The Return of the Condor Heroes-Chapter 32 – What is love?, Part 17

After his first experience seven days ago, Yang Guo was not hesitant. Although the ‘Severed Intestine Grass’ was poisonous, it was effective against the poison in his body. He immediately sat down on the ground, exerted his internal energy to protect his heart and liver, and quickly ate the grass. This time the pain was not so severe. After about an hour or so he threw up some blood and the pain lessened almost immediately.

He stood up, stretched his arms and legs, and saw Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang’s joyful countenance. “I am so lucky to have two very loving sworn sisters.” he said to himself. “One is more than enough, now I have two. How can I repay their kindness?” He looked down, thinking hard. Then he thought, “Second Sister has had an excellent Master, and I am sure someday she will be an excellent martial artist. Not so with Third Sister.” ƒ𝚛𝐞𝚎𝑤𝘦𝚋𝓷o𝚟e𝘭.c𝐨𝙢

Having had that thought, he said to Wushuang, “Third Sister, your master and mine were martial sisters. That makes us people of the same sect. The highest level of the Ancient Tomb Sect’s martial arts was written in the ‘Jade Maiden Manual’. Li Mochou’s lifelong desire was to get hold of this manual, fortunately she did not get her wish right up to the day she died. While we have the opportunity, I’d like to teach you one or two arts from our sect. What do you say?”

Lu Wushuang was delighted, “Thank you Big Brother,” she said. “Next time Guo Fu and I meet, she will not dare to pick a fight with me.”

Yang Guo smiled faintly and immediately taught the theory of ‘Jade Maiden Manual’ to his sister, beginning from the elementary to the advanced. “You have to memorize the theory first, and later on ask Second Sister’s help when it comes to training,” explained the big brother. “This quiet Passionless Valley is a very suitable place to learn martial arts.”

For a few days Wushuang used all her waking moments to memorize the theory. Since her background was also from the Ancient Tomb Sect, she did not have any difficulty understanding the elementary lessons. Very soon however, she arrived at the more difficult part of the lesson and started to have some trouble understanding the theory. Yang Guo advised her to just memorize the theory blindly; she would eventually understand the whole lesson. So Wushuang spent almost the whole month memorizing the entire ‘Jade Maiden Manual’. In the mean time Yang Guo ate the ‘Severed Intestine Grass’ every seven days and his pain gradually lessened.

One morning, as usual Cheng Ying and Lu Wushuang prepared their breakfast, and then waited for Yang Guo to come. After waiting for quite a while, Yang Guo did not come. They went to their big brother’s cave, only to find some characters written on the ground at the cave’s entrance. It said, “To part for a while, to be together forever. Brotherly love shines like the sun and the moon.”

Both girls were shocked. “He … finally he left us,” Lu Wushuang said, running toward a hill and looked around. Cheng Ying followed not too far behind. All they could see were clouds on the mountain peaks. Miss Lu’s heart was broken. She asked, with an uneven voice, “Second Sister … where … where did he go? Can we … can we see him again?”

“Third Sister,” her older sister replied, “Do you see those clouds? They gathered together, then were blown away by the wind, to be gathered again somewhere else. We are just like those clouds. Now we gather, then we part. Why is your heart troubled?” Even though her mouth said those words, her heart was also full of sorrow.

Yang Guo had remained on the Broken Heart Cliff for about over a month and imparted the ‘Jade Maiden Manual’ to Lu Wushuang. During all this time, he did not find any more clues or news about the whereabouts of Xiao Longnü and knew that it would be no use to wait any longer. He gathered a bunch of the ‘Severed Intestine Grass’ and then left a parting a message in the sand before leaving the cliff. However, he had still not given up hope of seeing Xiao Longnü again, so he returned to mount Zhongnan and went back into the Ancient Tomb. But after seeing that the wedding garments were left untouched and were lying on the bed and floor, his heart was broken once again.

He left the mountain and roamed Jianghu for a few months. One day, he found himself near the city of Xiangyang. The burned wastelands that the Mongols had left was showing signs of human activity and it appeared that in the past months the Mongols were once again heading south.

He missed Guo Jing, but he did not want to see Guo Fu and thought to himself, “It’s been a long time since I parted with Brother Eagle, why don’t I go visit him?” He then made his way to the wild valley.

As he neared the home of Sword Demon Dugu Qiubai [Dugu Seeking-A-Loss], he gave a long whistle. He walked and whistled at the same time and not long after, he heard chirrup calls from the base of the mountain. He raised his head and saw the Divine Eagle below a large tree with a wolf in its claws. When the Divine Eagle saw Yang Guo, it released the wolf and made its way to him. After managing to keep its life after facing the jaws of death, the wolf darted straight into the bushes without turning back.

Yang Guo hugged the eagle; both man and beast were extremely happy. They made their way back to the cave. In just a few months, Yang Guo had found himself slipping from life to death and from death back to life again, grief and joy both came and went, the trials and tribulations he had gone through, countless. It was a pity that the eagle could not speak; otherwise Yang Guo could tell it all the things that have been on his mind.

He stayed in the valley with the eagle as his companion for months. One day out of boredom, he made his way to the cliff where Dugu Qiubai buried his swords. He made his way to the top of the cliff and looked at the words underneath the decayed wooden sword:

“After the age of forty, I no longer relied on weaponry. Even bushes, trees, bamboo sticks or rocks can all be my sword. From then on, I achieved great progress and slowly reached the realm of overcoming the sword without a sword.”

Yang Guo thought to himself, “With the heavy iron sword, it can be said that I had no match under heaven’s skies; but from senior Dugu’s words, it appears that the wooden sword can defeat the heavy iron sword, and finally, no sword can defeat the wooden sword. Since Long’er said that we will only be able to see each other again in sixteen years time, with all these years to come, I might as well study the ways to defeat the heavy iron sword with the wooden sword and how to overcome a sword without a sword.”

He broke a branch and formed a sword with it and pondered, “The heavy iron sword is around seventy jin in weight, there are only two possibilities on how to overcome it with such a light and fragile wooden sword. One is through ingenuity of the sword strokes, using speed to overcome the slow; the other is through overbearing internal energy, using strength to subdue the weak.”

From that day on, he trained his internal energy hard night and day and studied the art of the sword. Every timed it rained; he went to the mountain torrents to fight the water in order to increase the power in his sword strokes.

Summer ended and autumn arrived, autumn went and winter came. Though Yang Guo trained with dedication, he made little progress with his internal energy and sword arts. However, he knew that his level of martial arts was already very high; to gain any sort of improvement from such a state was, in reality, a hard task to accomplish, so he wasn’t troubled by it.

One day, it started to snow. The Divine Eagle called out with joy and leapt into the open. It spread its wings and created a strong gust of wind, blowing the snow away. Yang Guo had a thought, “There are no mountain torrents in the winter; practicing in the snow is a great alternative.”

He watched on as the gusts of wind created by the eagle became stronger and stronger; though the snow was heavy, not a flake landed on its body.

Yang Guo’s interests were stirred. He picked up the wooden sword and he too went out into the snow. He used his sword with his left hand and swung his right sleeve at the same time. Whenever flakes of snow got close, either the wind from the wooden sword or the force from his right sleeve would repel it. He continued for a half a day and felt that the power in both his sword and sleeve seemed to have made some improvements.

It snowed for three days and Yang Guo practiced in the snow each day. On the afternoon of the third day, the snow became even heavier. Yang Guo was in the middle of concentrating on attacking the snow when suddenly, the Divine Eagle swept its wings at him. Yang Guo was not prepared for this and was almost tripped by this attack. He leaped up urgently to avoid this attack but as soon as he did this, he felt coolness on his forehead, two flakes of snow had landed on it. He immediately understood, “That day on top of the cliff, Brother Eagle used its wings to fight me and helped me to make great improvements in my sword arts; today he is helping me to train my sword skills once again.” He then extended his sword and thrust forward, a ‘crack’ sound was heard as the sword met the eagle’s wings; the sword broke. The Divine Eagle did not continue its attack and instead it straightened up and chirruped with an impression of blame.𝙛𝚛𝙚ewe𝗯𝓃𝗼ѵ𝚎Ɩ.𝒄ｏ𝐦