The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 8 – Part 4

The girl was none other than Lu Wushuang,¹ the little girl who had been picking lotus on South Lake in Jiaxing² that day long ago. She had broken her leg picking trumpet-creeper flowers with her cousin Cheng Ying³ and the Wu brothers,⁴ and Madam Wu⁵ had set the bone for her. But just then Hong Lingbo⁶ had come to attack them on her shifu’s orders, and the bone had not been set properly. When it healed, her left leg was about an inch short, and she walked with a slight limp. Her skin was not especially fair, but her features were fine and pretty, and as she grew up she became lovelier still. Only her lame foot she could never help resenting.

That day Li Mochou had killed her parents and their maids and servants and carried her off to her home, Crimson Cloud Manor.⁷ She had meant to kill the girl too, but when she saw the brocade handkerchief tied round her neck she remembered her old love for the girl’s uncle, Lu Zhanyuan,⁸ and kept putting it off, unable to bring herself to do it. Lu Wushuang was clever and sharp. She knew that, fallen into this she-devil’s hands, her life hung by a thread, and that a demon who came and went like the wind was the last person on earth she could escape from. So from the very start she bent to the woman’s every whim and tried to please her at every turn, and her flattery worked so well that the Scarlet Serpent Immortal, who killed without blinking, gradually lost the urge to harm her. Sometimes, when Li Mochou remembered the old wrong, she would humiliate the girl, and Lu Wushuang would make herself unkempt and grimy on purpose, hobble about, and take whatever came meekly. Li Mochou was not wicked to the very core, and now that she had come to know the girl, with no great cause to stir her, she gave up any thought of killing her. Lu Wushuang swallowed every humiliation to survive, and it was no small thing that a little girl had endured so long under that great demon’s roof.

She kept her hatred over her parents hidden deep in her heart and never let it show. Whenever Li Mochou asked about her parents, she always pretended she could not remember. When Li Mochou and Hong Lingbo practised their martial arts, she would wait on them most attentively, handing them their jians and towels, pouring tea and bringing fruit. She already had some grounding in martial arts, and as she watched the two of them practise she quietly committed what she saw to memory, then practised in secret whenever they went out. She took special pains to please Hong Lingbo, and later, when their shifu was in a particularly good mood, Hong Lingbo pleaded for Lu Wushuang, and she too was taken on as a disciple.

So several years went by. Lu Wushuang’s martial skill improved by the day, but Li Mochou never stopped mistrusting her, and would not teach her even second-rate skills, let alone the very best. It was Hong Lingbo, taking pity on her, who often gave her pointers on the quiet, so that her skill, if not high, was not low either. That day, Li Mochou and Hong Lingbo, shifu and disciple, had gone one after the other to the Tomb of the Living Dead⁹ to steal the Jade Maiden Heart Sutra.¹⁰ When they had been gone a long time and still not come back, Lu Wushuang made up her mind to escape Crimson Cloud Manor there and then and go back to Jiangnan¹¹ to find out whether her parents were alive or dead. As a child she had seen Li Mochou wound them gravely, and she feared the worst, but she had never actually seen them die, and she still clung to a thread of hope. She meant to get to the bottom of it. As she was leaving she thought, In for a penny, in for a pound, and stole Li Mochou’s Secret Manual of the Five Venoms¹² as well, a handwritten book recording all manner of poisons and their antidotes.

Lame in her left foot, she hated nothing more than people staring at it. That day at the inn, two Daoists had looked at her bad foot a few times too often, and she had rounded on them at once. The Daoists’ tempers were none too sweet either. A few words, and they came to blows, and she sliced off both their ears with her curved dao. That was how the fight at Jackal-Wolf Valley had come about. On the day Li Mochou carried her off north, she had seen Yang Guo once at the mouth of the kiln, but they had both been small then and had changed out of all knowledge since. One hurried meeting several years before: naturally neither of them remembered it now.

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After two pieces of roast meat Lu Wushuang had eaten her fill. But Yang Guo was studying her face in the flickering firelight. Where can Aunt be now? he thought. If only this girl were Aunt, and I were roasting river-deer legs for her to eat, wouldn’t that be fine? Thinking this, he gazed at her blankly, as if bewitched. Lu Wushuang gave a snort. Staring at me like that, the cheek of it, she thought. I’ll put up with it for now, and in the middle of the night I’ll kill you. And she went straight back into the ruined temple and lay down to sleep.

In the middle of the night she rose quietly and went out of the temple. Yang Guo lay motionless by the fire, fast asleep, and the fire had long since gone out. She tiptoed up behind him, raised her dao and brought it down at the middle of his back, and suddenly her wrist jarred and the web of her thumb stung with a violent pain. She could not keep her grip, and with a clang the dao flew from her hand. Where it had struck had felt like iron or stone. With a great start she turned and fled. Has this fool trained his whole body so that no blade or spear can pierce it? she thought. She had run several dozen feet before she saw that Yang Guo was not coming after her. She looked back. He was still lying by the fire, not moving.

Lu Wushuang’s suspicions were well and truly roused. “Fool, Fool!” she called. “I’ve something to tell you.” Yang Guo made no answer. She peered closely. Yang Guo seemed to be curled up in a ball, and there was something odd about the shape of him. Plucking up her courage, she went closer and saw that he hardly looked human at all. She reached out and felt him. Under the clothes was something hard, like a big stone. She took hold of the clothes and lifted them, and sure enough, underneath was a rock. Where was Yang Guo?

She stood there dumbfounded for a moment. “Fool, Fool!” she called. There was no answer. She cocked an ear, and from the ruined temple there seemed to come a steady sound of snoring. She followed the sound, and there was Yang Guo asleep on the very altar table where she had been lying a moment before, his back turned outwards, snoring loudly, sound asleep. Lu Wushuang was in such a rage that she never stopped to wonder how he could suddenly be asleep on the altar table. She sprang forward and drove the point of her dao down into his back. This time the edge went into flesh, and nothing felt amiss in her hand. Yet she heard Yang Guo snore a few times and begin talking in his sleep. “Who’s that scratching my back? Hee hee, stop it, stop it, I’m ticklish.”

Lu Wushuang went white with fright and her hands shook. Can he be some ghost or demon? she thought. She turned to run, but for a moment her legs would not obey her. Then she heard him talking in his sleep again. “My back’s ever so itchy. Must be a little mouse after my river-deer meat.” He reached behind him, pulled half a river deer out from under his clothes and flung it down on the ground with a slap. Lu Wushuang let out a long breath. Now she understood. So the fool had the river-deer meat on his back, and that stab went into the meat. A fine scare he gave me for nothing.

Twice now her stroke had failed, and her hatred of Yang Guo grew stronger than ever. She ground her teeth. “Stinking fool,” she muttered, “see if I don’t finish off your worthless little life this time.” She darted in and hacked down hard at his back. In the midst of his snoring Yang Guo rolled over, and with a thwack the dao struck the table and sank deep into the wood.

Lu Wushuang put her strength into her hand to pull the dao free, but just then Yang Guo seemed to be having some nightmare. “Mama, oh Mama, a little mouse is biting me,” he yelled, and his two muddy legs shot out. His left leg came down across the Quchi acupoint¹³ in the crook of her arm, his right leg on the Jianjing acupoint¹⁴ at her shoulder. Both were major acupoints of the body, and his two muddy legs, flopping down, had hit them square, as chance would have it. Lu Wushuang was instantly unable to move. She stood there stupidly, her body serving as a rest for his legs.

She was beside herself with fury. Though her body could not move, she could still speak. “Hey, Fool,” she snapped, “get your stinking feet off me.” His snoring only grew louder. She did not know what to do, and in her rage she spat at him. Yang Guo rolled over, and the toe of his right foot swept carelessly across and just touched her Jugu acupoint.¹⁵ At once numbness spread through Lu Wushuang’s whole body, and she could not even open her mouth. All she could do was breathe the stink of his feet as it wafted up her nose in waves.

They stayed like that for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea, and Lu Wushuang was so angry she nearly fainted. She swore a solemn oath to herself, Tomorrow, when my acupoints come free, I’ll hack this fool seventeen or eighteen times. A while later Yang Guo decided he had had enough fun with her. He took his feet away and turned towards her. Even in the dark he could see the furious look on her face plainly, and the angrier she got, the more she seemed to look like Xiaolongnü. Yang Guo gazed at her, spellbound. How could he bear to close his eyes? The truth was that Lu Wushuang’s looks fell far short of Xiaolongnü’s. It was only that all the women under heaven look much the same when they are angry, and Yang Guo, aching for his shifu, with nothing else to cheer him, looked at Lu Wushuang’s pouting rage and fancied he could dimly see Xiaolongnü in it. It was no more than drawing a cake to stave off hunger, or gazing at plums to quench a thirst.

After a while the moon slanted west and its light shone in through the main door. Lu Wushuang saw that Yang Guo’s eyes were open, and that he was looking at her with a little smile. She went cold. Can this fool be shamming? Did he seal my acupoints on purpose, and not hit them by chance? At the thought, she broke out in a cold sweat. Just then she saw Yang Guo glance sideways at the ground. She rolled her eyes round to follow his gaze, and there on the ground lay three dark shadows side by side: three people were standing in the doorway. Looking harder, she saw that each of the three shadows held a weapon, and she groaned inwardly. Oh no, oh no. My enemies have come knocking, and this fool has to go and hit my acupoints. After so many strange happenings she had her doubts, yet she still found it hard to believe that so filthy and wretched a cowherd could have such high martial skill.

Yang Guo shut his eyes and snored loudly. A man at the door called out, “Come out, you little slut. You think standing there stock-still will make the Daoist gentleman spare you?” So it’s another ox-nose,¹⁶ Yang Guo thought. Then he heard a second man say, “We don’t want your life. We’ll just take your two ears and three of your fingers.” “Your old man’s waiting outside,” said a third. “Come out and fight, and make it quick.” With that he leapt outside, and the three of them stood in a half-circle 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. 武氏兄弟 – Wǔ shì xiōngdì. The Wu brothers, Wu Dunru and Wu Xiuwen, sons of Wu Santong. ↩

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. ↩

16. 牛鼻子 – niú bízi. Literally ox-nose, a derogatory term for Daoist priests, alluding to the topknot that resembles an ox’s nose. ↩