Black Dragon, Black Cat

by Brian Edwards

  Mao had no trouble copying this, as she had done it many times as a child when playing with the boys at the monastery. She performed four in a row, and then stopped to look at her master.

  “Very good,” he said nodding his head. “Since you are so good at that, now do it placing only the first hand on the ground.”

  This sounded more complicated to Mao, but she nervously tried it. The first time, she touched the ground with her left hand, and then almost fell on her head as that arm collapsed under her weight. However, after several more unsuccessful attempts, she managed to perform one, although Jai-tien pronounced it to be quite sloppy.

  For an hour Mao practiced this maneuver under the watchful eye of her master. By the end of this period, she was performing the movement very well, and Jai-tien pronounced that her efforts were of acceptable quality.

  “Now that you have become better at that, I want you to do the same thing, but this time, rotate your body during the cartwheel so that you land facing the opposite direction to which you began.”

  Mao hesitated for a long minute, trying to imagine in her mind what such a movement would look like, and how and when she would need to move various parts of her body to manage it. She was doubtful that she could do it, but nevertheless propelled herself forward to begin the motion. She bent over and placed her first hand on the ground, then rotated her body up with the momentum of her legs. Then she twisted her body around to change the direction of her face, but in so doing, she overextended her body and crashed down to the ground with a loud groan. She stood slowly back up with a grimace of pain etched on her face.

  “That was not very pretty,” Jai-tien stated bluntly. “Try it again.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Mao continued to practice this movement, with varying degrees of success. After an hour, she had managed to perform the twisting motion to change the direction that she faced upon landing, but then she grew tired and dizzy with continued effort and her performance became sloppy. To her great relief, Jai-tien ended the day’s training slightly earlier than usual.

  For several days Mao continued to practice this movement repeatedly, and she rapidly became adept at performing it with ease. On the fifth day, Jai-tien stated that the next phase of the technique would be explained to her.

  “Now that you have mastered the first part of the movement, Hei Mao, you must do the same thing, but now without using either hand.”

  Mao looked into her master’s eyes with a stunned expression on her face. “Master,” she questioned, “you want me to do this with no hands?”

  “Correct,” Jai-tien replied, then clasped his hands behind his back and stared at her expectantly.

  Mao blew a long breath out of her mouth, and then threw her hands up in the air to begin the movement. She bent over at the waist thrusting her head down toward the ground and pushed upward with her lead leg, propelling herself into the air. She pulled her hands inward toward her body as she twisted to face the other direction. Her legs spun over her head, but she had not gained enough height and she fell to the ground on her right shoulder with a hard impact. She sat up spitting dirt out of her mouth and with a slight scrape on her left cheek.

  “Very nice,” Jai-tien said, “for a first effort. Please try again.”

  Mao stood up and almost fell over as the blood rushed back into her head. She tried once again, but the result was the same.

  “That was better,” Jai-tien declared. “Please do another one.”

  The practice of this technique went on for several weeks until Mao could perform the movement quite well with great confidence. Jai-tien decided one afternoon that she was ready to begin the last phase of the technique.

  “Now I will teach you the final mechanics of this movement. I will have to explain it to you, as I cannot perform it properly. The basic motion is that which you have already learned, but now you must use your hands as you rotate upside down and twist your body to strike out at your opponent. Then, as your legs pass over your head, you must strike with each of those in rapid succession toward the head of your enemy. Your hands will distract the opponent and cause him to raise his head and pull his shoulders back to avoid them. Then your first foot will strike his arms to pull down his guard from his face. Your second foot will then strike him at the base of his jaw or temple. The force of the impact should render him unconscious.”

  Mao’s mind was overwhelmed by all of this information. She tried to imagine how to perform such a maneuver, but could not even remember everything that her master had told her to do. She asked him to repeat it several times until she thought that she had a sense of it.

  She tried it several times, but only managed in the end to injure her left shoulder before Jai-tien called a halt to the day’s training. “Very good, Hei Mao,” he declared as they walked toward the well to wash up. “You have made great progress today.”

  Mao did not believe him.

  The rest of the winter was spent practicing this movement for an hour each day. Mao felt that she was not making any progress, and her frustration grew with each passing day, despite Jai-tien’s insistence that she was improving. As winter wore on, she still did not really understand the basic striking movements she was asked to perform, and became annoyed with her master for his lack of guidance.

  On her tenth attempt one afternoon, she again failed miserably and fell on her head. She could still not imagine how this technique would even be performed, let alone actually do it herself. Mao wished for the thousandth time that her master were many years younger so that he could demonstrate the technique himself. She tried to perform the maneuver once more, but the result was the same and she crashed to the ground on her right shoulder.

  “Hei Mao,” Jai-tien said looking down at her, “You are becoming worse instead of better. Do I need to describe the motion for you again?”

  Mao was completely frustrated, and pulled herself off of the ground. Pleadingly, she said to the old man, “Master, can you not demonstrate this for me? Even some small part of it will help me to understand it better. I cannot even envision how it should be performed, let alone do it.”

  Jai-tien shrugged his shoulder. “I told you before, Hei Mao, that I am unable to perform this technique properly.”

  Mao’s frustration made her question further, “But how can I do it if you cannot?”

  Jai-tien thought to himself for a few moments, and then relented. “If you insist,” he said to her, “I will try to demonstrate it for you; however, do not expect to witness a flawless demonstration. Perhaps I can do it sufficiently to allow you to picture what it should look like if performed correctly.” He pointed to a spot on the ground. “Stand here, and assume a fighting stance.”

  Mao did as directed, and waited for Jai-tien to begin. The old man began a series of strikes with a back fist followed by a sidekick and finally a roundhouse kick. The last one he used to continue momentum and to propel himself into the air, launching himself upside down as his two hands, first one and then the other in rapid succession, arched toward Mao’s head. She instinctively raised her upper body from its crouching position, pulling her head back slightly out of range of Jai-tien’s blows. As he arched through the air in the fashion of a cartwheel, he twisted his body so that he faced away from her, with his legs swinging over his head. The first foot to pass struck Mao on her guarding arms, and pulled them downward away from her head. The second foot arched directly toward her exposed head, but Jai-tien’s motion was not fluid enough and it missed its mark. His body twisted back around to face her again, but the errant strike with his foot made him spin too far in the other direction and his left foot hit the ground with a bone-breaking impact.

  Jai-tien immediately sat up on the ground, and began running his hand over his ankle. He had not made any noise when he landed, other than the sound of the impact, and his face was expressionless. It took Mao several seconds even to suspect that something was wrong.

  “Master?”, she said with a growing sense of concern. �
��Are you all right?”

  Jai-tien shook his head, and replied, “No, Hei Mao, I have broken my ankle. You must go to my room and retrieve the cloth bandages and glue powder that I keep there. They are in the small chest to the left of the window. Then get a bucket of water from the well and come back here.”

  An expression of extreme dismay covered Mao’s face, and she felt tears trying to form in the corners of her eyes. “Master,” she said in a whimpering voice, “I am so sorry. I never imagined that this would happen!”

  “That is of no consequence now,” he replied. “Go do as you were told, and be quick about it.”

  Mao ran off toward the house as fast as she could. She fought back the tears, and tried to remain calm. She felt an overwhelming guilt about the tragic event, and she could sense a hot blush in her cheeks at the thought of her indiscretion.

  She ran into the house with heavy breath, and went directly to the room of Jai-tien. She hesitated momentarily at the threshold, realizing that she had only once before set a foot inside of his room, and that was in darkness when she had tried to drench him with a bucket of cold water. Then she burst through the doorway, and looked around for the chest.

  There were two chests beneath the window on the opposite side of the room, one on the left and one on the right. In her flustered state, she could not remember whether he had said the right or the left one, so she chose the one on the right and opened the cover. It was filled to the brim with various nondescript personal items, a mirror, a book, a brush, and such, so she removed the things on top from the chest to search the lower layers. Toward the bottom, she grasped a bundle of black cloth and pulled it from the chest. The bundle was wrapped with a heavy black belt, and, thinking it might be the cloth bandages that Jai-tien had requested, she untied the belt and opened the bundle. A black tunic and pantaloons unfolded, as well as a long scarf of thick black material. She knelt on the floor in front of the chest, fingering the black cloth with a puzzled expression on her face. She had never seen the clothes before, and wondered about the strange look of the material and the monotone black of the whole bundle. Then she remembered her task, and, without further thought, she wound up the bundle and stuffed it and the other items she had removed back into the chest and closed the lid.

  She moved over to the chest on the left and lifted the cover. She rummaged around for several seconds, and quickly found the wound rolls of khaki cloth and a jar filled with a gray powder. She pulled these out, slammed the lid down, and ran from the house toward the well.

  After she retrieved the water, she saw that Jai-tien had hopped from the training ground on one foot all the way to the outside table under the willow tree. He was sitting in his chair, with his broken leg propped up on the tabletop. Mao ran with the splashing bucket of water as fast as she could to where he was waiting.

  Jai-tien looked into her face as she approached, and Mao could detect no trace of pain or anxiety. She remembered the searing pain she had felt when her arm had been broken, and wondered how her master could remain so calm under this circumstance.

  “Place those things on the table,” he instructed her, “and walk to the other side.”

  Once she had done this, he said to her, “Grab my foot with both hands, and push against the table side with your hips as hard as you can.”

  With a grimace, Mao grasped his swollen foot and pulled backward with as much force as she could muster. A hushed scraping sound could be heard, and Mao flinched from the memory of her own broken limb. Jai-tien remained expressionless, but leaned forward to finger the area where the break had occurred.

  “Now release your grip very slowly,” he said, wrapping his right hand around his ankle to guide the bones together as Mao released the pressure.

  He fingered the area around his ankle, and seemed satisfied. “A clean break!”, he declared. “Now tear off some bandages for me, then mix some paste in the bucket of water until it has the consistency of mud.”

  He leaned back in his chair as Mao mixed up the paste, and then he dressed his own leg with several layers of cloth and paste.

  Mao sat across from him at the table while the cast dried into a hardened shell encasing the broken ankle. During this time, she marveled at the strange detachment Jai-tien seemed to have from pain. How could he manage to control his emotions under such conditions? As she thought more, she realized that she had never seen a sign of pain on his countenance, even when she had managed to strike him with great force during their sparring.

  After an hour of contemplation, she gathered the courage to put voice to her thoughts, even though the pangs of guilt sought to stifle the question. “Master,” she said in a slight whisper, “you did not make any sound when you broke your ankle, and your face did not display any sign of pain. For the past hour you have not given any impression that you have been severely hurt. In fact, I have never seen you give an expression of suffering at any instant. Do you not feel pain like normal people?”

  Jai-tien looked directly at Mao, and let out a long sigh. “My Maome, of course I feel pain like everyone else. It cannot be escaped except with death. But pain is in your mind, and only the injury is in your body. Your mind can be controlled if you wish.”

  “But Master,” Mao continued, “the pain of a break is excruciating! How can you possibly control it?”

  “I can control it because it is all in my mind,” he repeated. “Pain is intangible, and therefore can be controlled. Can you cut the pain from your body and carry it to the garden and bury it? Can you throw it down the hill? If it is not an object that can be touched or seen or heard, then it is all in the mind and one has the ability to think about it or not. I choose not to do so.”

  Mao thought about this for a few minutes, but was unconvinced. “Master, if pain can be controlled, why does not everyone do so?”

  “Because most people have not trained to do so,” he replied. “They experience pain so infrequently that it is not a necessary exercise for them to develop this skill. But as a warrior, it is very necessary to do so, because one must never betray being hurt when he is in combat. Any expression of pain or distress will be seized as an opportunity to be exploited to his advantage by your opponent. It is time that you learned this ability as well, as you will have need of it later on.”

  Mao could see the wisdom in this, and realized that she would have to work very hard to learn how to control her facial expressions and sounds when she was fighting. It did not sound easy, however.

  Mao prepared the dinner that evening in a somber mood. The feeling of guilt remained with her as she ate across the table from her master, and she merely picked at her food, having no appetite for a heavy meal. When they both had finished, she cleared and washed the dishes, and returned to the table to find that Jai-tien had vanished.

  “Master?”, she called, hoping to hear a reply, but none came. She began to worry about him, and set about a search of the premises. Eventually, she found him at the edge of the green pond beneath a willow tree.

  “Master,” she said with relief, “why did you come down here? How did you manage it?”

  “I still have one good leg,” he replied, “which is sufficient for traveling such a short distance.” Then he pointed to a Y-shaped branch that he had pulled from the tree and was busy cutting to size with a large carving knife. When he had finished, he used it to pull himself erect, and then placed the branch beneath his left shoulder and tested its length. “Ah, a perfect fit!”, he announced, and started toward the pathway up the hill using the branch as a crutch.

  Mao looked at him in disbelief. “Master,” she called out after him, “where are you going?”

  “It is time to visit Mother Lu-chin,” he said over his shoulder. “We must leave earlier this evening because it will take me longer to climb the hill than usual.”

  “Master, please!”, Mao pleaded with him. “You cannot possibly climb the hill in this condition! It is madness even to attempt it.”

  “I have climbed this hill ma
ny times in worse condition than this, Maome,” he replied. “Do not be concerned with me.” He continued on his way up the hill, and Mao fell in behind him on the long march to the top.

  With every small gingerly step that Jai-tien took, Mao felt a pang of guilt at indirectly causing this accident. If not for her continual insistence, her master would not have attempted to perform the technique and would not be hobbling up the pathway on a crutch. Halfway up the hill, she was still feeling morose, but decided to force her mind onto another subject; however, it kept returning to the tragic events of the afternoon. She replayed the scene over and over again in her mind, how Jai-tien had fallen and how she had run into the house panic-stricken to retrieve the cast materials.

  Suddenly, she remembered the bundle of black cloth that she had pulled from the chest to the right of the backroom window. She envisioned the sweeping black pantaloons and the loose tunic with the flowing sleeves, but most of all, she recalled the black belt of the style worn by practitioners of the warrior arts, and the long black scarf that was typically worn around the head with only an opening for the eyes during cold wintery days.

  A strange thought occurred to her as she thought about these things, perhaps a crazy thought, but she immediately became obsessed with it. Could this possibly be the costume worn by Hei Lang during his competitions at the Grand Tournament of Xiaomei? Could it be that Jai-tien was the legendary Black Dragon? Well, it did explain why Chung Jun said that her master was the greatest warrior of his generation, and also why no one had ever heard of Jai-tien. The fact that her master had a unique style of kung fu was also consistent with the fact that Hei Lang had developed his own personal style, which nobody else had ever been able to replicate. All of these facts taken together with the black garments hidden in Jai-tien’s chest constituted too much evidence to dispute. By the time she and Jai-tien had finally arrived at the house of Lu-chin, Mao had completely convinced herself that her master must indeed be the great Black Dragon, legendary master of kung fu!