Black Dragon, Black Cat

by Brian Edwards

  Mao could not understand why he was attacking her left side and not the injured one. Surely he would not be so unaware to notice her injury, or not conscious enough to attempt to exploit it. Was it perhaps that he also had made the decision not to injure and opponent unnecessarily? Or had he recognized earlier that she could have ruptured his knee joint to end the match and was returning the favor?

  Whatever the reason, Mao continued to battle with him back and forth, but her weariness continued to grow and her fractured ribs bore more and more stress. She knew that at this point Xie-feng’s masculine body would give him an advantage as both fighters neared physical exhaustion. How long had this fight been going on? Mao was not sure: was it five, maybe six hours now? She dared not look to the sun for an answer, fearing to take her sight from Xie-feng for even a fraction of a second, but she could feel that the strength of the heat bearing down on the black garment had subsided dramatically, and that the intensity of the light was waning. Evening must rapidly be approaching.

  Another half an hour passed, and Mao recognized that the fight was nearly at an end. She was barely able now to block and parry Xie-feng’s attacks, and her counterstrikes were rapidly diminishing in both power and in form. She could not execute her techniques perfectly, and each back and forth series of movements left her significantly weaker.

  She began to despair. She could tell that her opponent sensed victory. Perhaps this might make him a little sloppy himself, if she could convince him that she was fading faster than she was in reality. For several more series of attacks and counterattacks, she pretended to be slowing down dramatically and she let her techniques display a lack of accuracy and precision. Xie-feng continued to attack her left side more ferociously each time, letting his techniques become sloppy as well as his confidence grew that he was finally in control of the match.

  Although she had appeared to convince him that she had weakened more than she had, Mao knew that this alone would not be enough to stop him. She needed a new technique, something she had not yet used in the match. She searched her mind for something, anything that might work, but all she could come up with was the jump-spinning movement that Jai-tien had tried so many times to teach her without success. Without a choice, she decided to risk everything and attempt this difficult technique, hoping that Xie-feng would never have seen it before and might be caught unaware with his current sense of confidence.

  Mao performed one last series of strikes, trying to appear as weak as possible, in both mind and body. She performed a series of amateurish strikes that Xie-feng could have blocked with his eyes closed. As she finished this flurry, she paused for a fraction of a second to appear as if she had completely exhausted her mental and physical faculties.

  Xie-feng picked up this signal, and began to launch what he believed would be his final flurry to win the match. But before he could begin, Mao anticipated his attack as he had gotten sloppy in disguising his upcoming movements with his growing overconfidence. As he began to strike outward, she flung herself as high in the air as she could, propelling her head directly at the chest of her opponent. She then began to rotate her body, striking out with both fists sequentially toward his head.

  Xie-feng stepped forward at the same instant to begin his attack, but was met with Mao’s flying fists, and his head snapped backward to avoid the blows. From this position, Mao continued her upward motion while pulling her head in and somersaulting upside-down through the air. Then she spun her body to the side, bringing her right leg around to meet the forward blocking arms of her opponent. Catching them from the side, she pulled them downward, breaking his guard and exposing his head. The second leg then whipped around immediately after the first, and her foot struck Xie-feng in the left temple directly above the ear. She landed on her shoulder and rolled upward into a crouching position, holding her exploding ribs with her right hand. Xie-feng collapsed to the floor of the ring, and did not move. All of these complicated motions were performed so rapidly that the crowd could discern nothing but a swift arching black apparition flying through the air in the shape of a dancing flame.

  As Mao crouched upon the floor, she could feel the right side of her body growing numb from the pain. She felt her ribs, and she could feel the swelling that had arisen during the final hour of the match. She watched and waited for Xie-feng’s response, but he only remained motionless on the ground.

  The crowd grew suddenly silent. After a few moments, the referee climbed onto the stage and called an end to the match. Several men helped Xiefun to regain consciousness, and then pulled him to his feet and aided him as he stepped down from the platform.

  Mao had won the tournament! She stood up painfully, and stared out at the crowd of silent people staring back at her. She felt a swelling of tears in her eyes and her heart rising up into her throat. She thought of her childhood dreams and ambitions, and realized that she had fulfilled every one of them. Feelings of exhilaration and relief threatened to overwhelm her.

  “By the Great Buddha, this is truly unbelievable!” A raspy voice rang out through the stadium. While everyone else in the arena remained dumbfounded where they stood, Grand Master Bai Chen had risen from his chair and stepped to the front of the royal platform with a pallid face, looking as if he had seen a ghost. He had just witnessed the technique that he had spent a lifetime trying to master, yet could not, after his series of ten defeats at the hands of Hei Lang. There was now no doubt that this was a student of the great master, Black Dragon!

  “I have seen this technique many times in my battles in the tournament,” Bai Chen continued, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time in decades. “This woman has performed the Dragonflame! There can be no doubt: surely, she is a disciple of the great Hei Lang!”

  The silence of the crowd grew deathly, as the people turned their heads slowly back and forth between Bai Chen and Hei Mao, as if contemplating the truth of the words that the old man had just uttered. Mao stood at the center of the ring with an expression of amazement on her face. “This technique was the Dragonflame?”, she thought. “This movement that Master Jai-tien was so insistent on teaching to me? It is incredible!” Indeed, the notion that this technique could possibly be the Dragonflame had never occurred to her, in spite of her certainty that Master Jai-Tien was indeed Black Dragon. She could never perform this technique perfectly during her many years of training, but she had finally managed to execute it flawlessly when she needed it most.

  This silence persisted for a long time. The people within the stadium stood in shock and amazement with their mouths gaping open. They slowly began to realize that they had witnessed the legendary technique that they had heard about since they were children in the tales of their elders, but had never seen except in their own imaginations.

  After what seemed as an eternity, the ruler of Xiaomei rose to his feet and proclaimed, “The tournament has ended, and we have a new champion! All hail Hei Mao, disciple of the great Hei Lang!”

  This time, there was only a brief moment of stunned silence, and then the crowd erupted in a thunderous applause. The noise within the stadium was deafening. The amazement and awe within the crowd was such that many of them impulsively rushed toward the stage to get closer to the disciple of the great Hei Lang. In a far corner of the stadium, far back from the surging crowd, a broad smile could be seen beaming under the wide-brimmed hat of a peasant farmer, if anyone had bothered to look.

  Mao felt the instantaneous change in the mood of the crowd. Her feeling of exultation immediately evaporated. How could this be? The same people who had been praying for her blood a few moments before were now cheering wildly for her. She felt sickened by the spectacle, and a wave of revulsion passed from her mind to her stomach at the throng of people surging toward her. She grabbed the black mask from the side of the ring and retreated as quickly as possible to the far edge and slipped off and under the platform as the crowd rushed onto the stage. She took off her black tunic and rolled it up with the mask and stuffed the b
undle within her undershirt. Then she crawled over to the far right side of the ring platform, and made a short, unnoticed dash through the cheering crowd down one of the rear tunnels leading from the stadium. Most of the surging crowd climbing onto the stage and throughout the arena had no idea that she no longer remained on the platform.

  On the royal stage, Grand Master Bai Chen hobbled backward and eased himself down onto his seat to regain his breath. His chest heaved from the shock of the tournament outcome and the strain of raising his voice so that it could be heard throughout the stadium. He placed a hand over his heart, feeling a sharp pain there and the mad rush of blood through his brittle veins; he knew that the circumstances had proven too much for his aged constitution to bear. His final thoughts traced their way back to the monastery and fell at the feet of the baby girl that had appeared there one cold winter morning. The connection between the young girl that had struggled at his temple doors and the woman who had just fought in the black garb of Hei Lang became apparent to him. “So this was to be her destiny,” he whispered to himself. “She was truly a gift from the moon and stars, but she was not meant to be my gift.” He eased his frail body down further into the chair, closed his eyes, and smiled widely in appreciation at the mysterious and beautiful designs of the gods.

  Then Bai Chen’s mind drifted to an earlier memory, one from long ago during the days of his youth. A loud laugh escaped from his lips, and his smile grew wider. “My dear old friend, Hei Lang, twice you have shown me the ugly face of my own prejudice and vanity. At least this time, I did not fail you at the end.” Bai Chen laughed feebly again at the irony of his life, and whispered, “We were truly teardrops of the moon. May we fight many more great battles in the spirit world, Black Dragon!” Then his chin slowly sank to his chest, and his spirit passed from its earthly body.

  Mao returned slowly to her bushes on the other side of the royal palace very carefully to avoid attracting any attention to herself. There she gathered up the rest of her belongings and wrapped another bandage around her fractured ribs for support. Before she left, she scratched in the dirt the Chinese symbol for thank you, hoping that the person who had brought her food over the past three weeks would find it. She passed from the city as unnoticed as when she had entered.

  So it came to pass that Hei Mao, a woman, became a champion of the Grand Tournament of ancient China. Many of the spectators that day ultimately refused to believe what they had witnessed, while many others considered the incident to be an act of the gods. Some even felt that Hei Mao was a reincarnation of the legendary Hei Lang himself, in the form of a woman. Those who were not present at the event generally dismissed the secondhand recounts of Mao’s victory as fanciful fairy tales. Nevertheless, the view of men toward the virtues of women gradually, but inevitably, began to change after that day.

  Black Dragon unmasked

  The hollow feeling of victory remained with Mao as she made the long, arduous journey back to the home of her master. Many times along the way she searched herself for the source of this feeling, as she passed again through the same hills and valleys, and tiny villages with names unknown to her. Gone were the excitement and anxiety with which she had strode purposefully down this same path in the opposite direction several months before. After several weeks, she felt her fractured ribs beginning to feel well again. In the evening, she would stop in a small hamlet to do odd jobs in exchange for a modest meal and lodging for the night. In each town, the same question was asked: “What is a young woman doing wandering through the countryside alone?” Each time, she would simply say, “I am searching for something that is always over the next hill.” The next morning, she would be gone before the sun had arisen.

  Many times along the way, she thought of the people she had met during her journey. She thought about the frail young boy whom she had fought early in the tournament, and of the boy who had brought her food those many nights. Were they the same person? She remembered her time with Qianpeng, and wondered how the old woman was getting along. What had happened to her since that final tournament match when her disguise had been discovered? What had happened to poor Xieng-gue after their encounter. Where was the old blind woman in the marketplace now? Was she still selling her vegetables in the dirty square? Mao realized that she would never know the answers to these questions.

  And so her days went, one unto the next, until at last she climbed the final hill in the shadow of the majestic snowy summit of Mount Shai-lae, where stood the Shailan Monastery from which she had fled so many years before. Down below on the hillside were the green pond and the home of Master Jai-tien. It had never looked so beautiful, she thought, as she stood on the hillside and beheld the panoramic view of the valley and tiny villages below. The sun was setting over the mountain, and Mao knew that Master Jai-tien would have just returned from the home of his mother. Her excitement at the end of her journey was so great that she flung herself down the hillside with all possible haste, in much the same way as when she fled from the monastery when she was a child. And in much the same way, she arrived at her master’s door panting and gasping for breath.

  Mao quickly regained her stamina, as the years of training had taught her to control her emotions and strengthened her heart and lungs. She hesitated only a moment, and then scratched at the paper door, like the old black cat would do when it wanted to be let in. She slid open the door in silence to find Jai-tien sitting in his chair with his eyes closed and with a slight smile on his wrinkled old face. She bowed and entered the room, with a warm eastern breeze swirling around her in spite of the late autumn season.

  “The east wind told me you would return this evening, Hei Mao,” he greeted her in his crinkly old voice. “Did you find that which you were seeking on your long journey?”

  Mao had asked herself this question many times along the journey home, and she now realized what was the answer. “I did not find it there, Master,” she replied, moving her gaze toward the floor before remembering her promise always to look in the old man’s eyes. “I won the tournament, but I did not find what I was seeking.”

  Jai-tien stood slowly up from his chair, propped himself on his stick, and slowly hobbled over to Mao. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I knew that you would not, my Maome, but many things you must learn for yourself.”

  “I found no glory in winning the tournament, Master,” she continued. “I expected to feel exultation, but I only felt hollow and empty inside. I do not understand it.”

  Jai-tien dropped his hand from Mao’s shoulder and propped himself on his stick with both hands. His lips broadened slightly in his knowing smile and he nodded, saying, “Perhaps you have learned the final mystery of kung fu, my kitten. Once you understand the hollow feeling, you will realize this.”

  This did not help Mao make sense of the hollow feeling. Nevertheless, she knew that someday his meaning would become clear, and she was humbled with profound gratitude for the old man’s devotion to her lifelong pursuit. Mao put her hands together in front of her chest, and bowed to her Master. “Thank you for teaching me everything you know about kung fu, Black Dragon. It has been an honor to have been your humble student.”

  A mildly surprised look crossed Jai-tien’s face. He raised an eyebrow and looked at Mao with a strange distance in his eyes. Then he chuckled aloud and said, “I told you once before, Maome, that I am not Black Dragon.”

  Mao did not believe him. “Surely you are Black Dragon,” she said. “Who else could have taught me to perform the Dragonflame besides the great Hei Lang himself? Why do you run from the truth, oh Master, you who have always stressed the importance of honesty? Is there something for which you still search?”

  “I am being truthful, Maome,” he replied in a softened tone. “I am not Hei Lang.”

  Mao still did not believe him. She had convinced herself long ago that her master was Hei Lang, and the black costume and events at the tournament had proven this fact to be true. Her belief could not so easily be dispelled. “But
how could you teach me the style and movements of Black Dragon if you were not him? Only Hei Lang could perform this style of kung fu that he himself had created.”

  “I did not create this style of kung fu, Maome, and I could never perfect all of the movements, especially the Dragonflame,” Jai-tien began. “Even the great Bai Chen spent much of his life trying to perform it, but could not come close to mastering it.

  “You see, Maome,” he continued, “there are differences between the bodies of men and women, especially in the hips. Women have wider and more mobile hips, which allow for the necessary degree of flexibility required to perform the Dragonflame technique properly. The same anatomical features that allow a woman’s body to permit the passage of an infant during childbirth are those that are necessary to execute the Dragonflame.”

  Mao became light-headed and could not think clearly, but she could still hear Master Jai-tien speaking.

  “Have you ever had the chance to notice, Maome,” the master continued, “that there are stark differences between the dances that are performed by men and women?”

  Mao’s mind immediately jumped to the troops of dancers and acrobats she had seen passing through the village occasionally during her childhood.

  “The movements of the dances,” Jai-tien continued, “the swaying, the jumping, the motion of the hips, are all dictated by the physical characteristics of the body. Men can mimic the dances of women, and vice versa, but neither can be truly proficient in the dance of the other. The same is true for the art of kung fu.”