The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 2 – Part 5

“Young Brother, don’t rush off,” Guo Jing called. “The poison left in your body hasn’t been cleared. If it flares up, it’ll be no joke.” Nothing galled the boy more than being looked down on, and Guo Fu’s words had stung him to the heart. He held his head high and walked straight on, as if he had not heard Guo Jing calling. Guo Jing hurried after him. “How did you get poisoned? Let us treat you, and then you can go.” “I don’t even know you,” said the boy. “What business is it of yours?” He quickened his pace, trying to slip past Guo Jing. Guo Jing saw the sullen resentment on his face, and something about his brows and eyes was very like an old friend’s. A thought stirred in him. “Young Brother,” he said, “what is your surname?” The boy shot him a scornful look and turned sideways, meaning to dash past. Guo Jing turned his palm over and caught him by the wrist. The boy struggled a few times but could not break free, and his left fist slammed hard into Guo Jing’s belly.

Guo Jing smiled faintly and paid it no attention. The boy tried to draw his arm back to strike again, but his fist had sunk deep into Guo Jing’s belly and would not come out. His small face flushed scarlet. He pulled with all his might until his arm ached, but he could not break free of the pull of Guo Jing’s belly. Guo Jing laughed. “Tell me your surname, and I’ll let you go.” “My surname is Ni,” said the boy, “and my given name is Laozi. So let me go, quick.” Guo Jing was sorely disappointed and let his belly go slack. He had no idea that the boy had really been calling himself “your old man”¹ and was having a laugh at his expense. His fist free, the boy looked at Guo Jing and thought, You’re very skilled, but your old man’s no match for his good son.

Huang Rong had seen the sly, impudent look on his face, and could not shake the feeling that he was very like that man. She could not resist testing him once more. “Young Brother,” she said with a laugh, “if you want to be my husband’s father, wouldn’t that make you my father-in-law?” Her left hand flicked out and was already pressing down on his right shoulder. The boy felt how strong the push was and quickly summoned his strength to resist it. Suddenly Huang Rong let go of the pressure, and the boy pitched helplessly forward and hit his forehead hard on the ground with a thud. Guo Fu clapped her hands and laughed. The boy was furious. He jumped up, covered in dust, and backed away a few steps. He was just about to let fly a stream of filthy abuse when Huang Rong darted forward, pressed both hands on his shoulders and looked steadily into his eyes. “Your surname is Yang and your given name is Guo,”² she said slowly. “Your mother’s surname was Mu. Isn’t that right?”

The boy was indeed called Yang Guo. Hearing Huang Rong suddenly say his name aloud gave him a terrible shock. Blood and qi surged up in his chest, the poison in his hand rushed back up his arm, his head swam, and he fainted on the spot.

Huang Rong caught him in alarm and held him up. Guo Jing kneaded him a few times, and his eyes slowly opened. He had bitten through his tongue, and his mouth was full of blood. Guo Jing was startled and overjoyed. “He… so he is Brother Yang Kang’s boy,”³ he said. Huang Rong saw that Yang Guo had been very badly poisoned. “Let’s find an inn first,” she said quietly, “and get some medicine made up in town.” “You… how do you know me?” asked Yang Guo. “We were friends of your mother’s,” said Guo Jing. “Where is your mother?” “My mother’s dead,” said Yang Guo. “She died a long time ago!” The words shook Guo Jing, his grip tightened without his meaning it to, and Yang Guo fainted again.

What had happened was this. Huang Rong had seen how much the boy’s features resembled Yang Kang’s, and remembered how, years before, at an inn in Zhongdu,⁴ Wang Chuyi⁵ had tested where Mu Nianci’s⁶ martial arts came from. He had pressed down on her shoulder, and instead of falling backwards Mu Nianci had pitched forward. That was the breathing and training method peculiar to Hong Qigong’s⁷ school. If this boy was Mu Nianci’s son, his martial arts would surely be of the same line. Huang Rong was Hong Qigong’s disciple and knew the secrets of her school’s training inside out, and one test had indeed laid bare who he was.

Guo Jing picked Yang Guo up, and with Ke Zhen’e, Huang Rong, Guo Fu and the twin eagles, went back to the inn. Huang Rong wrote out a prescription, and the serving boy went to the apothecary’s to have it made up. But most of the drugs she called for were rare and out of the way, and big city though Jiaxing was, they could not all be had at once. Guo Jing saw that Yang Guo’s agony showed no sign of easing, and was deeply worried. Huang Rong knew that ever since the death of his sworn younger brother Yang Kang, her husband had never been at peace with himself. Meeting Yang Kang’s son out of the blue today had filled him with boundless joy, and yet the boy had been gravely poisoned and might live or die. “Let’s go out and gather the herbs ourselves,” she said. Guo Jing knew that if there were the slightest hope of a cure she would have said something to comfort him, and seeing how grave she looked, he grew more uneasy still. He told Guo Fu not to wander off, and husband and wife went out to search for herbs.

Yang Guo slept on in a daze until nightfall, no better. Ke Zhen’e came in to look at him several times but could do nothing for him. The poison on his own caltrops⁸ was nothing like that of the Soul-Freezing Silver Needles,⁹ and the antidote to one could not be used for the other. He was afraid, too, that Guo Fu would slip out, so he kept coaxing her to go to sleep.

---

Yang Guo had no idea how long he had lain senseless when he felt someone kneading his chest. He slowly came round and opened his eyes. A dark shadow flickered, and someone darted out through the window. He forced himself up, leaned on the table, and made his way to the window to look out. On the eaves a man was standing upside down, head down and feet up. It was the strange man who had made him call him Papa earlier that day. He was swaying back and forth as if he might fall off the roof at any moment.

Yang Guo was surprised and overjoyed. “It’s you,” he called. “Why aren’t you calling me Papa?” said the strange man. “Papa!” Yang Guo called, but thought, You’re really my son. I’m your old man, but I’ll stoop to it and call you Papa. The strange man was very pleased. “Come up here,” he said. Yang Guo climbed onto the window sill and leapt for the roof. But the poison had left him weak and he did not have the strength. His fingers missed the eaves, and he fell. “Ah!” he cried out in spite of himself.

The strange man reached out, caught him by the back and set him gently down on the roof. He flipped himself upright and was about to speak when he heard a faint click from the lattice of a window in the west room. Knowing that someone had spotted him, he snatched up Yang Guo and ran. By the time Ke Zhen’e leapt onto the roof, there was not a sound to be heard.

The strange man ran with Yang Guo to a patch of waste ground outside the town and set him down. “Use the method I taught you,” he said, “and force out a bit more of the poison.” Yang Guo did as he was told. After about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, a few drops of black blood dripped from his fingertips, and his chest felt much easier at once. “You’re a very clever child,” said the strange man. “You learn a thing the moment you’re taught, quicker even than my own son was. Ah! My boy!” At the thought of his dead son his eyes grew moist, and he stroked Yang Guo’s head and sighed softly.

Yang Guo had never had a father, and his mother too had fallen ill and died the year he was eleven. On her deathbed Mu Nianci had told him that his father had died in Iron Spear Temple¹⁰ in Jiaxing. She told him to have her body cremated and her ashes buried outside Iron Spear Temple, and then to go and seek refuge with his shifu,¹¹ Guo Jing. Yang Guo had done as his mother had bidden. From Changxing¹² by Lake Tai to Jiaxing was not a long journey, and once he had buried his mother he had drifted about Jiaxing ever since, living in this ruined kiln and getting by on petty thieving. Young as he was, Yang Guo was stubborn by nature and very proud, and he would not go to Peach Blossom Island to throw himself on other people and live on their charity. Mu Nianci had taught him some first steps in martial arts, but her own skill had never been high, and Yang Guo had still been small when she died, so she had not really been able to teach him much. For the past few years Yang Guo had met cold looks wherever he went and had been bullied by everyone. This strange man had never set eyes on him before, and yet he was so good to him. Seeing the man’s true feeling for him laid bare, Yang Guo was deeply moved. He sprang up, threw his arms round the man’s neck and cried, “Papa, papa!” Ever since he was two or three, he had longed for a father who would love him and look after him. Sometimes in his dreams a kind and heroic father would suddenly appear, but when he woke the father was gone again, and he would often cry his heart out over it. Now the wish of so many years had suddenly come true, and into those two cries of “Papa” he poured all the longing a son has for his father. He no longer had the least thought of scoring off the man in his heart.

Yang Guo was deeply stirred, but the strange man, sensing that the boy’s cries came from the heart, was happier still. When they first met, Yang Guo had been forced to own him as a father and had been a hundred times unwilling. Now their hearts were as one, as close as any father and son, and each felt that if the other were in danger, he would gladly die for him. The strange man laughed and shouted. “Good child, good child. Good son, call me Papa again.” Yang Guo called him Papa twice more and leaned against him.

The strange man laughed. “Good son, come, I’ll teach you the martial art I’m proudest of in all my life.” He crouched low and croaked three times deep in his throat, then pushed out with both hands. There was a thunderous boom, and half a rammed-earth wall in front of them collapsed at the blow, filling the air with plaster and dust. Yang Guo stared open-mouthed, his tongue hanging out, astonished and delighted at once. “What skill is that?” he asked. “Can I learn it?” “This is called the Toad Skill,”¹³ said the strange man. “As long as you’re willing to work hard at it, you’ll learn it all right.” “Once I’ve learned it,” said Yang Guo, “will no one ever bully me again?” The strange man’s brows shot up. “Who dares bully my son? I’ll rip out his sinews and flay off his skin. One push like this, and however many villains there are, you’ll knock them all flat and they won’t get up again.”

This strange man, of course, was none other than Ouyang Feng the Western Poison.¹⁴

Ever since Huang Rong had tricked him into madness at the Huashan Sword Summit,¹⁵ he had wandered to the ends of the earth for more than ten years, forever asking himself, Who am I, really? Wherever the scenery seemed faintly familiar, he would linger long, hoping to find himself, and that was why he had stayed on in Jiaxing these past few months. In recent years he had been practising the Nine Yin Manual¹⁶ in reverse, and his neili had advanced a great deal and his mind had cleared considerably. Though he was still half mad, many old memories had gradually come back to him. Only who he himself really was, he still could not remember.

Then and there Ouyang Feng passed on to Yang Guo the entry-level mental method for cultivating the Toad Skill. His Toad Skill was one of the supreme accomplishments of all the martial learning under heaven. The toad is a creature that first lies buried in the earth for a long time, storing up its strength, and once it comes out it needs little food. The Toad Skill likewise was built on storing up force and hoarding strength, which was why its neili was so very hard to cultivate. The slightest mistake in training could do grave injury, even make a man cough blood and die, so much so that in the old days Ouyang Feng had not taught it even to his own son, Ouyang Ke.¹⁷ Now, in his excitement and his befuddlement, with no sense of what was safe, he taught it without the least reserve to his newly sworn son. Yang Guo had no grounding in martial arts at all. He learned the entry formula off by heart, but how could he hope to grasp what it really meant? Worse, being so quick and clever, wherever he did not understand he made up his own explanations. Ouyang Feng taught him for a long while, and as he listened to the boy’s muddled nonsense, as ill-matched as a cow’s head on a horse’s mouth, he lost his temper and raised his hand to box his ears. But in the moonlight he saw the boy’s handsome face, so very lovable, better-looking even than Ouyang Ke had been as a boy, and the slap would not come down. “You’re tired,” he sighed. “Go back and rest. I’ll teach you more tomorrow.”

Ever since Guo Fu had said his hands and body were dirty, Yang Guo had loathed her whole family. “I’m staying with Papa,” he said. “I’m not going back.” Ouyang Feng was muddled only about his own affairs. About everything else he was not confused at all. “There’s something not quite right in my head,” he said. “I’m afraid I’d drag you into trouble. You go back for now. When I’ve thought one thing through, the two of us, father and son, will be together for good and never part. All right?” Since his mother died, no one had ever in his life spoken to Yang Guo so warmly. He stepped forward and took the man’s hand. “Then come for me soon,” he said, choking back tears. Ouyang Feng nodded. “I’ll follow you in secret. Wherever you go, I’ll know. If anyone bullies you, I’ll break his ribs into seventy or eighty pieces.” He picked Yang Guo up and carried him back to the inn.

Ke Zhen’e had come looking for Yang Guo earlier, and finding no one when he felt the bed, he had searched all round the inn without finding him either, and had grown very anxious. When he came a second time, Yang Guo was already back. Ke Zhen’e was about to ask him where he had been when he heard a sharp rush of wind on the roof above as someone leapt across. He knew it was two people of formidable martial skill passing over the rooftops. Quickly he carried Guo Fu over and laid her on the bed beside Yang Guo, then took up his iron staff and stood guard at the window, afraid the pair were enemies who had gone and come back again. Sure enough, the rush of wind came nearer from afar, and in an instant it was on the roof. “Do you see who that is?” said one voice. “Strange, strange,” said another. “Can it really be him?” It was Guo Jing and Huang Rong.

Footnotes

1. 倪牢子 – Ní Láozi. A pun: spoken aloud, the name sounds like 你老子 nǐ lǎozi, “your old man”, so whoever repeats it calls the boy his father. ↩

2. 杨过 – Yáng Guò. His name meaning “fault or transgression”; his courtesy name Gaizhi means “to correct it”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

4. 中都 – Zhōngdū. Jin dynasty’s central capital, present-day Beijing. ↩

5. 王处一 – Wáng Chùyī. His name meaning “dwelling in oneness”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 穆念慈 – Mù Niàncí. Her name meaning “cherishing kindness”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 洪七公 – Hóng Qīgōng. Literally Hong the Seventh Lord; the numeral seven marks seniority among sworn brothers. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 毒菱 – Dú Líng. Poison caltrops, Ke Zhen’e’s signature hidden weapons, coated with a different type of poison than Li Mochou’s silver needles. ↩

9. 冰魄银针 – Bīngpò Yínzhēn. Literally ice-soul silver needles. Li Mochou’s signature hidden weapon, poisoned. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 铁枪庙 – Tiěqiāng Miào. Iron Spear Temple in Jiaxing, named after the iron spear of the Five Dynasties general Wang Yanzhang. It is where Yang Kang met his death. ↩

11. 师父 – shīfù. Teacher responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 长兴 – Chángxīng. County near Lake Tai in Zhejiang Province, where Mu Nianci lived and raised Yang Guo. ↩

13. 蛤蟆功 – Hámá Gōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 欧阳锋 – Ōuyáng Fēng. His name meaning “blade” or “cutting edge”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 华山论剑 – Huàshān Lùnjiàn. Literally sword discussion at Huashan. Use of discussion is key as the participants were engaged in a martial arts exchange and a philosophical debate on mastery, rather than just a physical contest. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

16. 九阴真经 – Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Nine Yin Manual, the most comprehensive martial arts text in the Condor Trilogy, containing the accumulated wisdom of countless masters. ↩

17. 欧阳克 – Ōuyáng Kè. Ouyang Feng’s nephew (actually his illegitimate son). He was a skilled but lecherous martial artist who died during the events of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. ↩