The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 3 – Part 2

At the sight of the gaudily patterned dead snake the Wu brothers cried out together. Yang Guo seized his chance, rolled over and hit back with a vicious punch that left Wu Dunru’s nose streaming blood. Then he scrambled up and ran for it. The Wu brothers, furious, went after him, and Guo Fu, wanting to see the fun, chased along behind, shouting, “Catch him, catch him!” Yang Guo ran on a while and looked back. Wu Dunru’s face was a mask of blood and he looked murderous. Yang Guo knew that if the two brothers caught him, the thrashing he got would be far worse than the last, so he ran on without stopping to the foot of Jian-Testing Peak¹ and went scrambling straight up it.

Wu Dunru had taken a punch on the nose, but it did not really hurt much. The sight of his own blood, though, made him frightened and angry at once, and he drew breath and went after Yang Guo hard. Yang Guo climbed higher and higher, and the Wu brothers would not give an inch. Guo Fu, however, stopped halfway up the slope and stood looking up. Yang Guo scrambled on until he found a sheer drop in front of him and nowhere left to go. In years past, whenever Huang Yaoshi² devised a new move, he would leap the chasm to the most perilous spot on the summit to try it out, but how could Yang Guo make such a leap? He thought, Even if I jump off this cliff and die, I won’t let those two stinking brats catch me and beat me again. He turned round. “Come one step nearer and I’ll jump!” Wu Dunru stopped dead, but Wu Xiuwen shouted, “Jump, then. Who’s afraid of you? You haven’t got the nerve!” And he climbed a few steps higher.

The blood rushed to Yang Guo’s head. He was about to hurl himself over when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a big boulder beside him. Half of it rested on a few smaller stones, and it did not look at all secure. In his wild fury he gave no thought to what might follow. He pulled away the stones beneath it, and sure enough the boulder began to rock. He jumped round behind it and pushed with all his strength. The boulder swayed twice, then with a hollow rumble it went rolling down the mountainside.

When the Wu brothers saw him pushing the boulder they knew they were in trouble. Their faces went white, and they shrank aside to dodge it. The boulder thundered past them, dragging a great slide of earth and stones behind it, flattening shrubs and flowers all the way down, and plunged into the sea. Wu Dunru, in his panic, put a foot on nothing and slid, and Wu Xiuwen grabbed hold of him. Neither could keep his feet on the slope, and they went tumbling down locked together, rolling sixty or seventy feet until a big tree below stopped them.

From the house, far off, Huang Rong heard the din. She ran out, followed the noise to the foot of Jian-Testing Peak and found dust and sand flying, her daughter hiding in the grass at the edge of the hill, too frightened even to cry, and the Wu brothers bruised and bloody from head to foot. Huang Rong ran forward and picked up her daughter. “What happened?” Guo Fu buried her face in her mother’s breast and burst into loud sobs. When she had cried for a while, she gulped out how Yang Guo had hit her for no reason, how the Wu brothers had come to help her, and how Yang Guo had then pushed a great rock down to crush them both. She laid every bit of the blame on Yang Guo, and of her stamping on the cricket and of the Wu brothers beating him she said not a word. Huang Rong heard her out and stood a long while in silence. She saw that one side of her daughter’s face was red and swollen, and the slap had plainly been a hard one. Her heart went out to the girl, and she comforted her over and over.

By now Guo Jing had come running out too. When he saw the sorry state of the Wu brothers and asked what had happened, he was thoroughly vexed. He was afraid, too, that some harm might have come to Yang Guo, so he hurried up the peak, but though he searched it front and back, there was no trace of the boy. He raised his voice and shouted, “Guoer, Guoer.” His shouts carried several li,³ yet Yang Guo never appeared, and no answer came. Guo Jing waited a while, more and more anxious. Then he went down from the peak and took a small boat to row round the island searching, until dark, but Yang Guo had vanished.

After he had pushed the boulder down, Yang Guo saw the Wu brothers roll down the slope and Huang Rong come out of the house, and he knew he was in for a severe punishment. So he squeezed himself into a cleft in the rocks. He heard Guo Jing calling but dared not answer. Hungry as he was, he stayed in the cleft without stirring and watched the dusk thicken and the sea slowly darken, until there was not a human sound anywhere. A while later stars began to glitter overhead and a cool wind blew, and he felt the cold. He came out of the cleft and looked down the hill. Lamplight showed in the windows of the house, and he pictured the six of them, Guo Jing and his wife, Ke Zhen’e,⁴ Guo Fu and the Wu brothers, sitting round their dinner with chicken, duck, fish and meat crowding the table, and he could not help swallowing a few mouthfuls of spit. Then it came to him that they were sure to be talking about him behind his back, scolding and blaming him, and he was nearly beside himself with rage. Standing on the cliff in the dark with the sea wind blowing round him, he grieved that his parents had died so early, and thought how he had been bullied and humiliated all his life. Now, it seemed to him, apart from his sworn father⁵ everyone looked on him coldly. His thoughts rose and churned, and his breast filled with a loneliness, bitterness and resentment he could not master.

In fact Guo Jing, unable to find him, had no heart for food. Huang Rong saw how troubled her husband was and knew he would not listen if she tried to talk him round, so she did not eat either, but sat with him in silence. Before dawn the next day the two of them were out searching again.

Yang Guo had gone hungry for half a day and a night, and by the next morning he could stand it no longer. He crept down from the peak, caught a few frogs by a stream, skinned them and gathered dry leaves to roast them on. In his vagabond days he had often kept himself alive this way. Now, afraid that Guo Jing and Huang Rong might see the smoke, he lit his fire inside a cave, and as soon as the frogs’ legs were browned he stamped it out and wolfed them down. He heard Guo Jing calling, “Guoer, Guoer.” He thought, You want to call me out so you can beat me. Well, I’m not coming out.

That night he slept in the cave. He had lain there a while, half dozing, when Ouyang Feng walked into the cave. “My boy,” he said, “I’ve come to teach you martial skill, so those two little devils of the Wu family can’t beat you.” Yang Guo was overjoyed and followed him out. Ouyang Feng squatted on the ground, croaked a few times and pushed out with both palms. Yang Guo copied him and began to practise, and every strike and kick seemed to come exactly right. Suddenly Ouyang Feng swung a fist at him. He could not dodge in time, and with a thud it struck him full on the crown of his head. The pain was terrible. He gave a great cry and leapt up.

Something thudded against his head again, and he woke with a start. It had all been a dream. He felt the top of his head and found a lump coming up, and it hurt badly. He could not help sighing, and thought, Father’s injuries must have healed by now, and he’ll have come out from under that great bell. I wonder when he’ll come and fetch me, and really teach me martial skill, so I don’t have to put up with sour looks and bullying here. He walked out of the cave and gazed at the horizon, where a few sparse stars hung over the tops of the trees. He tried to recall the skills Ouyang Feng had just taught him in the dream, but not one came back to him. He squatted down, croaked a few times, and tried to put the Toad Skill⁶ formulas Ouyang Feng had taught him in Jiaxing into his fists and feet, but however he tried, he could not make them work. He racked his brains and pushed out with both palms, but the strikes and kicks that had flowed so freely in the dream were now utterly beyond him.

He stood alone on the cliff and gazed at the endless sea, lonelier than ever. Then, faint across the water, came a long cry: “Guoer, Guoer.” Before he knew it he was running down the peak, shouting, “I’m here, I’m here.” He ran out onto the sand. Guo Jing saw him from far off and, overjoyed, rowed hard for the shore and leapt onto the beach. Under the stars the two of them ran towards each other. Guo Jing swept Yang Guo into his arms and said only, “Come home quickly and eat.” He was so moved that his voice was almost breaking. Back in the house, Huang Rong made a meal for Guo Jing and Yang Guo, and nobody said a word about what had happened.

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Early the next morning Guo Jing called Yang Guo, the Wu brothers and Guo Fu to the main hall and asked Ke Zhen’e to come as well. “Eldest shifu,”⁷ he said to Ke Zhen’e, “I ask your leave to take four grand-disciples for you.” Ke Zhen’e was delighted. “Nothing could be better. I congratulate you.” “More than ten years ago, while his mother was still alive, Guoer took me as his shifu,” said Guo Jing. “Today he will do it again, properly. First you bow to the Patriarchs.”⁸ He had Yang Guo and the Wu brothers kowtow first to Ke Zhen’e, then before the spirit tablets of Zhu Cong⁹ and the rest of the Six Freaks of Jiangnan,¹⁰ and lastly perform the rite of taking him and his wife as their shifus. “Mama,” Guo Fu asked with a smile, “do I have to bow too?” “Of course you do,” said Huang Rong. Grinning, Guo Fu kowtowed to the three of them as well. As a small child, when he met Guo Jing and his wife at Changxing,¹¹ Yang Guo had been told by his mother to take Guo Jing as his shifu. When Guo Jing and Huang Rong met him again in Jiaxing they had not mentioned it, and Yang Guo, barely more than a baby at the time, had long since forgotten.

“From this day on,” said Guo Jing gravely, “the four of you are shixiong and shidi to one another…” “No,” Guo Fu broke in, “shixiong and shimei.” Guo Jing gave his daughter a sharp look. “Your father hasn’t finished. No interrupting.” He paused, then went on, “From now on the four of you must love and care for one another, share your good fortune and stand together in hardship. If there’s any more quarrelling or fighting, I won’t let it go lightly.” As he said it he glanced at Yang Guo. Yang Guo thought, Of course you’ll take your daughter’s side. From now on I’ll just keep out of her way.

Ke Zhen’e then told them some of the rules of their school: no bullying others with their strength, no harming the innocent without cause, and the like. Each of the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan had come from a different school, and Ke Zhen’e could not remember all their rules, but they came to much the same thing.

“What I’ve learned is a mixed bag,” said Guo Jing. “Besides the grounding the Seven Xias of Jiangnan gave me, I’ve trained in the neigong of the Quanzhen Order,¹² and a little of the skills of Peach Blossom Island and the Beggars’ Guild, the two great lineages of the south-east. But a man must not forget his roots, so today I’ll begin by teaching you the skills of your Eldest Grand Shifu Ke.¹³”

He was about to give them the formulas himself when Huang Rong noticed Yang Guo staring at the ground, lost in thought, with an odd look on his face that she could not have put a name to. It was something like Yang Kang’s look in years gone by, and she felt a stab of loathing. She thought, I may not have killed his father with my own hands, but you could say he died at them. I mustn’t rear a tiger that will savage us, and have him grow into a great curse one day. A thought stirred, and her mind was made up. “Teaching four children on your own is too much work,” she said. “Let me teach Guoer.” Before Guo Jing could reply, Ke Zhen’e had clapped his hands and laughed. “Splendid! You two can have a contest and see whose disciple is better taught.” Guo Jing was pleased too. He knew his wife was a hundred times cleverer than he was, and her way of teaching was sure to be far better than his own, so he agreed with all his heart.

Guo Fu was afraid of her father’s sternness. “Mama, I want you to teach me too.” Huang Rong laughed. “You’re always pestering me to play. You’d never learn anything. Better let your father teach you.” Guo Fu stole a look at her father, found his eyes fixed on her in a glare, and quickly turned away, not daring to say another word.

Footnotes

1. 试剑峰 – Shìjiàn Fēng. Jian-Testing Peak, literally sword-testing peak, the highest and most dangerous peak on Peach Blossom Island, where Huang Yaoshi would test his newly devised martial arts moves. ↩

2. 黄药师 – Huáng Yàoshī. His name meaning “medicine master”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

4. 柯镇恶 – Kē Zhèn’è. His name meaning “subduing evil”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 义父 – yìfù. Literally righteous father, a sworn father. Yang Guo’s term for Ouyang Feng, who accepted him as a godson in Chapter 2. ↩

6. 蛤蟆功 – Hámá Gōng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 大师父 – Dà Shīfu. Eldest shifu, Guo Jing’s term for Ke Zhen’e, the eldest of his seven shifus. ↩

8. 祖师爷 – zǔshīyé. The Patriarch; literally ancestral master. Founder of a school, the source of a lineage rather than a rung on it. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 朱聪、韩宝驹、南希仁 – Zhū Cōng, Hán Bǎojū, Nán Xīrén. Three of the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan, Ke Zhen’e’s sworn brothers. All except Ke Zhen’e were killed by Ouyang Feng and Yang Kang at Peach Blossom Island. ↩

10. 江南七怪 – Jiāngnán Qī Guài. Group of seven martial artists from Jiaxing who followed their own code of honour. They took a bet to find and train Guo Jing and spent years in the Mongolian steppes fulfilling the vow; their integrity and loyalty were legendary. ↩

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

12. 全真教 – Quánzhēn Jiào. Major Daoist order founded by Wang Chongyang, based at Chongyang Palace on Zhongnan Mountain. Its seven senior disciples are known as the Seven Zis of Quanzhen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 师祖 – shīzǔ. Literally master’s ancestor. The shifu of one’s own shifu, two rungs up the lineage. ↩