White Camel Mountain (simplified: 白驼山, traditional: 白駝山, pinyin: Báituó Shān) was the home and school of Ouyang Feng the Western Venom, in the Kunlun of the Western Regions.1 Its young master was Ouyang Feng’s heir Ouyang Ke, who styled himself the Young Master of White Camel Mountain (白驼山少主 — Báituó Shān Shàozhǔ). The name meant nothing in the Central Plains: when Ouyang Ke came to Zhongdu, none of the assembled masters of the jianghu2 had heard of it.
History
The novel says nothing of White Camel Mountain’s founding. Its arts were an Ouyang family inheritance: Ouyang Ke’s Divine Camel Snow Mountain Palm and Instant Thousand Li are both called family arts, and he had trained at White Camel Mountain for more than twenty years before he first came to the Central Plains.
Ouyang Feng was one of the five masters who contested the Nine Yin Manual on Mount Hua, where all four of his rivals acknowledged Wang Chongyang the greatest. Knowing that the Innate Skill was the bane of his Toad Skill, he later tried to kill Great Master Yideng while Yideng’s power was spent. Yideng’s disciples wanted to go to White Camel Mountain to settle the score, but Yideng forbade it.
In the novel’s present, Ouyang Ke travelled east to join the masters gathered by Wanyan Honglie. His news of Huang Rong went by carrier pigeon, relayed station by station from the Central Plains to White Camel Mountain, and brought Ouyang Feng to Peach Blossom Island to ask for her hand on his nephew’s behalf. After Yang Kang killed Ouyang Ke at the Niu Family Village, Ouyang Feng declared that White Camel Mountain had no heir left and took Yang Kang, who had blamed the killing on the Quanzhen Daoists, as his disciple. Ouyang Feng ended the novel driven mad by his reversed practice of the Nine Yin Manual.
Organisation
Ouyang Feng was master of White Camel Mountain. Ouyang Ke was his nephew in name but in fact his son by his sister-in-law, a secret Ouyang Feng let slip only in his madness on Mount Hua.
Ouyang Ke travelled with a train of concubines dressed in white, eight of whom, dressed as men and some riding camels, tried to seize Guo Jing’s red horse on his way to Zhongdu. He taught them martial arts, though they were not true disciples and their skill stayed ordinary. They helped him abduct women, and Nan Xiren and Quan Jinfa each killed one of them. White Camel Mountain also kept snake herders, men who drove Ouyang Feng’s snakes with pipes and whistles.
Martial arts abilities
Ouyang Feng’s great art was the Toad Skill. He also fought with his Snake Staff, whose head held live venomous snakes, and struck acupoints with the Bone-Penetrating Acupoint Strike Technique, which Huang Rong boasted her father could undo with ease. He spent two years devising and three years practising the Spirit Serpent Fist, whose arm bends in mid-strike, meaning to use it at the second contest on Mount Hua, and taught it to Ouyang Ke with orders to use it only in mortal danger. Ouyang Ke’s own arts included the Divine Camel Snow Mountain Palm and the qinggong Instant Thousand Li. In his last years Ouyang Feng practised the Nine Yin Manual as Huang Rong had falsely explained it to him, standing on his head and forcing his meridians to run in reverse.
The household’s snakes were its other weapon: Ouyang Ke walked unharmed through his snakes, and his white-clad women carried medicines to keep them off.
Notable members
- Ouyang Feng, the Western Venom, one of the Five Greats and master of White Camel Mountain.
- Ouyang Ke, the Young Master of White Camel Mountain, killed by Yang Kang.
- Yang Kang, accepted as Ouyang Feng’s disciple after Ouyang Ke’s death.
- Yang Guo, Yang Kang’s son, who became Ouyang Feng’s adopted son in The Return of the Condor Heroes.
See also
Footnotes
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西域 — Xīyù. Frontier territories west of Yumen Pass. See Wikipedia. ↩
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江湖 — jiānghú. Literally rivers and lakes. The itinerant world beyond settled society and official reach, holding not only martial artists but the trades that travel with them, including pedlars, physicians, fortune-tellers, entertainers, boatmen, beggars, outlaws and the like. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩