A Bond Undone

by Jin Yong

  “Viper Ouyang switched it for another book, just before Immortal Wang burst out from the coffin?” Guo Jing could not believe his ears.

  “That was what she was implying, but I knew the Heretic was full of tricks and I reckoned she was the same. She must have noticed my disbelief. ‘Have you read the Nine Yin Manual?’ she asked, and I could only tell her the truth. ‘No-one has set eyes on its contents since my late brother took possession of it. He fought for the right to guard the Manual, to stop it from causing more havoc in the wulin. He didn’t want it for personal gain. He forbade Quanzhen disciples from learning the kung fu within.’

  “Then she said, ‘Immortal Wang’s selfless benevolence is most admirable, but it is also the reason why you were tricked. Look, Brother Zhou, see for yourself.’ She showed me the Manual. I kept my eyes averted. My brother’s last words were fresh in my mind.

  “Seeing my reaction, she continued, ‘This is a popular divination book in the south – it’s worth not half a candareen. Even if this is the Nine Yin Manual, surely there’s no harm in reading the text, as long as you don’t put the words into practice? Your martial brother said you couldn’t learn, but he didn’t say you couldn’t look, did he?’

  “She was very persuasive. I turned to the first page. There, before my eyes, were descriptions of the most advanced martial skills. It certainly wasn’t a book about fortune telling or divination.

  “Madam Huang watched me read a few pages before she spoke again. ‘I read this book when I was five. I know it inside out. Nine out of ten children in the south know the whole text. I’ll recite it for you, if you don’t believe me.’ She started from the beginning. It flowed from her like water. I checked against the Manual in my hands. Every word she uttered was the same as what was written down. I felt like I’d been plunged into a cave of ice.

  “She recounted the first few pages, word for word, then said, ‘I can probably remember what it says on any page you choose. Just give me the first line.’ So I did as she asked, and, like she said, she knew it inside out. She could recite any page, without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Old Heretic Huang laughed and laughed. A rage burned in my heart. I ripped the cover off and tore it to shreds. Just as I was about to tear the pages too, I noticed an odd look on the Heretic’s face. I realised something wasn’t quite right and stopped.

  “Then the Heretic spoke: ‘There’s no need to throw a tantrum, Hoary Urchin. The Hedgehog Chainmail is yours.’ I didn’t know, then, what an utter fool I’d been. I thought maybe he felt bad that his wife had discovered the Manual had been switched, and he wanted to offer me a consolation. I’d never been so distressed in my life, but I still knew I couldn’t take the most treasured object of Peach Blossom Island for nothing.

  “So I thanked him and returned to my hometown. I decided to shut my door and focus on my kung fu. I believed Madam Huang. I really thought Viper Ouyang had switched the Manual, but I still didn’t believe I could defeat him. Perhaps, if I cut myself off from the world for five years to work on some really powerful kung fu, I could go west in search of him. By then, I’d be able to give the Venom such a beating, he’d never walk again. And he’d have no choice but to give me back the Manual. My brother left it in my care. It was my duty to look after it.”

  “How could you let the Venom get away with it! You could have taken Elder Ma and Elder Qiu with you. That would have given you the upper hand, surely?” Guo Jing suggested.

  Zhou Botong looked at Guo Jing and sighed. “If only I wasn’t so intent on winning . . . then I would have realised I’d been fooled a lot sooner. If I had talked to Ma Yu, he would have probably noticed the signs I was oblivious to.”

  2

  “A YEAR OR SO LATER, RUMOURS BEGAN TO FLY AROUND THAT Twice Foul Dark Wind had acquired the Nine Yin Manual,” Zhou Botong continued. “People were saying that the disciples of Peach Blossom Island had learned the kung fu contained within its pages and were behaving savagely. I didn’t believe it at first, but the story kept circling round and round the wulin.

  “Another year passed. Qiu Chuji came to my home. He told me he had been investigating the rumours and he had confirmation that the second volume of the Nine Yin Manual was in their hands. I was furious. I muttered out loud to myself, ‘Apothecary Huang is a terrible friend!’ Qiu Chuji overheard me and asked, ‘What do you mean, martial uncle?’ So I told him, ‘He went to Viper Ouyang for the Manual and he didn’t tell me about it! Now he’s got the book. Even if he isn’t going to return it to me, he should at least have the courtesy to tell me!’”

  “Maybe he intended to return it to you, but his unfilial disciples stole it before he had the chance?” Guo Jing said. “He seemed very angry about it. He broke the legs of his four other disciples and banished them. And they didn’t have anything to do with the Manual.”

  Zhou Botong shook his head sadly. “You’re a simple, honest fellow, like me. You wouldn’t have realised you’d been tricked, if you were in my place. Qiu Chuji stayed with me for a few days and we worked on some moves together. Two months later, he came back to tell me Hurricane Chen and Cyclone Mei had indeed stolen the Manual and were practising some unspeakable techniques: the Nine Yin Skeleton Claw and Heartbreaker Palm. He took a great risk listening in on them and eventually he heard them say that Apothecary Huang had stolen the Manual from me. He hadn’t taken it from Viper Ouyang!”

  “Did Madam Huang switch the Manual?”

  “As I told you, she wasn’t trained in the martial arts. Still, I made sure not to take my eyes off her, even for a second. She didn’t switch it – she swallowed it whole. She memorised the whole thing!”

  “How is that possible?”

  “How many times do you have to read something before you can remember it?”

  “If it’s a simple text, maybe thirty or forty times. Long and difficult ones, perhaps seventy or eighty, even a hundred. Some texts I just can’t learn, however hard I try.”

  “Exactly, but, well, you aren’t particularly smart.”

  “I know I’m slow – both in kung fu and in reading.”

  “Forget about reading, for now; let’s stick to something we know. So, when your shifu teaches you a new martial move, he has to demonstrate it dozens of times before you get it?”

  “Yes . . .” Guo Jing answered sheepishly. “Sometimes I get the gist, but can’t remember the details. Sometimes the details are there, but I don’t know how to put it all together.”

  “But you do know that there are people who can learn a whole set of kung fu from watching it once?”

  “Definitely! Lotus, Lord Huang’s daughter, can do that. Count Seven never had to repeat a move more than twice when he taught her.”

  “If she’s that smart, I hope she isn’t like her mother.” Zhou Botong said with a sigh. “The poor woman contracted the plague of death at such a young age. She read the Manual twice that day and remembered every single word. She wrote it down for her husband the moment I left.”

  Guo Jing said, after a long pause, “So Madam Huang didn’t understand the text, but she was able to memorise it from the first line to the last. It’s hard to believe anyone could be so clever.”

  “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Through the eyes, into the mind’, right? Your girlfriend can probably do it too. I was so frightened and ashamed when I heard Qiu Chuji’s report. I immediately summoned all seven martial nephews and we decided we must take the Manual back.

  “Qiu Chuji said to me, ‘Martial uncle, you don’t need to attend to the matter personally. You are their senior, we wouldn’t want the masters of the jianghu to claim that you pick on the young. However strong Twice Foul Dark Wind may be, I doubt they’re on the same level as the disciples of the Quanzhen Sect.’

  “So I sent Qiu Chuji and Wang Chuyi to track them down. The rest remained in reserve, keeping their ears to the ground, to make sure Huang’s disciples didn’t slip through our fingers.”

  “They wouldn’t have been able to beat the
Seven Immortals of the Quanzhen Sect.” Guo Jing remembered that night on the cliff in Mongolia, when the Six Freaks pretended to be Ma Yu’s martial siblings.

  “Yet, by the time Chuji and Chuyi arrived in Henan, Twice Foul Dark Wind had left. They had taken too many innocent lives practising their infernal kung fu, and the heroes of the Central Plains had banded together to stop them. Outnumbered, they had to retreat, but no-one knew where to. They killed a few more men of the wulin as they made their getaway.”

  “What did you do after you lost Twice Foul Dark Wind?” Guo Jing asked.

  “I went to confront Old Heretic Huang. I didn’t wait for Qiu Chuji and his brethren to come back. I went to Peach Blossom Island alone to find answers. The Heretic said to me, in his twisted logic, ‘Brother Bottom, Apothecary Huang never broke his word. I said I would not glance at your Manual – and I did not. The Nine Yin Manual I read was set down by my wife. It wasn’t yours.’

  “I was furious and demanded to see her. He said, with a wry smile, ‘My wife is dead.’ I didn’t expect that and my few words of condolence set him off further. ‘Brother Bottom, no more pretence. If you hadn’t gone around boasting about your cursed Manual, my wife wouldn’t have left me behind.’ I asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ He just glared at me with rage. Then a tear rolled from the corner of his eye and he broke down and wept.

  “In the end, he told me everything. Madam Huang knew her husband was interested in the Nine Yin Manual and memorised it for him. But, though the Heretic now had the Manual, his pride kept him from practising any of its kung fu. He said that, as my martial brother had never sought to learn from it, if Apothecary Huang chose to study its contents, then he would be inferior to Double Sun Wang Chongyang. He just wanted to make sense of one strange passage at the very end, which was contained in the volume stolen by Hurricane Chen and Cyclone Mei.

  “Madam Huang tried to recreate the text to comfort her husband, but it had been months since she had crammed it into her mind without comprehending a word of it. Needless to say, she’d read many other books and poetry since. How could she still remember it, word for word? She was eight months with child at the time, but she stayed up for several days and nights, racking her brains for any remnants of the Manual. She did manage to set down seven or eight thousand words, but much of the second volume was beyond her, and she could barely remember anything of the gibberish at the end.

  “By the end, she was so physically and mentally exhausted, she gave birth prematurely. She was burnt out in every way. There was nothing Apothecary Huang could do to revive her, even with his vast medical knowledge.

  “The Heretic has always directed his rage at others, shifting the blame. You can imagine how the grief rocked him. He rambled on and on as tears streamed down his face. With his Zhejiang accent, he kept calling me ‘Bottom’ instead of ‘Botong’. I let it pass. It wasn’t the time to debate pronunciation.

  “Eventually, I said to him, ‘You’re a martial man. Does it not bother you that you’re a figure of fun in the martial world because you place so much value on your relationship with your wife?’ He answered proudly, ‘My wife stood head and shoulders above anyone else.’ I’ve always found this ‘one man, one woman’ thing ridiculous, so I said, ‘You can focus on your martial skills, now that she’s dead. I’d rejoice, if I were you. I’d have been willing it to happen. You know, it’s great – it’s brilliant that she’s gone. The sooner, the better. Congratulations! Many congratulations!’”

  “How could you say that?”

  Zhou Botong rolled his eyes. “Why can’t I say what I truly believe? Anyway, once I said those words, rage consumed the Heretic and he thrust his palm at me. That was how our fight started.”

  “Did you lose?”

  “Do you think I’d be here if I’d won?” Zhou Botong laughed. “He broke both my legs. It was his way of forcing me to give him my copy of the second volume of the Manual. He said he wanted to burn it as an offering for his wife. So I hid the Manual in this cave and placed myself at the entrance. I told him, if you try to take it by force, I’ll destroy it. And he said, ‘I’ll find a way to make you step aside.’ And I told him, ‘We’ll see about that.’

  “That was five and ten years ago. I told you he’s conceited. He won’t sink so low as to starve me or poison me. He’s tried a thousand ways to lure me away. Oh, but he refuses to take advantage when I leave the cave to answer the call of nature. Sometimes, I take two hours. I know how tempting it is for him, but he’s managed to resist, so far.”

  Zhou Botong chuckled and Guo Jing also laughed, yet was secretly astonished that a martial master could bring a quarrel down to such a base level.

  3

  “FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, THE HERETIC TRIED EVERYTHING, AND failed.” It had taken Zhou Botong a long time to stop laughing and regain his composure. “But, if it weren’t for you, the Manual would be in his hands right now. He has played the ‘Ode to the Billowing Tide’ many times, but it’s never bothered me that much. Who’d have thought he’d put in all those new flourishes? Last night, he almost caught me off guard. My dear brother, thank you.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Guo Jing was still flummoxed by how a book could cause so much havoc and ruin so many lives.

  “We’ll see who lives longer.” Zhou Botong dissolved into laughter again. “Remember Huang Shang? He won by outliving all his enemies.”

  Guo Jing was not convinced that hoping to outlive Apothecary Huang was the best way out. Then he remembered he too was stuck on this island, in this cave, with no word from Lotus. “Why didn’t Elder Ma and the others try to rescue you?”

  “They probably don’t know I’m here. Even if they do, every tree, rock and hill here is enchanted; they won’t be able to get anywhere unless the Heretic lets them in. And, besides, I won’t leave until this fight has a winner.”

  Guo Jing had greatly enjoyed the company of his new sworn brother. Despite his age, he had an endearing childlike frankness. Now, Guo Jing’s mind wandered back to Lotus. He wished he knew where to find her.

  The sun was blazing in the sky. The mute servant returned with their midday meal.

  When they had finished the food, Zhou Botong said, “I may have been stuck here for fifteen years and counting, but my time has not been wasted. I know my kung fu has improved a great deal. There are no distractions in this cave. It would have taken me at least twenty-five years to get the same results elsewhere. My biggest problem is not having a sparring partner. I have to get my hands to fight each other.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Let’s say my right hand is the Heretic and my left is the Hoary Urchin,” Zhou Botong said, raising his hands to demonstrate. “Now, the right throws a palm strike, like this. My left deflects it and returns the favour with a punch. And now I’m fighting.” The blows grew faster and more intense, the left hand attacking, while the right defended.

  Guo Jing watched with a smile: yet another of Zhou Botong’s eccentricities. But, before long, he was transfixed. He was witnessing a unique and complex brand of kung fu.

  As every student of the martial arts knew, when throwing a punch, striking with the palm, wielding a sword or thrusting a spear, the different motions of the hands worked together towards the same goal: to attack or to defend. Yet Zhou Botong’s hands were attacking each other’s vital points – the wrist, the back of the hand, the palm – and responding to the other’s offensive with countermoves. Each hand employed a completely different kung fu!

  “You didn’t make the full move with your right hand just now. Why?” Guo Jing asked suddenly.

  Zhou Botong stopped and appraised his sworn brother with a satisfied smile. “Your eyes are sharp. You’re right. Come, spar with me. I’ll show you.”

  Guo Jing put his hand against his brother’s outstretched palm.

  “Careful, now. I’ll push you to the left.”

  Energy flowed from Zhou Botong’s hand. Guo Jing answered with a move from the Dragon-Subduin
g Palm. The two internal forces clashed, propelling Guo Jing half a dozen steps back. His arm felt weak and numb.

  “I just unleashed my full force on you. Now I’m going to let loose only a portion of it.”

  Their palms clashed once more. The moment Guo Jing sensed Zhou Botong’s strength, it vanished. The energy kept appearing and disappearing, rocking his balance.

  Thud! Guo Jing hit the ground, his face in the dust. He climbed back to his feet quickly, but the fall seemed to have plunged him into a daze.

  “Do you see?” Zhou Botong asked.

  Guo Jing shook his head.

  “Well, it took me ten years stuck in this cave to work it out. My martial brother always told me how ‘the immaterial beats the material and absence trumps excess’. I thought he was droning on about Taoist philosophy and shut my ears.

  “But, five years ago, I had a moment of clarity as my hands were fighting each other. I can’t really explain it, but I feel it and understand it now. Yet, without a sparring partner, I still couldn’t quite believe it. Now you’re here, it’s just perfect. It’ll hurt a bit, but you’ll know what I mean once I’ve sent you flying a few more times.”

  Guo Jing looked reluctant and Zhou Botong changed tack. “My good brother, I’ve been here for fifteen years. All I’ve ever wanted is someone to exchange a few moves with. When the Heretic’s daughter was here, a few months ago, I was going to get her to spar with me, but her palm kung fu wasn’t strong enough. And she never came back. I promise I won’t make you fall too hard, my dear brother.” His hands were poised to strike before he had even finished speaking.

  Seeing how eager Zhou Botong was, Guo Jing relented. “I can handle a few falls.”

  After exchanging several moves, all the tension suddenly disappeared from Zhou Botong’s palm. Guo Jing could not retrieve his strength fast enough and tipped forward again.