The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 8 – Part 3

“Hey, cowherd,” said the girl, “what are you wailing about?” “The bull went mad all of a sudden and scraped off ever so much of its hide,” said Yang Guo. “When I go back, the family I work for will beat me to death for sure.” The girl looked the bull over. Its coat was glossy and sleek, without a scrape on it. “All right,” she said. “Your bull did me a good turn, after all. Here’s a silver ingot for you.” She took a three-liang¹ ingot of silver from her robes and tossed it on the ground. She expected him to be overjoyed and thank her, but he went on looking miserable, shaking his head and leaving the silver where it lay. “What’s the matter with you?” said the girl. “It’s silver, idiot.” “One ingot’s not enough,” said Yang Guo. The girl took out another ingot and tossed it down. Yang Guo, out to tease her, shook his head again.

That made the girl cross. Her fine brows went up, her face darkened, and she snapped, “There’s no more, idiot!” She turned to go. At the sight of her anger Yang Guo felt the hot blood rush to his chest and a sting in his eyes, for he remembered how Xiaolongnü used to look when she scolded him, and his mind was made up. If I can’t find Aunt for the time being, I’ll just watch this girl lose her temper instead. He reached out and threw his arms round her right leg. “You can’t go!” he cried. The girl struggled with all her strength, but he had her fast and she could not break free, which made her angrier still. “Let go!” she shouted. “What are you hanging on to me for?” The angrier she got, the happier Yang Guo was. “I can’t go home now,” he cried. “Save my life.” And then he started bawling, “Help, help!”

The girl did not know whether to be angry or laugh. She raised her dao. “If you don’t let go, I’ll cut you down.” Yang Guo only clung tighter and began to pretend to cry. “Cut me down, then. I’m a dead man if I go home anyway.” “What do you want?” said the girl. “I don’t know. I’m coming with you.” The girl thought, Of all the rotten luck, to get this idiot pestering me for no reason. She raised the dao and chopped down. Yang Guo had been sure she would not really strike, and he kept hold of her calf, but the girl was ruthless. The stroke was truly aimed at the crown of his head. She had no wish to kill him, but she meant to put a cut in his scalp so he would smart for it and not dare pester her again. Yang Guo watched the dao come straight down. He waited until the edge was only a few inches from his head, then rolled clear, yelling, “Murder, murder!”

The girl was angrier than ever. She darted in and swung at him again. Yang Guo lay sprawled on the ground, kicking wildly with both feet and yelling, “I’m dead, I’m dead!” His muddy feet flailed and thrashed, as ugly a sight as could be, but several times the girl nearly had her wrist kicked, and she never once landed a cut. Yang Guo saw the fury all over her face. That pout of temper was just what he wanted to see, and he could not help gazing at her, spellbound. Seeing the odd look on his face, the girl barked, “Get up!” “Are you going to kill me or not?” said Yang Guo. “All right, I won’t kill you,” said the girl. Yang Guo got up slowly, puffing and panting loudly, and secretly worked his qi to hold back his blood, so that his face went pale at once, without a drop of colour in it, as if he had been frightened out of his wits.

The girl was very pleased with herself. “Pah,” she said. “Let’s see if you dare pester me now.” She pointed her dao at the fingers lying on the hillside where she had sliced them from Pi Qingxuan’s hand. “That one was as fierce as a demon god, and I still chopped off his claws.” Yang Guo put on a look of terror and kept cringing away. The girl stuck the dao in her belt and turned to look for her black donkey, but it had long since bolted, who knew where, and there was nothing for it but to go on foot.

Yang Guo picked up the silver and tucked it into his shirt, took the bull’s rope and followed after her. “Aunt, take me with you,” he called. The girl paid him no heed at all. She lengthened her stride and in no time had left him so far behind that he was lost to sight. But she had barely stopped for a breather when she saw him in the distance, running up with the bull in tow and calling, “Take me with you, take me with you.” The girl knitted her brows tight, put on her qinggong² and ran several li³ without stopping for breath, sure that he could never catch up now. Yet before long she faintly heard that cry again, “Take me with you.” Anger flared up in her. She turned and ran back, drew her dao and raised it high. “Yikes!” cried Yang Guo, and fled with his hands over his head. All the girl wanted was for him to stop following her, so she let it go at that and turned to walk on.

She had walked some way when she heard a bull low behind her. Looking back, she saw Yang Guo trailing far behind with the bull, thirty or forty paces off. The girl stopped and waited for him to come up. But when Yang Guo saw her standing still, he stood still too. When she walked on, he followed at once. When she turned and came at him with her dao raised, he turned tail and ran. So it went, chase and halt, chase and halt, until the light was failing, and still she could not shake him off. The little cowherd might be a simpleton, but she could see he was uncommonly quick on his feet, from running about the hills all his life, she supposed. Every time she tried to run him down and knock him senseless, or hack at his legs, he slithered away from her, rolling and scrambling, in the nick of time. Each time she saw him escape by a hair’s breadth, but she only thought the fellow was in luck, and found nothing strange in it.

After a few more rounds of this, the girl’s lame left foot was making her tired from so much walking, and a plan came to her. “All right,” she called out, “I’ll take you with me, but you’ve got to do as I say.” “You’ll really take me?” said Yang Guo, delighted. “Of course. Why would I lie to you? I’m tired of walking. You get up on the bull and let me ride too.” Yang Guo hurried over with the bull. In the deepening dusk he saw a glint in her eyes and knew she was up to no good, but he clambered onto the bull’s back, all thumbs. The girl tapped off with her right foot, sprang up lightly and deftly and sat in front of him. My donkey’s run off, she thought. Riding this bull won’t be half bad. She kicked the bull hard in the ribs with the toe of her shoe, and the bull, stung, broke into a mad gallop. The girl gave a faint, cold smile, then suddenly drove her elbow back hard and caught Yang Guo full in the chest. “Ow!” he cried, and went head over heels off the bull’s back.

The girl was very pleased with herself. Rascal that you are, she thought, this time you’ve fallen for my trick. She jabbed a finger into the bull’s flank and it ran faster still. Then all at once she heard Yang Guo yelling and shouting as loud as ever, and right behind her. She looked round. He had both hands locked on the bull’s tail and his feet off the ground, dragged flying through the air by the bull, his face smeared with mud and dirt, tears and snot, as sorry a sight as could be, yet he would not let go of the tail. The girl was at her wits’ end. She raised the dao to chop at his hands, when suddenly she heard a hubbub of voices: the bull had run into a market. The press of people was so thick that it had nowhere to go, and it came to a halt.

Ever since he was small, Yang Guo had loved teasing people for fun, and there was a good streak of the rascal in him. But once he had entered the ancient tomb, Xiaolongnü had been so solemn and kept him so strictly in hand that he had not dared take the least liberty, and it was a long time since he had had his fun. Now Xiaolongnü was gone, and he was sick at heart and miserable, so he amused himself by teasing this girl. It let off a little of his pent-up gloom, and besides, he could watch her temper and console himself, as though he were seeing Aunt. He lay on the ground and bawled, “Oh, my chest hurts, you’ve beaten me to death!” The people of the market came crowding round, asking what had happened.

The girl dived into the crowd, meaning to slip away in the confusion, but Yang Guo crawled after her along the ground and wrapped his arms round her right leg again. “Don’t go, don’t go!” he yelled. “What’s going on?” someone asked. “What are you two quarrelling about?” Yang Guo remembered how Xiaolongnü had asked him whether he wanted her for his wife, and he shouted, “She’s my wife. My wife doesn’t want me, and she hits me too.” “A wife hitting her husband?” said the man. “What’s the world coming to?” The girl’s willow-leaf brows shot up and she lashed out with her left foot. Yang Guo gave a burly fellow beside him a shove, and the kick landed square in the man’s side. The big man was livid. “Kicking people, you little slut?” he roared, and swung a fist as big as a vinegar bowl at her. The girl caught him under the elbow, borrowed his own force and flung him off, and the fellow’s two hundred jin⁴ of bulk flew up into the air, howling, and came down in the thick of the crowd, flattening people left and right until they were all shouting and squealing in a heap.

The girl strained with all her might to break free, but he was clinging to her leg for dear life, and how could she shake him off? Seeing another five or six men pressing forward to make trouble, she had to give in. “All right, I’ll take you with me,” she said. “Just let go.” “Will you hit me any more?” said Yang Guo. “Fine, I won’t!” Only then did Yang Guo let go and scramble to his feet. The two of them wormed their way out of the crowd and ran out of the market, with a storm of shouting behind them. And in all that hurry Yang Guo, of all things, still had the bull in tow.

Yang Guo grinned. “See, other people say so too: a wife mustn’t hit her husband.” “You damned fool,” the girl said savagely. “Talk any more of that rubbish, saying I’m your wife or whatever, and see if I don’t chop your silly head off.” She brandished her dao as she said it. Yang Guo clutched his head and scuttled a few steps aside. “Please, good miss,” he begged, “I won’t say it again.” The girl spat. “Look at the filthy state of you. Not even an ugly old hag would marry you.” Yang Guo giggled foolishly and said nothing.

By now it was dark. The two of them stood on the open plain, watching the cooking smoke curl up from the market in the distance, and both of them were hungry. “Fool,” said the girl, “go into the market and buy ten steamed buns.” Yang Guo shook his head. “I’m not going.” The girl’s face darkened. “Why not?” “I’m not going, so there! You want to trick me into going for buns so you can sneak off.” “I told you I won’t sneak off.” Yang Guo only shook his head. The girl raised her fist to hit him, but he scampered off again, and the two of them went round and round the big bull as if playing hide-and-seek. The girl’s lame foot hampered her, and though she had qinggong, she could not catch him, for all that the lad kept falling over and scrambling up again, yelling and hollering.

She was beside herself with anger. All her martial skill was going to waste, she thought, and for all her boasted wit and cunning, this filthy, stinking little country fool had her at a loss what to do with him. It was the very height of incompetence. The truth was that Yang Guo played the bumpkin far too convincingly. Otherwise, after failing to kill the little fool time after time, she would have grown suspicious long before. She followed the high road south, watching Yang Guo trail along far behind with his bull, and racked her brains for a way to take him by surprise and kill him. She had walked for about as long as it takes to eat a meal, and it was darker still, when she saw a ruined temple by the roadside that seemed to be empty. I’ll sleep here tonight, she thought, and in the middle of the night, when that idiot’s asleep, I’ll cut him down with one stroke. She went up to the temple and pushed the door open. Dust filled her nose. The statues of the gods inside were falling to pieces. The place had plainly been abandoned for a long time. She cut some grass, wiped the altar table clean with it, lay down on the table and closed her eyes to rest.

Yang Guo had not followed her in. “Fool, Fool!” she called. There was no answer. Don’t tell me the fool knew I meant to kill him, and ran away! she thought. She told herself she did not care, yet she felt a little lonely. After a long while, just as she was drifting off, the smell of meat suddenly filled her nostrils. She jumped up and went outside. There sat Yang Guo in the moonlight with a big hunk of meat in his hand, chewing away with his mouth wide open. He had built a fire in front of him, with a rack of branches over it, and game was hanging there to roast, the smell drifting over to her in waves.

Seeing her come out, Yang Guo smiled. “Want some?” He tossed her a leg roasted to a sweet-smelling turn. The girl caught it. It looked like a leg of river deer, and she was starving, so she tore off a strip and ate it. There was no salt, but it still tasted rather good, and she sat down near the fire and began to eat in a very ladylike way, tearing the meat off strip by strip and chewing it slowly. But Yang Guo was eating with spit flying everywhere and loud smacking noises, and the sight of him turned her stomach. She would have stopped eating, but she was still hungry, so she could only turn her head away and not look at him.

When she had finished one piece, Yang Guo handed her another. “Fool,” said the girl, “what’s your name?” Yang Guo stared at her blankly. “Are you an immortal or something? How do you know my name’s Fool?” The girl was tickled. “Ha, so your name really is Fool,” she laughed. “Where are your mum and dad?” “All dead,” said Yang Guo. “What’s your name?” “I don’t know,” said the girl. “What do you want to know for?” If you won’t tell me, Yang Guo thought, I’ll needle it out of you. “I know,” he said smugly. “You’re called Fool too, that’s why you won’t say.” The girl flew into a rage. She sprang up and thumped him hard on the head with her fist. “Who says I’m called Fool? You’re the fool.” Yang Guo clutched his head with a woeful face. “When people ask me my name and I say I don’t know, they call me Fool. You said you don’t know either, so of course you’re a fool too.” “Who said I don’t know? I just don’t care to tell you, that’s all. My surname’s Lu. Got that?”

Footnotes

1. 两 – liǎng. Traditional Chinese unit of weight, one-sixteenth of a jin. Also the unit in which silver was reckoned. Approximately 37 grams in the Song dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 轻功 – qīnggōng. Literally lightness skill. The martial art of body lightness; practitioners leap great heights and move with extraordinary speed. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

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

4. 斤 – jīn. Traditional Chinese unit of weight, approximately 590 grams in the Song dynasty. ↩