A Heart Divided

by Jin Yong

  Zhou Botong, fearing that he might be left out, parroted Count Seven Hong’s words and action, substituting “Old Beggar” with “Old Urchin” and explaining that he had given Guo Jing lessons in channeling his energy. But his playful echo of Count Seven’s words turned the well-meaning remark into a grating scoff in the blind man’s ears.

  “Pah! You Greats are powerful, but to what end? Not one of you acts with righteousness, and that will be your downfall!” And, in the heat of his fury, Ke Zhen’e cursed the Heretic, the Venom, the King and the Beggar—the four most powerful Masters of the wulin.

  “Wait, why do you curse the King of the South? Has he wronged you too?” Zhou Botong never knew when to keep quiet.

  “Hey, Old Urchin, someone’s here to see you!” Lotus was aware that Ke Zhen’e’s ire would be hard enough to quench without Zhou Botong’s meddling, and it would be a hopeless task if he were around. “The lovebird has taken flight.”

  “What?” The shock of those words sent the older man three feet into the air.

  “She’s here to bathe your scarlet feather in the chill of dawn.” Another reference to Madam Ying’s poem.

  “Where?” the Urchin shrieked.

  “Just over there.”

  “I won’t see her—never, never, never, never, never. Good Miss Huang, dear Miss Huang, please don’t tell her you’ve seen me,” Zhou Botong begged. “I’ll do anything you ask of me…” His voice trailed off. He had already sprinted so far north, he was almost out of earshot.

  “I’ll hold you to your word!” Lotus shouted after him.

  “When a word bolts from the Hoary Urchin’s mouth, not even eight horses can chase it down!” The ghost of his voice was the only part of him that remained in the valley.

  Lotus found Zhou Botong’s reaction unsettling. It was extreme, even by his standards. She had hoped to coax him into seeking Madam Ying out. Who would have thought he would be so terror-stricken by the mere mention of her? Well, at least she had succeeded in getting rid of him before he could cause more trouble.

  Kneeling by Ke Zhen’e, Guo Jing was speaking through his tears. “Shifu left the comforts of home and moved to the wilderness of Mongolia, all because of me. This kindness I can never repay, even with my death. Today, this hand injured you, and I will have nothing more to do with it!” He pulled out the golden dagger and chopped down.

  Hearing the blade cut through the air, the sightless man twisted his staff sideways. Sparks flashed as the weapons clashed.

  The boy put all his force into the blow, Ke told himself as numbness dulled his grip.

  “I know you speak from the heart,” he said, somewhat breathless from the exchange “I hereby ask you to do one thing for me.”

  “I shall most certainly oblige,” came Guo Jing’s eager reply.

  “If you refuse, the bond between us shall be severed for eternity.”

  “Your command will be my lifelong mission.”

  Ke struck the Exorcist’s Staff against the ground. “Bring me the heads of Heretic Huang and his daughter Lotus.”

  Reeling, Guo Jing spluttered, “What hap—how—?”

  The Freak cut his student off with a snort. “I wish the heavens would grant me sight for this one moment. I would love to see the face of this ungrateful little bastard!”

  He swung the metal staff at the crown of Guo Jing’s head. The young man stayed on his knees, rooted to the spot.

  Lotus had had an inkling of what Ke Zhen’e might demand of Guo Jing and was poised for action. She thrust the Dog Beater in a Rabid Dog Blocks the Way. The instant it made contact with the metal staff, the bamboo cane slipped a touch to the side, twirled round and flicked out. The intricate move turned Ke’s force back onto him, flipping the staff to the side and rocking his footing.

  The eldest Freak made no attempt to disguise the impact of Lotus’s intervention. Instead, he beat himself in the chest twice in anguish and took off in the same direction Zhou Botong had taken.

  Guo Jing went after him. “Shifu! Shifu!”

  The old man halted, turned back and snarled, “Does the Great Lord Guo wish to take my life?”

  The savageness of Ke Zhen’e’s tone stopped Guo Jing dead in his tracks. Head hung low, he listened to the diminishing thud of the metal staff against the ground as his First Master hobbled away. Recalling their years together in Mongolia, Guo Jing curled up on the ground and wept.

  3

  Taking Lotus’s hand, Count Seven Hong approached Guo Jing. “Another bitter feud between Hero Ke and Heretic Huang,” he sighed, “fueled by their fiery tempers. This Old Beggar will do his best to bring peace.”

  Guo Jing dried his tears and sat up. “Shifu, do you—do you know why?”

  “My stomach has been growling most of the day. We’ll talk after I’ve had a good meal.”

  They walked Count Seven to their guest house. Lotus found some meat and wine in the kitchen and conjured up a quick but delicious late-night feast. When the Beggar was sated, he began to tell them how the scene they had happened upon had come about.

  “You saw the Hoary Urchin just now. He was gulled into that bet with the lama. With him out of action, the gang was ready to do away with me, but the stars were on our side. Your first shifu came across us and stood by me until we found refuge in that cave. The villains were wary of his poisoned devilnuts and did not try to force their way in, which gave us a reprieve. And then you two arrived.

  “Master Ke stands firm by his principles. He stayed by my side, putting my life before his, ready to defend me to the death.” Count Seven heaved a sigh and glugged down two large gulps of wine. After that, he stuffed a chicken drumstick into his mouth. A couple of chews later, he spat out the bone. Satisfied, for the moment, he wiped his greasy lips on his sleeve and resumed his tale.

  “Things were rather precarious until you came along, and obviously I was no help at all in my current state, so Master Ke and I didn’t have time for idle conversation. But this much I know for sure: his rage doesn’t stem from that simple fall. He’s a hero and adheres to the moral code of xia. He wouldn’t be so small-minded. There must be another reason. Well, we’re only days away from Moon Festival. Once we’ve taught those blackguards a lesson at the Tower of Mist and Rain, I’ll speak to Master Ke and resolve this misunderstanding.”

  Waving Guo Jing’s tear-flooded gratitude away, the Beggar said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Now, tell me everything that’s happened to you two in the past weeks. How come your kung fu has improved so much? Master Ke is much admired in the wulin for his craft, and yet one wave of the hand from you young ’uns sent him tottering!”

  It was too complex a story for Guo Jing to tell, and he was still haunted by the disgrace he had subjected his teacher to, so Lotus happily brought Count Seven up to date with their adventures. He applauded Yang Kang for ridding the world of Gallant Ouyang, but let rip a succession of expletives when he heard what had happened at the Beggar Clan Assembly.

  “That knave! And the Four Elders—woolly old clods! Surefoot Lu has dung for brains! I’ll squeeze the life out of Elder Peng!”

  He grew subdued and distant when Lotus told him how she had been brought back to life by Reverend Sole Light and how Madam Ying came to take her revenge in the dead of night. He sucked in a breath when she described how the former consort of the Dali Kingdom went berserk at Blue Dragon Shoal.

  “Do you know her?” Lotus inquired, noticing her Master’s odd reaction. Perhaps he too had been seduced by her charm. Is that why he never married? What’s so special about Madam Ying? She’s obsessive and odd. How did she make so many martial Masters fall for her? Was it her beauty? Her intelligence? Maybe she cooks well? I wonder how we compare …

  “No, I don’t know Madam Ying.” Count Seven’s voice interrupted her musings. “But I was there when King Duan took his monastic vows—I was standing right next to him.

  “He wrote to me one day, inviting me to Dali. I knew it must be for a matter of great import. He wou
ldn’t have got in touch about a mere trifle. Anyway, the thought of Yunnan dry-cured ham, crossing-bridge soup noodles and pounded rice cake sent me on my way instantly.

  “When I got there, King Duan looked wretched. Wasted away. A changed man. He was so full of life and energy on the summit of Mount Hua, just a few years before. A couple of days into my stay, he invited me to spar, but, in fact, he wanted to teach me Cosmos neigong and Yang in Ascendance.

  “This Old Beggar is no dullard. We are martial equals. Each of us Greats has an unparalleled skill that no ordinary man can withstand. I have the Dragon-Subduing Palm; King Duan, his Yang in Ascendance acupressure jabs; the Venom, the Exploding Toad; and the Heretic actually has two, Splitting Sky Palm and the Divine Flick.

  “Now, King Duan had been granted the knowledge of Cosmos neigong by Wang Chongyang. There was no doubt who would claim the title of the Greatest Martial Master Under the Heavens when we all met again. Why on earth would he want to teach me those two supreme repertoires? And why didn’t he want me to demonstrate the Dragon-Subduing Palm in return? Something was amiss. I made up some excuse about needing time and privacy to think things over, and held a secret conference with his four disciples. I worked out what he had been planning: he would commit suicide once he had finished teaching me. We had deduced that he was heartsick, but the why and wherefore eluded us.”

  “King Duan feared that no one would be strong enough to face Viper Ouyang after his death,” Lotus commented.

  “Yes, I had inferred that too, so I stood my ground, refusing to learn anything from him. In time, he started to open up. He told me that, although his four students were earnest, loyal and hardworking, their hearts were torn between running the kingdom and kung fu training. And that, though they were born with some martial intuition, they were not truly gifted and would never become supreme Masters. As he understood it, the Seven Disciples of the Quanzhen Sect were much the same—they would never attain the heights of their mentor Wang Chongyang. He could live with my refusal to learn Yang in Ascendance, but, if he did not share Cosmos neigong with a Master worthy of it, how would he face the Double Sun Immortal when he passed on to the next world?

  “It was clear that he’d thought the matter through and there was nothing I could say to change his mind, other than digging in my heels and rejecting his offer. That was why he abdicated and became a monk—it was a way to leave this life without physically killing himself. I was right by him when he received the tonsure—and that was more than ten years ago…” Count Seven’s tone was uncharacteristically wistful. “Well, it’s for the best that this tangled affair has at last been resolved.”

  “Now it’s your turn to tell us your adventures,” Lotus urged.

  “My adventures? Well, I enjoyed the Contrast of Five Treasures four times in the imperial kitchens, which, I have to say, did satisfy my cravings. I was also treated to lychee pork kidney, quail potage, goat tongue slips, ginger and vinegar whelks, and goat tripe stuffed with oysters—” As Count Seven rattled off the palace’s most famous delicacies, he could feel his mouth watering and the glorious flavors came flooding back.

  “How come the Old Urchin couldn’t find you?”

  Count Seven chuckled at the memory. “The imperial chefs started to notice their prized creations going missing, and rumors that the fox demon had returned to haunt the kitchens began to circulate. They offered me a great deal of candles and incense sticks in homage. Not long after that, the stories of the fox demon reached the commander of the Imperial Guard, and he sent eight of his men to the kitchens to catch the crafty old thing.

  “Now, as you will recall, this Old Beggar has lost his kung fu, and the Old Urchin was nowhere to be seen, so these guards were very bad news. I scuttled off and found a quiet part of the palace, to lie low. I ended up in a place called the Hall of … Virescent Sepal. That’s it. Virescent, ha! It’s got a courtyard full of plum trees. Our weedy Emperor comes here every winter to admire the blossoms. Of course, not a soul goes anywhere near this spot at the height of summer, apart from a few old eunuchs who come every morning to sweep and prune.

  “Beautiful, delicious food could be found in every corner of the palace. You could let loose a hundred Old Beggars in there and none of us would ever go hungry. The perfect place to convalesce in peace. I ate like the Emperor, I slept like the Emperor, but I had an even better life than the Emperor himself, because no one troubled me about anything. Until I heard the Old Urchin’s voice in the middle of the night, that is. He shrieked like a vengeful ghost, screeched like a cat in heat and bayed like a pack of mad dogs, rousing everybody from their beds, turning the palace upside down. Amid this chaos, I heard men shouting: ‘Master Hong! Count Seven Hong!’ I tiptoed out of my little paradise, and who should I find? Tiger Peng, Hector Sha, Graybeard Liang and their cursed little throng of flunkies.”

  “Huh? Why were they looking for you?” Lotus asked in surprise.

  “I was as baffled as you are now. One peek at those faces was enough to send me scurrying back to my courtyard, but the Hoary Urchin had already spotted me. He ran up and folded me in his arms. ‘Thank the heavens and earth! I’ve found you at last,’ he cried into my ear. Then he yelled at Graybeard Liang and his wretched mob to bring up the rear—”

  “He was commanding them?”

  Count Seven laughed. “Yes, it was incredible. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what the devil was going on. The scoundrels seemed to be scared witless and followed the Urchin’s every word. With the Ginseng Codger and his ragtag rabble standing guard, he slung me on his back and off we went to Ox Village look for you two.

  “On the way, he told me how he’d panicked when he couldn’t find me, and, when he came across Graybeard and his posse, he beat them into submission and made them search every lane and alley of the capital, day and night, until they’d tracked me down. He told me he had also searched the palace high and low several times, but it was such a sprawling complex, and I had hidden myself so well, they hadn’t been able to locate me until that night.”

  “I can’t imagine the Urchin bossing anyone around. How did he tame those dogs and keep them on a leash?”

  “The Hoary Urchin has his ways and means. He rolled little balls of grime and dead skin from his body and stuffed three of them into each of their mouths. He then claimed that he had force-fed them a deadly toxin that would only reveal its potency after forty-nine days, and he was the only person in the whole world with the antidote. If they behaved and obeyed him, he would grant them the cure on the forty-eighth day. To be honest, they weren’t entirely convinced, but when your life is at stake … Well, you know the saying, ‘Better to believe the worst will happen than assume it can never come to pass.’ So, they swallowed the Urchin’s tall tale and ended up at his beck and call, running around to placate his every whim.”

  At this point, even the stricken Guo Jing managed a smile.

  “Once we left the city, the Old Urchin decided to put them to use searching for you two. But, earlier tonight, when they returned once again without any news, the Urchin got carried away berating them and gave the game away. ‘If you don’t find my little brother Guo Jing and the lass Lotus,’ he said, ‘I’ll feed you a few more pills of piss and grime!’ They hounded the poor man with trick questions and eventually pieced together the truth. There had never been any poison. They had been duped.

  “Those rascals would never let such an affront slide, and I told the Urchin quietly that he needed to dispatch them once and for all. We all knew it would take the lot of them to get the better of the Urchin, and, even then, it might not be enough. It was Tiger Peng who came up with the ploy you happened across. Tricking him into a wager with the fat monk from Kokonor.

  “Of course, I tried to stop the Urchin from taking the bait, but can you imagine him saying no to the chance of winning a bet? So, I ran—as fast as I could—and, as luck would have it, I came across Hero Ke. He offered me protection and kept me company as we fled from Tiger Peng and his
cronies to the cave where you found us. The Urchin might be foggy in the head sometimes, but he did realize that he shouldn’t let me stray too far, so he hurried after us too. But the swine wouldn’t let him be and heckled him into taking part in the contest.”

  “It’s lucky we overheard those students of Graybeard Liang, otherwise the Urchin would have wagered your life away.” Lotus found herself amused and annoyed in equal measure by the infantile martial Master.

  “It’s a marvel that I’m still clinging on to life. It makes no difference who gives it away.”

  “Ah! Remember when we were sailing back to the mainland from Rosy Cloud Island—”

  “Ghost Crushing Island,” Count Seven corrected her.

  “Alright, whatever you say. Ghost Crushing Island it is … I suppose it’s more fitting now that Gallant Ouyang has become a ghost in every sense of the word. Anyway, when we fished the Ouyangs onto our raft, the Venom said that your injury could only be healed by one person under the heavens, but you refused to tell us his name. Now that we’ve been to western Hunan, we know you were talking about King Duan—or Reverend Sole Light, as he is now known.”

  “He could reconnect the energy flow in my Eight Extraordinary Meridians using Yang in Ascendance and Cosmos neigong, but it would damage his elemental qi and he’d need at least three years to recover from the exertion. He may not be weighed down by the troubles of this world. He may not care about winning the next Contest of Mount Hua. But he is in his fifties. How many more years has he got left in which to recover? Could this Old Beggar demand that from a friend?”