The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 5

The Tomb of the Living Dead

Yang Guo¹ tumbled down the slope and rolled into the long grass under the trees, and there he blacked out. How long he lay there he never knew. Then a sudden stinging pain ran over his body, and he opened his eyes to find countless white bees swirling round him, his ears full of their droning. An itch seized his whole body and bit to the bone, and everything before his eyes was a white blur. Unable to tell whether it was real or a dream, he fainted again.

After a long while he became aware of something cool, fragrant and sweet trickling slowly into his throat. He swallowed it in a daze and found it soothing beyond words. He opened his eyes a crack, and there, two feet from him, was an ugly face covered in bumps like gooseflesh, staring at him wide-eyed. The shock nearly sent him back into a faint. The owner of the ugly face had taken hold of his jaw with the left hand, and with a cup in the right was pouring the sweet liquid into his mouth.

Yang Guo felt the fierce itching and the sharp pain ease, and found that he was lying on a bed. Knowing that this ugly-faced stranger had saved him, he gave a faint smile by way of thanks. The stranger smiled back, and when the sweet liquid was finished, set the cup down on the table. Yang Guo saw that her smile was uglier still, yet within all that ugliness there was kindness and tenderness, and at once a warmth spread through his heart. “Granny,” he pleaded, “don’t let my shifu come and take me away.”

The ugly old woman asked gently, “Good child, who is your shifu?” It was a long time since Yang Guo had heard a voice so mild and caring. Warmth flooded his chest, and before he could stop himself he was sobbing aloud. The old woman took his hand in her left hand and said nothing to comfort him. She only smiled, her head tilted to one side, watching him with eyes full of tender pity, and patted his back softly with her right hand. When he had cried for a while, she said, “Feeling better?” The kindness in her voice was too much for Yang Guo, and he cried again. The old woman wiped away his tears with a handkerchief and soothed him. “There’s a good boy. Don’t cry, don’t cry. It’ll stop hurting in a little while.” The more she comforted him, the harder he wept.

Suddenly a soft, sweet voice spoke beyond the curtain. “Granny Sun,² what is this child crying and crying for?”

Yang Guo raised his head. A slender hand, white as jade, lifted the curtain aside, and a girl came in. She was draped in a thin robe of plain white cloth, as if she stood in mist and smoke, and she looked about sixteen or seventeen. Apart from her black hair she was white from head to foot. Her face was lovely beyond anything in the common world, only her skin lacked colour and looked unnaturally pale. Yang Guo flushed. He stopped crying at once and hung his head, thoroughly ashamed, but the next moment he was stealing a look at her out of the corner of his eye. Finding her looking at him too, he quickly dropped his head again.

Granny Sun laughed. “I’m at my wits’ end. You try talking him round.”

The girl came to the bedside, looked at the stings the jade bees had left on his head, and reached out to touch his forehead to see whether he was feverish. The moment his forehead met her palm, Yang Guo felt how strangely cold her hand was, and a shiver ran right through him. “It’s nothing,” said the girl. “You’ve drunk the jade bee honey. You’ll be well within half a day. What did you come blundering into the forest for?”

Yang Guo raised his head and met her eyes. She was so pure and lovely that he could hardly bear to look at her, yet her face was cold and indifferent. Truly she was as clean as ice and snow, and just as cold. He could not tell whether she was pleased or angry, sad or happy, and a dread came over him in spite of himself. Is she made of crystal, or is she a girl of snow? Is she human or ghost, or a bodhisattva, or a fairy? Her voice was soft, sweet and lilting, yet there seemed to be not the least warmth in it. For a moment he stood dumbstruck and dared not answer.

Granny Sun smiled. “Sister Long here is the mistress of this place. Whatever she asks you, you just answer!”

This lovely girl in white was none other than the mistress of the Tomb of the Living Dead,³ Xiaolongnü.⁴ She was already past her eighteenth birthday, but she had lived so long in the tomb without seeing the sun, and the neigong⁵ she cultivated was of the kind that holds the heart’s feelings in check, so she looked several years younger than other girls of her age. Granny Sun had been the maidservant of Xiaolongnü’s shifu, and since the shifu’s death the two of them had lived in the tomb with no one but each other. That day they had heard the jade bees and known that someone had strayed into the forest outside the tomb grounds. Granny Sun went out to look, found Yang Guo lying senseless from the bee venom, and brought him back to save him. By the rules of their School no outsider might set even half a step inside the tomb, and for a man to enter was a graver breach still. But Yang Guo was so young, and his body was covered in wounds, and Granny Sun had not had the heart to turn him away. She had broken the rule to save him.

Yang Guo rolled over and sat up on the stone couch, sprang down to the floor and kowtowed to Granny Sun and to Xiaolongnü. “Your disciple Yang Guo pays his respects to Granny, and pays his respects to Aunt Long.”

Granny Sun beamed all over her face and hurried to raise him up. “Ah, so you’re called Yang Guo. There’s no need for all that ceremony.” She had lived in the tomb for decades without any dealings with outsiders, and now, seeing what a handsome boy Yang Guo was and how nicely he behaved, she felt a fondness for him she could not have put into words. Xiaolongnü merely nodded and sat down on a stone chair beside the bed. “How did you come to be here?” said Granny Sun. “How did you get hurt? Which villain beat you like this?” Even as she asked, she did not wait for an answer, but went out and fetched a heap of pastries and cakes and kept urging him to eat.

Yang Guo ate a few mouthfuls of cake, then told the whole story of his life from beginning to end. He had a ready tongue and could hold a listener at any time, and with the humiliation still fresh, his words came charged with feeling. Granny Sun sighed and sighed, putting in a remark or two every so often, and every one of them took his side. One moment she was saying that Huang Rong had favoured her own daughter and been unfair, with no care for an orphan from outside the family; the next she was condemning Zhao Zhijing⁶ as a petty-minded bully who picked on children. Xiaolongnü’s face showed nothing. She sat there quite at her ease, and only when Yang Guo came to Li Mochou⁷ did she and Granny Sun exchange several glances. When Yang Guo had finished, Granny Sun put her arms round him and hugged him to her, saying over and over, “My poor child, born to suffer.”

Xiaolongnü rose slowly to her feet. “His injuries are nothing serious. Granny, take him out.”

Granny Sun and Yang Guo were both taken aback. “I’m not going back,” Yang Guo shouted. “I’ll die before I go back.” “Miss,” said Granny Sun, “if this child goes back to Chongyang Palace,⁸ his shifu is bound to make his life a misery.” “Take him back,” said Xiaolongnü, “and have a word with his shifu. Tell him not to be hard on the child.” “Oh,” said Granny Sun, “what goes on inside another order is no business of ours.” “Take a bottle of jade bee honey with you,” said Xiaolongnü, “and then tell him. That old Daoist won’t be able to refuse.” She spoke softly and courteously, yet there was an authority in her voice that was hard to defy. Granny Sun sighed. She knew how stubborn Xiaolongnü had always been and that more words would be wasted, and she looked at Yang Guo with great pity in her eyes.

Yang Guo sprang to his feet and bowed to them both with his hands clasped. “Thank you, Granny, and thank you, Aunt, for healing me. I’m going now!” “Where will you go?” said Granny Sun. Yang Guo stood blankly for a moment. “The world’s a big place. I can go anywhere.” But in truth he had no idea where he ought to go, and in spite of himself his face showed how forlorn he felt.

“Child,” said Granny Sun, “it isn’t that Miss won’t let you stay the night. This place has always had strict rules that no one from outside may come in. Don’t take it to heart.” Yang Guo lifted his chin. “Granny, don’t say that. Thank you, Granny, and thank you, Aunt. We shall meet again.” He was talking just like a grown-up, but in a child’s piping voice, and Granny Sun found it both comic and pitiful. Seeing the tears glistening in his eyes as he forced them not to fall, she said to Xiaolongnü, “Miss, it’s the middle of the night. Let him go first thing tomorrow.” Xiaolongnü gave a slight shake of her head. “Granny, have you forgotten the rules Shifu laid down?” Granny Sun sighed and stood up. “Come, child,” she said quietly to Yang Guo, “I’ll give you something to play with.” Yang Guo dashed the back of his hand across his eyes, ducked his head and ran out of the door, shouting, “I don’t want it. I’ll die before I go back to those stinking Daoists.”

Granny Sun shook her head. “You don’t know the way. I’ll take you out.” She went to him and took his hand. The moment they were outside the room, everything before Yang Guo’s eyes was pitch black. Granny Sun led him by the hand, and he felt them turn one corner and then another, and could not think how she found her way along such winding passages in the dark.

The truth was that the Tomb of the Living Dead, for all that it was called a tomb, was really a vast and spacious underground storehouse. Before Wang Chongyang⁹ rose against the Jin,¹⁰ he had set thousands of men to work on it, and it had taken them several years to build. In it he had secretly stored weapons, armour, grain and fodder, to be the root of his strength in the Shaanxi and Shanxi region. He had built its outside in the shape of a tomb to deceive the eyes and ears of the Jin, and fearing that Jin soldiers would come to attack it in the end, he had also laid countless ingenious traps inside it to hold off the enemy. After his righteous army was defeated, he lived here in seclusion. So the tomb held many chambers and a maze of passages, and an outsider might easily lose his way even with lamps and candles blazing everywhere, let alone with not a spark of light.

Footnotes

1. 杨过 – Yáng Guò. His name meaning “fault or transgression”; his courtesy name Gaizhi means “to correct it”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 孙婆婆 – Sūn Pópo. Literally Granny Sun; pópo is a familiar term for an elderly woman. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 活死人墓 – Huósǐrén Mù. Tomb of the Living Dead, the vast underground complex beneath Zhongnan Mountain built by Wang Chongyang and later home to the Ancient Tomb School. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 小龙女 – Xiǎolóngnǚ. Literally little dragon maiden. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

6. 赵志敬 – Zhào Zhìjìng. His name meaning “aspiring to reverence”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 李莫愁 – Lǐ Mòchóu. Her name meaning “do not sorrow”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 重阳宫 – Chóngyáng Gōng. Main temple of Quanzhen Order on Zhongnan Mountain. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 王重阳 – Wáng Chóngyáng. His name meaning “double yang”, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 金朝 – Jīn Cháo. Former Jurchen dynasty that ruled northern China before being conquered by the Mongols. Represented by descendants like the Wanyan clan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩