She thought that with the weather being blisteringly hot, if she cooked some rice and dishes, they would definitely spoil if kept in the room for seven days and nights. She went to the village market to buy a picul [approximately 50 kg or 100 lbs] of watermelons.
The farmer who sold the watermelons brought everything back to Sha Gu’s inn and stacked them on the floor. On the way out after being paid he said, “Our Ox Village’s watermelons are sweet and crispy. Once Miss tastes them, you will agree with me.”
On hearing the words ‘Ox Village’ [niu jia cun], Huang Rong’s heart skipped a beat. “So it turns out this is Ox Village,” she said to herself. “This is Jing ge ge’s hometown.” She was afraid that if Guo Jing found out his mind would be disturbed and therefore, she replied noncommittally.
She waited until the villager went out before going to the hidden chamber. Guo Jing was asleep and blood no longer seeped out through the cotton cloth wrapped around his waist. Huang Rong opened the cabinet, turned the iron bowl to open the secret chamber’s door, and took the watermelons inside one by one. Then only one thing remained outside…Sha Gu. Huang Rong had repeatedly warned Sha Gu not to tell anybody that they would be staying inside the chamber. No matter what kind of earth shattering things happened, she was not supposed to call out from outside.
Sha Gu did not understand her intentions, but seeing Huang Rong’s serious expression, she said she understood and repeatedly nodded her head. “You want to eat watermelons inside and you don’t want anybody to know. After you finish eating watermelons, you will come back out again. Sha Gu will not tell.”
Huang Rong was happy. “If Sha Gu doesn’t tell, Sha Gu is a good girl,” she said. “If Sha Gu tells, Sha Gu is a bad girl.”
“Sha Gu won’t tell…Sha Gu is a good girl,” Sha Gu said repeatedly.
Huang Rong fed Guo Jing another big bowl of rice porridge and ate one herself. Then she helped him enter the secret chamber. As she was closing the door from the inside, she saw Sha Gu’s simple face showing a smile. Sha Gu said, “Sha Gu won’t tell.”
Suddenly Huang Rong’s heart fluttered. “This girl is so dumb and what if every time she meet someone she says, ‘Those two eat watermelons inside the cabinet, but Sha Gu won’t tell?’ The only way to ensure our safety is to kill her.”
She grew up under the influence of her father. Benevolence and justice, the differences between good and evil didn’t matter to them. Although she knew that Sha Gu had a very close relationship with Qu Lingfeng, right at that moment she presented a danger to Guo Jing’s life. Even if there were a dozen Sha Gus, she would kill them all.
She took the dagger from Guo Jing’s waist and walked out of the room.
End of Chapter 23.
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Chapter 24 – Healing in the Secret Room
Translated by Frans Soetomo
Sha Gu walked over to Liang Ziweng and said, “You hit my nose, I must hit your nose. You hit me once; I must pay you back three times.” Her fist went straight to his nose.
Huang Rong had walked two steps before she turned her head and saw Guo Jing’s suspicious expression, as if he could see the murderous look on her face. She thought, “I don’t have a problem with killing Sha Gu, but Jing ge ge might ask me about it later. He might not ask me now, he might not even raise this matter…ever, but in his heart he might harbor hatred towards me and that won’t be good. All right, we’ll just have to take this huge risk.” She closed the door immediately and then looked around the room carefully.
In the western corner, near the roof of that small room, there was a small ventilation window about one foot square where the sunlight entered the room through a sheet of clamshell curtain. It was by this light that they were able to see everything inside the room. The ventilation hole was dusty, so Huang Rong took ut her dagger and cleaned it out. The bad smell in the room still lingered, but they did not seem to notice it. In light of the life and death experiences they’d faced earlier, the smelly, dusty room felt like a sanctuary to them.
Guo Jing leaned against the wall, smiled slightly and said, “There is no better place for us to treat my injury than in this room. Unfortunately we are accompanied by two dead people. Are you afraid?”
Inside, Huang Rong was actually frightened, but she was determined not to think about it. She said with a smile, “One was my older Martial Brother [shige], he certainly won’t harm me, and the other was a rice bucket government official. Alive he wouldn’t scare me and by becoming a ghost he would scare me even less.” She immediately kicked the pair of skeletons towards the northern corner of the room. She took the straw mat covering the watermelons, spread it out on the floor, and then she piled the watermelons around it within arm’s reach. “What do you think?” she asked.
“Very good,” Guo Jing replied. “Now we can start.”
Huang Rong helped him sit down on the straw mat and she sat cross-legged to his left. When she raised her head she saw a small peep-hole the size of a coin in the wall right in front of her. She looked through it and to her delight she saw a mirror in which she could see the entire room outside.
Apparently the people who built this secret room had planned it well. When they were hiding from enemies inside this room, they could still observe the activities outside in the mirror. It had been unused for a long time and the mirror was covered with a thick layer of dust. She took out a handkerchief, wrapped it around her index finger, and poked it through the hole to clean the mirror.
She saw Sha Gu sitting on the floor throwing pebbles while humming a tune. Huang Rong could not hear clearly what she was humming, so she pressed her ear to the hole to listen. It seemed Sha Gu was humming a lullaby: “Swing, swing, swing; swing to the Grandmother’s bridge. Grandmother calls me the precious baby …”
It was strange, but the more she listened, the more she felt the touching emotions that song carried.
Her heart overflowed with tender affection. She could not help but wonder: “Could this song be the one her mother sang to her when she was little …? If my mother had not died, would she have sung to me like this?” Thinking of this, her eyes became moist.
Guo Jing saw her sad expression and said, “What are you thinking? My injury is not that bad…don’t feel so sad.”
Huang Rong moved her hand to wipe away tears and said, “Quickly teach me the internal energy cultivation technique.” Thereupon Guo Jing started to slowly recite the ‘Treating Injuries’ chapter from the ‘Nine Yin Manual’.
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There was a saying amongst martial arts practitioners: ‘Learn how to take a beating first before learning how to beat someone.’ Therefore, the most basic lesson in martial arts was how to take a beating without getting seriously injured. When the martial arts became more profound, the practitioner must learn how to protect their own body and their life by sealing acupoints to treat an injury, set broken bones, cure poison, treat wounds, and many other kinds of advanced techniques.
Better techniques would result in better skills and it did not matter if one’s martial arts skills were unmatched, there would come a day when he would fall. The ‘Treating Injuries’ portion of the
‘Nine Yin Manual’ explained how a highly skilled martial artist could use his own internal energy to treat an injury and how to circulate his own and other’s internal energy for treating internal injuries. As for broken bones, weapon-inflicted wounds or other external injury treatments, it was assumed that the person who practiced the ‘Manual’ did not need further instructions.
Huang Rong needed to listen to something once and she would remember forever. There were several unclear passages in the ‘Manual’, which they needed to discuss in detail. One had a strong foundation in the Quanzhen Sect’s internal energy cultivation and the other had extraordinary intelligence. With some deliberation, they were able to grasp almost everything. Huang Rong held out her right hand, clasped Guo Jing’s left, and they started to train diligently according to the techniques in the ‘Manual’.
After training for four hours they took a short break. Taking her knife in her left hand, Huang Rong cut up a watermelon. She fed some to Guo Jing, while her right hand still clasped Guo Jing’s left.
After training for several hours, the tightness in Guo Jing’s chest gradually decreased as the warm energy from Huang Rong’s palm slowly dispersed into his bones. The pain in his side also gradually reduced. He thought the techniques contained in the manual were truly incomparable. He did not dare to be negligent and proceeded with care.
When the time came for them to take their third break, the light streaming through the ventilation window had gradually dimmed. It was near dusk. Not only did Guo Jing feel that his chest was a lot less constricted, but Huang Rong also felt invigorated. The two chatted a while before continuing their training. Suddenly they heard running footsteps that stopped in front of the inn. Then several people came in. An insolent voice shouted, “Quickly get some food. Your masters here are starving!”
They recognized that the voice belonged to the ‘Three-Headed Dragon’ Hou Tonghai. Guo Jing and Huang Rong looked at each other in surprise. Huang Rong quickly looked through the small hole and to her surprise, she saw in the mirror not only Hou Tonghai, but Wanyan Honglie, Ouyang Feng, Yang Kang, Peng Lianhu and the others. Huang Rong had no idea where Sha Gu had gone to play.