A Heart Divided

by Jin Yong

  Qiu Qianzhang! The young couple shared a grin.

  “Yang Kang was all smiles. He seemed so grateful to this old fox. I almost fainted from rage. The fossil took his leave not long after and I followed him. I punched him in the back and he fell. He’d have tasted my saber if I were somewhere safe, but instead I gave him a good beating, then I emptied his pockets. He had all manner of queer contraptions in them. Rings, bricks, sword stumps … I didn’t know what he used them for, but I knew it was for making mischief. There was also a thread-bound notebook. It looked important. I got more and more cross as I went through the old man’s things and I decided that I had to confront Yang Kang about the flask and everything else—we needed clarity between us.

  “He was expecting me. I found him standing at the door with a smile on his face. ‘Sister, please come in.’ I stepped inside, and he pointed to the flask on the table. ‘Guess what’s in the bottle?’ I was seething, so I said, ‘Who knows what vileness it contains!’ He was in excellent humor. ‘A friend gave it to me earlier,’ he said. ‘He told me to put a little of this powder into your tea and everything would go as I wish.’ This was not how I had expected our exchange to go and I felt my outrage slipping away. I picked up the bottle, opened the window and threw it out. ‘Why did you keep it?’ To which he replied, ‘I respect Sister as I would a celestial being. How could I commit such a base crime?’”

  Guo Jing nodded with approval. “Brother Yang did right.”

  Mercy scoffed, but said nothing more.

  Lotus thought back to when she had seen Yang Kang and Mercy on Iron Palm Mountain. They were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. His lips were brushing her ear, whispering, and his arms were pulling her close. Mercy was smiling, bashful.

  We must have come upon them after this episode, Lotus said to herself. I bet Yang Kang saw her beating up Qiu Qianzhang, and that’s why he came clean, the snake!

  “What happened next?” Guo Jing asked, just as Zhou Botong had taught him. Always show interest and prompt the storyteller to continue.

  Mercy’s response was not one he had ever seen from the Hoary Urchin.

  She flushed crimson and twisted away, her head bent even lower.

  “Oh, Big Sister, I know!” Lotus cried. “You bowed to the heavens and earth and became man and wife!”

  Mercy’s head snapped up, her gaze fixed on Lotus. She had gone as white as a sheet, biting down hard on her lip. There was a peculiar glint in her eyes.

  Lotus knew she had spoken out of turn. “I’m so sorry, my tongue ran away with me. My dear sister, please don’t take it to heart.”

  “Your tongue didn’t run away,” Mercy muttered. “It was my senses that took their leave. I—I became … man and wife with him … but we—we didn’t … didn’t bow to the heavens and earth. I detest myself for my lack of self-control…” She trailed off as tears coursed down her cheeks.

  Lotus put her arm around Mercy’s shoulders, trying to find some soothing words for her friend. A moment later, she pointed at Guo Jing. “Sister, don’t feel bad. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Not long ago, in Ox Village, he wanted that with me too.”

  Now it was Guo Jing’s turn to feel awkward. “We … didn’t … I…”

  “You thought about it, though?”

  Even the tips of Guo Jing’s ears were burning a fiery red. He bowed his head and whispered, “I was bad.”

  Lotus patted him on the shoulder. “It makes me very happy that you want me to be your wife. Nothing bad about that.”

  This little exchange made Mercy ache deep inside. She may be smart, but she’s too young to really grasp that … Still, she’s very blessed to have met someone so pure of heart.

  “What happened afterward, Sister?”

  Mercy was staring vacantly at the stream once more. Her voice was very small. “Afterward … I heard yelling. Orders being bellowed out. It was chaos. He told me to keep quiet and said it had nothing to do with us—it was an Iron Palm Gang matter. Men began to assemble in the courtyard outside our room and they were told to fetch weapons and prepare torches so they could capture the trespassers.

  “I looked out the window. The man issuing commands turned out to be that old fossil I had beaten up. I had not realized he was the leader of the Iron Palm Gang. I was worried that he would come in and confront me. And how … how could I face anybody after what had just happened? But, once his men were ready, they marched away.”

  “That old codger isn’t the one you punched, Sister,” Lotus said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are two of them. Twins. They look exactly the same. The one you beat up was called Qiu Qianzhang. Awful kung fu, nothing but a trickster. The one giving orders was Qiu Qianren, the actual leader of the Gang. One wave of his Iron Palm and you wouldn’t be talking to us now.”

  “Really? If I had met him and died at his hands, everything would’ve been so much simpler.”

  “But our Brother Yang would miss you.”

  Mercy twisted away from Lotus’s touch with disgust.

  Lotus stuck her tongue out. “Then I’d miss you.”

  “I should go now,” Mercy said, standing up. “Take care of yourselves. Beware of the Iron Palm Gang.”

  Lotus shot to her feet and grabbed Mercy’s hand, pleading, “My dearest, dearest big sister, please don’t be angry with me. I won’t talk nonsense like that again.”

  “It’s not you I’m angry with. It’s … it’s just that my heart hurts.”

  Lotus pulled Mercy back to their seat under the tree. “What did that villain do to upset you?”

  “When the old man and his followers were gone, I asked him about our plans. He said, ‘Since we are now man and wife, I’m not going to hide the truth from you. The army of the Great Jin Empire will soon march south, and, with the Iron Palm Gang’s help from this side of the border, the Two Hus will be ours.’

  “He was so excited by this grand plan. He said that once they had destroyed our Song armies, his father the Prince of Zhao would ascend the throne as the Great Jin Emperor, and he would be named the Crown Prince.

  “And then he said to me, ‘And you—you will become Her Highness the Consort.’ I … I slapped him, very hard, and I ran. I ran out of the room and down Iron Palm Mountain. No one paid me any attention, they were all rushing the other way. Toward the summit.

  “Every spark of life in here –” she put her hand over her bosom—“had gone out. Only ash remained. I didn’t want to live anymore. I kept running. I didn’t know where I was going. I just ran. Then I came upon a Taoist nunnery and barged inside. I stepped through the gate and I fainted. The old abbess took pity and let me stay. I succumbed to an illness and was bed-bound for days. When I recovered, she gave me this gown for the road, so I could return to Ox Village…”

  “We’re going in the same direction. Let’s travel together!” Lotus said. “We’re heading to Peach Blossom Island. I can share some kung fu with you along the way.”

  Mercy shook her head. “No, I—I’m fine. Thank you for thinking of me.” She got to her feet and took a bound volume from inside her robe. “Big Brother Guo, this notebook contains affairs related to the Iron Palm Gang. Please pass it on to Master Count Seven when you see him. Perhaps it could be of some use.”

  “Of course.”

  She pressed the book into Guo Jing’s hands and disappeared between the weeping willow branches without saying goodbye.

  2

  “I hope no wicked men bother her along the way,” Guo Jing said, a little while after Mercy’s abrupt departure. “She has to travel alone for thousands of li to reach the Two Zhes. At least she knows enough kung fu to deal with any common rogues she comes across.”

  “Mm … hard to say. Even we get plagued by wicked men.”

  “Second Shifu has often said, ‘In times of chaos, men are less than curs.’ Maybe that’s why?”

  “Perhaps. Now, let’s deal with that mute dog!”

  “We’ll still sail
with him?”

  “Of course! I suffered so much at the hands of that old fossil Qiu Qianren. I can’t let him get away with it. We may not have the kung fu to beat him, but we can start by taking out a few of his minions.”

  So, they returned to the tavern, where they found the boat-master still skulking around the entrance. He spotted his passengers and bounded over to greet them. Guo Jing and Lotus acted as though they did not know his secret and followed him down the quay to the canopied riverboat he had pointed out earlier. Vessels of this size dominated the Yuan River, cruising down with produce from the hills in western Hunan and sailing up with rice from paddy fields downstream.

  Two youths, stripped to the waist, were scrubbing the deck as they boarded. The boat-master waited for his passengers to settle in, then unmoored the craft, sculled to the middle of the river and raised the sail. Propelled by a brisk southerly wind, the barge shot downriver like a singing arrow.

  Lounging on the deck under the awning, Guo Jing could not take his mind off Yang Kang and Mercy. We have sworn to share our blessings and hardships as brothers, he said to himself. I can’t stand by and watch him take a wrong turn. I should make him see his mistake and bring him back to the path of righteousness …

  “Can I see the notebook Sister Mu gave you?”

  Absentmindedly, Guo Jing pulled the thread-bound volume out of his inside shirt pocket.

  Lotus flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning their contents. “A-ha, that’s how it got there! Come, look.”

  Guo Jing pushed himself up and read over Lotus’s shoulder, but he was more taken by the view before him. The eventide sun floated just over the river surface. The water, mirroring the rosy clouds overhead, painted everything—Lotus’s face, her clothes and the book—with a rippling, rubescent glow.

  * * *

  THE VOLUME turned out to contain a chronicle of the Iron Palm Gang, penned by Qiu Qianren’s shifu and predecessor, Shangguan Jiannan.

  Before Shangguan became the Gang’s thirteenth leader, he was an officer serving under General Han Shizhong, a Song patriot. Han, like Yue Fei, had successfully stemmed the encroachments of the Jin Empire and believed in actively repelling the Jurchen army, instead of angling for a fragile peace by making treaties and paying tribute.

  And yet, with the rise of Qin Hui to the post of Chancellor, it was the faction that preferred peaceful negotiations which gained power in court. Qin Hui used his influence to recall General Yue Fei from the frontline and thereafter engineered his demise. Han Shizhong, who held a lower official rank, was demoted and his troops were taken away. The majority of units under his command were disbanded, the soldiers sent back to their old lives, toiling once more in the fields.

  When Shangguan Jiannan was released, he traveled to Jinghu with his decommissioned brothers-in-arms, so they could be closer to the war against the Jin. They were all furious that their homeland was in the grip of treacherous officials. Some volunteered to join the force defending the city of Xiangyang, a strategic stronghold near the border, against the Jin’s invasion from the north, while Shangguan became a member of a small local outfit known as the Iron Palm Gang.

  When the Iron Palm Gang leader passed on, Shangguan was named as his successor, though he was relatively new to the group. He took on this duty with great zeal, improving the members’ discipline and encouraging them to act in ways that were moral, righteous and good for the country. Soon, heroes and patriots of the Two Hus were flocking to join the Gang, and, within a few years, its influence in the south was compared to the Beggar Clan’s hold on the north.

  Although Shangguan Jiannan was no longer a soldier, he held fast to his responsibilities as a loyal son of the Song Empire: to protect the homeland, to vanquish its foes, and to restore lost territories. He often sent men to the southern capital of Lin’an and through the enemy lines to Bianliang—the Song Empire’s main capital, now under Jin occupation—to gather intelligence so he could keep abreast of the latest news and troop movements, looking for a chance to strike back at the invaders.

  Some years later, Shangguan was told that an Iron Palm Gang member had befriended a jailer who had stood guard over General Yue Fei in his last days of imprisonment. According to this man, the General wrote a military tract while confined and it was among the objects interred with him when he passed on. Shangguan made it his mission to track down this text and later discovered that it was most likely hidden within the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Lin’an.

  Shangguan summoned every capable fighter in the Gang to go east with him. They stole into the royal complex under the cover of darkness and were able to find The Secret to Defeating the Jin without any complications.

  Shangguan then went straight to his old commander Han Shizhong, who was leading the life of a hermit by the shore of West Lake after his forced retirement from the Imperial Court. The sight of Yue Fei’s handwriting brought back a flood of reminiscence for the aged warrior—the patriot’s unjust death and his thwarted dreams of freeing his people from their Jurchen shackles. Han was so roused by his memories that he drew his sword and swung it at his desk.

  When the older man had collected himself, he said to Shangguan that he was too old to make use of the military treatise, but insisted that it could be a powerful weapon in the hands of a younger man. He then took out a bound volume and gave it to Shangguan. It contained General Yue’s poems, letters, memorials to the Emperor and other writings that Han had compiled and copied out by hand to commemorate his old friend. He bade his former officer to take on General Yue’s mantle, to rally the heroes of the Central Plains, repel the invaders and restore the realm to its rightful ruler.

  For it occurred to Han Shizhong that Yue Fei would not have written the military text just for it to keep him company in the grave. The General had never been one for empty words and gestures, and the book stressed the importance of serving one’s country with loyalty and righteousness—it must have been intended for a practical purpose. Perhaps Qin Hui had kept the General guarded so closely that the writings failed to make it out of his jail.

  Still, Han Shizhong was certain that the General would have made provision to get his vital work into the right hands. Could it be that the news had never reached the intended recipient? What if they had come to the palace but could not find the treatise because Shangguan Jiannan had already taken it?

  The two men decided to leave a message in its place. Shangguan painted a landscape of Iron Palm Mountain, and within the mounting concealed another piece of paper with a message of sixteen characters:

  Yue Fei’s final writings

  In Iron Palm Mountain

  Beneath the Middle Crag

  In the Second Segment.

  Han Shizhong added a poem by his old comrade, in case the painting alone was too cryptic a clue. He believed that Yue Fei must have set down the military strategy for his officers, and hoped that the presence of the General’s verse would prompt them to study the painting, thereby discovering the hidden message. And so, Shangguan went back to the palace and placed the hanging scroll where he had found Yue Fei’s book.

  Shangguan Jiannan then returned to Iron Palm Mountain and studied General Yue’s guide to training troops and vanquishing the enemy on the battlefield. In those years, the Jin army’s incursions were increasing in frequency and ferocity, but the Iron Palm Gang barely had enough strength to protect itself, let alone rally patriots to mount a campaign north to repel the Jurchens. His dream of chasing the Jin from Song territory was never realized.

  Decades later, Shangguan Jiannan departed this life a disappointed man, and the leadership was passed on to his disciple Qiu Qianren. The older man had no illusions about his student’s nature. Qiu cared only for the martial arts and had no interest in any higher principles. The fate of his country had never concerned him, so, although Shangguan shared all his knowledge of kung fu, he never instructed him in the art of war and battle formations, or told him about Yue Fei’s writings, since it would mean n
othing and served no function for a man of Qiu Qianren’s inclination.

  When Shangguan Jiannan realized his end was nigh, he took Yue Fei’s military tract with him on his final journey—to the cave in the middle crag of Iron Palm Mountain—to prevent it from falling into the hands of false-hearted men.

  * * *

  “LEADER SHANGGUAN held Yue Fei’s writings close to his chest as he breathed his last,” Guo Jing said with a sigh. The sun had now dipped below the horizon and dusk was fast descending.

  “I assumed he had conspired with the Jin, like the Qiu brothers. If I had known, I would have shown his remains the respect he deserved. I can’t imagine how aggrieved he must feel in the underworld right now. The once patriotic Iron Palm Gang is now made up of double-dealers.”

  Their boat was now moored by a village and the boat-master was busy slaughtering a chicken for dinner. Worried that their food might be tampered with, Lotus snatched the ingredients from him, grumbling about his unhygienic cooking area. The man glared at her as she went ashore with Guo Jing. He had no hope of browbeating the eloquent girl using sign language, but nor could he blow his cover by regaining the use of his tongue. All he could do was storm into the cabin to let out a string of profanities and groans of frustration the instant they stepped off the boat.

  Lotus found a farmstead whose owners allowed her to use their kitchen, and, after they had eaten, they sat under a tree to enjoy the evening breeze.

  “What do you think Qiu Qianzhang was planning to do with Leader Shangguan’s chronicle?” Guo Jing asked. “How did he get hold of it?”

  “It wouldn’t have been difficult for the old swindler to steal the book, since he looks exactly like his brother. And he’s been posing as the leader of the Iron Palm Gang, so he’d need to know their history, or else people would see through his act … I bet Brother Tempest Qu knew nothing about his great contribution to the cause.”

  Guo Jing looked at Lotus in confusion.

  “Remember the cave behind the waterfall? By the Hall of Wintry Jade in the Imperial Palace in Lin’an?”