The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 2 – Part 4

The boy thought, So he wants to take me as his son. He had never seen his father’s face in his entire life. His mother had told him that his father had died before he was born. Ever since he was small, seeing other children cherished by their fathers, he had secretly envied them. But this strange person’s behaviour was so bizarre, so utterly mad, that he was most unwilling to acknowledge him as an sworn father. The strange person shouted, “You won’t call me Papa? Fine! When other people call me Papa, I won’t even agree to it.” He suddenly emitted a string of bizarre sounds, as if chanting an incantation, and started to walk away. The boy cried out in alarm, “Papa, Papa! Where are you going?”

The strange person roared with laughter. “Good son! Come, I’ll teach you how to purge the poison from your body.” The boy drew near. The strange person said, “What you’ve been poisoned with is Li Mochou’s Bingpo Silver Needle venom. Curing it is truly no easy matter.” He then transmitted the oral formula and the method of circulating energy, explaining that the technique involved reversing the flow of qi¹, one had to be head-down and feet-up, with blood and qi flowing in reverse, so that the poison would exit the body through the same point where it had entered. But since the boy was a beginner learning it for the first time, he could only expel a little each day. It would take more than a month to drive out all the poison.

The boy was extremely intelligent, he grasped things at a single hint and remembered everything he heard. He immediately began practicing according to the method, and indeed the numbness lessened somewhat. After circulating his energy for a while, several drops of black fluid oozed from the tips of his fingers. The strange person said happily, “Good! No need to practice any more today. Tomorrow I’ll teach you new techniques. Let’s go.” The boy was taken aback. “Go where?” The strange person said, “You are my son. Wherever Papa goes, the son naturally follows.”

Just then, several condor cries rang through the air, the two great condors were gliding past overhead. The strange person stared blankly at the twin condors, struck his forehead with his hand, and frowned in deep contemplation. Suddenly, as if remembering something, his expression changed dramatically. “I don’t want to see them! I don’t want to see them!” he cried. He stretched out his arms and took a step forward. His arms swung alternately, the first stride was enormous, and the second carried him a zhang or so away in a combined step-and-leap. After a dozen such strides, his figure had already vanished behind the mulberry grove.

“Papa! Papa!” the boy called, running after him. He rounded a large willow tree and suddenly felt a fierce wind sweep past the back of his head, the twin condors had swooped past him from behind and landed up ahead. A man and a woman emerged from behind the willow grove, the condors perched on their respective shoulders.

The man had thick brows and large eyes, a broad chest and a trim waist. He appeared to be in his early thirties, with a faint mustache on his upper lip. The woman looked to be under thirty, with features of exquisite beauty and a pair of exceptionally lively eyes. Her gaze swept over the boy several times. “Who do you think he looks like?” she said to the man. The man studied the boy intently for a long moment. “You mean he looks like…” He spoke only four words, then did not continue.

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These two were none other than Guo Jing and Huang Rong. That day, they had been making inquiries at a teahouse about Huang Yaoshi’s² whereabouts when they saw fierce flames shooting into the sky in the distance. A while later, people came running through the streets, spreading the word: “Lu Manor is on fire!” Huang Rong’s heart tightened. She recalled that the lord of Lu Manor in Jiaxing, Lu Zhanyuan, was a figure of some note in the jianghu. Though she had never met him, she had long heard of his reputation. In the jianghu, people often spoke of the two Lu family seats in Jiangnan. Guiyun Manor on Lake Tai and Lu Manor of Jiaxing. Hundreds of manors in Jiangnan were owned by families surnamed Lu, but when martial artists spoke of “the two Lu Manors,” they meant those two alone. For Lu Zhanyuan to be mentioned in the same breath as Lu Chengfeng,³ he could not be an ordinary man. Upon asking, they learned that the fire was indeed at Lu Zhanyuan’s home. The two of them rushed over at once. By the time they arrived, the flames had subsided somewhat, but the manor had already burned down to a smoldering shell. In the ruins lay several charred corpses, their bodies black as coal, their features unrecognisable.

“There’s something strange about this,” Huang Rong said. Guo Jing asked, “What do you mean?” Huang Rong said, “Lu Zhanyuan’s name carries considerable weight in the jianghu, and his wife, He Yuanjun, is also a renowned heroine of the present age. If this were an ordinary fire, how could no one in his household have escaped? It must have been set by enemies seeking revenge.” Guo Jing thought this over and agreed. “Right,” he said. “Let’s search around and see who set the fire and why they would resort to such vicious methods.”

The two of them circled the manor once but found no traces. Suddenly Huang Rong pointed at a half-collapsed wall. “Look, what’s that?” she cried. Guo Jing raised his head and saw several bloody handprints imprinted on the wall. The smoke had made them even more ghastly. Part of the wall had collapsed, leaving only half of two of the handprints. Guo Jing’s heart jolted, and the words escaped his lips: “Scarlet Serpent Immortal!”⁴ Huang Rong said, “It must be her. I’ve long heard that Scarlet Serpent Immortal Li Mochou’s martial arts are profound and her viciousness unmatched, no less than the Western Poison⁵ of old. Now that she’s come to Jiangnan, this is our chance to test ourselves against her.” Guo Jing nodded. “All our friends in the jianghu say this witch is terribly difficult to deal with. If we could find Father-in-law, that would be ideal.” Huang Rong laughed. “The older you get, the smaller your courage.” Guo Jing said, “That’s true. The more you train in martial arts, the more you realise how inadequate you are.” Huang Rong laughed. “How modest Lord Guo is! I, on the other hand, feel I grow more formidable with every passing day.”

They joked between themselves, but in their hearts they remained on guard. They searched the surrounding area and found two Bingpo Silver Needles beside a pond. One needle was half-submerged in the water, and several dozen goldfish in the pond had all turned belly-up. The toxicity of these needles was truly terrifying. Huang Rong stuck out her tongue. She picked up two broken twigs to grip the needles, wrapped them carefully in a handkerchief, and tucked them into her pouch. The two of them searched farther afield, and that was when they came upon the twin condors and encountered the boy.

Guo Jing felt the boy’s face was familiar, but for the moment he could not place who he resembled. His nose suddenly caught a strange, foul odor. He sniffed a few times and felt a slight dizziness in his head. Huang Rong had smelled it too. The stench seemed to come from nearby. She turned to look and saw that the male condor had a wound on its left foot. She leaned closer to smell it, the foul odor was indeed coming from the wound. Both of them were alarmed. Examining the wound closely, they saw that although it had only grazed the surface of the skin, the injured foot had swollen to more than twice its normal size, and the flesh was already rotting. Guo Jing wondered, What kind of wound could be this severe? Then he noticed that the boy’s left hand was entirely black. “You’ve been poisoned by this too?” he exclaimed in alarm.

Huang Rong rushed over, took the boy’s hand, and looked at it. She quickly pushed up his sleeve, took out a small knife, and cut his wrist to squeeze out the poisoned blood. But the blood that flowed from the boy’s hand was bright red. She found this strange, his palm was clearly black all over, so why was there no poison in his blood? She did not know that the boy, under the strange person’s instruction, had already forced the poisoned blood towards his fingertips, temporarily halting its spread. She took a Nine-Flower Jade Dew Pill⁶ from her pouch and said, “Chew this up and swallow it.” The boy took it in his hand. A fresh, delicate fragrance reached his nose first. He casually thanked her, put it in his mouth, and chewed. A sweet, exquisite flavor filled his mouth, and a stream of cool, refreshing energy penetrated straight to his dantian.⁷ Huang Rong took out two more pills and fed one to each condor.

Guo Jing sank into deep thought for a long while, then suddenly opened his mouth and let out a long howl. The strange sound erupted beside the boy’s ear without warning, startling him badly. The howl travelled far into the distance, startling birds into chaotic flight in all directions, and the drooping willow branches nearby trembled and shook. Before the first howl had faded, a second followed, howl upon howl, the sound waves overlapping and compounding, like a thousand horses and ten thousand soldiers galloping into the distance.

Huang Rong knew her husband was using his voice to challenge Li Mochou. When she heard his third howl ring out, she too gathered qi in her dantian and let loose a long, clear howl. Guo Jing’s howl was powerful and grand. Huang Rong’s was clear and soaring. Their two howls intertwined, like a great roc and a small bird flying side by side, climbing higher and higher, and the small bird never once fell behind the great roc. The two of them had trained diligently in seclusion on Peach Blossom Island, and their neili had reached the realm of perfection. When their twin howls rose together, it was truly as if they soared through the Ninth Heaven, their sound carrying for several li.

The upside-down strange person, hearing the howls, quickened his pace and fled.

The green-robed stranger carrying Cheng Ying heard the howls and gave a laugh. “So they’ve come too,” he said. “I’ll go farther away, save myself the trouble.”

Li Mochou, with Lu Wushuang clamped under her arm, was racing along at top speed when she suddenly heard the howls. She stopped abruptly, flicked her whisk, and turned around. “Guo the Great Hero’s name shakes the jianghu,” she said with a cold laugh. “I’d like to see whether he truly possesses genuine skill and learning.” Then she heard a clear, bright howl rise in response. The two howls echoed and harmonized, hard and soft complementing each other, their power redoubled. Li Mochou’s heart tightened. She knew she could not match them. And then she thought, husband and wife roaming the jianghu together, supporting each other, while she was all alone. A wave of utter desolation washed over her. She let out a long sigh. She was about to abandon Lu Wushuang and leave her behind when she caught sight of the half-handkerchief around the girl’s neck. Her heart ached. She seized the girl by the back of her collar and sped away.

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By this time, Madam Wu had helped her husband to his feet and, taking her two sons, had bid farewell to Ke Zhen’e and departed. Ke Zhen’e, after the fierce battle just now, feared that Li Mochou might return to harm Guo Fu. He was leading the girl away, looking for a hidden place to take shelter, when he suddenly heard the howls of Guo Jing and Huang Rong. His heart surged with joy. “Papa! Mama!” Guo Fu cried, and broke into a run.

The old man and the young girl followed the sound of the howls until they reached Guo Jing and Huang Rong. Guo Fu threw herself into Huang Rong’s arms. “Mama,” she said with a laugh, “Grand Elder just drove away a wicked woman. His venerable skills are truly tremendous.” Huang Rong naturally knew the girl was lying, but she only smiled. Guo Jing scolded, “Little child, when you speak, you must be honest.” Guo Fu stuck out her tongue and laughed. “Grand Elder’s skills aren’t tremendous? Then how could he be your teacher? That’s strange!” Afraid her father would scold her further, she ran far off and beckoned to the boy. “Go pick some flowers and weave me a flower crown!”

The boy followed her over. Guo Fu glanced at his black palm and said, “Your hands are so dirty, and the rest of you is dirty too. I won’t play with you. You’d just make the flowers stink.” The boy said coldly, “Who wants to play with you?” He strode off in great strides.

Footnotes

1. 气 – qì. Literally breath or vital energy. Fundamental life force flowing through all living things, central to Chinese medicine and martial arts. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 黄药师 – Huáng Yàoshī. His name meaning “medicine master”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 陆乘风 – Lù Chéngfēng. His name meaning “riding the wind”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 赤练仙子 – Chìliàn Xiānzǐ. Literally scarlet chain immortal. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 西毒 (Xī Dú). “Western Poison,” the martial name of Ouyang Feng. One of the Five Greats of the previous generation, known for his mastery of poison and his Toad Skill. He was Yang Guo’s sworn father, having taken the boy under his wing during a period of madness. ↩

6. 九花玉露丸 – Jiǔhuā Yùlù Wán. Nine-Flower Jade Dew Pill, a renowned healing elixir created by Huang Yaoshi from nine flowers gathered with morning dew. It is effective against a wide range of poisons and injuries. ↩

7. 丹田 – dāntián. Literally cinnabar field. Primary energy centre below the navel, where qi is stored and cultivated. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩