The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 20 – Part 3

Gongsun Lü’e¹ thought, If this goes on, one of them is bound to get hurt. She did not want Yang Guo beaten, but neither could she bear to watch her father wounded. “Mother,” she whispered to Qiu Qianchi, “tell them to stop fighting. Let everyone sit down and judge who is right and who is wrong.”

Qiu Qianchi gave a snort. “Pour two bowls of tea and bring them here.” Lü’e’s mind was in a whirl, but she did as she was told, poured two bowls of tea and hurried them over to her mother. Qiu Qianchi raised both hands and took off the bloodied cloth bound round her head. When she had dashed her head against the pillar, Xiaolongnü had torn a strip from her gown to bandage it, and now, with the cloth off, fresh blood welled from the crown of her head again. “Mother!” cried Lü’e in alarm. “I won’t die of it!” said Qiu Qianchi. She tossed the bloody cloth onto her lap and took a tea bowl in each hand, holding each with four fingers and dipping the thumb into the tea, so that the blood all over her fingers mingled with it. She swirled the bowls idly, and in a moment there was no trace of blood to be seen. “You must both be worn out with fighting,” she called. “Have a bowl of tea, then carry on!” To Lü’e she said, “Take them the tea to quench their thirst, one bowl each.”

Lü’e knew how bitter her mother’s hatred of her father ran, and she could not believe her capable of such kindness as sending him tea to quench his thirst. Most likely it meant him harm. Yet she had poured both bowls herself, there was certainly no poison in them, and they were exactly alike. Perhaps Mother was only taking pity on Yang Guo, but if Father had no tea, he would never stop, and then Yang Guo would not get his bowl either. And both men were plainly exhausted. So she took up a tea tray with the two bowls on it, walked out to the middle of the hall and said clearly, “Please, have some tea!”

Gongsun Zhi and Yang Guo had long been parched, and at Qiu Qianchi’s call they both broke off and leapt apart. Lü’e took the tray to her father first. Gongsun Zhi reasoned that since the tea came on Qiu Qianchi’s orders, there must be something wrong with it, most likely poison. He waved it away and said to Yang Guo, “You drink first.” Yang Guo was not in the least afraid. He picked up a bowl at random, raised it to his lips and took a sip. “Good,” said Gongsun Zhi. “Give that one to me!” And he reached out and took the bowl from Yang Guo’s hand. Yang Guo smiled. “Your own daughter poured this tea. Do you really think it could be poisoned?” He took the other bowl in exchange and drained it at a gulp.

Gongsun Zhi glanced at his daughter’s face and saw it calm and untroubled. E’er is sweet on this boy, he thought. Of course she wouldn’t poison the tea. And I’ve already changed bowls with him, so what is there to fear? He too drained his bowl at a single draught. His dao and jian clanged together. “We fight on,” he said. “Hmph. If that vile old hag hadn’t been coaching you, you’d have lost ten lives by now to my golden dao and black jian, if you had them.”

Qiu Qianchi pressed the torn cloth back on the wound on her head. “His Acupoint-Sealing Skill² is broken,” she said, in a voice that chilled the blood. “You can strike his acupoints as you please.”

Gongsun Zhi froze. He could taste blood, faintly, at the root of his tongue, and the shock of it was no small thing. The family art of acupoint-sealing he practised had one great taboo: not the least morsel of meat or fish must ever pass his lips, or the skill would break at once. His forebears, fearing it might be touched by accident, had laid down in the family precepts that no one in the valley should eat meat or fish, so that everyone else, though they never practised this superior neigong, was forced to keep a vegetarian diet along with them.³ He had always been meticulously on his guard. How could he have dreamed that Qiu Qianchi would hit on so venomous a trick as mixing her own blood into the tea? A bowl of blood tea did Yang Guo no harm whatever, but the Acupoint-Sealing Skill Gongsun Zhi had laboured at all his life was gone, poured away like water.

In a towering rage he swung round. Qiu Qianchi had a dish of honeyed dates on her lap, set out for the wedding guests, and she was eating them with relish. “I told you twenty years ago,” she said slowly. “This skill of the Gongsun family is hard to learn and easy to break. Better not to practise it at all.”

Fire seemed to blaze from Gongsun Zhi’s eyes. Raising dao and jian, he hurled himself at her. Lü’e started and sprang in front of her mother to shield her, and suddenly she felt a rush of wind past her ear, as if a hidden weapon had flown by. Gongsun Zhi let out a long howl. Blood was streaming from his right eye. He turned and ran headlong from the hall, his dao and jian still clutched in his hands. Drop after drop of blood spattered the floor, a thread of red running straight to the door of the hall. His agonised howls grew fainter and fainter, until at last they died away among the mountains. The guests in the hall stared at one another. None of them knew how Qiu Qianchi had wounded him.

Only Yang Guo and Lü’e understood: Qiu Qianchi had used her date-pit spitting again.⁴

All through Yang Guo’s fierce fight with Gongsun Zhi, she had been chewing honeyed dates and holding seven or eight of the pits in her mouth. She had seen how far Gongsun Zhi’s martial skill had come on: even if she spat pits at him, he would surely dodge them, and if the first attack missed and put him on his guard, she would never get another chance to hurt him. So while he was in the thick of the fight, she had first broken his acupoint-sealing with the blood tea, then loosed the date pits the moment his fury boiled over. It was the only martial art she had, the fruit of more than ten years of single-minded, bitter practice, and in power and accuracy it was a match for any deadly hidden weapon in the world. Had Lü’e not suddenly rushed out and stood in the way, Gongsun Zhi would have lost both eyes, and a pit in the acupoint between his brows would have killed him on the spot.

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Lü’e’s heart ached for him. She stood stunned a moment, then cried, “Father, Father!” and started out after him to see how he was. “If you want your father,” Qiu Qianchi said harshly, “go with him, and never let me see you again.” Lü’e stopped short, aghast, torn both ways. But then, this was Father’s own doing, after all; Mother had suffered far worse than he had; and besides, he was far away by now, and she could never catch him. So she came slowly back from the doorway and stood with her head bowed, saying nothing.

Qiu Qianchi sat bolt upright in her chair, looking this way and that. “Well, well,” she said with a cold laugh. “You all came today to drink the wedding wine, and the wine was never drunk. What a disappointment, eh?” Her icy gaze made everyone’s skin crawl. They feared some strange hidden weapon might suddenly shoot from her mouth. The people of the valley were simply terrified, but the State Preceptor, Yin Kexi⁵ and the others each quietly braced themselves.

Neither Xiaolongnü nor Yang Guo had dreamed Gongsun Zhi would come to such an end, and both of them heaved a long, deep sigh. Each reached out, and they gripped each other’s hands tight, and with their hearts in perfect accord they turned at once and walked side by side towards the door. They had just reached it when Qiu Qianchi suddenly shouted, “Yang Guo, where are you going?”

Yang Guo turned and bowed to the ground. “Esteemed Senior Qiu, Miss Lü’e, we take our leave of you here.” Knowing his own days were numbered, he did not add anything like “until we meet again.”

Lü’e returned his bow, saying nothing, her face full of sorrow. Qiu Qianchi’s face was dark with anger. “I have promised you my only daughter,” she barked. “Why do you neither call me mother-in-law nor stay, but rush off like this?”

Yang Guo was taken aback. You may have promised me your daughter, but I never said I wanted her. “The wedding gifts are all here,” Qiu Qianchi went on, “the lamps and candles are ready, and so many guests have come. We people of the martial arts needn’t fuss like old women. The two of you shall be married today.”

State Preceptor Jinlun and the rest had watched Yang Guo fight Gongsun Zhi to the death more than once for Xiaolongnü’s sake, and hearing this from Qiu Qianchi, they knew another storm was bound to follow. They exchanged glances, some smiling, some giving a little shake of the head.

His left hand on Xiaolongnü’s arm, his right resting backwards on the hilt of the Junzi Jian, Yang Guo said, “Esteemed Senior Qiu, your goodwill is generous, and your daughter has done me a great kindness, for which I am deeply grateful. But my heart already belongs to another, and I am truly no fit match for your daughter.” As he spoke he backed slowly away, for he feared that in her fury Qiu Qianchi might suddenly spit date pits, and so he kept his hand on his jian, ready.

Qiu Qianchi shot Xiaolongnü an angry glare. “Heh,” she said coldly. “The little fox spirit⁶ really is uncommonly lovely. No wonder the old one was besotted and the young one has lost his head over her.” “Mother,” said Lü’e, “Big Brother Yang and Miss Long were betrothed long ago. I’ll tell you all about it later.” Qiu Qianchi spat at her. “Pah. What do you take your mother for? Do I go back on what I’ve said? You, Yang. Never mind that my daughter is fair of face and not a whit unworthy of you. If she were a hideous fright, I’d still have you marry her today.”

Hearing her lay down the law so outrageously, Ma Guangzuo burst out laughing. “Husband and wife in this valley are a real pair of treasures,” he boomed. “The husband forces somebody’s girl to marry him, and the wife forces somebody’s boy to marry her girl. And if they say no? Won’t that do?”

“It will not!” said Qiu Qianchi coldly. Ma Guangzuo opened his great mouth and roared with laughter. Suddenly, with a soft pop, a date pit shot at his brow, quick as a flash of lightning, impossible to dodge. Startled, Ma Guangzuo jerked his head up, and with a crack the pit knocked out three of his front teeth. Ma Guangzuo flew into a rage, gave a tiger’s roar and threw himself at her. Pop, pop, came two more, and the Huantiao acupoint on his right leg and the Yangguan acupoint on his left were struck by date pits at the same instant.⁷ Both his legs gave way. He crashed to the floor and could not get up.

Footnotes

1. 公孙绿萼 – Gōngsūn Lǜ’è. Her name meaning “green calyx”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 闭穴功 – Bì Xué Gōng. Acupoint-Sealing Skill. A Gongsun family secret art that renders the practitioner’s acupoints immune to enemy strikes. Requires strict vegetarianism; any contact with meat or blood shatters the skill instantly. ↩

3. 不食荤腥 – bù shí hūnxīng. To eat no meat or fish. The valley-wide rule existed solely to protect the Gongsun family’s Acupoint-Sealing Skill from accidental contamination. ↩

4. 口喷枣核 – Kǒu Pēn Zǎohé. Qiu Qianchi’s only remaining martial art after her limbs were crippled. Through years of bitter practice in her underground prison, she developed the ability to spit date pits with lethal force and accuracy, making this seemingly absurd technique a genuinely fearsome hidden weapon. ↩

5. 尹克西 – Yǐn Kèxī. His name meaning “overcome the west”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 狐狸精 – Húlijīng. In Chinese folklore, fox spirits are seductive supernatural beings who bewitch men. Qiu Qianchi uses this term to insult Xiaolongnü, implying she has used her beauty to enchant both Gongsun Zhi (“the old one”) and Yang Guo (“the young one”). ↩

7. 环跳穴, 阳关穴 – Huantiao and Yangguan acupoints. Huántiào Xué and Yángguān Xué. The huantiao point is located on the hip/buttock area; the yangguan point is near the knee. Striking both simultaneously collapses the legs. ↩