The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 7 – Part 4

By now Xiaolongnü was no longer as stern with him as before. Though she was weary, she still felt it was better to indulge him. She smiled faintly and said, “Very well.” She surveyed the chamber, deep in thought. Finally she gazed for a while into the stone coffin where they had just lain and said, “So this stone coffin was also left behind by Wang Chongyang. The bottom of the coffin can be lifted.”

Yang Guo was overjoyed. “Ah, I understand! That must be the door leading to the stone chamber!” He immediately jumped into the coffin and felt around in all directions. Sure enough, he found a depression just large enough to fit a hand. He gripped it tightly and pulled upward, but it did not budge. Xiaolongnü said, “First turn it to the left, then pull upward.” Yang Guo followed her instructions, turned, then pulled. With a kala sound, the stone slab at the bottom of the coffin came up in his hand. He cried out joyfully, “It worked!” Xiaolongnü said, “Not yet. Wait until the stale air in the cave has dispersed before going in.”

Yang Guo could not sit still. After a while, he said, “Gugu, is it ready yet?” Xiaolongnü sighed. “With an impatient nature like yours, it must have been truly hard for you to keep me company all these years.” She slowly rose, took the candleholder, and descended with him through the bottom of the stone coffin. Below was a flight of stone steps. At the end of the steps was a short passageway. They turned a corner, and sure enough, there was another stone chamber.

The chamber itself had nothing unusual about it. Without prior agreement, both raised their heads to look up. The ceiling was densely covered with written characters and symbols. At the far right were four large characters: Nine Yin Manual.¹

Neither of them knew that what the Nine Yin Manual contained was in truth the highest realm of martial study. They looked at it for a while, but found it abstruse and difficult to understand. Xiaolongnü said, “Even if this skill is truly incomparably powerful, it is of no use to us now.”

Yang Guo sighed. He was about to lower his head and look away when, in a single glance, he suddenly noticed a diagram drawn in the southwest corner of the ceiling. It seemed unrelated to martial arts. He stared at it carefully. It looked rather like a map. He asked, “What is that?” Xiaolongnü followed the direction of his finger and looked. She had only looked for a moment when her entire body stiffened as though frozen. She did not move at all.

After a long while, she remained like a stone statue, gazing at that diagram in a trance. Yang Guo grew afraid. He tugged at her sleeve. “Gugu, what is it?” Xiaolongnü made a soft sound, then suddenly buried her face against his chest and began to sob. Yang Guo said gently, “Does it hurt again?” Xiaolongnü said, “No. It is not that.” After a long pause, she said, “We can get out.” Yang Guo was wild with joy. He leapt up and shouted, “Truly?” Xiaolongnü nodded and said softly, “That diagram, it shows the secret passage out of the tomb.” She knew the tomb’s layout intimately, so she understood the meaning of the map the moment she saw it.

Yang Guo’s joy knew no bounds. “That is wonderful! Then why are you crying?” Tears still in her eyes, Xiaolongnü smiled beautifully. “I was never afraid of death before. After all, my entire life was in this tomb. Dying sooner or later, what difference did it make? But these past few days, I keep thinking: you treat me so well, I want to be with you and live some happy days. I want to go outside and see the world. Guoer, I am afraid and happy at the same time.”

Yang Guo took her hand. “Gugu, when you and I go out together, I will pick flowers for you to wear and catch crickets for you to play with. How does that sound?” All these years he had only been in the ancient tomb. Though he had grown older, the amusing things that came to his mind were still the amusements of childhood. Xiaolongnü had never played with anyone. She listened quietly as he spoke with such excitement. After a long while, she could no longer hold on. She slowly leaned against Yang Guo’s shoulder. Yang Guo talked for a while, then, hearing no answer, turned his head and saw that her eyes were gently closed, her breathing soft and faint. She had fallen into a deep sleep. A sense of peace filled his heart, and drowsiness stole over him. In his daze, he too drifted into slumber.

They did not know how much time had passed when suddenly Yang Guo felt a soreness at his waist. Someone had struck a finger into the “Central Pivot” acupoint² at his lower back. He started awake. Just as he was about to leap up and resist, a grappling hand seized the back of his neck in an iron grip. He could not move at all. He turned his head and saw Li Mochou and her disciple standing beside him, smiling. His master had also been struck at her acupoints. It turned out that neither Yang Guo nor Xiaolongnü had the slightest experience in guarding against enemies in the jianghu. In their joy, they had not thought to go back up and replace the stone slab at the bottom of the coffin. They had allowed Li Mochou to discover this underground stone chamber and ambush them successfully.

Li Mochou laughed coldly. “Well, well! So there is such a comfortable place hidden down here. The two little ones were hiding away enjoying themselves. Shimei, you had best think carefully. Perhaps there is a path out of the tomb.” Xiaolongnü said, “Even if I knew, I would not tell you.” Li Mochou had originally been deeply convinced that Xiaolongnü’s earlier words were true, that the Dragon Severing Stone had indeed been lowered and there was no hope of leaving the tomb. But Xiaolongnü was utterly artless and guileless. The tone and expression of these two sentences seemed to indicate that she did know a way out. Li Mochou was overjoyed. “Good Shimei, lead us out. From now on I will never make trouble for you again.” Xiaolongnü said, “You came in on your own. Find your own way out. Why should I lead you?”

Li Mochou had always known this shimei to be stubborn and wilful. Even when their master was alive, she had often had to accommodate her. Using force and threats would almost certainly be ineffective. But with life and death at stake, she had to try to force the issue no matter what. She extended her fingers and struck heavily at the “Celestial Protrusion” acupoint³ below each of their throats, then struck the “Five Pivots” acupoint⁴ between their thighs and abdomens. The Celestial Protrusion acupoint was the meeting point of the Yin Linking and Conception Vessels. The Five Pivots acupoint was the meeting point of the Foot Lesser Yang and Girdle Vessels. Li Mochou was using the Ancient Tomb School’s secret acupoint-sealing technique. She expected that before long the two of them would be overcome by unbearable numbness and itching all over their bodies and would have no choice but to reveal the secret.

Xiaolongnü closed her eyes and paid no attention. Yang Guo said, “If my gugu knew the way out, why would we not have escaped already? Why would we still be here?” Li Mochou laughed. “She already let it slip in her words just now. There is no denying it. She naturally knows there is another secret exit from this ancient tomb. Once you have recovered your strength, you will leave, of course. Shimei, are you going to speak or not?” Xiaolongnü said quietly, “Once you are outside, it will be nothing more than finding ways to kill and harm people. What good is there in going out?”

Li Mochou sat to one side with her arms around her knees, smiling wordlessly. After a while, Yang Guo was the first who could no longer bear it. He shouted, “Hey, Li Mochou! Did Founding Grandmaster pass down this acupoint-sealing technique for you to bully your own people? Using it against your own shimei, can you face Founding Grandmaster?” Li Mochou smiled faintly. “You call me Li Mochou. We ceased to be ‘our own people’ long ago.”

Yang Guo whispered in Xiaolongnü’s ear, “You absolutely must not reveal the secret of the exit. As long as Li Mochou does not know it, she will never kill us. The moment she learns the way out, she will strike us down immediately.” Xiaolongnü said, “You are right. I had not thought of that. I simply will not tell her.” At that moment she was lying on the ground. When she opened her eyes, she could see the map on the ceiling. She thought, If Shijie discovers this map, it will be disastrous. I must not let my gaze fall on the map.

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In those years, when Wang Chongyang learned that Lin Chaoying had passed away within the Tomb of the Living Dead,⁵ he recalled how she had loved him so devotedly all her life. This depth of feeling was no small matter. Now that they belonged to different worlds, one among the living, one among the dead, the grief in his heart was profound. He quietly entered the tomb through the secret passage, avoiding her maidservants and disciples. He gazed long upon the remains of this old companion of the jianghu, stifling his sobs as he wept bitterly. Only then did he make a tour of this stone tomb that he himself had built in years past. He saw the portrait Lin Chaoying had painted of him standing with his back turned, and he saw the engravings she had left on the ceilings of the two stone chambers. When he saw that the martial arts described in the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra were subtle, profound, and wondrous, every move indeed the precise nemesis of Quanzhen martial arts, his face turned ashen. He immediately withdrew.

He went deep into the mountains alone and built a thatched hut. For three full years he did not set foot outside the mountain, devoting himself to studying methods to defeat the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra. Though he achieved small successes here and there, in the end he could not assemble a complete system of martial learning that encompassed both internal and external, fully integrated and interconnected. Disheartened, his admiration for Lin Chaoying’s intelligence and talent only deepened. He conceded defeat and ceased his research. More than ten years later, at the Huashan Sword Summit,⁶ he obtained the wondrous martial text, the Nine Yin Manual. He was determined not to practise the skills within the manual, but driven by curiosity, he could not resist leafing through it once.

By then, his martial arts were already the greatest under heaven. The various secret profundities and essential principles contained in the Nine Yin Manual, once his eyes passed over them and he pondered for a dozen or so days, he comprehended completely. He knew that after mastering the essential doctrines of the Nine Yin Manual, defeating the martial arts of the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra would pose no difficulty whatsoever. Thereupon he raised his head to the heavens and laughed long. He returned to the Tomb of the Living Dead and, on the ceiling of the most hidden underground stone chamber in the entire tomb, engraved the essential doctrines of the manual. He also pointed out, one by one, the methods for defeating the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra. He examined the layout of the ancient tomb and surmised that those several empty coffins would in the future be used by Lin Chaoying’s disciples. They would most likely climb into the coffins themselves when their end was near, to await death. At that time they would naturally come to know that the founding patriarch of the Quanzhen Order had never, in all his life, been weaker than anyone. And so he wrote the sixteen characters on the underside of one empty coffin lid, so that Lin Chaoying’s descendants, at the moment of their death, would learn that the martial learning of the founding patriarch of the Quanzhen teaching was in truth not something the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra could overcome.

This was merely a moment of competitive pride on his part. He had no intention of allowing the Nine Yin Manual to be leaked to the world. He assumed that by the time Lin Chaoying’s disciples saw the Nine Yin Manual, they would already be at their last breath and could only carry this secret into the underworld.

Wang Chongyang and Lin Chaoying were both prodigies of martial learning, a match made in heaven. Between the two of them, there was no third party, male or female, to stir the waves of passion, nor any enmity or entanglements involving relatives or fellow disciples. In earlier times, Wang Chongyang had been wholly devoted to the great cause of raising a volunteer army to resist the Jin⁷ with no leisure to attend to matters of the heart. But after the volunteer army was defeated and he languished in the ancient tomb, Lin Chaoying came to comfort him, her tender devotion and noble righteousness were deeply moving. By then there was no reason why their union should not have been fulfilled. Yet it still ended in everlasting regret, one leaving home to become a Daoist priest, the other wasting away in melancholy within the stone tomb until her final day. The reasons for this, Qiu Chuji⁸ and the other disciples certainly did not know. Even Wang Chongyang and Lin Chaoying themselves would have found it difficult to explain, and could only attribute it to the two words: “not fated.” They did not know that “not fated” was the effect, not the cause. The two of them, their martial arts already so high, grew ever more prideful. Whenever the seedling of affection began to sprout, competition in discussing martial arts would inevitably arise alongside it. Neither would ever yield to the other. When the two were compared, in the end Lin Chaoying was slightly superior. Wang Chongyang, unable to accept being subordinate to a woman, would forcibly suppress his feelings whenever the slightest affection for Lin Chaoying arose. Later, Lin Chaoying created the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra to counter Quanzhen martial arts, and Wang Chongyang, unwilling to admit defeat, engraved the essential doctrines of the Nine Yin Manual within the tomb. But he reflected that the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra was Lin Chaoying’s own creation, whereas he had relied on a predecessor’s legacy. In comparison, he was indeed one step inferior. Thereafter he cultivated deep humility and often admonished his disciples in the way of tolerance, self-restraint, and keeping one’s abilities hidden.

Footnotes

1. Nine Yin Manual (九阴真经). Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Most comprehensive martial arts manual in the wulin, compiled by Huang Shang during the Northern Song dynasty. It contains both internal and external techniques of the highest order. Manual was the prize at the first Huashan Sword Summit, won by Wang Chongyang. ↩

2. 中枢穴 – Zhōngshū Xué. Literally central pivot. Acupoint on the lower back along the spine on the governing vessel meridian. See Wikipedia. ↩

3. 天突穴 – Tiāntū Xué. Literally celestial prominence. Acupoint at the base of the throat on the conception vessel meridian. See Wikipedia. ↩

4. 五枢穴 – Wǔshū Xué. Literally five pivots. Acupoint in the lower abdomen on the gallbladder meridian. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 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. ↩

6. 华山 – Huáshān. One of China’s Five Sacred Mountains, site of martial arts competitions. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. Jin Dynasty (金朝). Jurchen-led dynasty (1115—1234) that ruled northern China during this period. Wang Chongyang’s volunteer army fought against the Jin, who had conquered the Central Plains from the Song dynasty. ↩

8. 丘处机 – Qiū Chǔjī. His name meaning “dwelling in opportunity”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩