THE SMILING PROUD WANDERER by Jin Yong

Meditation Part 2

"You are the senior apprentice sister. When a junior apprentice brother has problem with his sword practice, you should be giving him some pointers, not drawing your sword to kill for no specific reasons. All new apprentices of the Master will be your junior apprentice brothers. What if when Master takes in one hundred new apprentices, and you decided to kill ninety-nine of them in a couple of days? What are we going to do then?" Linghu Chong joked.

"You are absolutely right about that! I'll only kill ninety-nine of them and make sure I leave one alone. If I kill all of them, then who is going to call me senior apprentice sister?" Yue Lingshan held onto the side of the rock wall and almost laughed herself silly.

"If you killed ninety-nine junior apprentice brothers, the one hundredth one would be running away for sure. You still won't be able to maintain your senior apprentice sister status." Linghu Chong suggested.

"By then I'll make you call me senior apprentice sister." Yue Lingshan grinned.

"I have no problem calling you senior apprentice sister. But are you going to kill me or not?" Linghu Chong asked jokingly.

"If you listen to my orders, then I won't kill you. If you don't, then I will." Yue Lingshan also said jokingly.

"Little apprentice sister, I beg you to show some mercy with your sword!"

It had stopped snowing by then. Afraid that when apprentice brothers and sisters found out that Yue Lingshan had been missing they might start slanderous gossips, which could be disastrous for little apprentice sister's reputation, Linghu Chong urged Yue Lingshan to go back down after some short chats.

"I want to stay here a bit longer to play. Mom and Dad are both not at home. It's very boring!" Yue Lingshan still didn't want to go.

"My good apprentice sister, in the last couple of days, I just created some more moves for the Chong-Ling Sword Art. As soon as I can leave the cliff, I'll go with you to practice sword skills in the waterfall. Alright?"

After quite some coaxing, Linghu Chong finally succeeded in getting her off the cliff back home.

At dusk that day, Gao Gengming brought food up the cliff instead. He said that Yue Lingshan caught a cold and was having fevers. She had to rest in bed, but she thought about the big apprentice brother and had asked him to make sure not to forget bringing some wine when he brought the food up. Linghu Chong was greatly shocked and suffered great worries. He knew that she had a terrible fall the previous evening and was probably terribly scared, which caused all the illness, and wished dearly that he would be able to rush down the cliff to pay a visit to her. Although he had starved for two days, with the meal right in front of him, he only felt a lump in his throat and could hardly swallow.

Gao Gengming knew that big apprentice brother and the little apprentice sister were a loving couple, and that was why as soon as Linghu Chong heard about her illness, he became very worried. So he tried to comfort him.

"Big apprentice brother, don't be too worried. Yesterday we had a lot of snow. Little apprentice sister must have spent too much time in the snow playing and caught a cold. For people who practice inner energy like us, such a little cold is really nothing. After taking some medicines, it will be gone in no time," he persuaded.

But Yue Lingshan remained sick for over two weeks. Only after the Yue couple had returned to Mount Huashan and rid the fever for her using Huashan style inner energy was she able to recover slowly. By the time she was finally able to get up to the cliff, it was already over twenty days later.