CHAPTER ONE
THE BLACK SWAMP RECLUSE
1
The condors flew through the dark and heavy night. Guo Jing, clinging to the bird’s neck, called to Ulaan using his internal strength, urging the Fergana horse to keep pace on the ground.
The only light came from the mountaintop blaze they had fled. There was not a hint of the moon overhead. Not a single star in sight.
The condors were exceptionally strong, but soon the load of a fully grown human began to tell. As each flap of their wings grew more strained, they dipped lower and lower.
The moment they touched down, Guo Jing rushed over to check on Lotus. She was draped lifeless over the female condor’s back. Qiu Qianren’s Iron Palm strike had thrust her to the very brink of death. He quickly undid the sash that he had wound around the bird to keep Lotus secure in flight, and massaged her acupressure points. It was a long time before she opened her eyes.
Guo Jing stood rooted to the spot, cradling her in his arms, unsure what to do. He wanted to ask her for advice, but she was too groggy to speak.
He peered into the black wilderness, his wits still scrambled from their narrow escape. He wanted to summon Ulaan but feared giving away their position. The belligerent Qiu Qianren must still be hunting for them with his Iron Palm Gang followers.
At length, he took small, cautious steps, his legs swallowed up by dense undergrowth. There was no path, no trail, just thorns tearing at his trousers, scoring his skin, but pain was the least of his concerns right now. He trudged on, deeper and deeper into the inky night.
He forced his eyelids apart as wide as possible, yet he could make out little in the gloom. He advanced gingerly, worried that he might step into a void, a pit or a gorge. However slow his progress, he had to keep going, in case the Iron Palm Gang were still in pursuit.
He plodded on for more than two li, until a star twinkling at the sky’s edge to his left caught his attention. He squinted at the faint glimmer, trying to work out its position in the heavens to get his bearings, and realized it was the glow of a lantern.
It could be a settlement! Guo Jing was overjoyed.
He shifted Lotus from his arms onto his back and broke into a jog, heading directly for the light. In no time at all, he had covered another li, and the shrubbery seemed to have thickened into a forest. The beacon, though dim, hailed him through the branches. He plowed on, and, before long, stumbled onto a track that twisted and coiled through the woods. Then, the flicker disappeared. He scaled the nearest tree to reorientate himself.
The lamplight had somehow moved. It was now behind him.
He hopped down and waded through the vegetation in the direction of the glow, only to stop when he realized it had moved again. He climbed up another tree, jumped down, darted ahead—again and again—but it kept shifting, so that it was always at his back.
No closer to the light than when he had first spotted it, Guo Jing discovered they were now buried so deep in the thicket that the condors would not be able to locate them. His head spun from running round and round after the elusive gleam, and then it struck him. He had been disorientated like this before. There was something strange about the paths in these woods.
Guo Jing ran through his options. I could jump from tree to tree. But what if I stumble? I’ve got Lotus on my back. She’ll be scratched by the branches! Yet I can’t sit here and wait for daybreak. Her injury needs tending …
One thing became apparent: bumbling around like a headless fly would achieve nothing. He stood still, collected himself and smoothed his breathing.
“Go right, at an angle,” Lotus whispered.
“How are you feeling?”
Relief washed over Guo Jing. She’s conscious! But all he got in reply was a worrying grunt into the back of his neck. He followed her directions without another word, and on the seventeenth step, he heard:
“Left. Eight steps.”
He obeyed.
“Turn around. Thirteen steps.”
Guo Jing forged ahead through the pitch-black forest, twisting and turning as Lotus instructed. Although shrouded in a fog of pain, she had gleaned enough about the trail from his blundering to realize that it was man-made and mapped out according to the principles of the Five Elements and the Mysterious Gates. If it were formed naturally, she would have been as hopelessly befuddled as Guo Jing was, but her father Apothecary Huang had devoted a lifetime of study to this very subject and taught her much about it. She had the ability to navigate a path through this wood with her eyes closed.
Lotus pointed left, then right; from time to time, they were forced to backtrack to make progress. Guo Jing felt they were meandering farther and farther from their goal, but, before long, he found himself clear of the trees and saw what he had been chasing.
Light, straight ahead. Not a lantern, but lamplight spilling from two thatched huts, diffused by a white mist.
He ran.
“No!”
Too late.
Aiyooo! Guo Jing found himself knee deep in mud, stuck fast in a bog. He mustered his qi and sprang, upward and back, freeing his legs from the mire. The stink of peat assaulted his nostrils.
“Sir, we beg you to grant us entry. One of us is grievously hurt,” he said, projecting his voice. “We seek only a drink for our parched lips and a brief respite under your roof.”
He waited for a reply. Nothing. Absolute silence. He asked again. Still no response. He restated his request for the third time.
“You’ve managed to get this far. You can surely find your way in,” a woman answered, making no effort to hide her displeasure.
Guo Jing would rather camp in the wild than impose himself on an inhospitable stranger, but Lotus was in no state to brave the elements. She needed shelter. How were they going to cross this quagmire surrounding the shacks? He described their predicament to his half-conscious beloved.
“Tell me about the huts,” she mumbled with difficulty. “One round, one square?”
Guo Jing strained to make out their silhouettes through the haze. A heartbeat later, he cried, “You’re right!” She never ceased to surprise him.
“We can cross the bog from the opposite side,” she said, wheezing. “Go all the way round.” Once he reached the spot she knew to be the starting point, she stopped him. “Now, face the light and walk straight ahead, three steps. Next, diagonal left, four steps. Then, straight again, three steps. After that, four steps to the right, also at an angle. Weave your way forward, straight, left, straight, right. Count your steps. Don’t get it wrong.”
Guo Jing probed with his toes, and, as Lotus had foretold, he found a foothold—a wooden stake buried in the sludge. Feeling his way through the slough according to her instructions, he reached another post, then another. Some were at an angle, others wobbled. Were it not for his superb lightness kung fu, he would have toppled into the morass after a few steps.
Keeping his mind focused and his breathing under control, he managed to cross the swamp by the one hundred and nineteenth step, alighting on firm ground in front of the square hut, but there was no opening or entrance along the perimeter wall.
“Jump in from here. Land on your left,” she breathed.
Guo Jing tightened his arms around Lotus, making sure she would not be jolted, and sprang over the wall as he had been told. When he touched down, he was awed by her ability to anticipate every detail of their new surroundings.
The courtyard was split in two. A pond to the right, and to the left, solid ground.
He crossed this unusual garden and headed toward the hut. The entrance was wide open; no doors guarded this circular moon gate.
“Go in. It’s safe.”
2
“Master, we ask for your forbearance. Circumstances have compelled us to impose on you.” Guo Jing allowed time for an answer that never came before stepping across the threshold.
The room’s furnishings were spartan. Standing in his way was a long table, on which seven oil lamps were arranged in the shape of the Northern Dipper constellation. Beyond, a grizzle-haired woman sat on her haunches, a hemp robe draped over her shoulders. She had heard them come in, but her eyes did not wander for an instant from the clusters of bamboo slips that were spread out across the floor.
With great tenderness, Guo Jing placed Lotus on a chair. She looked waxen, even in the warm glow of the firelight, without a tinge of color to her cheeks. The sight made his heart sore. He wanted to ask the old woman for a cup of water, but the words caught in his throat—he could not bring himself to interrupt her.
Lotus, after a short rest, revived somewhat and grew curious about their reluctant host. The bamboo slips that so captivated the woman were all about the same size, each roughly four inches long and one-fifth of an inch wide. They were counting rods, arranged in four rows to calculate—Lotus scanned the groupings—the square root of fifty-five thousand, two hundred and twenty-five. She could see that the woman had already worked out the first two numbers of the answer, two and three, and was moving the slips to determine the third and final.
“Five. Two hundred and thirty-five,” Lotus blurted out.
The woman whipped around and fixed the intruders with a glare before turning back to her mathematical problem.
For the first time, Guo Jing and Lotus were able to see their host’s face. Her forehead was marked by deep wrinkles, but the skin on her cheeks was smooth and unblemished. Her features were delicate and she seemed to be no more than forty years old, though the lines on her brow and the graying hair belonged to someone at least two decades older. They wondered what hardship could age a person so.
At length, the woman stopped working with the counting rods.
Five! The same as the little girl’s guess. She glanced at Lotus in bewilderment; then her eyes hardened. You just got lucky! Now leave me in peace!
She turned away and noted “two hundred and thirty-five” on a piece of paper, then reset the slips to calculate the cube root of thirty-four million, twelve thousand, two hundred and twenty-four.
In the time it took the woman to place the counting rods into six rows and work out the first number, which was three, Lotus had reached the solution: “Three hundred and twenty-four.”
The woman sneered in derision, assuming that she was spouting nonsense, and continued to switch the slips around for the time it takes to drink a pot of tea. At last, she arrived at the result.
Three, two, four.
She stood up, stretched and shot Lotus a black look.
“Come with me.” She scowled, pointing to the inner chamber, then picked up an oil lamp from the long table and disappeared inside.
Guo Jing helped Lotus to her feet and guided her into the room. The wall was curved and a layer of sand covered the floor—vertical strokes, horizontal lines and circles were scratched into this temporary surface. There were also characters and short phrases inscribed around the marks, such as Supreme, Heaven Unknown, Earth Unknown, Man Unknown and Matter Unknown.
Guo Jing hovered at the entrance, unable to make any sense of the writing on the floor and wary of disturbing it if he took another step, whereas Lotus, who had been taught mathematics and advanced reckoning skills by her father, instantly recognized the symbols and words—they represented some of the more difficult calculations that were in the process of being solved. These equations, though complex, could be worked out methodically by anyone familiar with the Heaven Unknown technique.
Steadying herself against Guo Jing, Lotus pulled the Dog Beater from her belt and started scribbling in the sand. She solved the seven or eight questions marked on the floor in the twinkling of an eye.
The woman had been struggling with those equations for several months, and seeing them resolved with such ease sent her into a stupor. After a long silence, she asked, “Are you human?”
Lotus smiled, then tried to explain through ragged gasps for air: “The methods of the Heaven Unknown or the Four Unknowns aren’t difficult. You do realize there are nineteen unknowns altogether, don’t you?
“Beyond ‘Man’ is Spirit, Luminance, Cloud, Nebula, Rampart, Tower, Height, Above and Heaven;
Beneath ‘Man’ is Earth, Below, Decrease, Descent, Decease, Wellspring, Darkness and Specter.
“Well, things do get complicated when you try to solve the Nineteenth Unknown.”
All color drained from the woman’s face. She slumped on the sand and buried her face in her hands, struggling to wrap her mind around the implications of the girl’s words. And yet, when she eventually looked up, she sounded almost glad. “You’re a hundred times more skilled in reckoning than me. Now, how would you solve this? Line up the numbers one to nine in three columns of three. Whether down, across or diagonal, the sum must be fifteen.”
Lotus chuckled to herself. That’s a child’s game! The Nine Halls Method is the foundation of Peach Blossom Island, and Papa applied it along with the interaction of the Five Elements.
“The significance of the Nine Halls,
The method in the Hallowed Turtle.”
Lotus chanted as she scrawled on the floor with the Dog Beater, her voice still weak from her injury.
“Four and two as shoulders, eight and six are feet.
Three on the left, seven on the right,
Nine as crown and one as shoe,
In the center five sits tight.”
Every last vestige of life now left the woman’s already ashen cheeks. “I thought I invented this, but it’s so common that there’s even a verse about it.”
“The Nine Halls Diagram is the most basic form. There are grids of four by four, five by five, even of a hundred, and none of them is that complex. Take the four-by-four as an example. First, you write down the numbers in four columns, then you start swapping positions, beginning with the four corners. One is moved to sixteen, four is switched with thirteen. Then the four numbers in the middle trade places: six with eleven, seven with ten. The sum of each row, column or diagonal line is always thirty-four.”
The woman drew on the sand as Lotus explained and was startled by the simplicity of the solution.
“We can also replace the squares of the Nine Halls with the octagons of the Eight Trigrams, so eight times nine is seventy-two. We start by writing a number from one to seventy-two on each side of the octagon.” Lotus illustrated her workings on the sand as she spoke, halting from time to time to catch her breath. “Done right, the total of each individual Eight Trigram will always be two hundred and ninety-two. And there’ll be thirteen octagons together—the original nine converted from each square of the Nine Halls, plus four more that sit in-between. You’ve probably never heard of the Script of River Luo and its many variations. I wouldn’t have known any of this without my teacher.”
Gaping at the complex configuration of numbers on the floor, the woman hauled herself unsteadily to her feet.
Copyright © 1959, 1976, 2003 by Jin Yong (Louis Cha). English translation copyright © 2021 by Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant
