The Return of the Condor Heroes

Chapter 28 – The wedding, Part 9

Chapter 28 – The wedding, Part 9

Xiao Longnü said, “There is something that strange?”

Yang Guo said “Let me try it for you to see.” Having said that, he flipped up-side down and used his hand to prop himself up on the floor, his head down and legs up in the air. Then he quickly spun himself, making a few rounds, and then breathed in a few times. Suddenly he jumped up and bumped his head into a pointed corner of the table in front of the bed. Xiao Longnü cried out, “Ai yo, be careful!” only to see the “Hundred Meetings” point [Bai Hui] on his head hit the corner of the stone table hard. This “Hundred Meetings” point was right on top of the brain, where the vertical line from the front to the back of the head and the horizontal line from the left ear to the right ear intersect, and hence the name “hundred meetings point.” This was a vital pressure point, which controlled all the veins. Doctors usually compared it to the North Star, as in the saying “Bai Hui [Hundred Meetings] is sky, Xuan Ji [Jade Pearl -chest] is man, and Yong Quan [Bubbling Spring -legs] is earth,” which was to say that these “three big pressure points” were the most critical in a human body. Knowing this, Yang Guo bumped it right into a table corner and then turned around to stand erect. With a laugh he said, “You see, as the energy flew in the opposite direction, my Hundred Meetings point changed its position!” Xiao Longnü clucked her tongue in approval and said, “How very strange. And he came up with that!”

Hitting himself this time, even though Yang Guo didn’t seal his pressure point, he used quite a bit of force and his brain couldn’t help becoming confused. In his daze, he seemed to have figured out something important all of a sudden but couldn’t quite say what it was. Xiao Longnü saw him looking dazed and disoriented so she said with a smile, “Dumb kid, a gentle demonstration would have been enough. Nobody told you to crash into the table so hard. Does it hurt?” Yang Guo didn’t reply just waved his hand for her to stop talking. He concentrated on his thoughts but felt like there was a fuzzy shadow flashing in his brain, barring him from getting a clear picture. It seemed he needed to recall something from the past, yet it was also like he’d suddenly discovered something new. He wished he could have just taken it out from his brain, stopped that moving shadow, put that thought before his eyes and clearly look at it.

He thought for a while. Still he couldn’t grasp the main points and couldn’t give up thinking either. He grabbed his head. Quite vexed, he asked Xiao Longnü, “Long’er, I’ve figured out an extremely important matter but I don’t know what. Do you know?” When a person got his thoughts mixed up like entangled threads and he himself didn’t have a clue, asking another person what he was thinking was quite ridiculous. But for the two of them who had lived together for a long time and understood each other very well, their guesses would be correct most of the times. Xiao Longnü said, “This is a very important matter?” Yang Guo replied, “Yes.” Xiao Longnü asked, “Is it related to my injury? Delighted, Yang Guo said, “Good, very good! What matter is that? What have I figured out?”

With a chuckle, Xiao Longnü said, “You just talked about your adoptive father Ouyang Feng. You said he could direct vital energy to circulate in the opposite direction. Is this related to my injured condition? I’m not the person he injured…”

Yang Guo suddenly jumped up and shouted out loudly, “Got it!”

These two words “Got it!” were brightly loud. The doors of the stone chambers inside Gu Mu were not closed so each and every word spoken echoed back, “Got it, Got it…” Yang Guo grabbed Xiao Longnü’s right arm and repeatedly cried out, “You could be saved! You could be saved! You could be saved!” He couldn’t restrain his happiness; nor could he really find words to express it. Seeing him all excited, Xiao Longnü was infected with this joyous feeling. She sat up.

Yang Guo said, “Long’er, you listen to my words. Right now you are seriously injured so you can’t use our sect’s Jade Maiden skills. And this makes it difficult for you to recover from the injury. But if you can circulate your vital energy against the flow to heal yourself, the Chilled Jade Bed will precisely be a marvelous aid.”

Xiao Longnü had yet to understand. She mumbled, “Vital energy against the flow… the Chilled Jade Bed…”

Happily, Yang Guo said, “Would you say this is fate? You’ve practiced the Jade Maiden skill, which was good enough. On top of that we have the Chilled Jade Bed.”

Xiao Longnü became confused so she said, “I still don’t quite understand.”

Yang Guo then explained, “The Jade Maiden skills follow the Yin energy but the reverse flow skills are pure Yang. When I talked about my adoptive father’s reverse energy flow skills, I vaguely felt that your injured condition could be healed. Then I hit my head and, afterwards, recalled what Master Chongyang mentioned in his letter about the Chilled Jade. And it all became clear.”

Xiao Longnü said, “So is that to say our Ancestor Grandma, who used the Chilled Jade Bed to treat her injury, could reverse the energy flow as well?”

Yang Guo said, “That’s not likely. Our Ancestor Grandma would definitely not know this reverse energy flow technique. But I suspect that she was injured by the Yin’s soft internal energy. Your injury, on the other hand, was caused by the opposite force of the hard Yang.” Xiao Longnü smiled and nodded. Then with a joyful feeling, she put her mind at ease.

Yang Guo said, “We’d better not wait. Let us do it now.” He then went into the firewood room and took out a bunch of firewood. He lit them up in the corner of the stone room. Then he taught Xiao Longnü the most basic elements of the reverse energy flow skills and helped her sit up on the Chilled Jade Bed. He sat by the fire. As he used his left hand to press against Xiao Longnü’s right palm, he said, “I’ll push this heat through each of your pressure points and you use your internal energy to circulate it against the normal flow. We’ll do it one point at a time and when the heat comes back to the Chilled Jade Bed, your injured condition should improve a little bit.” With a smile Xiao Longnü said, “Do I have to get down and spin myself just like you did?” Yang Guo said, “Nah, that’s not necessary. Spinning is for shifting pressure points. It’s only good when fighting enemies. We are slowly healing your injury; sitting down here is just as good.”

Xiao Longnü stretched her hand to hold his left palm and with a smile she said, “Come to think of it, that Guo Guniang wasn’t too mean. She didn’t cut off both of your arms.” The two people had been through so many near death incidents that the matter of missing an arm became trivial. And Xiao Longnü was even joking about it. Yang Guo also laughed and retorted, “If both of my arms got cut off, I’d still have two feet. Only that using my soles to help you circulate the energy would be hilariously smelly and not quite elegant.” Xiao Longnü scoffed and then silently recited the principle of reverse energy flow. After a while, she said, “I’ve got it!”

Yang Guo saw that the fire was burning too intense so he got up to slow it down. And just when they were about to begin circulating the energy, he suddenly called out, “Ai yo! I almost missed one important detail! Xiao Longnü said, “What is it?” Yang Guo pointed to Guo Xiang who was sleeping at the foot of the bed and said, “At a critical moment, if this little devil cries out, it will be quite a disaster!” Xiao Longnü then murmured, “Very dangerous!” When one was circulating and cultivating energy, the most evil taboo was a disturbed mind. Quite some time ago, Xiao Longnü and Yang Guo were practicing their Jade Maiden skills and were discovered by Zhen Zhibing and Zhao Zhijing. Xiao Longnü’s anger caused her to spit up blood and she almost died. In addition to that, at that time her body was normally healthy. Today she was heavy injured, how would she be able to withstand any bit of distraction?

Yang Guo mixed half a bowl of the bee honey, picked up Guo Xiang, and fed her before moving her to a distant stone chamber. He shut two doors between them so even if she cried out, they wouldn’t hear her. Then he came back to stay by the chilled jade bed and said, “To clear the thirty six major pressure points your body, I think at best it will take ten days and at worst about half a month. Originally it should have taken many, many days because it’s hard to avoid distraction. But our Gu Mu is completely isolated from the outside world, making it the best place on earth for recovery. Even the most remote wild mountain or valley won’t be as good because there will always be the sound of birds or the smell of flowers to disturb one’s mind.”

Xiao Longnü smiled and said, “My injury was caused by the Quanzhen Taoists but it was their founding master who gave us the tomb chamber and the Chilled Jade Bed for me to rest and recover in. So their merits and crimes actually cancelled out each other.”

Then Yang Guo said, “What about that Jinlun Fawang? We can’t let him get away with it.”

Xiao Longnü sighed and said, “So long as I can live, what else do you have to be unhappy about?”

Yang Guo held her hand and said, “You are right. This time after you’ve recovered, we’ll never fight with people again. God is so kind to us. Hmmm…”

Xiao Longnü gently said, “We’ll go south to become farmers and we’ll raise a lot of chickens and ducks…” As she was saying that, she felt the heat energy passing into her body. With a trembling heart, she used the reverse energy flow technique that Yang Guo taught her to circulate that energy.

This healing method of using the reverse energy flow technique and the Chilled Jade Bed to complement each other was really strange but the result was also very effective. Years ago, Reverend Yi Deng had used the “Divine One Yang Finger” to cure Huang Rong’s injury by circulating energy and clearing all her pressure points in pretty much the same way. The difference was that using the One Yang Finger to cure an illness ravenously consumed a lot of Reverend Yi Deng’s internal energy but hence lead to a quick recovery. Yang Guo’s method would take many days to see results. And more than that, for a non-martial person who was heavily injured, a master of the One Yang Finger would use his profound internal energy to help the injured circulate the Yang energy and thus bring him back to health. In Xiao Longnü’s case, she didn’t have a very deep internal energy foundation but she and Yang Guo were from the same sect, yet could use different techniques. Not even Ouyang Feng coming back from the grave or Huang Yaoshi arriving could create a harmony between the helper and the helped like this. And nor would they be able to help Xiao Longnü to reverse her energy flow without innumerable difficulties.