Chapter 32 – What is love?, Part 18
Yang Guo thought, “The only way to fight against your frightening strength with a wooden sword is to dodge, evade and wait for a chance to attack from afar.” He made another wooden sword and once again, fought with the Divine Eagle in the snow. This time, he managed ten stances before the sword broke.
Training as hard as this without stop, Yang Guo felt that the Divine Eagle was like a strict teacher and showed no signs of letting up; he was touched by this but he was also ashamed of himself, “If I don’t manage to learn the wooden sword, won’t I have let down Brother Eagle’s good intentions? Anyway, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, how can I let it slip away?”
From then on, he thought about how to increase his internal energy, about how to evade and how to strike out with the sword even in his dreams. He trained rigorously and as a result, his thoughts of Xiao Longnü did not engulf his mind as it had in the previous months. The poison from the Passion Flower had now been cleansed from his body, his internal energy had improved, he was in prime shape and he no longer had the haggard and distressed look of old.
It was now the anniversary of his parting with Xiao Longnü. Yang Guo said, “Brother Eagle, I want to visit the Passionless Valley; I’m going to have to leave you for a while.” He then picked up his wooden sword and made his way out of the valley. The Divine Eagle followed. When they reached the fork in the road, Yang Guo bowed to the Divine Eagle and made his way on the road to the north. But to his surprise, the Divine Eagle tugged at his clothes and pulled him towards the south.
Yang Guo said, “Brother Eagle, I have something to do in the north, let us part now.” But the eagle kept on pulling him south. Yang Guo was curious, “Brother Eagle has been very understanding; why is he being so stubborn now?” He could not get through to it with words and could only follow the Divine Eagle south. When the Divine Eagle saw that Yang Guo was following, it let go of Yang Guo’s clothes: but as soon as Yang Guo turned around and tried to go north, it got hold of his clothes once again.
Yang Guo thought, “Brother Eagle is a divine creature, it must have a reason for wanting me to go to the south with him, I might as well go.” He dropped his thoughts of returning to Passionless Valley and followed the eagle to the southeast.
After traveling over ten li, Yang Guo suddenly had a thought, “Could it be that Brother Eagle is leading me to the South Sea to allow me to see Long’er?” As soon as this thought finished, he was filled with excitement and started to take greater strides as he followed the Divine Eagle. Within a month, they had reached the coast of the South Sea.
He stood on a rock and gazed into the sea. He watched the waves of the sea as all manners of emotions filled his mind. After a while, he heard the thunderous sounds of the tides that went on without stop. After spending part of his childhood on the Peach Blossom Island, he knew that the tides of the sea always kept its cycle; it would come at the first and seventh hour of the day. The sun was in the sky and it appeared that it was the time for the turn of the tide. The tide was getting louder and louder, sounding like the hoofs of ten thousand horses. The tide made a white line as it surged towards the coast; the force shown by the tide was greater than the hue and cries of thunder and lightning. Yang Guo could not believe that there existed such a force and after seeing this display, he couldn’t stop his face from changing expression.
In the blink of an eye, the waves had reached him and were about to engulf him. Yang Guo leaped backwards, but suddenly he felt a great force pushing him from behind. It was the Divine Eagle using its wings to hit him. He was in midair and had no control over where he was going. With a splash he landed in the foamy waves. He felt a salty taste in his mouth as he swallowed two mouthfuls of seawater.
It was an extremely dangerous situation but luckily for him, he had spent a long time training in the mountain torrents and he immediately used the ‘Thousand Pound Plummet’, steadying himself on the rocks below the sea’s surface. The bottom of the sea was a lot calmer than the turbulent waves on top. He gathered his thoughts and immediately knew what was happening, “Brother Eagle has led me here because he wants me to train my sword arts in the waves of the sea.” He lifted his legs and leapt up to the surface of the sea and into the fierce winds, meeting the first of the waves head on. He pushed against the water with his left arm and leapt above the waves before quickly drawing a deep breath and returning to the bottom of the sea.
He repeated this until the tide calmed; by then he was so exhausted that his face had turned white. When the tide came again that night, he took the wooden sword with him and leapt into the waves to again train his sword skills. However, unlike the mountain torrents where all he had to contend with was the force of the water heading in one direction, the forces of the waves came from everywhere; whenever he could not take it any longer, he would dive down to the sea bed to avoid the waves.
From then on, he trained twice a day and within a month, he felt his internal energy had made great improvements. When he used the wooden sword on dry land, he was able to produce a faint sound that sounded like sound of the tide. Whenever the Divine Eagle sparred with him, it started to avoid the sword and did not dare to meet it with its wings.
One day, Yang Guo was getting deeply engrossed in the sparring sessions and slashed the wooden sword with all his might. The Divine Eagle called out and leapt to the side. Yang Guo could not withdraw the force of his sword in time and it struck a tree. The wooden sword broke but the tree was cut in two.
Yang Guo held the broken sword’s handle and thought, “This wooden sword is light and fragile, but it was still able to cut a tree; this is because of the internal energy in my hand. If in the future the tree breaks and the sword doesn’t then I won’t be too far off the divine skill of Senior Dugu.”
Spring went and autumn came, the months flowed by. He trained his sword arts in the sea’s waves night and day, whatever the weather. The sound produced by the wooden sword was getting louder and louder to the point where it was able to produce great volume of noise. After a few months, the sound from the wooden sword got quieter and quieter until no more noise came from it. Another few months passed and the sword produced sound again. This process of going from soft to loud and loud to soft repeated itself seven times. Eventually, he was able to produce whatever sound he desired, loud or soft. By the time he reached this stage, he counted on his fingers and realized he had been by the sea for six years.
By this time, when Yang Guo trained in the sea’s waves with the wooden sword in his hand, the wind generated by his sword could repel the waves and the Divine Eagle, with its frightening strength, could last not more than three stances of the wooden sword. At this point, he realized what the Sword Demon Dugu Qiubai must have felt all those years ago, “With a sword art such as this, who, on this earth, can stand up to it? No wonder Senior Dugu felt lonely and buried his sword away in the deep valley.” He then thought, “If Brother Eagle hadn’t witnessed how Senior Dugu trained his sword skills, how would I have been able to obtain such a divine skill? I call him Brother Eagle but in reality he is my kind master. When it comes to age, I don’t know how old he is, I’m afraid that I could even call it Grandfather Eagle or Grandmaster Eagle.”
During his training by the sea, Yang Guo would often ask the passengers on passing boats about a ‘Divine Nun of the South Sea’ [Nan Hai Shen Ni]. He has asked thousands of sailors and passengers but there was nothing. He knew that seeing Xiao Longnü before the sixteen years was up was going to be a near impossible task.
One dark, windy and rainy day, something stirred in Yang Guo’s heart, he placed the wooden sword at his waist and covered himself with his tattered gown. The man and eagle made their way west and from then on, made their way back into Central Plains and roamed the southern region [Jiangnan].
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