by Jin Yong
“Mountains huddled,
Torrents bubbled,
Tong Pass sat aloft over river and ridge.
Gazing toward the western capital,
The mind dithers.
Where the Qin and Han once passed, the heart hurts,
Palaces, watchtowers, ten thousand rooms, to earth all returned.
Thrive, the people suffer!
Fail, the people suffer!”
The last two lines brought to Lotus’s mind a sentiment her father had often expressed: “Emperor, generals and chancellors, without exception, are the bane of the people. When kingdoms change hands, it is always the people who suffer.”
“Well sung!” she cheered.
“How so?” The logger hung the axe from his belt and turned to the young woman.
Lotus decided to answer with lines sung to the same melody:
“Welcomed by clean breeze,
Loved by white clouds,
Dream not of silk robes and gold belts.
One thatched hut,
Wild flowers bloom,
Care not who rises or falls, who thrives or fails,
Alone on a humble path, merry am I.
Poor, aspirations great as mountains!
Rich, ambitions grand as mountains!”
She thought Old Yang’s lyrics would make a perfect rejoinder. On the one hand, it paid tribute to the logger’s assumed past as a military man, on the other, it praised the pastoral simplicity of his new life. The only improvement she devised was adapting the last two lines to further compliment his choices—first serving King Duan as his general and now following his sovereign to lead a hermit’s life.
Lotus’s voice might have been weakened by her injury, but the song had won the logger’s heart. For, as the age-old saying goes: “Everything wears out, but flattery never tires.”
Pleased that the young woman had understood him so well, the logger pointed at a woody vine, as thick as his arm, leading up the vertiginous slope. “Go on!” He assumed the fisher had offered them the boat to come upstream. How else would they know where to launch the craft and how to combat the current?
Guo Jing craned his neck. Mist and clouds swallowed at least half the crag. How far would he need to climb? Unable to comprehend much of the lyrics, he had not realized Lotus’s song was all it had taken for them to be granted passage.
“Thank you, Uncle,” he said loudly, fearing the man would change his mind. He lifted Lotus onto his back and cut a thin but strong climber to use as a rope, binding her tightly to him in case she lacked the strength to cling on for the whole ascent. Then he took hold of the vine the logger had indicated. Inhaling deeply, he heaved, pulling himself and Lotus up, little by little.
In a trice, he was already a dozen zhang from the ground. The logger’s voice could still heard:
“… Where were the battles bygone?
Victory, to earth we return!
Defeat, to earth we return!”
Lotus tittered into Guo Jing’s back. “Maybe we should listen to him. No. Let’s not bother!”
“Huh?”
“Everyone dies one day.” Then she broke into song:
“Healed, to earth we return!
Failed, to earth we return!”
“Pah! Don’t listen to him!”
Lotus hummed to herself:
“Live, you will carry me!
Die, you will carry me!”
“That’s more like it. In life and in death, I’ll carry you!”
“Dying hasn’t been so scary since you said you’d carry me on the road to the netherworld…”
They soon found themselves surrounded by a white haze so dense that not even the summer sun could penetrate it. Guo Jing could feel the drop in temperature in spite of all his physical exertions.
“Whatever happens next, this hasn’t been a wasted trip,” Lotus said. “We’ve seen so many sublime sights.”
“Can you stop being so morbid?”
Chuckling, she blew on the back of his neck. Warm and ticklish.
“Hey! Behave! We’ll fall!”
She laughed. “Now who’s being morbid?”
Guo Jing gave her a smile and turned his mind back to the ascent, his arms working faster than ever. In no time at all, the vine was leading him forward instead of upward. They had reached the top.
8
Just as Guo Jing had hauled himself and Lotus onto firm ground, they were rocked by a loud crash as if the mountain had split open, followed by the whine of a distressed animal and the sound of a man shouting.
“An ox? On a mountain this high and steep?” Guo Jing was puzzled. Adjusting Lotus’s weight on his back, he hurried over to see what had caused the commotion.
“Fisher, logger, farmer, scholar,” Lotus reminded him. “Oxen plow fields.”
On the slope ahead, the draft animal was howling into the sky, helpless. It thrashed on its back, contorting its body, flailing its hooves in a bid to right itself, while the boulder supporting it trembled under its weight.
Lotus chuckled as she marveled at the bizarre scene. “We were just singing ‘Goats on the Hill,’ now we’ve got an ox on the hill.”
Holding up the rock—and the struggling animal—was a bare-chested man with mud up to his knees. Arms thrust high over his head, he had planted his feet at right angles for maximum purchase. He too was in a precarious situation: the ground he stood on jutted out, with a sheer drop on three sides. If he were to sacrifice the ox and let go, he would still be crushed by the boulder, since there was nowhere he could go to avoid it.
Lotus supposed the animal must have climbed up the hill and slipped, causing the rockfall, while the farmer happened to be close enough to come to the rescue. Now, both man and beast were stuck.
She had not expected to find farmland at the summit of the mountain. Looking around, she estimated that there must be at least twenty mu of paddy fields, and at the edge of one patch of cultivated land was a pile of hastily discarded tools.
He must be the farmer, Lotus deduced. What a stupendously strong man. The ox is at least three hundred jin, and then there is the weight of the boulder! As she wondered how the man would get out of his predicament, she sensed Guo Jing undoing the vine that was tying them together, and the next thing she knew she was being placed lightly on the ground.
“No! Not so hasty!”
Always willing to lend a helping hand, Guo Jing was racing to the man’s aid. “Go! Help the ox!” He positioned himself under the rock, half crouching, and pushed.
The farmer felt his burden ease, but was doubtful that this stranger could support the rock and the ox on his own. He let go with one hand.
Guo Jing secured his footing, pooled his inner strength and thrust upward. He was now supporting the boulder by himself, lifting it away from the farmer’s hand. The man waited to make sure the stranger was strong enough before bending low to slip out from under the rock and help the ox.
Just as he reached for the beast, he realized the man who had come to his aid was a mere boy, no more than eighteen or nineteen. There was nothing distinguished about the lad, and yet he did not look as though he had any trouble bearing the rock’s great weight. The farmer grew suspicious. This boy’s strength was far superior to his own, which was considered exceptional. What had brought him here? He could not have stumbled across this place by accident. He cast his eyes around and saw a girl leaning against a rock. Even from a distance, he could tell she was grievous sick.
“What brings you here, friend?” the farmer inquired.
“To seek an audience with your honorable shifu,” came the reply.
“What is your business?”
Guo Jing was at a loss for an answer.
“Lead the ox away,” Lotus called. Her voice lacked power. “You wouldn’t want them both to fall into the abyss, would you?”
There was no whistling arrow from my martial brothers below to say that I should receive them, the farmer thought as he scrutinized the girl. He mu
st be a skillful martial artist to have forced his way up. I’ll question them while he’s stuck.
“Are you here to seek treatment?”
Guo Jing nodded. There was no point in lying, since they had already admitted as much to the fisher.
“Ah, let me make inquiries.” An odd look flitted across the farmer’s face. He bounded up the hill, leaving the ox to its thrashing and whining.
“Wait! Help me with the rock first!”
“I shall be back soon.”
Lotus knew the man wanted to wear Guo Jing out until he was too weak to fight back. She wished she had the strength to help, but all she could do was watch in frustration as the wily farmer hurried away.
“Hey, Uncle, come back!”
“Don’t worry,” the farmer said with a simpering smile. “He’s strong enough.”
Guo Jing helps you, out of the goodness of his heart, Lotus grumbled under her breath. How dare you trap him like this? You won’t get away with it!
“Uncle, we can appreciate your wish to ask your shifu first,” she said as loudly as she could. “I have a letter here from our shifu Count Seven Hong, if I could trouble—”
“Are you both students of Master Hong?” the farmer asked as he went over to fetch the note. It now made sense that the boy was so strong.
She nodded. “Yes, he’s my martial brother. But he’s all brawn and no brains.” She pulled out the Hedgehog Chainmail and rummaged through the knapsack for the nonexistent message. She then looked over at Guo Jing and horror marred her features.
“Help him, please, Uncle!” she shrieked. “His hands will be ruined!”
“He’ll be fine.” The farmer brushed off her concerns and reached for the letter.
“You don’t understand. He’s learning Splitting Sky Palm. He soaked his hands in vinegar last night. He’s not supposed to strain them today. It’ll ruin his craft forever.”
There was a grain of truth to her lie, for she had described the actual training method devised by her father. Although the farmer had not heard of this kung fu, he knew enough to realize that she had cited an advanced method of martial cultivation.
If I hurt the Divine Vagrant’s disciple, he said to himself, not only will I have to face Shifu’s wrath, but I won’t be able to make peace with my conscience either, for the boy came to my aid. But what if the girl is trying to gull me into freeing him?
“This is Hedgehog Chainmail. No weapon can penetrate it,” Lotus said, noticing his hesitation. She offered him the steel shirt. “Please, Uncle, could you kindly drape it over his shoulders? He could then support the rock without hurting his hands. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be the cause of bad blood between our Masters, right?”
The farmer was of two minds whether he should trust her as he reached for the treasure from Peach Blossom Island he had heard so much about.
“Shifu always entreats us to act in good faith,” Lotus added, sensing his misgivings. “You can test its strength.”
The farmer knew his Master thought highly of the Divine Vagrant’s integrity. He had been studying the girl, a picture of earnest innocence, and was increasingly inclined to believe her. Still, he could not afford to be careless when his teacher’s safety depended on his decision. He drew the short saber hanging from his belt and brought it down on the Hedgehog Chainmail. Indeed, as she had promised, it withstood his blade.
“I’ll do as you say.” The farmer went up to Guo Jing and laid the shirt on the young man’s shoulders. Then he pressed his hands against the boulder. “Let your shoulders take the weight.”
Lotus was paying close attention to the farmer’s every move. Once she was certain he had taken the rock’s full weight, she shouted, “Dragon Soars in the Sky!”
Guo Jing’s body reacted automatically. He shot out from under the rock and propelled himself away from it, landing next to Lotus with the Hedgehog Chainmail draped snugly over his shoulders.
A stream of curses flowed from the farmer. His arms held high, he was once more stuck under the rock.
“Don’t worry, you’re strong enough,” Lotus said, mocking him. “Let’s go.”
“You’ve tarnished the Divine Vagrant’s reputation!”
“I doubt it. Can Shifu fault me for obeying my father? Papa says a little lie hurts no one.”
“Who’s your father?”
“Didn’t I show you the Hedgehog Chainmail?”
“You’re the Old Heretic’s spawn!”
Giggling, Lotus took Guo Jing’s hand and left the spluttering farmer behind.
CHAPTER TWO
REVEREND SOLE LIGHT
1
With Guo Jing’s support, Lotus shambled along the trail through the paddies and soon they came to a narrow stone bridge spanning a deep valley. The structure was just over a foot wide and most of it was obscured by drifting clouds. They could not tell how far it extended or what was on the other side. If they were on firm ground, of course, a path that narrow would not have bothered them in the least. Yet, right now, one look at the nothingness below was enough to make their hearts quail.
“King Duan has done a good job of secreting himself away,” Lotus remarked. “By the time his rivals have made it this far, I’m sure most of their grievances would have melted into the air.”
“Why do you think the fisher said King Duan had left this world?”
“I can’t work it out. I don’t think he made it up to fool us, since he said our shifu was there when it happened.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
Guo Jing stooped and lifted Lotus onto his back, then started to sprint across the bridge using the Fleet Foot Light Step technique. The uneven paving stones, coated in condensation, were slippery in the extreme. He had to move fast to maintain his balance.
“Watch out!” Lotus yelled when they were seven or eight zhang across the bridge.
A gap yawned ahead. At least five feet wide.
Guo Jing heaved a deep breath and charged forward. At the very edge, where the gap yawned, he pushed off with his back foot and glided across on the momentum of his thrust.
“The condor was steadier,” Lotus said when they touched down on the other side.
Guo Jing kept up his pace and leaped over another gap, then another, then another. After the seventh breach, he could at last make out through the mist the relatively flat ground at the far end of this dilapidated bridge. And yet, between where he was and where he needed to get to was a chasm of more than one zhang, perhaps even reaching a dozen feet. He was confident that he could jump over it, but, on the spot where he would land, a scholar sat cross-legged, and just beyond him was one last rift he would have to negotiate before they could set foot on firm ground.
“We are here to seek an audience with your honorable teacher.” Guo Jing steadied his footing and projected his words. “We would be grateful if Uncle could guide us to him.”
The scholar was reading aloud from a thread-bound volume rolled up in his left hand. He was so engrossed, bobbing his head to the sound of his own voice, that he did not seem to hear the young man at all.
Guo Jing asked again, even louder. No reaction.
“What should we do?”
Lotus answered with a frown. There was no question in her mind as to why the scholar had seated himself there—if they wanted to get past by force, they would have to push him from this foot-wide stump of the bridge into the abyss. But they were here to ask for help. To murder the man would not set the right tone. She needed to get him to acknowledge them. She listened to his recitation, hoping it would give her inspiration and help her find an opening that would spur the scholar into a response. Then it dawned on her that he was reading from the Analects of Confucius, a classic that all students know inside out.
“‘In the twilight of spring, the season’s garb completed,’” the scholar declaimed. “‘With capped men five and six, and boys six and seven, bathe we in the water of River Yi and in the breeze among rain altars, and sing we on
the way home.’”
The man gushed and gasped in delight as he read, as if he too was bathing in the spring breeze, singing and dancing.
Lotus wondered if she could provoke him with some outrageous comments about the classics.
“What’s the point of reading the Analects a thousand times if you can’t grasp the significance within?”
As she had predicted, the scholar lifted his eyes from the book.
“Do enlighten me.”
He was about forty years of age, and wore his hair tied in a kerchief, in the style preferred by educated men. From his chin, a long black beard flowed. In his right hand, that ubiquitous accessory of a man of letters—a folding fan.
A Confucian literati, without a doubt.
“Does sir know how many disciples Confucius did have?”
“Of course I do. Three thousand students did Confucius have, of whom seventy-two were particularly distinguished.”
“Of these seventy-two, how many had come of age? How many were still boys?”
The scholar was taken aback. “Such details were not recorded in the Analects, nor are they mentioned in other sources.”
“I wasn’t mistaken when I said you hadn’t grasped the significance within. You just read the passage out loud: ‘Capped men five and six, and boys six and seven.’ Five and six is thirty, so that’s how many capped men who had come of age. Six and seven make forty-two, that’s the number of boys. Thirty plus forty-two is exactly seventy-two.”
Chuckling at her brutish misinterpretation, the scholar had to give the girl credit for her quick thinking nonetheless.
“I am full of admiration for the young lady’s learning. Might I inquire what business has brought you here to seek an audience with my teacher?”
Lotus deliberated over her riposte: If we say we have come to seek treatment, he’ll probably try to stop us as the others did, but I cannot ignore such a direct question … Let me reply with Confucius’s own words.
