A Heart Divided

by Jin Yong

  “‘A sage, alas, is not in my lot to meet! If I could meet a man of virtue, that would suffice,’” she quoted. “‘How can one not be joyful when friends come from afar?’”

  The scholar threw his head back in laughter. “I shall take you to my shifu if you can give me satisfactory answers to my three questions. If you make one mistake, however, then I’m afraid I will have to ask you to turn back.”

  “Please don’t make them too difficult. I am not at all learned.”

  “They shan’t be too hard. The first is a poem, which contains one word—”

  “Riddles! What fun!”

  The scholar smoothed his beard and began:

  “For years the six classics have guided this heart,

  One blade for ten winters this hand has honed.”

  Lotus stuck out her tongue. “A man of letters and the sword. Impressive!”

  He smiled and continued:

  “Reclining, this one sprig of apricot blossom,

  Explain the heavens’ mysteries these lips would not.

  Masterstroke from this great one,

  Obscures half a bed of naught.

  Set aside this courtier’s cap to retreat with the name whole,

  This face, did you know how it once looked?”

  Lotus laughed to herself as she listened to his recitation: Papa told me all about this tired old acrostic when I was a child!

  “Pardon our lack of manners,” she said with exaggerated politeness. “We did not realize we were in the presence of one who has set aside his position in court to retreat to this idyllic country. Forgive us, please, foremost of scholars, as revealed by the first letters of your verse.”

  The man was dumbfounded by the ease with which she arrived at the answer. It rolled off her tongue as if it had required no thought at all! He had assumed the puzzle would occupy her for a good half a day. No matter how great the boy’s kung fu might be, this bridge was too perilous a place in which to remain standing for long with another on his back. He thought they would give in and go back the way they had come.

  “I am in awe of the breadth of your knowledge, miss. The verse is old and by no means a description of this humble scholar.” He realized his next question would need to be exceptionally difficult if he wanted to get the better of this bright young woman. He cast his eyes around for inspiration and a row of palm trees swaying in the wind caught his attention.

  That will do, he told himself with a flick of his fan.

  “I shall share the first line of a couplet. Might I ask miss to match it with a second line?”

  “Mmm … matching couplets isn’t as fun, but I’ll do as you say if it means you’ll let us pass.”

  He pointed at the palm trees with his fan:

  “Palm fronds sway in the wind, the thousand-hand Buddha waves his folding fans.”

  Lotus felt a grudging respect. Well, well, this stuffy old bookworm isn’t as dull as he looks. He’s not simply described the scenery, he’s also elevated his own standing with a reference to the Buddha! Pairing words won’t be enough. I will have to comment on his person too.

  She looked around, searching for something in the landscape that would spark her imagination. Her eyes settled on a lotus pond in front of a small temple at the end of the bridge—perhaps the place where they would find King Duan.

  In this part of China, summer heat still lingered at the end of the seventh lunar month, but up here in the mountains there was an autumnal edge to the air, which had caused the lotus leaves to shrivel and wilt.

  “I have a second line, but I fear it might offend Uncle.” She beamed at him.

  “Please, go ahead.”

  “Promise you won’t take offense?”

  “You have my word.”

  “If you say so…” She began, motioning at his kerchief:

  “Lotus leaves wilt in the frost, the one-legged phantom wears his scholar scarf.”

  “Marvelous!” Merry laughter. “A perfect match in every way!”

  Guo Jing at last caught on to the joke when he saw the withered lotus leaves drooping over stalks that jutted from the surface of the pond.

  “Stop laughing! I don’t want to be a bareheaded wraith!” Lotus tittered at her own witticism.

  The scholar realized she would find a rejoinder to anything he could devise, but a word game from his student days now came to his mind. It was the first line of a couplet that had stumped generations of literati—one he had no answer for. And as far as he was aware, no one had yet come up with a solution.

  “Might I ask miss to complete another couplet?

  “Timbre, tone, tune and toll, tumbling as they tut.”

  Lotus cracked a smile when she heard the first words, before scrunching up her face in an attempt to look perplexed.

  Another ancient and stale puzzle. Lucky me! Yes, it’s very hard to match all the layers of the wordplay, but Papa cracked it years ago! Well, I’ll let you gloat for now …

  She scratched her head and mumbled to herself, putting on a convincing act of agonizing over the test.

  The man fell for her dramatics and allowed himself a short-lived smile, before the fear that she would ask his opinion overtook any sense of triumph. “This indeed is an impossible line to match, and I must confess that I do not have the learning to formulate a neat response. Might I remind miss that, if you cannot provide a satisfactory answer, you must go back the way you came.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.” Lotus flashed her most brilliant smile. “But I’ve already offended Uncle once, and if I reply, I shall insult all four of you in one breath. It is not befitting to let these words pass my lips.”

  Of course the scholar did not believe her. To come up with a match and taunt them at the same time? Never!

  “If your line truly forms a couplet, then we will not mind being mocked.”

  “In that case, please accept my apologies:

  “Goblin, ghoul, ghost and ghast, grumbling in the gut.”

  The scholar climbed to his feet, flabbergasted by her flawless response. “I submit to your superior scholarship.” He flicked his sleeves to extend them to their full length and bowed deeply with his hands together in a gesture of utmost respect.

  “I wouldn’t have had this idea if you and the other uncles hadn’t tried so hard to stop us.” Lotus returned the courtesy, grinning from ear to ear. She was delighted that she had put her father’s witty jibe at his disciples to such good use.

  The scholar hopped over the final gap and stood to attention. “Please.”

  He watched the young man leap over the widest breach to the stump he had just vacated, effortless and sure-footed. The weight of the girl on his back did not affect his footwork at all.

  I thought I had mastered the martial and the literary arts, and yet today I have been bested in both by these youths, the scholar said to himself, somewhat disheartened. Then he noticed Lotus’s self-satisfied smile, and he could not refrain from taunting her.

  “Miss has a great store of literary talent, but is perhaps somewhat wanting in deportment.”

  “Enlighten me, please.”

  “‘A man and a woman should not touch when giving or receiving gifts, such is propriety.’ I trust miss is familiar with this quote from the Mencius? Now, I gather you have yet to leave your maiden’s chamber and thus could not have wedded this young man. Why do you allow him to carry you thus? Mencius also laid out the case of the drowning sister-in-law, exploring when it is appropriate for a brother-in-law to extend a helping hand. From what I can discern, miss hasn’t fallen into water, nor are you this young man’s sister-in-law. Surely it is not proper to permit such contact?”

  How come everyone can tell that we’re not married? Lotus was both intrigued and displeased by this phenomenon.

  “Mencius is full of hot air. Much like yourself, sir,” she shot back. “Why should I listen to him, or to you?”

  “How can you dismiss the wisdom of the great sage as hot air?”


  Smirking, Lotus recited in a sing-song voice:

  “How come a beggar has two wives?

  How does the neighbor keep so many fowls?

  Since the King of Zhou still reigns,

  Why canvass the rulers of Wei and Qi?”

  The poem was another of Apothecary Huang’s creations. He had made it his mission to satirize and mock the great thinkers like Mencius and Confucius, to express his contempt for the strictures the classics, which formed the bedrock of Chinese culture, had imposed on people’s minds.

  The scholar stood agape. He had no words with which to counter these logical questions. He could brush away the first two quips since they were querying parables Mencius set out to explain a philosophical point, but he had to concede that even the Master himself would not be able to justify the actions questioned by the final challenge. The Zhou dynasty, which had ruled China for six hundred years before Mencius’s birth, was still in existence then, though greatly enfeebled and fractured into many fiefdoms and states. Why in sooth did Mencius offer his service to King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi instead of the King of Zhou, who had the most legitimate claim to the realm? He could not fathom how this teenage girl had come to be so erudite and astute. He knew better than to challenge her again, so he led them forward without another word.

  As they stepped onto the much smaller bridge that spanned the lotus pond, the scholar could not resist taking a stealthy look at the enigmatic young woman who had made such a fool of him. For once, Lotus looked away tactfully, though she could not stifle a giggle.

  2

  The scholar guided Guo Jing and Lotus through the temple’s main gate and settled them in a chamber on the eastern side of the courtyard.

  “Please, make yourself at home. I will inform Shifu of your arrival,” he told them once a novice had brought tea for the guests.

  “The farmer is trapped under a boulder,” Guo Jing said, recalling Lotus’s trickery. “You should help him first!”

  “Let’s see what’s in Madam Ying’s last message,” Lotus said, when the scholar had left the room.

  “It completely slipped my mind!” Guo Jing took the yellow pouch from inside his shirt and unpicked the seams.

  It was a crude drawing on white paper. A man, clothed in the regal garb typical of the land of Sindhu, was cutting a piece of flesh from his chest with a dagger. A balance sat before him: on one side of the scale, a white dove; on the other, the skin and muscle the man had flayed from himself. The bird was small, but it outweighed what the man had offered. A raptor surveyed this scene from the sidelines.

  Lotus studied the gruesome, crude image, but its significance eluded her. The one thing she could glean from it was Madam Ying’s ignorance when it came to the art of painting, though her calligraphy was passable. Guo Jing folded up the image once Lotus was done. He was not going to burden himself with the task of deciphering its message.

  When the novice returned, he touched his palms together, held them upright over his chest in a Buddhist greeting and bowed. “May I ask what brings sir and madam to this far-flung place?”

  “We are here to seek an audience with King Duan,” Guo Jing said.

  The novice put his hands together in the same respectful gesture. “King Duan has long left this world of dust. I am sorry that you have come here for nothing. Might I invite you to a vegetarian meal before guiding you back down the mountain?”

  Guo Jing was crestfallen. After all their efforts, they were still being sent away with the same frustrating and enigmatic excuse. Yet, things were coming together for Lotus—the temple, the novice and the way he talked … She prised the drawing from Guo Jing’s hand and offered it to the young monk.

  “We would be very grateful if you would deliver this note to your superior and let him know that Guo Jing and Lotus Huang humbly request an audience. We hope he will grant us one on the strength of his friendship with the Divine Vagrant Nine Fingers and the Lord of Peach Blossom Island.”

  Genuflecting, the boy accepted the paper, folded it up, then took his leave. This time, he returned almost straight away and indicated that they should follow him.

  * * *

  THE TEMPLE turned out to be a far more extensive complex than the first courtyard had suggested. They followed a paved path through a bamboo grove before arriving at three stone cottages set in the peaceful embrace of lush greenery.

  The novice walked up to one of the cottages, pushed the doors open with a light touch and stepped aside, standing with his body politely inclined to allow the guests to enter first. Guo Jing gave the boy a smile, moved by the courtesy they were being shown, and lent Lotus his arm so she could steady herself as she stepped over the threshold.

  Two monks sat cross-legged on prayer mats in the middle of a sparsely furnished room. On the low table between them was a censer, from which the gentle scent of sandalwood filled the air. One of the monks had darker skin than was common for the people of this region, with a pronounced nose and deep-set eyes. Lotus knew he must be the martial uncle from Sindhu the fisher had mentioned.

  The other man, she noted, had a regal presence that neither his rough-spun kasaya nor his flowing white beard could conceal. She also perceived a shade of sorrow between his graying eyebrows. Behind him, the scholar and the farmer stood in waiting.

  Her intuition confirmed, she took Guo Jing’s hand, led him before the kingly monk and lowered herself onto her knees. “Uncle, your juniors Guo Jing and Lotus Huang bow to you.”

  Guo Jing copied her stance without asking wherefore and kowtowed four times.

  With a kindly smile, the monk got to his feet and helped the young couple up.

  “I am delighted that Brother Seven has acquired such outstanding protégés, and Brother Apothecary is most blessed to have such a wonderful daughter. My indolent students –” the monk gestured at the scholar and the farmer—“told me that your martial and literary understanding far surpass theirs. My heartfelt congratulations.” He followed these sentiments with a bout of effusive laughter.

  Guo Jing could not make sense of this latest turn of events. From the way he talks, he has to be King Duan. But how come the king is now a monk? Why did they all say that he’d left this world of dust? How can Lotus tell this monk is the man we’ve been seeking?

  “Tell me, how are your father and your shifu doing? They’re well, I trust?” the monk asked Lotus. “It’s hard to believe twenty years have gone by since we were at the summit of Mount Hua together. Your father wasn’t even married then—and now he has such a beautiful, accomplished daughter! Have you got any siblings, my dear? Who is your grandfather? I dare say he’s a great hero.”

  “I’m an only child.” Lotus’s eyes reddened and tears threatened to fall. “Mama left this world a long time ago. Her family name was Feng, but I don’t know anything about her father.”

  The monk patted Lotus on the shoulder to console her. “Have you been here long? I have just emerged from the meditative state of samandhi after three days and three nights.”

  The monk’s delight at their arrival was evident, and it was plain to Lotus that the trials they had to go through were all his students’ doing. She would not let the affront pass without comment. “We have only just arrived. In fact, it is most fortuitous that the Uncles were so determined to hold us back and did everything they could to make our journey so very difficult. Or else, we would have been here much too early.”

  The monk chuckled. “They’re worried about me being disturbed by the outside world. But how could you two ever be outsiders to me? I know you, my dear, have made sense of it all already. I am now known as Sole Light. When King Duan left this world of dust, your shifu was there—he was right by my side when I pledged myself to the triratna and received the tonsure. Your father doesn’t know about any of this, does he?”

  “No, Papa isn’t aware and Shifu has never mentioned it to us,” Lotus replied.

  By now, Guo Jing had wrapped his mind around these latest revelations. The me
n were not making veiled references to King Duan’s physical death; they had been referring to the oath a monk took to renounce the secular world. And if they had been sent by Count Seven Hong, they would be seeking Reverend Sole Light rather than King Duan.

  Lotus is always so perceptive, he said to himself. She knew the second she clapped eyes on him.

  “Good food is the only thing your shifu allows to pass his lips. He wouldn’t waste his breath prattling about this aged monk. You must have had an arduous journey. Have you eaten—” The monk gasped and took Lotus by the hand, leading her to the open doorway, where the light was better. Grave concern clouded his features as he inspected her face in the sun.

  Guo Jing might not be the shrewdest, but even he could not fail to realize that Reverend Sole Light had detected Lotus’s injury. He fell to his knees and knocked his head loudly against the floor. Then he felt the monk’s hand under his arm. A great force was peeling him off the ground. He went with the flow and stood up slowly, for it was rude to oppose one’s elder.

  Within Sole Light’s polite gesture was a test of Guo Jing’s internal kung fu. The monk had employed a mere half of his strength and was poised to pull back the instant the young man showed the first sign of being overwhelmed by his power. He would not dream of humiliating his guest by making him flip in a somersault.

  By complying, Guo Jing had confounded all expectations, nullifying the monk’s energy, which required a greater skill and control than direct opposition would.

  No wonder my students were ashamed of themselves after their encounters with this young man, Sole Light reflected. Brother Seven has indeed trained a first-rate disciple.

  “Help her, Uncle!” Guo Jing pleaded as he straightened up. Just then, a strong current coursed through his body, threatening to topple him. He stepped forward involuntarily as his own strength poured forth to root his feet.