Chapter 25 – Domestic troubles and foreign invasion, Part 9
Zhou Botong laughed. “What do you mean “ordinary? Are you saying he’s stupid? Tell me; am I intelligent, or stupid?”
Xiao Longnu smiled and said: “I look at you and although you’re not young, you act silly. Sometimes, you say weird things and you act a little mad.”
Zhou Botong clapped his hands, saying: “Ah, you’re right. I once taught this Zuo You Hu method to Brother Guo Jing and it only took him a few days to learn it. Afterwards, he tried to teach the same lesson to his wife. You said that this child, Huang Rong is sharp and clever with a mind higher than that of a seventy-eight year old man, but she could not understand this kung fu. I thought that the little idiot Guo Jing probably did not teach her properly, so Lao Wan Tong decided to come and teach her himself. I repeated the left hand and right strokes with her, but she still didn’t understand how to combine the two together. It was then that I realized that some men may learn a method that other men would spend a lifetime learning, yet never understand. You see, intelligence is not the only measure of success.”
Xiao Longnu said: “Don’t tell me that when stupid people learn this kung fu, they can surpass even the smart ones. I can’t believe it.”
Zhou Botong grinned and said: “I look at you and see that your intelligence is more or less equal to that of young Huang Rong. Your wugong is not that far from hers either. Since you don’t believe, why not try to draw a square on the ground with your left index finger and a circle with your right at the same time?”
Xiao Longnu followed his instructions and extended both her index fingers to the ground, making downward strokes to create the figures. However, it turned out that the square looked like a circle and the circle looked like a square.
Zhou Botong laughingly said: “See? I told you it’s not easy.”
Smiling faintly, Xiao Longnu emptied her mind before extending her index fingers again. This time, she was able to draw a perfect square and a perfect circle.
In his astonishment, Zhou Botong could only stammer: “You…you…you…” A moment passed before he could speak: “You studied this before?”
“Ah, I haven’t,” Xiao Longnu replied. “Besides, didn’t you say this is difficult?”
Zhou Botong scratched the white hairs on his head and asked: “Then how did you know how to draw?”
Xiao Longnu said: “I don’t know. I didn’t think. I just held out my fingers and drew the figures.”
As she said this, she wrote the three characters “lao wan tong” with her left hand and the three characters “xiao long nu” with her right. The two hand strokes were so neatly written they looked like the ones found in books and the handwriting was also very elegant.
Delighted, Zhou Botong declared: “This shows that you learned this method even when you were still in your mother’s womb! This is so much better!”
Thereupon, he taught her how to attack with her left and defend with her right, strike with her right and block with her left. It was in Tao Hua Island that he first learned this strange kung fu that was unmatched under the heavens so when the old man spoke, she listened.
In truth, the essence of the Zuo You Hu technique was the four characters “Fin Xin Er Yong.” Often, people with high intelligence have complicated thoughts and they always rushed from one thought to another. *During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Zi wrote the Qi Bu Shi, which depicted the turbulence of Wu Dynasty [5]. The poem could be likened to that of a person trying to learn the Zuo You Hu kung fu technique, only to have the turbulence that makes it impossible to learn occur inside the person’s mind.
Xiao Longnu’s kung fu was based on suppressing all emotions and desires. Even when she was only eight or nine years old she mastered her feelings, stopping them like one would water. After she fell madly in love with Yang Guo, however, the constant pain in her heart from thinking of him caused her kung fu to gradually decline. But now, this weird technique was introduced, unexpectedly helping her to recover.
After she resumed practicing the Gumu Pai nei gong, she was actually at the same level as Lin Chaoying when she was pining over her lost love. Their mind sets were the same for the most part so they had more or less the same capacity for understanding. As soon as Zhou Botong moved his finger, she understood his meaning quickly. But it was only because Zhou Botong, Guo Jing, and Xiao Longnu shared the same personality, innocence of heart, and that was why people like Huang Rong, Yang Guo, and Zhu Ziliu could not learn it.
Zhou Botong had yet to remove the poison from his body, but he continued to speak and draw with enthusiasm. Xiao Longnu, on the other hand, kept on nodding her head, but in her mind she was secretly trying to figure out how to use the Yunu sword play with her right hand and the Quanzhen sword play with her left. And so after several hours of playing this Chinese finger game with him, she finally grasped the idea.
“I understand completely,” she spoke.
To test it out, she moved her hands, making circular and thrusting motions with it.
Zhou Botong’s jaw dropped. He could only shout: “Strange! Strange!”
Guarding the cave outside, Fawang and Zhao Zhijing heard the two of them muttering and laughing with each other so they pressed closer but they could only hear snatches of their conversation, not enough to make the meaning clear.
Xiao Longnu raised her head at that moment and saw them eavesdropping. She straightened and said, “We’re getting out of here!”
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