The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 22 – Part 7

In truth Yang Guo’s martial skill had come on a good deal, but half the reason was that he knew he had not long to live. To repay Guo Jing for raising him, he had resolved to fight to the death, and when a deadly move came at him he often made no move to save himself, but answered danger with danger and forced the State Preceptor to change his move. Yet though Yang Guo could disregard his own life, he had to think of the baby’s safety. How could he use her, as Li Mochou had done, to shield his own vital points? He had seen the State Preceptor’s moves avoid the baby when he fought Li Mochou, but the thought that this was Guo Jing’s daughter made him unwilling to take the smallest risk. Because he guarded the baby at every turn, as time went on the State Preceptor drove him from one peril into the next.

The State Preceptor had seen that when Li Mochou cared nothing for the baby, he had to steer every move away from the child. But he saw that Yang Guo was terrified of hurting her, so now his two wheels went for the baby more often than for Yang Guo himself. That threw Yang Guo into still worse confusion, and he could not hold out. “Li shibo,”¹ he shouted, “quick, help me drive off the bald thief. The rest can wait.”

The State Preceptor glanced at Li Mochou and saw her standing idly by with a smile, watching the tigers fight from across the hill² and helping neither side. He was deeply puzzled, Xiaolongnü called her shijie too, so this woman really is his shibo. Why won’t she lend him a hand? There must be some trick in it. I must wound the boy quickly and get the baby. He put more strength into his hands and pressed Yang Guo harder, so that he could barely fend off one side before the other was under attack. Li Mochou knew the State Preceptor would not hurt the baby, and however loudly Yang Guo called for help, she paid him no heed, but stood with her hands clasped behind her back, perfectly at her ease.

They fought on a while, and a dull pain began in Yang Guo’s chest. He knew his neili could not match his opponent’s and that he could not keep up such a brute struggle for long. He had not heard the baby cry for some time and was afraid something was wrong, so in the thick of the fight he snatched a glance down at her. He saw a little face with clear brows and fine eyes, pretty and dainty, and a pair of jet-black eyes gazing up at him. Yang Guo had never got on with Guo Fu, but toward this baby girl in his arms a strange feeling suddenly stirred in him, I’m fighting to the death for her now. If by heaven’s grace I save her life, in seven days I’ll be dead. When she grows up as big as her sister, I wonder if she’ll remember me? A pang went through him, and he very nearly wept.

Li Mochou, standing by, saw that he was at the end of his strength and would die under the twin wheels at any moment. She was on the point of stepping in to help when another thought came to her, The boy’s martial skill has come on so far that I’d do well to let the monk be rid of him for me. Otherwise there’ll be no curbing him later. So she kept her hands in her sleeves and did not stir.

Of the three, the State Preceptor was the strongest in martial skill and Li Mochou the most venomous, but for cunning and tricks Yang Guo took first place. His moment of grief over, he set his mind at once to finding a way out. He thought, When Auntie Guo told me the tales of the Three Kingdoms, she said that Cao’s Wei was the strongest then, and that for Shu Han to stand up to Cao it had to ally with Sun Quan.³ Since Li Mochou would not help him, he would have to help Li Mochou. Two swift strokes of his jian checked the State Preceptor, he skipped back two steps, and suddenly he held the baby out to Li Mochou. “Here!”

This was the last thing Li Mochou had expected, and for a moment she could not see what he meant by it, but she took the baby without thinking. “Shibo,” Yang Guo cried, “take the child and run, and I’ll hold off the bald thief!” He thrust twice with all his might to keep the State Preceptor from closing in. Li Mochou thought, So he reckons I still care enough for the ties of our school not to hurt the child, and in a pinch he has handed her to me. Nothing could suit me better. It never crossed her mind that this was Yang Guo’s wicked ruse to shift the danger onto her. She had only just started to go when the State Preceptor swung his arm round and hurled the golden wheel, leaving Yang Guo alone to strike at her back. The move came so fast that she had barely begun to move when the golden wheel was upon her, close as her shadow. Li Mochou had no choice but to turn her whisk back and parry.

Seeing his trick had worked, Yang Guo breathed a sigh of relief. But his concern for the baby would not let him stand by with folded arms as Li Mochou had, waiting for the other two to wear each other down. As soon as his breathing had steadied a little, he took up his jian and went for the State Preceptor.

The red sun stood at noon now, and patches of sunlight still came slanting into the dense forest. Yang Guo’s spirits rose, and his long jian went just where he willed it. With a clang the Junzi Jian⁴ sheared a piece off the copper wheel. The State Preceptor was secretly alarmed, and his attacks grew sharper still. A plan came to Yang Guo. “Li shibo,” he called, “watch out for the monk’s wheel. There’s deadly poison on the place where I cut it. Don’t let it graze you.” “Why?” asked Li Mochou. “The poison on this jian of mine is fearsome!” said Yang Guo.

Ever since Yang Guo’s long jian had wounded him, the State Preceptor had been afraid it was poisoned, but after fighting so long and feeling nothing strange in the wound, he had put his mind at rest. Now, hearing Yang Guo bring it up, he could not help a start, Gongsun Zhi is treacherous. I’m afraid the jian really is poisoned. At once the fight went out of him.

Li Mochou lashed out with her whisk. “Guoer, stab this monk with your poisoned jian,” she cried, and flicked her hand as if loosing a hidden weapon. The State Preceptor whirled his wheels before his chest. But Li Mochou was only bluffing. Having seen how good the State Preceptor was, she reckoned her Soul-Freezing Silver Needles⁵ would never hit him. She had only meant to check him for a moment, and in that moment she slipped out of the reach of his twin wheels, turned and ran.

State Preceptor Jinlun did suspect that Yang Guo’s jian was poisoned, but the wound neither itched nor swelled, and he had no wish to come all this way for nothing and go home with only a wound to show for it. Seeing Li Mochou run, he set off after her at full speed.

Yang Guo thought that there was no telling how all this fighting and chasing would end. If the newborn baby was left out in the wind and cold of the wilds, she might not live even if they saved her. The only way was to join forces and drive off the State Preceptor first, and then think of something better. “Li shibo, there’s no need to run!” he shouted. “The bald thief is deeply poisoned. He hasn’t long to live.” He had barely finished shouting when he saw Li Mochou dart ahead and slip into a cave in the hillside.

The State Preceptor stopped short, not daring to charge in after her. Yang Guo had no idea what Li Mochou wanted with the baby, and was afraid she might suddenly do her harm. He had long since stopped caring whether he lived or died, so he held his long jian before his chest and rushed in. He saw a silver glint and struck down three Soul-Freezing Silver Needles with his jian. “Li shibo, it’s me!” he called. The cave was pitch black, but his eyes could see in the dark, and he saw Li Mochou holding the child in her left arm with several more silver needles pinched in her right hand. To show he meant no harm, he turned his back on her and faced the entrance. “Let’s join forces and drive off the bald thief first.” He stood guard at the mouth of the cave, jian in hand.

The State Preceptor reckoned the two of them would not dare rush out for a while, so he sat down cross-legged beside the cave, opened his robe and looked at his wound. The blood around the cut was bright red, with no sign of poison at all. He pressed it, and it hurt only a little. Then he quietly circulated his neili once through his body, and nowhere in all his limbs was there the slightest hindrance. He was glad and furious at once: glad that there was no poison on Yang Guo’s jian, furious that the boy had fooled him and he had worried half the day for nothing. He looked at the cave. Its mouth was screened by long grass and wide enough for only one man at a time. He was tall and big-framed, and if he rushed in rashly he would find it hard to turn, and might fall prey to an ambush by the two inside.

He was still at a loss when he heard a strange voice call out from behind the hillside, “Big monk, what you do here?” It was the Indian dwarf Nimoxing. The State Preceptor kept his eyes on the cave. “Three rabbits have gone to ground in this hole,” he said. “I’m going to drive them out.”

Nimoxing had made a great nuisance of himself in Xiangyang and come away with nothing. On his way back to camp he had seen the State Preceptor’s gold, copper and lead wheels spinning in the air far off, and knowing he was fighting someone, he had marked the direction and come over. Seeing the State Preceptor watching the cave so intently, he was delighted. “Guo Jing run into cave?” he asked. The State Preceptor grunted. “One buck rabbit, one doe and one little bunny.” Nimoxing was more delighted still. “Ah, Guo Jing and wife, and also Yang Guo boy.” The State Preceptor let him talk away to himself and paid no heed. He looked round and soon had a plan. He gathered dry branches and dead grass, piled them at the mouth of the cave and struck a light. A strong south-west wind was blowing, and at once thick smoke came billowing into the cave.

While the State Preceptor was still piling up the brushwood, Yang Guo had already seen what he meant to do. “I’ll go and see if there’s another way out,” he said quietly to Li Mochou, and went deeper in. After seventy or eighty feet the cave came to an end. He turned his head. “Li shibo,” he said in a low voice, “they’re smoking us out. What do you say we do?” Li Mochou thought that she could never shake off the State Preceptor by forcing a way out, and hiding here was no answer either. If the worst came to the worst, she would simply drop the baby and get away alone. The monk had no quarrel with her. He wanted the baby, and then he would not bother to hound her. So she was not alarmed, but only gave a little cold smile.

Before long the smoke in the cave grew thicker and thicker. Yang Guo and Li Mochou held their breath and could bear it for the moment, but the baby cried and coughed. “Does it hurt you to hear her?” Li Mochou asked with a cold laugh. Yang Guo had fought for his life with this baby girl in his arms, and in the course of it a tender pity for her had grown in him. Hearing her cry so piteously, he said, “Let me hold her!” He held out both hands and came two steps nearer. Li Mochou lashed her whisk at his arms. “Keep away from me! Aren’t you afraid of the Soul-Freezing Silver Needles?”

Yang Guo jumped back. At the words “Soul-Freezing Silver Needles” an idea came to him. He remembered how, as a boy, the first time he met her, he had held her silver needles in his hand for only a moment and been badly poisoned. He tore a strip from his robe and wrapped his right hand in it, went to the mouth of the cave and picked up the three silver needles Li Mochou had shot at him. He stuck them into the ground eye downward, leaving only an inch of each point above the soil, and sprinkled a little sand and earth over them to hide the glint. By now the cave mouth was heaped with brushwood and full of thick smoke, and neither the State Preceptor nor Nimoxing saw him stooping to plant the needles.

His trap laid, Yang Guo came back. “I have a plan to beat them off,” he said in a low voice. “Keep the baby from crying.” Then he shouted at the top of his voice, “Splendid, there’s a way out at the back of the cave. Let’s go, quick!” His voice was full of glee. Li Mochou started, thinking there really was a way out at the back. Yang Guo put his mouth to her ear. “It’s not true,” he whispered. “I want to fool the bald thief.”

The State Preceptor and Nimoxing were taken aback to hear Yang Guo’s glad shout. Then the cave fell silent, and even the baby’s crying gradually died away. How could they guess that Yang Guo had put his sleeve over the baby’s face? They took it that he really had got out at the back. Without a second thought, Nimoxing flew round behind the hill to head them off. But the State Preceptor was a careful man. He listened hard, and found that the baby’s crying was only low and muffled, not fading into the distance. He knew this was another of Yang Guo’s tricks, to lure him behind the hill so that Yang Guo could break out of the mouth of the cave with the child. He sneered to himself, A paltry trick like luring the tiger from the mountain,⁶ and he tries it on the old monk? He hid beside the cave mouth with his gold and copper wheels raised, waiting for Yang Guo to come out.

Footnotes

1. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. Shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 隔山观虎斗 – gé shān guān hǔ dòu. Literally watching tigers fight from across the hill. An idiom: to stand aside while others fight, waiting to profit when both are spent. ↩

3. Three Kingdoms alliance strategy. During the Three Kingdoms period (220 to 280), the kingdom of Shu Han (led by Liu Bei and his strategist Zhuge Liang) allied with the eastern kingdom of Wu (led by Sun Quan) to resist the much stronger northern kingdom of Wei (led by Cao Cao). Yang Guo is applying this strategic principle to his current predicament. ↩

4. 君子剑 – Jūnzǐ Jiàn. One of a legendary pair of swords. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 冰魄银针 – Bīngpò Yínzhēn. Li Mochou’s signature hidden weapon. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 调虎离山 – diào hǔ lí shān. Literally luring the tiger from the mountain. One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems of ancient Chinese military thought. Strategy involves drawing an enemy away from their position of strength, making them vulnerable. ↩