The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 21 – Part 2

With Guo Jing’s deep, powerful neili pressing on his dantian, Yang Guo could not make a sound. Frantic over Xiaolongnü’s safety, he turned scarlet to the tips of his ears and strained to break free, but with his dantian pinned his whole body was held fast, and he could not stir.

Guo Jing said slowly, “Guoer, you have been pushing your training too hard. More haste, less speed, as the saying goes.¹ Stop struggling. I’ll help you guide your qi back to its source.” Yang Guo was taken aback, not seeing what he meant, but then he felt a warm current flowing gradually from Guo Jing’s palm into his own dantian, more soothing and pleasant than words could say, and he heard Guo Jing go on, “Breathe out slowly. Let this warmth travel from Shuifen to Jianli, then through Juque and Jiuwei to Yutang and Huagai.² Open the Conception Vessel first. Never mind the other meridians.”

Hearing this, and feeling Guo Jing using his neigong³ to help open his meridians, Yang Guo had guessed eight or nine parts of the truth in a flash. Shame on me! he cried inwardly. So he only thinks my practice has given me a qi deviation, and that’s why I behaved so wildly. At once he set his inner breath secretly running, sending it charging every which way, crashing and colliding as though it were beyond all control. Alarmed, Guo Jing increased the neili in his palm and gathered the wild currents running everywhere into one place. Yang Guo decided he might as well make the act as convincing as he could. His neigong was far from shallow by now, and with the breath surging wildly through his body, Guo Jing found it no easy thing to master. It took a full half shichen⁴ before every contrary current had been brought back into line.

This upheaval left Yang Guo drained and limp, and Guo Jing badly tired as well. The two of them sat in meditation together until dawn before they had recovered. Guo Jing smiled. “Guoer, are you better? I never imagined your neili had come so far. It was almost more than I could manage.” Yang Guo knew that, to save him, Guo Jing had not hesitated to spend a great deal of his own strength, and he was deeply moved. “Thank you for saving me, Uncle Guo,” he said. “Last night I nearly ended up crippled in all four limbs.”

Last night, out of your mind, you actually took up a blade to kill me, Guo Jing thought. It’s lucky you don’t know it, or how ashamed you would be. Afraid that Yang Guo would feel wretched if he learned of it, he changed the subject. “Come outside the city with me. Let’s look over the defences on all four sides.” “Yes!” said Yang Guo.

Each mounted a warhorse, and they rode out of the city side by side. Guo Jing said, “Guoer, Quanzhen neigong is the orthodox line of neigong under heaven. Progress is slow, but it never goes astray. You may dabble in the martial arts of every school and house, but for neigong it is best to cultivate the Daoist arts alone. Once the enemy has withdrawn, you and I will study it properly together.” Yang Guo said, “Please don’t say a word to Auntie Guo about my qi deviation last night. If she knew, she would be sure to laugh at me and say I had learned heterodox arts from Aunt Long and put you to all that trouble.” Guo Jing said, “Of course I won’t tell her. Miss Long’s arts are not heterodox at all, in fact. It was your own wandering thoughts: you had not cleared your mind and held to the One.” Yang Guo knew that if Huang Rong ever heard of the matter she would see through it at once, so when Guo Jing promised to keep quiet he was greatly relieved.

The two rode west of the city and came to a small stream that crossed their path at the foot of the hills. Guo Jing said, “This stream is small, but it is very famous. It’s called the Tan Stream.”⁵ “Ah,” said Yang Guo. “I’ve heard the stories of the Three Kingdoms, how Imperial Uncle Liu leapt the Tan Stream on horseback. So this is where the stream is.”⁶ Guo Jing said, “The horse Liu Bei rode in those days was called Dilu. Judges of horses said it would bring harm to its master. Who would have thought that this same Dilu would leap the stream, shake off the pursuers and save Imperial Uncle Liu’s life?” As he said this, his thoughts turned unbidden to Yang Guo’s father, Yang Kang, and he sighed heavily. “In truth, everyone in this world is like that horse Dilu. Do good, and you are good. Do evil, and you are evil. Is anyone fixed for ever as a good man or a bad one? The whole difference lies in a single thought.”

Yang Guo gave a start. He looked at Guo Jing out of the corner of his eye and saw unmistakable sorrow in his face: plainly he had not meant it as a jibe. What you say may be true, he thought, but what is good? What is evil? You and your wife murdered my father behind his back. Is that good too? Such fine, grand words, and not a blush of shame. He admired Guo Jing in everything, but whenever he thought of how his father had died at the hands of this husband and wife, malice rose in his breast in spite of himself.

They rode on for a while and came to the top of a small hill, where they climbed to the edge of the cliff and gazed into the distance. Below them the Han River rolled vast and broad to the south, and the countryside on every side was swarming with refugees, dragging their sons and daughters along as they surged towards Xiangyang. Guo Jing pointed his riding crop at the stream of people. “The Mongol troops must be stepping up their slaughter in the villages round about, driving our people from their homes. It is hateful.” He looked across the Han River to the city of Fancheng on the far bank. Mercifully, all was still quiet there.

Looking down from the hill, they saw a stone tablet beside the road, carved with a line of large characters: “Home of Du Fu, Tang Secretary of the Ministry of Works.”⁷ Yang Guo said, “Xiangyang really is remarkable. So this great poet came from here.”

Guo Jing raised his riding crop and chanted:

“The great city is stronger than iron; the small fort towers a hundred thousand feet and more… Its war-screens are ranged up into the clouds; no flying bird can pass over them. Let the barbarians come, we need only hold fast; why fear again for the western capital?… In hard times, raise the long halberd high; through all the ages, one man holds the pass.”⁸

Yang Guo heard the passion and fire in his chanting and took up the lines after him: “Let the barbarians come, we need only hold fast; why fear again for the western capital? In hard times, raise the long halberd high; through all the ages, one man holds the pass. Uncle Guo, those lines are wonderful. Did Du Fu write them?” Guo Jing said, “He did. A few days ago your Auntie Guo and I were talking about the defence of Xiangyang, and this poem of Du Fu’s came into her mind. She wrote it out for me. I love it, but my memory is poor: I’ve read it dozens of times and these few lines are all I can remember. Think of it. Every scholar in China can write poetry, yet through all the ages Du Fu is held to be the first of them, and that must be because he cared for his country and loved its people.” Yang Guo said, “You said, ‘For the country and for the people: that is the greatest of the xia.’⁹ So though the civil and the martial paths are different, the principle is the same.” Guo Jing was delighted that Yang Guo had grasped this. “The classics and fine writing are beyond me altogether,” he said. “But I think that in this life, even if a man is only a pedlar or a porter, so long as his heart is set on serving his country and his people, he is truly a brave man, truly a man of valour.”

Yang Guo asked, “Uncle Guo, do you think Xiangyang can hold?” Guo Jing pondered a long while. Then he pointed west, to the hills and woods lying dense and green, and said, “Of all the men Xiangyang has known, past or present, the greatest is surely Zhuge Liang.¹⁰ Longzhong, twenty li west of here, is where he once farmed and lived in seclusion. Zhuge Liang’s genius for governing the state and bringing peace to the people is beyond rough men like me. He said himself that all he knew was ‘to bend to the task and spend myself utterly, and stop only in death’.¹¹ Whether he would succeed or fail in the end, even he could not foresee. When your Auntie Guo and I talk over whether Xiangyang can hold, we always come back in the end to those same eight characters: ‘to bend to the task and spend myself utterly, and stop only in death.’”

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Just as they were talking, they saw the refugees at the city gate suddenly turn back and run, while the crowds behind still surged forward, and in a moment the ground outside Xiangyang was one great confusion of wailing and screaming. Guo Jing was startled. “Why aren’t the guards opening the gates to let the people in?” He spurred his horse and galloped forward without drawing rein until he was outside the walls. There he found a line of guards with arrows nocked and bows bent, aimed at the refugees. “What are you doing?” Guo Jing shouted. “Open the gates, quick.” The officer of the gate saw who it was and hurriedly opened up to let him and Yang Guo in. Guo Jing said, “These people are being slaughtered by the Mongol troops. Why won’t you let them in?” The officer said, “Marshal Lü says there are Mongol spies mixed in among the refugees. On no account are we to let them in, or there will be no end of trouble.”

Guo Jing roared, “Even if there are one or two spies, how can you throw away the lives of thousands of people for that? Open the gates, and be quick about it.” Guo Jing had defended the city a long time and won one remarkable success after another, and his prestige stood high. Though he held no official post, the gate officer dared not disobey him. He opened the gates, and at the same time sent a man racing to report to the Imperial Pacification Commissioner, Lü Wenhuan.¹²

The people came streaming into the city, helping the old and carrying the young. They were almost all inside when a great cloud of dust rose in the distance: the Mongol army was attacking from the north. The Song soldiers spread out and took cover behind the battlements. Below the walls, at the head of the enemy, came a great crowd of people in rags, clutching clubs and sticks, not one real weapon among them, a disorderly mob with no ranks at all, all shouting together, “Don’t shoot, up on the walls, we’re all people of the Great Song!” Behind them the Mongols’ crack troops and iron cavalry kept themselves hidden.

Ever since the days of Genghis Khan, when the Mongols attacked a city they had always driven the enemy’s own people before them, and the moment the defenders faltered and held their fire, the Mongol soldiers came on close behind. It killed the enemy’s people and shook his soldiers’ nerve at the same time, two birds with one stone, and for all its brutal cruelty it often worked remarkably well. Guo Jing had spent many years in the Mongol army and knew the method only too well, but he had never found a way to break it. Now he watched the crack Mongol troops, spears and dao in hand, driving the Song people towards the walls. Closer and closer they came, until the foremost were already climbing the scaling ladders.

Lü Wenhuan, the Imperial Pacification Commissioner of Xiangyang, was riding round the four walls on a dapple-grey horse. Seeing how desperate things were, he gave the order: “The city comes first. Loose!” The soldiers sent their arrows down like rain. Amid shrieks of agony the people fell, pierced through, and the rest turned and fled. A Mongol dao lopped off a head here, a Mongol spear punched a hole there, as the soldiers drove them back to attack the city.

Yang Guo stood beside Guo Jing watching this horror, almost choking with rage. Then he heard Lü Wenhuan shout, “Loose!” and another volley of feathered arrows went down. “You mustn’t, don’t kill good people by mistake!” Guo Jing cried. Lü Wenhuan said, “In a crisis like this, even good people will have to be killed by mistake.” “No,” Guo Jing shouted. “How can good people be killed by mistake?”

Something stirred in Yang Guo, and he repeated silently, Don’t kill good people by mistake! How can good people be killed by mistake?

Guo Jing shouted, “Brothers of the Beggars’ Guild, friends of the wulin, all of you, follow me!” With that he ran down from the wall, and Yang Guo followed him. Guo Jing said, “Your qi practice did you harm last night. Today you mustn’t exert yourself on any account. Stay up on the wall and keep watch over the fight for me.” Yang Guo had seen the Mongol soldiers butchering the Han people as if they were lower than pigs and dogs, and he had meant to go down with Guo Jing and kill his fill. At these words he was taken aback. But he could not tell him plainly that last night had been no qi deviation at all, and he had no choice but to go back up on the wall.

Guo Jing led his men out through the wide-flung west gate and swept round to strike the Mongol flank. The Mongols bringing up the rear behind the people at once split off a force to meet them. Most of Guo Jing’s band were fighters of the Beggars’ Guild, the rest loyal and righteous men who had come from every quarter to join him. Shouting as one, they threw themselves forward, and the moment the two sides met, more than a hundred Mongols were cut down from their horses. The Mongol thousand looked on the point of breaking when another thousand charged in from the flank, long dao swinging, stabbing and hacking. The Mongol army had been through a hundred battles and was fierce and hardened, and though Guo Jing’s men had martial skill, for the moment victory would not come easily. The people who had been forced to the assault saw that the Mongols were now wholly taken up with the fight and no longer driving them on, and with a great shout they scattered in every direction.

Then horns sounded from the east and hooves thundered as two Mongol thousands came charging up, and two more came galloping from the west, closing Guo Jing and his band in at the centre.

On the wall, Lü Wenhuan saw the might of the Mongols and was frightened half to death. Send troops to the rescue? He would never dare.

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Author’s Note

The Imperial Pacification Commissioner who garrisoned Xiangyang had originally been Lü Wende. For his merit in defending the city he was promoted to Vice Commissioner of the Bureau of Military Affairs of the Song court (roughly the equivalent of vice-chairman of a military affairs commission). Drawn in by the Chancellor, Jia Sidao, he joined his faction, and his younger brother Lü Wenhuan took his place as Imperial Pacification Commissioner of Xiangyang.

Footnotes

1. 欲速则不达 – yù sù zé bù dá. Literally haste does not arrive. Saying from the Analects of Confucius: rushing leads to failure. ↩

2. 任脉 – Rèn Mài. Conception Vessel, one of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians in neigong practice. ↩

3. 内功 – nèigōng. Literally internal skill. Practice of developing neili through breathing, meditation and qi cultivation. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

5. 檀溪 – Tán Xī. Stream near Xiangyang, famous from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Liu Bei’s horse Dilu made its legendary leap across this stream to escape Cai Mao’s pursuing soldiers. ↩

6. 刘皇叔 – Liú Huángshū. Imperial Uncle Liu: Liu Bei (刘备), founder of the Shu Han kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period, so called because he claimed descent from the Han imperial line. ↩

7. 杜甫 – Dù Fǔ. (712–770) One of China’s greatest poets, of the Tang dynasty; he is often called Du Gongbu after his post in the Ministry of Works (工部). His family’s ancestral home was Xiangyang. ↩

8. 潼关吏 – Tóngguān Lì. “The Officer at Tongguan”, a poem by Du Fu on the walls raised at Tongguan Pass against the An Lushan rebels, so strong that one man could hold the pass against an army. Guo Jing quotes lines from it. ↩

9. 为国为民，侠之大者 – wèi guó wèi mín, xiá zhī dà zhě. “For the country and for the people: that is the greatest of the xia.” Guo Jing’s maxim, perhaps the best-known line in Jin Yong’s fiction; the title of Chapter 20, 侠之大者, is taken from it. It holds that the highest chivalry lies not in martial prowess or private vengeance but in selfless service to one’s country and people. ↩

10. 诸葛亮 – Zhūgě Liàng. (181–234 CE) Legendary prime minister and military strategist of the Shu Han kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period. ↩

11. 鞠躬尽瘁，死而后已 – Jūgōng Jìncuì, Sǐ Ér Hòu Yǐ. Zhuge Liang’s most famous phrase, from his “Second Memorial on Sending Out the Troops.” It expresses the ideal of serving one’s cause with total commitment, regardless of outcome. ↩

12. 安抚使 – Imperial Pacification Commissioner. Ānfǔ Shǐ. High-ranking military-civil administrative post in the Song Dynasty, responsible for the defence and governance of a region. See the Author’s Note at the end of this part. ↩