The Legend of the Condor Heroes

The man carrying the firewood was about thirty or so; his clothing was green colored with a belt made of straw around his waist and straw sandals on his feet. His hands and feet were huge and his face appeared without emotion. He put down the two loads of wood and rested his carrying pole against the table. "Errrrr"! The entire table was pushed several centimeters down by the weight of the pole. Shocked, Wanyan Honglie inspected the pole closely, but there seemed nothing out of the ordinary with this pole. It was black and smooth all over with a slight curve in the middle and two little caps on either end. For this pole to be that heavy, it had to be made of iron or some other kind of heavy metal. A wooden ax hung from the man's waist and there were some noticeable dents on the blade of the ax.

The two of them had just sat down when the sound of foot steps came from the stairs as two more men came walking up. The girl shouted: "Fifth Brother, Sixth Brother, did you two come together?" The first man was big and tall, at least 130 or 140 kilograms [around 285 to 308 lbs], he wore an apron around his waist. His body was naturally oily and the top of his shirt was open, revealing some of what must be a chest full of hair. His sleeves were all rolled up as well and his arms were covered with black hair that was several centimeters long and hanging from his waist was a foot-long knife. From his appearance he was a butcher. The one behind him was unusually short with a small felt hat on his head and a small scale and bamboo basket in his hands; he looked just like a street vendor. Wanyan Honglie could not help but wonder: "These three people obviously know martial arts, yet they call these two average city dwellers brothers?"

Suddenly there came a constant clunking outside on the street, like that made from metal hitting stone. The clunking slowly came up the staircase, and a blind man dressed in ragged clothing followed. He looked around forty years of age; his lips were thin and his cheekbones prominent. His face looked gray and seemed full of hate and anger. The five people sitting at the table all stood up and greeted: "Big Brother!" The girl lightly knocked on the seat of one of the chairs: "Big Brother, you sit here." The blind man replied: "Alright, is Second Brother here yet?" The man that looked like a butcher replied: "Second Brother has arrived in Jiaxing, so he should be here any time soon." The girl laughed: "Speak of the devil!" The sound of someone dragging his feet as he walked came from the staircase.

Before Wanyan Honglie figured it all out, up the stairs appeared a dirty torn fan which was flicked a couple of times, and only then did a poor, lackadaisical scholar come walking up. The very one that he had met earlier in the inn. A thought popped in Wanyan Honglie's mind: "He must have been the one that took my money…." Just as his anger was rising, the man shot a smile at him and then stuck his tongue out and made a face; only then did he turn to the others and greet them. It seemed that he was second among them. Wanyan Honglie speculated: "Looks like every one of them is a martial arts master; if I can somehow take them under my wing, they would be an enormous amount of help for our endeavors. As for the small matter of the poor scholar taking my money, that could easily be forgiven. It would be best to see what's going on first." The poor and pedantic scholar downed a cup of wine, then proceeded, still shaking his head from one side to the other, to loudly orate: "Dishonorable riches… let it go … The Jade Emperor [Yu Huang Da Di, the Supreme Deity of Taoism] will get mad!" As he was reciting these lines, he reached into his shirt and took out one gold or silver yuan bao after another and neatly lined them up on the table. In total there were eight of silver and two of gold.

From these yuan baos' color and shape, Wanyan Honglie knew that these were his. But he did not get mad; on the contrary, this piqued his interest even more: "Entering my room and stealing the money wasn't hard; but he only tapped my shoulder one time with his fan, yet he was able to steal all the money that was inside my shirt without my noticing. That magical hand skill of his is indeed something rarely seen in this world."

From the actions of these six men and a woman, it seemed like they were doing the inviting, and had invited two tables of men here for a drink. Because the guests hadn't arrived yet, the seven of them were only drinking some light wine and the dishes hadn't been brought out either. On the other two tables was only one pair of chopsticks each; that meant there were only two guests. Wanyan Honglie mused: "These seven freaks are waiting for guests; I wonder what kind of weird guests they'll have?" After waiting for about the time it would take to boil a pot of water, a voice came up from downstairs: "Amida Buddha!" The blind man spoke up: "The venerable monk Jiaomu [Burnt Wood] is here!" He stood up; the other six freaks followed him as they all stood up in preparation to welcome the guest. "Amida Buddha!" The voice said again as a monk that looked every bit like a burnt piece of wood came walking up the stairs. This monk was about forty or so, he was wearing a yellow monk's robe and in his hand was a piece of wood with one end burnt black. It's unclear what it's used for.

After the monk and the seven of them went through the formal greetings, the poor scholar led him to one of the empty tables and all of them sat down. The monk rose slightly out of his seat in respect and said: "When that person came all the way to our gates, I knew that I was no match for him. Now that the Seven Heroes of the South are willing to lend a hand, I could not be anymore grateful."

The blind man replied: "Venerable Monk Jiaomu, you do not need to be so polite. We seven brothers and sister have all been dependent upon the monk's hospitality now and then; now that monk Jiaomu is in trouble, how could we not get involved? Besides, that man came and, relying entirely upon his martial arts skills, made trouble for the monk for no reason. It is clear that he thinks nothing of us here in the martial world from this area. Even if the Venerable Monk did not ask us, we would have come had we found out about…."

He hadn't finished what he was going to say when the stairs started groaning as if they were going to collapse. It was like a huge, heavy beast, like an elephant, or at least a huge water buffalo, was walking up the stairs. The owner of the place and the waiters were all screaming downstairs: "Ay! You idiot, you can't take that up there!" "The stairs are going to collapse!" "Quick, quick, stop him, get him back down here!" But the sound of wood bending got louder and louder. "Crack"! One of the wooden stair treads snapped. Soon two more snapped as well.

For a moment Wanyan Honglie wasn't sure he believed what he was seeing; a Taoist priest came walking up the stairs with a huge copper vat in his hands. After taking another look, he was frightened out of his wits; the Taoist priest was the 'Changchun Zi' [Eternal Spring] elder Qiu Chuji.

Wanyan Honglie's mission as emissary to the Song Imperial Court was to coerce some of the officials of the Song court, so that when they eventually invade the south, there would be agents lending a hand from the inside. The Song Emissary, Wang Daoqian, who accompanied him down from Yanjing (Present Day Beijing) was greedy and corrupt; he had already secretly sworn allegiance to the Jin dynasty. When they arrived at Linan, he was the one that did the legwork for Wanyan Honglie. But unexpectedly he was killed suddenly by a Taoist priest; even his head, heart, and liver was gone. Shocked and in fear that someone had found out about his plan, Wanyan Honglie decided to lead his bodyguards and, with the best city guards of Linan leading the way, personally chase down the assassin. When they chased him to Ox Village they caught up with Qiu Chuji. Unexpectedly, this Taoist priest was a martial arts master. Wanyan Honglie hadn't even made a move before he was pierced through the shoulder by an arrow that Qiu Chuji threw back. The men that came with him were all killed. If Wanyan Honglie had not quietly crawled away during the confusion of the battle and was then rescued and treated by Bao Xiruo, the dignified and honorable royal prince of the Jin dynasty would have died there in a farm village without even really knowing how he had been killed.