The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 2 – Part 6

Ke Zhen’e was reassured at last, and opened the door to let them in. “Eldest shifu, is everything all right here?” asked Huang Rong. “Everything’s fine,” said Ke Zhen’e. Huang Rong turned to Guo Jing. “Could we have been wrong about him after all?” Guo Jing shook his head. “No. Nine chances in ten it was him.” “Who?” said Ke Zhen’e. Huang Rong tugged at the front of Guo Jing’s robe, warning him to say nothing, but Guo Jing did not dare keep anything from his Kind Master. “Ouyang Feng,” he said. Ke Zhen’e hated that man above all others in his life, and at the mere sound of the name his face changed. “Ouyang Feng?” he said, low. “He isn’t dead?” “Just now, as we were coming back from gathering herbs,” said Guo Jing, “we saw a figure flit past the side of the house, fast and strange in the way it moved. We went after it at once, but it had already vanished. It looked very like Ouyang Feng.” Ke Zhen’e knew him for a steady, honest man who never spoke lightly. If he said it was Ouyang Feng, it could be no one else.

Guo Jing was worried about Yang Guo. He took a candlestick and went to the bed to look at him, and found the boy’s face rosy and his breathing even, fast asleep. “Ronger, he’s better!” he cried in delight. Yang Guo was in fact only pretending to sleep, listening with his eyes shut to the three of them talking. He had dimly gathered that his sworn father’s name was “Ouyang Feng”, and that these three were plainly very wary of him, and he was secretly delighted.

Huang Rong came over to look and was greatly puzzled. Earlier she had plainly seen the poison creeping up his arm, and after these few shichen¹ it should only have grown blacker and more swollen. Instead it had receded. It was strange beyond words. She and Guo Jing had been out searching for half the day without managing to gather all the herbs they needed, so she pounded the few they had found to a pulp, squeezed out the juice and gave it to him to drink, and fed the male eagle a few spoonfuls as well.

Next morning Guo Jing and his wife found Yang Guo clearer-headed and livelier, and the blackness on his palm much faded, and they were very pleased. They asked him how his mother had died. “My mother coughed for months on end,” said Yang Guo. “She took the medicine, but it did no good, and then she started coughing up blood. I was frantic. All I could do was cry. My mother said she wasn’t going to get better. She told me that when she was dead I was to burn her body and bury her beside Iron Spear Temple outside Jiaxing. She said that was where my father was buried…” Guo Jing was saddened, and sighed. Yang Guo went on. “A few days later my mother died. I burned her body to ashes, wrapped them in a bundle, and asked my way all along the road till I found Iron Spear Temple in Jiaxing. I dug a hole outside the temple and buried her ashes there. When she was dying, my mother told me to find my way to Peach Blossom Island and look for Uncle Guo and Auntie Guo…”

“I am your Uncle Guo,” said Guo Jing, and pointed to Huang Rong. “This is your Auntie Guo.” “Uncle Guo, Auntie Guo!” cried Yang Guo. He did not know whether he ought to kneel and kowtow. Guo Jing and Huang Rong answered him. They reflected that Peach Blossom Island was not so very near Changxing, where Mu Nianci had lived, yet not so very far from it either. Only because they had been unwilling to leave the island and go back into the jianghu had they never once gone to visit their old friend or look after her, and they felt a good deal of remorse. Fortunately they had now come upon that old friend’s son, and from here on they would look after him properly and bring him up to manhood. “Why didn’t you come to Peach Blossom Island to find us?” asked Huang Rong. “Mother told me that once I got to Peach Blossom Island I had to be careful in everything, do as I was told and be good, and not offend anyone,” said Yang Guo. “I figured I wouldn’t starve to death here anyway, so… hee hee… so I didn’t come!” Guo Jing felt only sorrow. But Huang Rong, hearing this, understood that it was precisely because the boy did not want to be careful in everything, do as he was told and be good, that he had not come to Peach Blossom Island.

That day Guo Jing and his wife and Ke Zhen’e took the two children and left Jiaxing, heading southeast. They had decided to go back to Peach Blossom Island first and cure Yang Guo’s poisoning. That night they put up at an inn. Ke Zhen’e shared a room with Yang Guo, and Guo Jing and his wife shared one with their daughter.

Guo Jing and his wife had slept until the middle of the night when they heard a sharp crack on the roof, and then Ke Zhen’e shouting loudly in the next room as he burst out through the window. Guo Jing and Huang Rong sprang up and darted to the window. On the roof Ke Zhen’e was fighting someone savagely with his bare hands. The man was tall and long in the arm, and it was, unmistakably, Ouyang Feng. Guo Jing was appalled, afraid Ouyang Feng would take his eldest shifu’s life in a single move. He was about to leap up to help when Ke Zhen’e let out a great cry and tumbled from the roof. Guo Jing flew forward, and just as Ke Zhen’e’s head was about to hit the ground, he caught him lightly by the back of the collar, lifted him, and set him gently down. “Eldest shifu, are you hurt?” he asked. “I won’t die of it,” said Ke Zhen’e. “Go, quickly, and cut Ouyang Feng off.” “Yes,” said Guo Jing, and leapt onto the roof.

On the roof, Huang Rong’s palms were flying. She was already locked in a fierce fight with the old enemy she had not seen in more than ten years. Her martial skill had advanced greatly in those years, her neili had grown stronger and her palm strikes subtler and more varied than ever, and in more than ten exchanges Ouyang Feng could gain no advantage whatever.

“Mister Ouyang,” Guo Jing called, “I trust you have been well since we parted?” “What did you say?” said Ouyang Feng. “What did you call me?” His face was blank with bewilderment. Against Huang Rong’s attacks he now only defended and did not strike back, while somewhere in his mind he dimly felt that the word “Ouyang” had something very close to do with himself. Guo Jing was about to speak again, but Huang Rong had already seen that Ouyang Feng’s madness was not cured. “Your name is Zhao Qian Sun Li, Zhou Wu Chen Wang!”² she cried quickly. Ouyang Feng froze. “My name is Zhao Qian Sun Li, Zhou Wu Chen Wang?” “That’s right,” said Huang Rong. “Your name is Feng Zheng Chu Wei, Jiang Shen Han Yang.” She was reciting surnames from the Hundred Family Surnames.³ Ouyang Feng’s mind was muddled to begin with, and with her reeling off several dozen surnames in a single breath, he half believed her and half doubted, and was more lost than ever. “Who are you?” he asked. “Who am I?”

Suddenly a great shout rang out behind him. “You’re the Old Poison who murdered my five good brothers.” At the words “Old Poison” something seemed to dawn on Ouyang Feng, but before he could think it through, an iron staff was upon him. It was Ke Zhen’e. Ouyang Feng’s palm force had driven him off the roof a moment before, but he was unhurt, and had gone into the room for his iron staff and come back up to fight again. “Shifu, be careful!” shouted Guo Jing. Ke Zhen’e’s staff came smashing down, and it was less than a foot from Ouyang Feng’s back when there was a whoosh and the staff sprang back. Ke Zhen’e could not keep his grip. The staff flew from his hands, and he himself followed it, tumbling down into the courtyard.

Guo Jing knew his shifu’s fall was nothing serious, but if Ouyang Feng seized the moment to press after him, the follow-up could be deadly. “Watch this!” he called. His left leg bent a little, his right palm traced a circle and pushed straight out. It was Proud Dragon Repents,⁴ from the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing.⁵ He had drilled this move day and night without a break. Even when he first learned it, it had been no ordinary thing, and with more than ten years of hard labour added it had truly reached flawless perfection. Pushed out, it looked light and effortless at first, but the moment it met resistance it could pile on thirteen further surges of force in an instant, each stronger than the last, layer upon layer, so that nothing was too hard for it to smash and nothing too strong for it to break. This was a sublime state he had grasped from the Nine Yin Manual. Even Hong Qigong in his day had never reached such profound mastery of this one move.

Ouyang Feng had just shaken Ke Zhen’e off the roof when he felt a faint breeze come at his face. The wind was not strong, yet already it pressed on him so that he could hardly breathe. He knew this was bad. He dropped into a crouch and pushed out both palms flat, using the art he was proudest of in all his life, the Toad Skill. Three palms met, and both men shook. Guo Jing’s palm force mounted fast, surge upon surge, rolling forward like heaving waves. Ouyang Feng gave great croaking cries, his body swaying as though he might fall at any moment, yet the harder Guo Jing’s palm force pressed, the more his counterforce grew to meet it.

The two had not crossed hands in more than ten years. Now, meeting again in Jiangnan, they were matching strength once more. At the Huashan Sword Summit of old, Guo Jing had been no match for Ouyang Feng. But since then he had pressed boldly forward, and his martial skill had grown deeply seasoned. Ouyang Feng had practised the Manual in reverse and gained insights of his own, but one followed the true way and the other its reverse, and in the end the true prevails over the reverse. So at this meeting Guo Jing could run neck and neck with him, and neither could get the better of the other. Huang Rong wanted her husband to win by his own strength alone, so she only kept watch at the side and did not join the attack.

Southern roofs were very different from northern ones. In the north a house had to bear the weight of winter snow and ice, so its roof was exceptionally solid, but south of the Huai River roofs were of overlapping tiles, built above all to be light and handy. Guo Jing and Ouyang Feng pressed palm force against palm force, their strength driven down into their legs. After about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, they heard creaking beneath their feet. Suddenly, with a great splintering crash, several rafters snapped at once. A great hole broke open in the roof, and both men dropped through together.

Huang Rong was horrified and leapt down through the hole after them. The two were still palm to palm, standing on several rafters, and the rafters were pinning down a guest of the inn. The man had been sound asleep and sweetly dreaming. How could he know disaster would drop on him out of the sky? Both his legs broke on the spot, and he howled in agony. Guo Jing could not bear to harm an innocent man and dared not put any force into his feet, but Ouyang Feng cared nothing whether a bystander lived or died. The two had been evenly matched, but because Guo Jing’s footing was hollow and his palm had nothing to draw force from, he gradually fell behind. He was meeting his enemy’s two palms with one. His whole body’s strength was gathered in his right palm, and his left, though free, had no strength left to use. Huang Rong saw her husband lean back very slightly. It was a retreat of only half an inch or a fraction of it, but he was clearly losing. “Hey, Zhang San Li Si, Muddle-Headed Turtle, watch this,” she called, and sent a light, floating palm towards Ouyang Feng’s shoulder.

Light as that palm looked, it was a high art of the Falling Petals Divine Jian Palm,⁶ and landing on an enemy its force would drive straight through to the organs. Even a first-rank master like Ouyang Feng could not escape injury. Ouyang Feng heard her call him by yet another outlandish name and was taken aback, and then all at once he saw her palm coming. He drove forward with both palms, forcing Guo Jing’s palm force back half a foot, and in that lightning instant he seized Huang Rong by the shoulder, his five fingers hooked like claws, meaning to tear a lump of flesh clean out of her.

The instant that grab went out, all three of them got a great shock. Ouyang Feng felt a stabbing pain in his fingertips. He had caught the spikes of the Soft Hedgehog Armour she wore,⁷ and he let go in haste. At that very moment Guo Jing’s palm force came again. Ouyang Feng turned his palm back to meet it, and in that desperate moment both put out their full strength. There was a great thud, and both men shot backwards at once. Sand and dust flew, the wall gave way and the house leaned over. Both had used hard palm force in that exchange, and since in the darkness neither could make out the other’s shape, the huge power of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing and of the Toad Skill had each landed on the other’s shoulder. The two men broke out through the wall, and half the roof came crashing down. Huang Rong had taken that grab on the shoulder. She was not hurt, but she was so frightened that the colour left her face, and in the scramble, as the roof hung on the point of falling, she shot out sideways. There stood Ouyang Feng and Guo Jing, five feet apart, motionless. Both had plainly taken internal injuries.

Huang Rong had no time to attack the enemy. She went straight to her husband’s side and stood guard over him. The two men had their eyes shut, working their breath, and then, with a retching gasp from each, both spat out a mouthful of blood at the same moment. “Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, heh, fine stuff, fine stuff!” cried Ouyang Feng. He gave a burst of wild laughter and strode off, and in an instant he was gone without a trace.

Footnotes

1. 时辰 – shíchen. Traditional Chinese double hour; one twelfth of a day, equal to two modern hours. ↩

2. 赵钱孙李，周吴陈王 – Zhào Qián Sūn Lǐ, Zhōu Wú Chén Wáng. Opening lines of the Hundred Family Surnames, a classic Chinese text listing common surnames. Huang Rong is deliberately confusing Ouyang Feng by reciting random surnames. ↩

3. 百家姓 – Bǎijiāxìng. Classic Chinese text composed during the Song dynasty, listing over 400 common Chinese surnames in rhyming verse. It was traditionally used to teach children to read. ↩

4. 亢龙有悔 – Kàng Lóng Yǒu Huǐ. Proud Dragon Repents, the first and most famous move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing. Name comes from the Book of Changes, hexagram 1 (乾), top line: a proud dragon will have cause to repent, warning against excessive pride. ↩

5. 降龙十八掌 – Xiánglóng Shíbā Zhǎng. Signature martial art of the Beggars’ Guild, mastered by Hong Qigong and Guo Jing, and among the most powerful external martial arts in the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 落英神剑掌 – Luòyīng Shénjiàn Zhǎng. Literally falling-petals divine-sword palm. A palm art of Peach Blossom Island, created by Huang Yaoshi. ↩

7. 软猬甲 – Ruǎnwèi Jiǎ. Protective vest made of gold wire and the hide of a rare hedgehog-like creature, covered with fine barbs. It protects the wearer from blades and palm strikes, and its barbs can injure anyone striking it with bare hands. Supreme treasure of Peach Blossom Island. ↩