The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 19 – Part 4

Lü’e, however, was completely focused on the old woman. She saw that her hair was sparse, almost entirely bald, and her face was covered in deep wrinkles, yet her eyes gleamed with fierce vitality. The old woman, in turn, stared unblinkingly at Lü’e. The two looked at each other, and each other only, leaving Yang Guo completely ignored to one side. After studying her for a while, the old woman suddenly asked, “How old are you this year?” Lü’e said, “I am eighteen this year.” The old woman sighed deeply. “Eighteen already. You have a cinnabar birthmark on the left side of your waist, don’t you?”

Lü’e was shocked once again. She thought, Even my father may not know about this red mark on my body. How can this old woman, hidden deep beneath the earth, know it so clearly? And she knows my birth hour as well. She must have an extremely close connection to my family. Softening her voice, she asked, “Granny, you must certainly know my father, and you must have known my mother, who has passed away. Am I right?” The old woman started. “Your mother, who has passed away? Haha, of course I know her.” Suddenly, her voice turned harsh and severe. “Do you have that red mark on your waist or not? Unfasten your clothes and show me at once. If you speak even half a word of falsehood, I will strike you dead where you stand.”

Lü’e turned and glanced at Yang Guo, her cheeks flushing crimson. Yang Guo hurriedly turned away, putting his back to her. Lü’e loosened the long gown, lifted her inner garment, and revealed her snow-white, crystalline waist. There indeed was a cinnabar-red birthmark the size of a thumb, the red against the white like a red plum blossom blooming in the snow, exceptionally lovely.

The old woman took only one look, and her entire body began to tremble. Tears welled up in her eyes. Suddenly, she threw her arms wide and cried, “My darling, my precious treasure! Your mother has missed you so bitterly.” Lü’e, seeing the expression on her face, felt her own natural feelings surge forth. She rushed forward and threw herself upon the old woman, crying, “Mama! Mama!”

Yang Guo heard one call out “precious treasure” and the other cry “Mama,” and he was greatly astonished. He turned around and saw the two locked in a tight embrace. Lü’e’s back heaved with sobs, and the old woman’s face was streaked with tears and mucus. He thought, Can it be that this old woman is Miss Gongsun’s mother?

He watched as the old woman’s eyebrows suddenly shot upright, her face taking on a murderous expression, exactly the same look Gongsun Valley Master wore when he struck. Yang Guo cried to himself, This is bad. He stepped forward, afraid she might harm Lü’e, but instead saw her place a hand on Lü’e’s shoulder and push her gently away. “Stand back,” she commanded. “I have questions for you.” Lü’e started, drew back from her, and called again, “Mama!”

The old woman said sternly, “Did Gongsun Zhi send you here? Did he tell you to use sweet words and cunning speech to deceive me? Is that it?” Lü’e shook her head and cried, “Mama, so you are still alive! Mama!” The look on her face was equal parts joy and sorrow. This was unmistakably the genuine emotion between a mother and daughter. How could there be the slightest falsehood in it? Yet the old woman still demanded harshly, “Gongsun Zhi told you I was dead, didn’t he?” Lü’e said, “Your daughter has suffered for more than ten years, believing herself to be a motherless orphan. To think that Mama has been alive all this time, today I am truly happy.” The old woman pointed at Yang Guo. “Who is he? Why did you bring him here?”

Lü’e said, “Mama, listen to me.” She told the story from beginning to end, how Yang Guo had entered Passionless Valley, how he had been poisoned by the Passion Flower, how the two of them had fallen into the crocodile pool together. She only left out entirely the matter of Gongsun Valley Master wanting to marry Xiaolongnü, for fear of stirring up her mother’s jealousy and rage.

Wherever Lü’e’s account grew vague, the old woman pressed her with detailed questions. Aside from the matter of Xiaolongnü, Lü’e concealed nothing. The more the old woman listened, the more her expression softened. The look she directed at Yang Guo grew warmer with each glance. When she heard how Yang Guo had killed the crocodiles and how he had protected Lü’e, the old woman nodded repeatedly. “Good, very good!” she said. “Young man, it seems my daughter was not wrong to set her sights on you.” Lü’e’s face flushed deep red, and she lowered her head.

Yang Guo thought that the various complications in all this were not something to be sorted out right now. He said, “Auntie Gongsun, first we must devise a plan for how to get out.” The old woman’s face suddenly darkened. She barked, “What ‘Auntie Gongsun’? Those three words, ‘Auntie Gongsun’, you are never to utter again. Do not think that because my hands and feet are powerless, I cannot kill you as easily as turning over my palm.” Suddenly, with a po sound, something shot from her mouth. Zheng, it struck the blade of the dagger Yang Guo was holding.

Yang Guo felt a violent jolt run through his arm. His five fingers could not maintain their grip. Clang, the dagger fell to the ground. Shocked, he leaped backward and saw that beside the dagger lay a jujube pit, still spinning furiously on the ground.¹ He was shaken and uncertain. He thought, With the force of my grip on that dagger, even the Imperial Preceptor’s golden wheel, Da’erba²’s golden pestle, or Gongsun Valley Master’s serrated golden sabre could not have knocked it from my hand. Yet this old woman spat out a single jujube pit and disarmed me. Granted, I was not on guard, but this person’s martial skill is truly profound beyond measure.³

Lü’e, seeing the change in his expression, said hurriedly, “Brother Yang, my mother would never harm you.” She walked over, took his hand, and turned to her mother. “Mama, just tell him what he should call you, that’s all. He doesn’t know, after all.”

The old woman gave a cold laugh. “Fine. This old woman has never changed her surname, never changed her given name. In the rivers and lakes, they call me ‘Iron Palm Lotus’ Qiu Qianchi⁴⁵. And what should you call me? Heh heh, shouldn’t you kneel and kowtow, and address me as ‘Mother-in-Law’?”

Lü’e said hastily, “Mama, you don’t understand. Brother Yang and your daughter are pure and innocent. He… he has shown your daughter nothing but goodwill and has no other intentions.” Qiu Qianchi said angrily, “Hmph! Pure and innocent? No other intentions? Where are your clothes? Why are you wearing only your undergarments and wrapped in his gown?” Suddenly raising her voice to a shriek, she said, “If this Yang fellow plans to learn from that faithless, shameless wretch Gongsun Zhi, I will make sure he dies without a burial place. Yang, are you going to marry my daughter or not?”

Yang Guo thought her words were growing more deranged by the moment. She was utterly unreasonable, how could she pressure him to marry her daughter after just a few words of conversation? But if he bluntly refused, he would embarrass Lü’e terribly on the spot. Besides, this old woman’s martial skill was extremely high and her temper strange. If he gave the wrong answer, she might try to kill him at once. Right now, with all three of them trapped together in this cavern, the most important thing was to find a way out. So he smiled faintly and said, “Elder, please set your mind at ease. Miss Gongsun risked her life to save me. Yang Guo is no heartless man. This grace, this virtue. I shall never dare forget it as long as I live.” These words were extremely slippery. They did not agree to marry Lü’e, yet to Qiu Qianchi’s ears they sounded entirely agreeable. She nodded. “That is as it should be.”

Gongsun Lü’e naturally understood Yang Guo’s true feelings. She looked at him, her gaze filled with quiet reproach, and lowered her head in silence. After a long pause, she said to Qiu Qianchi, “Mama, how did you come to be here? Why did Father say you had passed away, causing your daughter to grieve for more than ten years? If your daughter had known you were here, she would have risked her very life to come find you long ago.” Seeing her mother half-naked above the waist, she thought that if she gave Yang Guo’s gown to her mother, she herself would be improperly dressed. So she tore off the front and back panels of the gown and draped them over her mother’s shoulders.

Yang Guo thought of how the gown Cheng Ying had sewn, which Xiaolongnü had also mended, had met such a fate. A pang of sorrow struck his heart, and the Passion Flower poison was stirred. Agonising pain once again seized his entire body. Qiu Qianchi saw this and her expression flickered. Her right hand, trembling, reached into her bosom as if to retrieve something. But on second thought, she drew her hand out empty.

Lü’e had caught a hint of meaning in her mother’s expression and movements. She pleaded, “Mama, this Passion Flower poison in Brother Yang’s body, can you find a way to cure it?” Qiu Qianchi said flatly, “Trapped here, I cannot even save myself. If others cannot save me, how could I save anyone else?” Lü’e said urgently, “Mama, if you save Brother Yang, he will naturally save you. Even if you don’t save him, Brother Yang will certainly do his utmost to help you. Brother Yang, isn’t that right?”

Yang Guo truly had no fondness for this perverse and eccentric Qiu Qianchi, but thinking of Lü’e, he felt he ought to do everything in his power to help. He said, “Naturally. Elder, you have been here a long time. You must be thoroughly familiar with the terrain. Could you enlighten us?”

Qiu Qianchi let out a long sigh. “Though this place is deep beneath the earth, getting out is not difficult.” She glanced at Yang Guo. “In your heart, you must be thinking, if it is not difficult to get out, why have I stayed here, withering away? Ah, the tendons in my hands and feet were severed long ago. All the martial skill in my body is gone.” Yang Guo had already noticed that the movements of her hands and feet were strange. Lü’e, however, was greatly shocked. She asked, “Were you injured falling through that hole up there?” Qiu Qianchi said darkly, “No! Someone did this to me.” Lü’e was even more shocked. Her voice trembling, she asked, “Mama, who harmed you? We must certainly seek revenge.”

Qiu Qianchi laughed coldly. “Revenge? Could you bring yourself to do it? The one who severed the tendons in my hands and feet was Gongsun Zhi.” From the moment Lü’e had realised this woman was her mother, a faint premonition of this had already stirred in her heart. But to hear it spoken from her mother’s own lips, still, her entire body shook violently. “Wh-why?” she asked.

Qiu Qianchi cast a cold glance at Yang Guo and said, “Because I killed a person, a young, beautiful woman. Hmph, because I killed the woman Gongsun Zhi loved.” As she spoke, her teeth ground together audibly. Lü’e was frightened and drew slightly away from her mother, edging closer to Yang Guo instead. For a time, dead silence filled the cavern.

Qiu Qianchi suddenly said, “You must be hungry. In this cavern, there are only jujubes to fill the belly.” With that, she dropped to all fours and crawled forward like a wild beast, moving with surprising speed. As Lü’e and Yang Guo watched, both felt a pang of sorrow. Qiu Qianchi had crawled like this for over ten years and no longer thought anything of it. Lü’e was about to rush forward to help her up when she saw her mother already crouched beneath a large jujube tree.

Footnotes

1. 枣子 – Jujube. Fruit of the jujube tree (Ziziphus jujuba), also known as Chinese date or red date. Trees growing in the cavern, originating from a single fruit that fell through the opening years ago, provided Qiu Qianchi’s only sustenance during her fourteen-year imprisonment. ↩

2. 达尔巴 – Dá’ěrbā. Golden Wheel National Preceptor’s second disciple. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 金轮国师 – Jīnlún Guóshī. Mongol Empire’s national teacher and martial arts adept. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

5. 尺 – chǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of length, about a third of a metre. Ten chi make one zhang. ↩