Chapter - 156 Repentance of the Haughty Dragon (9) (1/2)
” If every little beggar in the country came to find me, for me to sort out their affairs, that would be a catastrophe!”
” You have good reason,” Qi Gong sighed. ”As I am of a lax and lazy nature, the weight of grandmaster of the Beggar Clan is really too heavy for my shoulders. But I can't find a person to whom I can entrust it. Then I have well to do with… ”
” So that's why old Liang fears you so much: if all the beggars of the country came to give trouble to him, he would be in big trouble. If each one dropped a louse in his collar, that would trouble him until the end of his days!”
Qi Gong and Guo Jing burst out laughing.
” No,” the old beggar said at last, ” not just for that; he's also scared of me.”
” What is that?”
” Nearly twenty years ago, he was committing an evil deed when I fell upon him…”
” What evil deed?”
” That old monster,” said Qi Gong hesitantly, ” believed a section of the adage «Gather the yin to nourish the yang… » He had obtained for himself several virgins, of which he violated their bodies, supposedly to obtain immortality.”
” What's that, to violate the body?” asked Huang Rong.
The girl, whose mother had died in childbirth, had been taught by her father. After the treachery and escape of Chen Xuanfeng and of Mei Chaofeng, Huang Yaoshi, furious, had crippled his other disciples and they had all fled. No others remained on Peach Blossom Island than some mute servants. No one had therefore spoke to the girl of the things that happened between men and women. Since that she had met Guo Jing, she felt a joy and an unspeakable softness in his company, a melancholy and an unbearable solitudes when she was separated of him even for an instant. She believed that to be husband and wife meant nothing more than never to part from each other, that was why for so long she had considered Guo Jing as her husband, without knowing the nature of conjugal relations.
Her question therefore put Qi Gong in great difficulty.
” To violate the body of the virgins,” the girl insisted, ” this is to kill them?”
” No,” Qi Gong responded, ” when a woman undergoes a such outrages, this is sometimes more painful than the death itself. The proverb says: «To be dishonoured is grave, to die of hunger is nothing». That says well what I want to say…”
Huang Rong did not understand not yet:
” Does that mean to cut the ears or the nose with a knife?”
” Peuh!” said Qi Gong, bothered, ” not at all! Little imp, you better ask your mother when you get back home…”
” My mother is dead…”