, how bitterly your mother has longed for you.” Lü’e looked into her face, and all at once something deep in her own nature surged up. She rushed forward and threw herself on the old woman, weeping and crying, “Mama, Mama!”

Hearing one of them behind him say “treasure” and the other “Mama”, Yang Guo was astounded. He turned round and saw the two of them locked in each other’s arms, Lü’e’s back heaving, the old woman’s face streaming with tears. He thought, Can this old woman really be Miss Gongsun’s mother?

Then he saw the old woman’s brows shoot up and murder come into her face, exactly as Valley Master Gongsun looked when he struck. Yang Guo said to himself, This is bad. He took a quick step forward, afraid she would harm Lü’e, but she only gave Lü’e a gentle push on the shoulder. “Stand back. I have questions for you.” Lü’e started, drew away from her and cried again, “Mama!”

The old woman said harshly, “What did Gongsun Zhi send you here for? To trick me with sweet talk, is that it?” Lü’e shook her head. “Mama, so you’re still alive in this world, Mama!” Her face was all joy and sorrow together, plainly the true feeling of a daughter for her mother, with not a particle of pretence in it. But the old woman still demanded harshly, “Gongsun Zhi said I was dead, did he?” “For more than ten years I’ve been miserable,” said Lü’e, “believing I really was a motherless orphan, and all the time Mama was alive and well. I’m so happy today.” The old woman pointed at Yang Guo. “Who’s he? What have you brought him here for?”

Lü’e said, “Mama, listen to me.” She told her the whole story from beginning to end: how Yang Guo had come into Passionless Valley, how he had been poisoned by the Passion Flower,¹ how the two of them had fallen into the crocodile pool together. Only the Valley Master’s wish to marry Xiaolongnü she left out entirely, for fear of stirring her mother to jealousy and distress.

Wherever her account was vague, the old woman questioned her closely, point by point. Apart from Xiaolongnü, Lü’e kept nothing back. The more the old woman heard, the calmer her face became, and each look she turned on Yang Guo was kinder than the last. When she heard how Yang Guo had killed the crocodiles and protected Lü’e, she nodded again and again. “Good, very good! Young man, my daughter wasn’t wrong to set her heart on you.” Lü’e blushed scarlet and hung her head.

Yang Guo thought this was no time to go into all the twists of the matter. “Auntie Gongsun,” he said, “first we must think of a way to get out.” The old woman’s face darkened suddenly. “What Auntie Gongsun? Never let those words ‘Auntie Gongsun’ pass your lips again. Don’t think that because my hands and feet have no strength I couldn’t kill you as easily as turning my hand over.” All at once something shot from her mouth with a faint pop and struck the blade of the dagger in Yang Guo’s hand with a ring.

Yang Guo felt a violent shock run up his arm, his fingers could not keep their hold, and the dagger clattered to the ground. Badly startled, he sprang back, and saw a jujube stone² lying beside the dagger, still spinning rapidly on the ground. He was shaken and full of doubt. He thought, Gripping a blade as I was, not even the golden wheel of State Preceptor Jinlun,³ the golden pestle of Da’erba⁴ or the sawtoothed golden dao of Valley Master Gongsun could have knocked it out of my hand, and this old woman spits out a jujube stone and strikes my weapon down. True, I wasn’t on my guard, but her martial skill is beyond fathoming.

Seeing his face change, Lü’e said quickly, “Big Brother Yang, my mother would never hurt you.” She went over and took his hand, and turned to her mother. “Mama, just tell him what to call you, that’s all. He doesn’t know, you see.”

The old woman gave a dry laugh. “Very well. This old woman never changes her surname, walking or sitting. In the jianghu they call me Qiu Qianchi, the Iron Palm Lotus.⁵ And what will you call me? Heh heh, isn’t it time you knelt and kowtowed and called me ‘Honoured Mother-in-Law’?”

Lü’e said quickly, “Mama, you don’t understand. Big Brother Yang and I have been perfectly proper. He… he’s only ever meant me well, nothing else.” Qiu Qianchi said angrily, “Hmph. Perfectly proper? Nothing else? Where are your clothes? Why are you in nothing but your underclothes, with his gown round you?” Suddenly she raised her voice to a shrill pitch. “If this Yang fellow means to copy that faithless, shameless Gongsun Zhi, I’ll see to it he dies without a grave to lie in. Yang, will you marry my daughter or not?”

Yang Guo thought her talk crazed and quite beyond reason: how could she meet him, exchange a few words and then try to force him to marry her daughter? But if he refused her outright, he would put Lü’e to great shame on the spot. Besides, the old woman’s martial skill was very high and her temper strange, and if he answered amiss she might strike to kill there and then. With the three of them trapped together in this cavern, the first thing was to find a way out. So he smiled faintly and said, “Elder, set your mind at rest. Miss Gongsun risked her life to save me, and Yang Guo is no man without a heart. Such kindness, such goodness, I shall never dare forget as long as I live.” The words were very slippery. They did not agree to marry Lü’e, yet to Qiu Qianchi’s ear they sounded most agreeable. She nodded. “That’s all right, then.”

Gongsun Lü’e of course understood what Yang Guo really felt. She looked at him, her eyes full of quiet reproach, and hung her head without a word. After a while she said to Qiu Qianchi, “Mama, how did you come to be here? Why did Father say you had died, and leave me grieving for more than ten years? If I’d known you were here, I’d have come to find you long ago, even at the cost of my life.” Seeing her mother naked to the waist, and knowing that if she gave her Yang Guo’s gown she herself would be half-clothed, she tore off the front and back panels of the gown and laid them over her mother’s shoulders.

Yang Guo thought how this gown sewn by Cheng Ying, and mended by Xiaolongnü too, had come to such an end, and a pang went through his heart. It stirred the Passion Flower poison, and once more a violent pain swept through his whole body. Seeing it, Qiu Qianchi’s face changed a little. Her right hand, trembling, went into her bosom as if to take something out, but then she thought better of it and drew her hand out empty.

Lü’e had read something in her mother’s face and movements. She pleaded, “Mama, this Passion Flower poison in Big Brother Yang, can you find some way to cure it?” “Stuck here, I can’t even save myself,” said Qiu Qianchi coolly. “Nobody can save me, so how can I save anyone else?” “Mama,” Lü’e said anxiously, “if you save Big Brother Yang, of course he’ll save you. And even if you don’t, Big Brother Yang will do all he can to help you. Won’t you, Big Brother Yang?”

Yang Guo truly had no liking for this cross-grained, eccentric Qiu Qianchi, but for Lü’e’s sake he felt he ought to help with all his might. “Of course,” he said. “Elder, you’ve been here a long time. You must know every inch of the place. Will you tell us a little of what you know?”

Qiu Qianchi gave a long sigh. “Deep under the earth as this place is, getting out isn’t hard.” She glanced at Yang Guo. “No doubt you’re thinking, if getting out isn’t hard, why have I sat here wasting away? Ah, the sinews of my hands and feet were cut long ago, and every scrap of my martial skill is gone.” Yang Guo had already seen that she moved her hands and feet strangely, but Lü’e was horrified. “Did you hurt yourself falling through the hole up there?” “No!” said Qiu Qianchi grimly. “Someone did this to me.” Lü’e was more shocked still. Her voice shook. “Mama, who did it? We must take revenge on him.”

Qiu Qianchi gave a cold, dry laugh. “Revenge? Could you bring yourself to do it? The one who cut the sinews of my hands and feet was Gongsun Zhi.” From the moment she had known this woman was her mother, Lü’e had had a dim foreboding of it, but to hear it from her mother’s own lips still sent a violent shudder through her. “Wh… why?” she asked.

Qiu Qianchi cast a cold glance at Yang Guo. “Because I killed someone, a young and beautiful woman. Hmph, because I killed the woman Gongsun Zhi loved.” Her teeth ground together audibly as she said it. Lü’e was frightened. She moved a little away from her mother and edged closer to Yang Guo. For a time the cavern was utterly silent.

Suddenly Qiu Qianchi said, “You’ll be hungry. There’s nothing in this cavern to fill the belly but jujubes.” With that she went down on all fours and crawled forward like a wild animal, very quickly. Watching her, Lü’e and Yang Guo were both heartsick. Qiu Qianchi had crawled this way for more than ten years and thought nothing of it. Lü’e was about to hurry forward and help her up when she saw her already crouched beneath a large jujube tree.

Who knows in what year or month the wind had blown a single jujube down through the hole overhead. In the soil of the cavern it had put out a shoot and a stem and grown, flowered and fruited and multiplied, until there were fifty or sixty trees, large and small. If that one jujube had not fallen long ago, or had fallen and never grown into a tree, then when Yang Guo and Gongsun Lü’e came to this cavern they would have found nothing but a heap of white bones. Who would ever have guessed that the bones had once been a remarkable figure of the wulin? Still less could Lü’e have known that they were her own mother.

Qiu Qianchi picked up a jujube stone from the ground, put it in her mouth, tilted back her head and puffed out a breath. The stone shot up several dozen feet and struck a branch square on, the branches shook, and jujubes came down like rain, several dozen of them.

Footnotes

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

2. 枣子 – Zǎozi. Jujube (Ziziphus jujuba), also called Chinese date or red date. ↩

3. 金轮国师 – Jīnlún Guóshī. Literally Golden Wheel State Preceptor. The Mongol Empire’s State Preceptor and a martial arts adept. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 达尔巴 – Dá’ěrbā. State Preceptor Jinlun’s second disciple. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 裘千尺 – Qiú Qiānchǐ. Gongsun Zhi’s wife and Qiu Qianren’s younger sister; known as Iron Palm Lotus. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩