The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 8 – Part 4

This young girl was none other than Lu Wushuang,¹ the little girl who had been picking lotus flowers on South Lake in Jiaxing² that day. She had broken her leg while picking trumpet creeper flowers with her cousin Cheng Ying³ and the Wu brothers.⁴ Wu Sanniang⁵ had set the broken bone for her, but just at that moment Hong Lingbo⁶ came attacking on her master’s orders, and as a result the bone was not set perfectly. After the injury healed, her left leg was about an inch shorter, giving her a slight limp when she walked. Her complexion was not particularly fair, but her features were delicate, and as she grew older she became even more lovely. Only her lame foot remained a source of lasting bitterness.

That day, Li Mochou had killed her parents and their servants and taken her to her residence at Crimson Cloud Manor.⁷ She had originally intended to kill her as well, but when she saw the embroidered kerchief around Lu Wushuang’s neck, she remembered her past feelings for Lu Wushuang’s uncle, Lu Zhanyuan,⁸ and could not bring herself to strike. Lu Wushuang was bright and quick-witted. She knew that her life hung by a thread in the hands of this demoness, and that since the demoness came and went like the wind, escape was utterly impossible. So from the very start, she went out of her way to be agreeable, fawning and pleasing in every way, until the Scarlet Serpent Immortal, who killed without blinking, gradually lost her desire to kill the girl. Sometimes when Li Mochou remembered the old grievances, she would torment Lu Wushuang, but Lu Wushuang deliberately kept herself dishevelled and filthy, limping along, enduring everything with submission. Li Mochou was not evil by nature. Having grown accustomed to the girl’s presence, and with no major cause arising, she no longer thought of killing her. Lu Wushuang stooped to compromise, it was remarkable that a little girl could survive under the wing of such a great demoness.

She buried the hatred for her parents deep in her heart and never let it show. When Li Mochou asked about her parents, she always pretended she could not remember. Whenever Li Mochou and Hong Lingbo practised martial arts, she would wait upon them attentively, handing them swords and towels, pouring tea and serving fruit with the utmost diligence. She already had some foundation in martial arts, so she secretly memorised what she saw when the two trained, and when Li and Hong went out, she would practise in secret. She was especially careful to curry favour with Hong Lingbo. Later, when Li Mochou was in a particularly good mood, Hong Lingbo interceded on Lu Wushuang’s behalf, and she was accepted as a disciple.

Thus several years passed. Lu Wushuang’s martial skills improved daily, but Li Mochou always harboured suspicions about her, and would not teach her the highest-level skills, nor even the second-tier techniques. It was Hong Lingbo who, taking pity on her, often gave her pointers in secret. Thus her skill was neither truly high nor truly low. That day, Li Mochou and Hong Lingbo, master and disciple, had gone one after the other to the Tomb of the Living Dead⁹ to steal the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra.¹⁰ Seeing that they had not returned for a long time, Lu Wushuang resolved to escape Crimson Cloud Manor and return to Jiangnan¹¹ to discover whether her parents were alive or dead. Though she had seen her parents gravely wounded by Li Mochou as a child and feared the worst, she had never witnessed their deaths with her own eyes, and still clung to a thread of hope. She was determined to get to the bottom of it. Before leaving, she thought, In for a penny, in for a jin, and stole Li Mochou’s copy of the Secret Manual of the Five Venoms,¹² a handwritten volume recording the properties and preparation methods of various poisons and their antidotes.

Her lame left foot was her sorest point, and she hated it when anyone stared at her limp. That day at the inn, when two Daoists had looked at her crippled foot a few times too many, she had immediately rebuked them. The two Daoists had equally foul tempers, and after a few words, they came to blows. She had used her curved blade to slice off the two Daoists’ ears, which led to the appointment at Jackal-Wolf Valley. The day Li Mochou had taken her north, she had seen Yang Guo once at the kiln entrance, but both were young at the time, and their appearances had changed over the years. A brief encounter several years ago, naturally neither could recognise the other now.

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After eating two pieces of roast meat, Lu Wushuang was full. Yang Guo, however, studied her face by the firelight and thought to himself, Where is my Gugu right now? If this girl before me were Gugu, and I were roasting deer leg for her to eat, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Lost in thought, he stared at her as if in a trance. Lu Wushuang snorted to herself, You dare stare at me so rudely. I’ll endure it for now. In the middle of the night, I’ll kill you. She went back into the ruined temple and lay down to sleep.

In the middle of the night, she crept up and went outside the temple. By the fire pit, Yang Guo lay motionless, fast asleep, the fire long since extinguished. She tiptoed behind him, raised her blade, and brought it chopping down toward his back. But suddenly her wrist shook and her thumb joint was struck by a jarring pain, she instantly lost her grip. With a clang, the broadsword fell from her hand. The spot where the blade had struck felt as hard as iron or stone. She was badly startled and immediately turned to flee, thinking, Could this fool have trained his entire body to be invulnerable to blades? She ran several zhang and saw that Yang Guo was not chasing her. She turned to look and saw that he was still lying motionless by the fire.

Lu Wushuang’s suspicions grew. She called, “Fool! Fool! I have something to tell you.” Yang Guo did not answer. She focused her gaze and looked carefully. Yang Guo’s form seemed to have shrunk into a ball, something was strange about it. Gathering her courage, she approached and saw that he did not even look human. She reached out and touched him, beneath the clothes was something hard, like a great rock. She grabbed the clothes and lifted, beneath them was indeed a rock. Where was Yang Guo?

She froze for a moment, then called, “Fool! Fool!” No answer came. She listened carefully and seemed to hear the sound of snoring coming from the ruined temple. Following the sound, she found Yang Guo sleeping on the very altar table where she herself had been lying, his back facing outward, snoring thunderously, deep in slumber. In her fury, Lu Wushuang did not stop to wonder how he had suddenly ended up on the altar table. She lunged forward and drove the tip of her blade toward his back. The blade sank in, but there was no sensation of flesh at all. She heard Yang Guo snore a few times, then murmur in his sleep, “Who’s tickling my back? Hee hee, stop it, stop it, I’m ticklish.”

Lu Wushuang’s face went white with terror. Her hands trembled. Could this person be a ghost or a demon? She turned to flee, but for a moment her legs would not obey. She heard him mumble again, “My back is so itchy. Must be a little mouse trying to steal my deer meat.” He reached behind his back and pulled out half a slab of river deer meat from under his clothes. Slap! He threw it to the ground. Lu Wushuang let out a long breath. Only then did she understand: So the fool had put deer meat on his back. The blade stabbed into the meat just now, gave me a scare for nothing.

Having failed twice, her hatred for Yang Guo only deepened. She ground her teeth and whispered, “Stinking fool, let’s see if I don’t take your miserable little life this time.” She darted forward and raised her blade to hack down viciously at his back. Yang Guo, in the midst of his rumbling snores, turned over. Thwack! The blade struck the table, sinking deep into the wood.

Lu Wushuang put strength into her hand, meaning to pull the blade out, but just then Yang Guo was having some nightmare and cried out, “Mama! Mama! A little mouse is biting me!” His two muddy legs shot out, his left leg landed on Lu Wushuang’s “Quchi” acupoint¹³ in the crook of her arm, and his right leg landed on her “Jianjing” acupoint¹⁴ at her shoulder. Both were major acupoints of the human body. His two muddy legs had come crashing down and, by sheer coincidence, struck precisely these two points. Lu Wushuang was instantly immobilised. She stood frozen, her body serving as a rack for his legs.

She was furious beyond words. Though her body could not move, her mouth could still speak. She shouted, “Hey, fool! Get your stinking feet off me!” His snoring only grew louder. She did not know what to do. In her rage and frustration, she spat at him. Yang Guo turned over again, and the tip of his right foot swept past casually, brushing lightly against her “Jugu” acupoint.¹⁵ Lu Wushuang immediately felt numbness and weakness spread through her entire body, she could not even open her mouth. All she could smell was the stench of his feet assaulting her nostrils.

She endured this for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, so furious she nearly fainted. In her heart she swore a bitter oath: Tomorrow, when my acupoints are freed, I will hack this fool seventeen or eighteen times. After a while longer, Yang Guo decided he had toyed with her enough. He withdrew his legs and turned around. Even in the darkness, he could clearly see the anger on her face. The angrier she grew, the more she seemed to resemble Xiaolongnü. Yang Guo stared at her in a daze, how could he bear to close his eyes? In truth, Lu Wushuang’s looks were far inferior to Xiaolongnü’s, but the expressions of anger on a woman’s face are not so different from one to the next. Yang Guo, missing his master with desperate intensity, and with nothing else to occupy him, gazed at Lu Wushuang’s furious expression and imagined he could vaguely see Xiaolongnü in it. It was the longing of one who draws a picture of a cake to satisfy hunger, who stares at a plum to quench thirst.

After a while, the moonlight slanted westward and streamed in through the main door. Lu Wushuang saw that Yang Guo’s eyes were open and that he was gazing at her with a grin. Her heart chilled. Could this fool be playing dumb? Did he seal my acupoints deliberately, and not by accident? At this thought, she broke out in a cold sweat. Just then, she saw Yang Guo’s eyes slant toward the ground. She shifted her gaze and followed his line of sight. On the ground, three black shadows were lined up in a row, there were three people standing at the doorway. She focused and saw that all three shadows held weapons in their hands. Despair seized her. It’s all over, all over. My enemies have tracked me down, and this fool just happened to seal my acupoints. Though she had encountered one strange event after another and was beginning to feel suspicious, she still could not believe that such a filthy, wretched cowherd could possess such high martial arts.

Yang Guo closed his eyes and snored loudly. He heard a voice at the door call out, “Little slut, come out! You think if you stand there without moving, these Daoist masters will spare you?” Yang Guo thought, So it’s another stinking Daoist. He heard another voice say, “We don’t want your life, we only want to cut off your two ears and three fingers.” A third voice said, “I’ll wait outside. Come out quickly and fight.” With that, the speaker leapt outside. The three formed a semicircle outside the door.

Footnotes

1. 陆无双 – Lù Wúshuāng. Her name meaning “peerless” or “without equal”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 嘉兴 – Jiāxīng. City in northern Zhejiang Province, known for its South Lake and its role as a key location in Jin Yong’s novels. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 程英 – Chéng Yīng. Her name meaning “heroine” or “outstanding”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. Wu Brothers. Wu Dunru (武敦儒) and Wu Xiuwen (武修文), sons of Wu Santong, disciples of Guo Jing and Huang Rong. ↩

5. 武三娘 – Wǔ Sānniáng. Literally third lady Wu; a married woman’s honorific title. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 洪凌波 – Hóng Língbō. Her name meaning “treading the waves”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 赤霞庄 – Chìxiá Zhuāng. Crimson Cloud Manor, Li Mochou’s residence. ↩

8. 陆展元 – Lù Zhǎnyuán. His name meaning “spreading the origin”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 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. ↩

10. 玉女心经 – Yùnǚ Xīnjīng. Jade Maiden Heart Sutra, the supreme manual of the Ancient Tomb School, created by Lin Chaoying to counter Quanzhen martial arts. Its advanced internal portions require two practitioners training together. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 江南 – Jiāngnán. Prosperous region south of Yangtze River, continued from LOCH era. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

12. 五毒秘传 – Wǔdú Mìchuán. Secret Manual of the Five Venoms, a handwritten compendium recording the preparation and antidotes for various poisons used by Li Mochou. ↩

13. 曲池穴 – Qūchí Xué. Literally pool at the bend. Acupoint at the lateral end of the elbow crease on the large intestine meridian; striking it can numb the arm. See Wikipedia. ↩

14. 肩井穴 – Jiānjǐng Xué. Literally shoulder well. Acupoint at the highest point of the shoulder on the gallbladder meridian; striking it can paralyse the arm. See Wikipedia. ↩

15. 巨骨穴 – Jùgǔ Xué. Literally great bone. Acupoint in the hollow of the shoulder on the large intestine meridian; striking it can numb the limb. See Wikipedia. ↩