The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 5 – Part 7
Translation by Jenxi Seow
Yang Guo lay on the bed without a sound. He heard her put the broom back in the corner and leap back onto the rope to sleep. Xiaolongnü had expected him to wail and make a scene, but to her great surprise, he remained completely silent. She asked, “Why aren’t you saying anything?” Yang Guo said, “There’s nothing to say. You said you’d beat me, so you had to beat me. Begging for mercy is useless.” Xiaolongnü said, “Hmph, you’re cursing me in your heart.” Yang Guo said, “I’m not cursing you in my heart. You’re much better than my previous shifus.” Xiaolongnü said, surprised, “Why?” Yang Guo said, “Even though you beat me, in your heart you felt sorry for me. You hit lighter and lighter, afraid I’d be in pain.” Xiaolongnü’s heart was struck by his words, and her face flushed slightly, but fortunately, in the darkness, he could not see. She scolded, “Pei! Who feels sorry for you? Next time you disobey, I’ll hit even harder.”
Hearing the gentleness in her tone, Yang Guo said with a cheeky grin, “Even if you hit harder, I’d still like it.” Xiaolongnü spat. “Hmph, if you don’t get beaten at least once a day, you probably can’t sleep.” Yang Guo said, “That depends on who’s doing the beating. If someone who cares about me beats me, I’m not angry at all. I might even be happy. She’s beating me for my own good. But there are people who hate me in their hearts. If they so much as scold me or glare at me, when I grow up, I’ll find each and every one of them and settle accounts.” Xiaolongnü said, “Tell me then, who hates you, and who cares about you?” Yang Guo said, “I remember it all clearly in my heart. No need to mention those who hate me, there are too many to count. Those who care about me are my dead mother, my sworn father, Uncle Guo, and Granny Sun and you.”
Xiaolongnü laughed coldly. “Hmph, I certainly don’t care about you. Granny Sun told me to look after you, so I’ll look after you. Don’t expect me to treat you kindly in this lifetime.” Yang Guo was already freezing unbearably, and hearing these words was like having a basin of cold water poured over his head. Holding back his anger, he asked, “What’s wrong with me? Why do you hate me so much?” Xiaolongnü said, “Whether you’re good or not is none of my concern. I don’t hate you either. I’ve lived my whole life in this tomb, caring for no one, hating no one.” Yang Guo said, “What fun is that? Aunt, have you ever been outside?” Xiaolongnü said, “I’ve never gone down Mount Zhongnan. Outside, there are just mountains and trees, sun and moon. What’s so good about that?”
Yang Guo clapped his hands. “Aiyo, then you’ve truly lived your life in vain. The city is full of all kinds of things. Now that’s worth seeing.” He proceeded to describe, one by one, all the various sights he had encountered in his wanderings since childhood. He was naturally eloquent, and now he embellished freely, making everything sound even more bizarre and wondrous. Fortunately, Xiaolongnü had lived eighteen years without ever descending Mount Zhongnan, so no matter how he exaggerated, she believed it all. As she listened, she could not help sighing.
Yang Guo said, “Aunt, let me take you out to play. How about it?” Xiaolongnü said, “Don’t talk nonsense! Grandmaster left a commandment: anyone who has lived in this Tomb of the Living Dead is forbidden to take a single step down Mount Zhongnan.” Yang Guo was startled. “Does that mean I can’t go down the mountain either?” Xiaolongnü said, “Of course not.” Hearing this, Yang Guo was not particularly worried. He thought to himself, Peach Blossom Island1 was a lonely island in the middle of the sea, and I still managed to leave. How could this big tomb really keep me trapped? He asked, “You said that Li Mochou, Miss Li, is your shijie. She must have lived in this Tomb of the Living Dead too. How come she went down Mount Zhongnan?” Xiaolongnü said, “She disobeyed my shifu’s words. My shifu drove her out.” Yang Guo was overjoyed and thought, With this rule in place, it’ll be easy. The day I want to leave, I’ll just disobey you and let you drive me out. But he knew he must not let this plan slip, or it would not work.
As the two chatted, Yang Guo forgot the cold for a while. But the moment he stopped talking, his whole body shivered with cold again. He pleaded, “Aunt, have mercy on me. I won’t sleep on this bed.” Xiaolongnü said, “When you fought with your Quanzhen shifu, you refused to beg for mercy. Why are you so spineless now?” Yang Guo laughed. “If someone treats me badly, even if they beat me, I won’t yield a single word. But if someone treats me well, I’d gladly die for them, let alone beg for mercy.” Xiaolongnü spat. “Who treats you well?”
Hearing no anger in her voice, Yang Guo cried out loudly, “Cold! Cold! Aunt, I can’t take it anymore.” In truth, though his body was cold, there was no need to make such a heaven-shaking fuss. Xiaolongnü said, “Stop making noise. I’ll tell you the origin of this stone bed.” Yang Guo said happily, “Good. I’ll stop shouting. Aunt, tell me.”
Xiaolongnü said, “When I said the heroes of the world all dream of sleeping on this stone bed, I wasn’t lying to you. This bed is made of ancient cold jade and is truly an aid to cultivating the highest neigong.” Yang Guo said, puzzled, “Isn’t it just stone?” Xiaolongnü laughed coldly. “You claim to have seen many strange things, have you ever seen stone this cold? Grandmaster’s good friend spent several years of painstaking effort travelling to the farthest bitter-cold lands of the north, digging beneath hundreds of feet of solid ice to extract this cold jade. Sleeping on this jade bed to train neigong, one year is worth ten years of ordinary cultivation.” Yang Guo said delightedly, “Ah, so that’s the benefit.” Xiaolongnü said, “At first, when you sleep on it, you’ll find the cold unbearable and be forced to resist it with your entire strength. Over time, it becomes second nature, and even in your dreams, you’ll be training without pause. Ordinary people training, even the most diligent, must sleep for several shichen2 each day. You must understand that cultivating gongfu goes against the natural order. The circulation of qi and blood is entirely different from normal. But every night when you sleep, your qi and blood inevitably return to their normal circulation, and you lose ninety per cent of what you trained during the day. But sleeping on this bed, not only do you not lose your day’s training in your sleep, you actually increase your gongfu.”
Yang Guo immediately understood. “Then sleeping on ice and snow at night would also be beneficial.” Xiaolongnü said, “Not so. First, ice and snow are warmed by body heat and melt into water, and one cannot sleep in cold water. Second, this cold jade far surpasses the coldness of ice and snow.” Yang Guo said, “Aunt, no wonder you wear white clothes even in cold weather, just like ice and snow, truly beautiful. So your body is cold too. I’ve seen that in winter, everyone wears dark-coloured padded clothes. Aren’t you afraid of the cold?” Xiaolongnü said, “I’m not afraid of the cold. You say white clothes are beautiful? I don’t care whether they’re beautiful or not. I just wear whatever clothes I have. This cold jade bed has another benefit. The greatest danger in cultivating neigong is deviation, going astray and becoming possessed. Therefore, in ordinary training, half your concentration is spent resisting the heart’s fire. This cold jade is the most yin, most cold object under heaven. When a cultivator sits or lies upon it, the heart’s fire is naturally quelled, so one can train with boldness and vigour, without fear of consequences. Is this not twice as fast as ordinary training?”
Yang Guo was so delighted his heart itched with eagerness. “Aunt, you treat me so well. You let me sleep on this bed while you only sleep on a rope, missing out on the cold jade bed’s benefits. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you. Granny Sun told me to look after you for all your life too, and I will certainly take good care of you.” Xiaolongnü said, “Weeping and wailing the way you do, how could you look after me?” Yang Guo said, “When I’m older, I won’t be a child anymore. Aunt, I’ll train hard, and then I won’t have to fear the Wu brothers and Guo Fu anymore. Even Zhao Zhijing and those Quanzhen Daoists, though they’ve trained for so long, I’ll catch up to them.” Xiaolongnü said coldly, “The commandment Grandmaster left behind says that those who live in this tomb must cultivate the heart and nature, and extinguish all thoughts of competing with others.” Yang Guo said urgently, “But they bullied me like that, and they killed Granny Sun, are we just going to let it go?” Xiaolongnü said, “Everyone must die. If Granny Sun had not died at Hao Datong’s hands, in a few more years she would have died peacefully on her own. Living a few more years, a few less, what difference does it make? Words of revenge and vengeance, do not speak of them to me again.”
Xiaolongnü had been raised from childhood by her shifu and Granny Sun. For eighteen years, she had always been in the company of two elderly women. Though both treated her well, her shifu had required her to cultivate the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra, commanding her from an early age to banish all emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. If she was seen to cry or laugh, severe punishment would follow. Though Granny Sun was warm-hearted, she dared not interfere with Xiaolongnü’s training. Thus Xiaolongnü had developed a cold, solitary temperament. Not only was her neigong cold in nature, but her very character and disposition had been trained to be cold as well. Now Yang Guo had arrived, a boy whose heart burned like fire, still so young, whose every word and gesture was the complete opposite of the two old women. Xiaolongnü listened to him speak and, though she knew he was wrong, still found herself talking with him, engrossed and forgetting her weariness.
Yang Guo felt that although her words seemed reasonable, there was something not quite right about them, though he could not think of how to refute her. Just then, waves of cold assaulted him again, and he could not stop shivering. Xiaolongnü said, “I’ll teach you how to resist the cold of this bed.” She then transmitted to him a few oral formulas and the method for cultivating neigong, the foundational entry-level skill of her sect. Yang Guo practised according to the method. After only a short while, he felt the cold greatly diminish. By the time his inner breath had circulated three times, he felt heat rising through his body and no longer found the cold unbearable. Instead, lying on the stone bed felt cool and comfortable. His eyes closed, and he drifted hazily into sleep. After sleeping for less than half a shichen, the heat faded and the bed’s cold woke him, so he resumed the practice. Thus he alternated between waking and sleeping, passing the entire night in this manner. When he woke the next morning, he felt not the slightest trace of fatigue. In just one night, his neili cultivation had already advanced.
The next day, after the two had eaten breakfast, Yang Guo took the bowls and chopsticks to the kitchen, washed them clean, and returned to the main hall. Xiaolongnü said, “There is something you must think through clearly. If you truly take me as your shifu, then for all your life, you must obey my words. If you do not take me as your shifu, I will still transmit my skills to you. If in the future you surpass me, you may fight your way out of this Tomb of the Living Dead by martial skill.” Yang Guo answered without the slightest hesitation, “Of course I’ll take you as my shifu. Even if you never taught me a shred of martial arts, I would still obey your words.” Xiaolongnü said, surprised, “Why?” Yang Guo said, “Aunt, you treat me well in your heart, do you think I don’t know?” Xiaolongnü put on a stern face. “Whether I treat you well or not, I forbid you to keep saying it. Since you’ve decided to take me as your shifu, let us go to the rear hall and perform the ceremony.”
Yang Guo followed her to the rear hall. Xiaolongnü lit two candles on the table. Yang Guo saw that this hall too was empty, with hardly any furnishings, only two paintings hung on the walls, one on the east side and one on the west. The painting on the west wall showed two young women. One appeared to be about twenty-five or twenty-six, combing her hair before a mirror. The other was a maidservant of fourteen or fifteen, holding a washbasin, attending at her side. The mirror in the painting reflected the older woman’s face, extremely beautiful, with elegant brows sweeping towards her temples, though the corners of her eyes faintly carried a hint of murderous aura. Yang Guo gazed at it for several moments and could not help feeling a surge of awe and reverence.
Xiaolongnü pointed at the older woman. “This is Grandmaster. Kowtow to her.” Yang Guo said, puzzled, “She’s Grandmaster? Why does she look so young?” Xiaolongnü said, “She was young when the painting was made. Later, she was no longer young.” Yang Guo turned over the words “She was young when the painting was made. Later, she was no longer young” in his mind, and suddenly felt a wave of desolation. He stared blankly at the painting and could not help feeling tears about to fall.
Xiaolongnü had no idea what was in his heart. She pointed at the young woman in the maidservant’s attire and said, “This is my shifu. Kowtow quickly.” Yang Guo tilted his head to look at the painting. He saw that this young woman had an innocent, endearing expression, her face full of childish charm. Who could have known she would later become Xiaolongnü’s shifu? Without further thought, he knelt and kowtowed to the painting, knocking his head heavily against the ground, his heart filled with sincerity.
After he rose, Xiaolongnü pointed at the painting hanging on the east wall and said, “Spit at that Daoist.” Yang Guo looked and saw a Daoist of tall stature in the painting, a long sword hanging at his waist, the index finger of his right hand pointing towards the northeast, his back turned so his face could not be seen. He found this very strange and asked, “Who is that? Why spit at him?” Xiaolongnü said, “This is Wang Chongyang, the patriarch of the Quanzhen Order. Our sect has a rule: after kowtowing to Grandmaster, you must spit at him.” Yang Guo was overjoyed. He already detested the Quanzhen Order with all his heart and thought this sect rule was marvellous beyond words. He immediately spat a great gob of saliva onto the back of Wang Chongyang in the painting. One gob did not feel like enough, so he spat twice more and cursed, “Stinking Daoist!” He was about to spit again when Xiaolongnü said, “That’s enough!”
Yang Guo asked, “Did our Grandmaster hate Wang Chongyang very much?” Xiaolongnü said, “That’s right.” Yang Guo said, “I hate him too. Why not destroy his painting instead of keeping it here?” Xiaolongnü said, “I don’t know either. I only heard my shifu and Granny Sun say that among the men of the world, there is not a single good one.” Her voice suddenly turned severe as she shouted, “In the future, when you’re older, if you do bad things, see if I spare you or not!” Yang Guo said, “Of course you’ll spare me.” Xiaolongnü had meant this as a stern warning and had never expected him to answer immediately with such a reply. Caught off guard, she found herself at a loss. She snapped, “Hurry up and bow to your shifu.”
Yang Guo said, “Of course I must bow to my shifu. But first you must agree to one thing, or I won’t bow.” Xiaolongnü thought, I’ve heard Granny Sun say that from ancient times, when accepting a disciple, it’s always the shifu who makes the disciple agree to this and that. How can there be a disciple who makes demands of the shifu first? But she was calm by nature and did not grow angry. “What is it? Tell me,” she said. Yang Guo said, “In my heart, I’ll treat you as my shifu, respect you and honour you. Whatever you say, I’ll do. But with my mouth, I won’t call you ‘Shifu’, I’ll only call you ‘Aunt’.” Xiaolongnü could not help being taken aback. “Why?” she asked. Yang Guo said, “I bowed to that stinking Daoist of the Quanzhen Order as my shifu, and he treated me badly. Even in my dreams, I curse my shifu. So it’s better if I call you ‘Aunt’, that way, when I curse my shifu, it won’t involve you.” Xiaolongnü was struck speechless, then laughed despite herself, finding the child’s reasoning rather amusing. “Fine,” she said. “I agree.”
Footnotes
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桃花岛 – Táohuā Dǎo. Huang Yaoshi’s island stronghold, continued from LOCH era. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩
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时辰 – shíchen. Traditional Chinese double hour; one twelfth of a day, equal to two modern hours. ↩