The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 19 – Part 5

Yang Guo nodded to himself, thinking, So it was because the sinews of her hands and feet were cut that she was driven to master this peerless art of spitting jujube stones. Heaven never closes every road, they say, and how true it is. At the thought his spirits rose.

Lü’e gathered up the jujubes and shared them out between her mother and Yang Guo, eating a few herself. Here in a stone cavern under the earth she waited on her guest and her mother with such order and grace that she looked every inch the little mistress of a household.

Qiu Qianchi had suffered the cruellest fate a life can hold, and for more than ten years venomous hatred had been piling up in her heart. Even a gentle, yielding soul would have grown hard and unreasonable in everything, let alone one hot-tempered by nature. But mother and daughter are bound by nature after all, and seeing the daughter she had longed for day and night grown into so radiant, lovely and well-mannered a young woman, tender love slowly gained the upper hand. “What wicked things did Gongsun Zhi say about me?” she asked.

Lü’e said, “Father never spoke of Mama at all. When I was little I asked him once whether I looked like Mama, and what illness Mama had died of. Father suddenly flew into a terrible rage and gave me a dreadful scolding, and told me never to mention it again. A few years later I asked again, and again he scolded me with a stony face.” “And what did you think?” asked Qiu Qianchi. Tears welled in Lü’e’s eyes. “I always thought Mama must have been beautiful and kind, and that you and Father loved each other so much that after you died it grieved him whenever anyone spoke of you. So after that I didn’t dare ask any more.”

Qiu Qianchi laughed coldly. “You must be sorely disappointed now. Your mother is neither beautiful nor kind, but a vicious, spiteful, ugly old hag. If I’d known, I’d say you would have been better off never meeting me.” Lü’e put her arms round her neck and said softly, “Mama, you’re exactly as I always imagined you.” She turned to Yang Guo. “Big Brother Yang, my mother is beautiful, isn’t she? She’s good to me, and good to you too, isn’t she?” She asked it in all sincerity, for in her heart she truly believed her mother to be the best woman in the world.

Yang Guo thought, She may have been beautiful when she was young, but beautiful now? She may be good to you, but I doubt she means me any good. But since Lü’e had asked, he had to answer, “Yes, you’re right.” There was nothing like Lü’e’s sincerity in his tone, though, and Qiu Qianchi caught it at once. She thought, Heaven has taken pity on me and let me find my daughter again. Her heart is full of a child’s love today, but there’s no knowing it will always be so. I must tell her the whole story of the wrong done to me, clearly and plainly. So she said, “E’er, you asked why I’m shut away here, and why Gongsun Zhi said I was dead. Sit still, and I’ll tell you all about it, slowly.”

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Qiu Qianchi began slowly, “Gongsun Zhi’s forebears were officials under the Tang. Later, to escape the An-Shi Rebellion,¹ the whole clan moved away into this hidden valley. His ancestors were military officers, and he learned the martial arts handed down in his family, and you might even say he outdid those who taught him. But the truly superior martial arts he had from me.” Yang Guo and Lü’e both exclaimed in surprise. They had never expected this.

Qiu Qianchi said proudly, “You’re both young, so of course you don’t understand. Hmph. The Guild Chief of the Iron Palm Keep, Qiu Qianren, Iron Palm Floats on Water,² is my own elder brother. Yang Guo, tell E’er a little about the Iron Palm Keep.”

Yang Guo started. “The Iron Palm Keep? I’m ignorant and know little of the world. I really don’t know what the Iron Palm Keep is.”

Qiu Qianchi broke out cursing. “You little wretch, lying to my face! The Iron Palm Keep’s fame shook the lands north and south of the Great River. It was named alongside the Beggars’ Guild³ as one of the two great guilds under heaven. How can you not know it?” “The Beggars’ Guild, yes, I have heard of,” said Yang Guo. “But this Iron Palm Keep…” Qiu Qianchi grew frantic and cursed him. “Heh heh, and you call yourself trained in martial arts, and don’t even know the Iron Palm Keep…” Seeing her mother red in the face with rage, Lü’e put in soothingly, “Mama, Big Brother Yang isn’t twenty yet. He’s trained with his shifu in the deep mountains since he was small, so it’s no wonder he knows little of the affairs of the wulin.”⁴ Qiu Qianchi paid her no heed and went on grumbling and scolding.

Twenty years before, the Iron Palm Keep had indeed been at the height of its power in the jianghu. But at the time of the second Mount Hua Tournament its Guild Chief, Qiu Qianren, Iron Palm Floats on Water, had turned to the Buddha and become the disciple of Great Master Yideng,⁵ and the Iron Palm Keep had at once scattered like clouds before the wind. When the Keep broke up Yang Guo had only just been born, and no one had ever spoken of it to him afterwards, so naturally he knew nothing of it. In fact it was on Iron Palm Peak, the Keep’s headquarters, that his mother Mu Nianci had lost her maidenhood to his father Yang Kang⁶ and conceived him, and so Yang Guo had come into the world. Now, as Qiu Qianchi spoke of it, he could only stare and find nothing to say. Qiu Qianchi had lived shut away in Passionless Valley for more than twenty years and had heard nothing of the changes in the jianghu. She supposed that the Iron Palm Keep, having held sway for several hundred years, must be more flourishing than ever. All her life she had taken the greatest pride in her second brother Qiu Qianren, the Guild Chief, and to hear Yang Guo say he did not even know the words “Iron Palm Keep” naturally sent her into a towering fury.

Abused like this for no reason, Yang Guo at first forced himself to bear it, but as her cursing grew more and more outrageous his anger began to rise, and he was about to retort with a few barbs of his own. He raised his head to speak and saw Lü’e gazing at him, her eyes full of tenderness and her face full of apology. Yang Guo’s heart softened. He pulled a face at her as if to say there was nothing to be done, and to his own surprise felt rather pleased with himself. He thought, The fiercer your mother’s scolding, the kinder you’ll be to me. An old woman’s nagging is wind past the ear, but a beauty’s tenderness is a matter of the heart. With his mind at ease his wits grew especially sharp, and suddenly he remembered, Miss Wanyan Ping’s martial arts seemed to be of a piece with Gongsun Zhi’s, and she said she had learned Iron Palm skills. There must be some link with the Iron Palm Keep.⁷ He closed his eyes and thought. Of the fist and dao techniques Wanyan Ping had used in her fight with Yelü Qi he still remembered seven or eight parts in ten, and as for Gongsun Zhi, whom he had fought several bouts with only a few shichen⁸ ago, he remembered his footwork and strikes more clearly still. “Ah, I remember now,” he cried. “What?” said Qiu Qianchi.

Yang Guo said, “Three years ago I saw a remarkable figure of the wulin fight eighteen brave men of the jianghu. He took on all eighteen alone and bare-handed, and in the end nine of them were badly hurt and nine he beat to death. I heard this remarkable figure was of the Iron Palm Keep.” “What did he look like?” Qiu Qianchi asked eagerly. Yang Guo said the first thing that came into his head. “He was bald, about sixty, with a ruddy, glowing face, tall and big, in a green gown, and he called himself Qiu…” Qiu Qianchi barked suddenly, “Nonsense! Neither of my brothers was bald. They were short, and they never wore green. You see I’m tall and bald, so you say my brothers were bald too, is that it?”

Yang Guo cried inwardly, Disaster! But his face gave nothing away. He laughed. “Don’t be so hasty. I never said the man was your brother. Must everyone under heaven named Qiu be your brother?” Yang Guo had a ready tongue, and Qiu Qianchi, out-argued, could find no answer. “Then tell me what his martial skill was like,” she said.

Yang Guo stood up and went through several sequences of Wanyan Ping’s fist techniques, then worked in Gongsun Zhi’s footwork and palm strikes, and the longer he went on the more freely it flowed. Palm shadows drifted through the cavern and fist-wind roared. The moves were rather like and yet unlike the real thing, but already far above anything in Wanyan Ping’s own palm play. Wherever her fist techniques were loose or lacking, his body followed his will and made it good, so that every lift of a hand or a foot was close-knit and whole, and into every palm he chopped he put a little extra savagery on purpose.

Qiu Qianchi watched with great delight. “E’er, E’er, this is our Iron Palm Keep’s skill, right enough. Watch closely.” As Yang Guo went through the moves, Qiu Qianchi talked and pointed beside him, explaining the deadly points of each fist and foot technique. Yang Guo laughed to himself and thought, If I go on any longer I’ll give myself away. So he stopped and said, “At that point the remarkable figure had won outright, and he didn’t fight on.” Qiu Qianchi was delighted. “You’ve remembered a lot of the moves wrong, and the hand technique isn’t right, but to get it even this far is no easy thing. One day I’ll teach you properly. What was this remarkable man’s name? What did he say to you?” “He was like a divine dragon that shows its head but never its tail,” said Yang Guo. “After his victory he was gone, floating off into the distance. I only heard the nine wounded men lying on the ground blaming one another, saying who could cross old Master Qiu of the Iron Palm Keep, and weren’t they simply asking to die?”

Qiu Qianchi said happily, “That’s it. This man named Qiu was most likely one of my brother’s disciples.” She was mad about martial arts by nature. For more than ten years she had not been able to stretch her hands and feet, and now, seeing Yang Guo perform her own school’s martial arts, she was like an old hunter who sights game, and could not contain her delight. At once she launched into a flood of talk to the two of them about the palm techniques and qinggong of the Iron Palm School.

Yang Guo was desperate to get out of the cave and give the Passion-Cutting Pill to Xiaolongnü. What she was telling them was superior martial lore, keen and deeply informed, and there was much to be gained from hearing it, but when he thought of Xiaolongnü in her suffering, how could he have the heart to discuss martial arts? He shot Lü’e a meaningful look at once. Lü’e understood and asked, “Mama, how did you come to pass your martial arts on to Father?” “Call him Gongsun Zhi!” said Qiu Qianchi angrily. “What’s all this Father, Father?” “Yes,” said Lü’e. “Mama, please go on.”

“Hmph!” said Qiu Qianchi bitterly. Only after a long pause did she go on. “It was more than twenty years ago. My two brothers had fallen out and were quarrelling…” “I have two uncles?” Lü’e broke in. “You didn’t know?” said Qiu Qianchi, her voice turning very stern and full of reproach. Lü’e thought, How could I have known? “No,” she answered. “No one ever told me.”

Qiu Qianchi gave a long sigh. “You… you really don’t know anything at all. Pitiful! Pitiful!” After a moment she went on. “Your two uncles were twins, your eldest uncle Qiu Qianzhang⁹ and your second uncle Qiu Qianren.¹⁰ In build and looks, in the sound of their voices, they were exactly alike, but in their fortunes and their tempers they were very different. Second Brother’s martial skill was very high, Eldest Brother’s only middling. My martial arts were taught me by Second Brother himself, but Eldest Brother was far closer to me. Second Brother was Guild Chief of the Iron Palm Keep. With the Guild’s affairs so many and his own training so hard, he seldom saw me, and when he taught me he was strict and severe and never said half a word more than he had to. But Eldest Brother was always ‘little sister’ this and ‘little sister’ that, and there was deep affection between us. Later, when Eldest Brother and Second Brother fell out and quarrelled, I took Eldest Brother’s side a little.” “Mama,” asked Lü’e, “what did my two uncles quarrel about?”

Footnotes

1. 安史之乱 – An-Shi Rebellion. Devastating rebellion against the Tang Dynasty led by the general An Lushan and later Shi Siming, lasting from 755 to 763 CE. It marked a turning point in Tang history, after which the dynasty never fully recovered. Many noble families fled the capital region for remote areas, explaining how the Gongsun clan came to settle in Passionless Valley. ↩

2. 铁掌水上飘 – Tiězhǎng Shuǐshàng Piāo. Qiu Qianren’s famous sobriquet. ↩

3. 丐帮 – Gài Bāng. The Beggars’ Guild, the largest martial arts organisation in the jianghu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. Wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 一灯大师 – Yīdēng Dàshī. Literally one-lamp master; a Buddhist honorific title. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 杨康 – Yáng Kāng. His name meaning “health” or “peace”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 完颜萍 – Wányán Píng. Her name meaning “duckweed”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 时辰 – shíchén. A traditional Chinese unit of time; one shichen equals two modern hours. The day was divided into twelve shichen. ↩

9. 裘千丈 – Qiú Qiānzhàng. Qiu Qianren’s elder twin brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 裘千仞 – Qiú Qiānrèn. Chief of the Iron Palm Keep, known as Iron Palm Floats on Water. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩