King Kung Fu 1

K'ing Kung−Fu #1: Son of the Flying Tiger
Table of Contents
K'ing Kung−Fu #1: Son of the Flying Tiger...........1
Marshall Macao.................................................2
Prologue............................................................4
CHAPTER ONE. The Gobi, the Master,
and the Child..................................................13
CHAPTER TWO. Son of the Flying Tiger.......30
CHAPTER THREE. Protector of the
Nomads..........................................................59
CHAPTER FOUR. The Spirit of Genghis
Khan...............................................................79
CHAPTER FIVE. The Killing of Sasho
Yakai..............................................................99
CHAPTER SIX. Kak Nan Tang.....................120
CHAPTER SEVEN. Masters of the Blue
Circle............................................................148
CHAPTER EIGHT. The Promise...................169
CHAPTER NINE. The Challenge..................201
CHAPTER TEN. The Murder........................225
CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Fight.....................236
EPILOGUE....................................................251
K'ing Kung−Fu #1: Son of
the Flying Tiger
Marshall Macao
This page copyright © 2006 Silk Pagoda.
http://www.silkpagoda.com
• Prologue
• CHAPTER ONE. The Gobi, the Master, and the
Child.
• CHAPTER TWO. Son of the Flying Tiger
• CHAPTER THREE. Protector of the Nomads
• CHAPTER FOUR. The Spirit of Genghis Khan
• CHAPTER FIVE. The Killing of Sasho Yakai
• CHAPTER SIX. Kak Nan Tang
• CHAPTER SEVEN. Masters of the Blue Circle
• CHAPTER EIGHT. The Promise
• CHAPTER NINE. The Challenge
• CHAPTER TEN. The Murder
• CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Fight
• EPILOGUE
Prologue
“Master replaces Master in the bodily cycle of

living and dying: and in your time, Chong Fei K'ing,
Son of the Flying Tiger, you will be first among the
Masters. My enemies will not be yours; for mine are
dead. Yet there is but one enemy, with an infinity of
faces. And all my fights, you must fight again.”
—Lin Fong
RANGOON, BURMA. 26 DECEMBER, 1941. In a

small, dark bar frequented by members of the
American Volunteer Group, better known as the
Flying Tigers, a radio squawked and sputtered.
“Hey Martin—turn that thing up, will you?”
The RAF lieutenant seated near the door glanced
back toward the source of the request with obvious
respect. Nodding quickly at the hard, hawk−nosed
man who always squinted as he smiled, the
lieutenant put down his beer and reached over his
shoulder to spin a dial.
“This is Radio Tokyo,” a hard female voice
announced through the static, “with a message for
the American Volunteer Group in Rangoon. Give up

your despicable, sneaky tactics. You know what we
mean. Give up the fight. You cannot win. So when
you lose,−do not be taken as dishonorable curs.
Give up the tactics you employed yesterday. If you
do not, when you are captured you will be treated as
guerillas. You will be shown no mercy. None.
NONE!”
A hearty, mocking laugh exploded the gloomy
silence of the bar. The hawk−nosed Yankee
pounded the table, nearly smashing a pair of flight
goggles that sat next to his drink. The two pilots
seated next to him chuckled and shook their heads
incredulously, waiting for the Flying Tiger to speak.
“For Christ's sake,” he breathed between guffaws.
“We come down out of the sun at those bastards
with thirteen lousy planes, and we smash the shit out
of their formation and shoot down how many?”
The airman at his right responded. “Twenty−three
confirmed by wreckage. But we all know another
twenty−five or thirty went down in the Gulf or the
jungle...”
“And we lose two... and to them that's dirty
fighting! Son of a bitch, every time one of those

Rising Suns goes crashing down in flames, that's
dirty fighting! I guess they want us to stand on the
strip and bow, and maybe smile a little, while they
bomb the coolies and maybe rake us over with their
7.7's on the way home? Fuck them. No mercy my
ass. I don't need their goddamned mercy. I'm gonna
take the skin right off their behinds...”
The door to the bar swung open, and an old
Chinaman walked in.
The Americans, finished ridiculing Radio Tokyo, went

back to their drinks. In a moment, they were aware of
a presence before them.
A pair of squinting eyes glanced up, smiling

tentatively.
“You are the Flying Tiger,” the Chinaman said, his
deep eyes betraying just a hint of the veneration that
most of Rangoon's people showered on this man so
effusively. He nodded, as if satisfied that he had
found the right man. He was met by a look of friendly
puzzlement.
“I'm
a Flying Tiger,” the Yankee corrected gently. Then,

typically cutting across Oriental formality, “You speak
English like you were from Cincinnati.”
“I have not been to Cincinnati in a long time. San

Francisco more recently.” He nodded, turned as if to
go, and then turned back.
“I am Lin Fong.”
“Glad to meet you.”
The Chinaman's handshake was not that of a
sixty year−old man. The Yankee also noticed that his
hand was shaped strangely; it was hard and heavily
calloused from the tip of the little finger to the wrist.
He wondered what kind of work Lin Fong did. But
before he could ask, the Chinaman stopped him with
a deeply reflective look. “It is good to be the Flying
Tiger,” he intoned softly. Then, with a near−bow, he
moved off to occupy a table next to the bar's only
entrance.
The squinting eyes turned toward the beer on the
table before them, and, with a shrug of his shoulders,
the Yankee lifted the bottle to his lips.

Suddenly the door to the bar crashed open, and
the barrel of a submachine gun stabbed in spitting
fire. It was too dark for the assassins, bursting in out
of the sunlight, to pick a target, and the first bullets
raked the thin wooden walls to pieces and sent liquor
and glass showering in torrents.
The Flying Tiger dove for the floor and jammed
his hand into his flight jacket, searching for his pistol
and keeping his eyes open. But there was no second
burst. There was only the streak of a flying body, and
the sickening sound of a skull splitting open.
Now the Yankee knew what kind of work Lin Fong
did.
But the party wasn't over. The Flying Tiger wasn't
one to sit around watching the action, but in this case
he had no choice. It was over before he could get off
a shot.
There were five of them, piling in from the street
through the bar's wide double−doors. Two
sub−machine guns and three automatic pistols, all
talking. But Lin Fong's diving momentum had carried
him out of the line of fire. Hesitating no more over the
fact that he had just squashed someone's brains out

than the ordinary man would hesitate over having
killed a fly, Lin sunk into a deep crouch and came up
under them, arms spreading like he was doing the
breast−stroke. His right hand caught the second
submachine gun and sent it sailing silently over the
bar; his left snapped a wrist as if it were a toothpick,
and it made no difference, amid the screams of pain,
that a pistol continued to dangle in its maimed grasp.
Lin's body, still rising, catapulted over the lines of
fire of the last two killers, and as he came down
between them his lightning hands cupped their
heads
—almost gently, as the RAF lieutenant saw it from

flat on the floor beneath—and then, with a sharp,
willowy snap of the wrists, smashed them together.
The sound was as loud as any shot that had been
fired, and blood spurted up like juice from a dropped
watermelon.
By this time there was a lot of .45 calibre artillery

out and ready for use on the two
dacoits who were still living. But while Western eyes

searched for a shot that would not risk the
Chinaman's life, an Eastern body was still moving.
Lin went to the floor again. In one motion he sank
onto his back, threw up his legs, sighted between
them at the groin of someone foolish
enough—having lost his submachine gun— to try
and pull a knife, and lashed out.
A split second before, a tough jungle bandit, a

hired Burmese murderer, had found his hand on his
knife and his enemy's back to him. Now his pelvic
bone shattered, and, as one of the airmen later put it,
“That guy must have been chewing on his balls.” A
noiseless scream died in his dilating eyes, and he
crumpled.
The last assassin dove toward Lin with bare
hands, and as anyone who knew the meaning of the
name “Lin Fong” (and there were many...) could
have told him, that was simply ridiculous. He
speared both his eyes on a pair of forked fingers that
drove through to his brain.
There were no more screams of pain, no more
scuffles; everyone that needed to be dead was

clearly and, more or less cleanly, gone for good.
The RAF lieutenant dragged himself to his feet, a
dazed look of awe and disbelief originating from the
deepest depth of his blue eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he
muttered. “He ate that last guy for dessert. He just
ate him for
dessert!”
Lin Fong looked down at his blood−spattered shirt

as if he had spilled paint on it. Taking a deep breath
that he did not really need
—the kind of deep breath you take on a fresh spring

morning —he glanced around to see whether
anyone was wounded. No one was. Shaking his
head just a bit mournfully, he said to himself, “I never
like to do that. Why must men be so evil?”
The first phrase, in English, struck the Flying

Tiger as a particularly American way to speak.
The second, in Chinese, was from this old man
obviously a purely rhetorical
—almost a ritualistic—question.
“Lin Fong?” said a calm, deep voice that moved

closer.
The Master turned, a warm but strangely
matter−of−fact smile on his lips.
“I am glad to know you.”
And for the second time in one day
—only this time a little differently—the Flying Tiger

shook hands with the world's greatest Master of
Kung Fu.
CHAPTER ONE. The Gobi, the Master,

and the Child.
The Gobi Desert is a dead pit of sand and gravel

and rock carved out of the guts of Asia. Across it
wander winds that shift its barren substance
endlessly; and with the winds, tribes of nomads
come and go, driving their herds of scraggly sheep
and bony cattle along the timeless routes from patch
to patch of baked−out grassland.
Here is the place where Chong Fei K'ing came to
consciousness.
Under the Gobi winds, no place is permanent.
But, staring up from his bamboo crib into the
weathered, impassively smiling visage of Lin Fong,
whose drooping mustache and wispy strands of gray
hair gave the infant something palpably human to
hold onto among the otherwise lifeless surroundings,
the tiny K'ing seemed to see through the sage's dark
crystal eyes to an immovable station of refuge and
peace.
“We live in this place that is not a place in order to
remind ourselves,” the ancient mystic would later tell
the growing boy, “that everywhere on earth and in

heaven the sands are shifting; and, should we try to
grasp them, we should grasp only at the empty
ghosts of our own immortality.
“Here in the desert, one lets go quickly the ghosts
of eternity. One rides the wind, and lives with the
sand as it makes and dissolves its restless shapes.
“Here, one can hardly forget to hold to the Tao.”
***
True, the Master's abode was a solid enough
structure; a rambling shack of vertical gray boards,
surrounded by a zig−zagging fence of woven mat
against which the sands piled as they moved. It had
withstood the desert's dry ravages for some huge,
lost number of decades; and beneath its roof, warm
lights glowed in winter, and coolness collected in
summer.
But although to K'ing, and to his later companion
Kak Nan Tang, this structure was as much a home
as any child's house, Lin Fong's piercing eyes looked
through and past it as though it were an apparition.
His fascination lay in the bottomless heaving of the
landscape, and the permanent impermanence which
lay beyond; and when occasionally he moved his

aging but still−supple body deliberately up the rungs
of the ladder to the top of a rickety tower some
hundred yards to the north of the shack, he would sit
there motionless for days, maintaining his lotus
position with the solidity of a rock; and no one, not
the child, nor the passing nomads, nor the
mysterious woman—the child's mother —who
punctuated K'ing's earliest years with the brightness
and warmth of her rare visits, could tell what he was
seeing, or whether it was in this world or another.
Perhaps the child's dim, developing intuitions hinted
to him what the nomads and the woman already
knew; that had it not been for the presence of young
Chong Fei K'ing, the Master would have let the
shack collapse to a pile of boards while he sat in his
tower or wandered off homeless into the desert.
Lin Fong was not only in these early years a sage
and a mystic to the growing child; he was also a
teacher. So regularly, so patiently, did he move to a
huge old trunk that sat like a foreign presence by the
fireplace, to remove books of all languages from it
and describe and explain their contents to his
protege, that it took K'ing years to realize that he

need not have taken out the books at all. He knew
their contents by heart. “It was to show you how a
book works,” the old man explained one day after he
had absently laid a volume down and strolled across
the room, continuing to recite as though he were
reading. Then he added, as if wondering to himself,
“I suppose it is true, a young man should know how
a book works.”
For years Lin Fong was to the child purely a
figure of incomprehensible depth, boundless
wisdom, and unshaken inner peace; a portrait of
gentleness which, since K'ing knew no other men, he
assumed to be a true picture of all men.
The Master's soft, steel−gray hair, flowing down
over the shoulders of his plain white cotton robes; his
lean, kindly face, whose dark eyes seemed always to
sparkle with deeply hidden brilliance and the quiet
amusement of the mystic; his trim, hard,
well−muscled body, that even in its seventh decade
showed no signs of the stiffness or palsy so common
among the old nomad men; were so much a part of
K'ing's life from infancy that he could hardly have
imagined a world without them. Day after day the

boy watched the Master's effortless movements as
he prepared food or mended the house or the sand
fence or drew water from the well. Day after day he
listened to the soft, ringing tones of the voice that
seemed to speak of wonder in all things. His manner
patterned itself after Lin Fong's. His chestnut hair,
bleached to a dark blonde in the summer, grew also
to his shoulders; his deep blue eyes, a marvel to the
nomads, seemed to give evidence of the same
understanding of all things far past the simple
comprehension of worldly knowledge. Often a
questioning look would flash across his face in
response to something he did not feel he understood
fully. Then the Master would wait until—as always
happened—the questioning look was replaced by a
puzzled expression of concentration. Once the boy
had satisfied himself that the question was a good
one and he did not already know the answer to it, he
gave it voice. Always Lin Fong's responses were
such as to put the child at peace with himself and his
world. It was not that he was keeping notions of
conflict and hatred and strife and death from the boy:
it was that in their lives, none of these things were

real. And to the mind of Lin Fong, none of them were
ultimately real anyhow.
Then, suddenly, all changed... so dramatically
that, years later, in Canton or New York or Buenos
Aires or Cairo, K'ing could hardly conjure up an
image of his dead Master's face in its early
uncontradicted serenity without other, darker
memories crowding in. By these later years his two
pictures of Lin Fong had converged into the image of
one man seeking the Tao. But this did not wipe away
the recollection of that first, profound, world−splitting
shock.
These first unhinging memories were not those of
Tai Chi; for, from the days when K'ing was first able
to move his limbs and make them do his bidding, Lin
Fong made certain that they moved in the forms of
this ancient and graceful mode of exercise; so that,
by the time the young man had reached the age of
speech, Lin Fong could tell him, “Your body has
already begun to search after and follow the Tao.
Now it remains for your mind to become tuned to it,
so that body and mind merge, and together learn the
art of going along the Way.”

No, these were not the memories that unsettled
the young K'ing to the depths of his being— the
memories of the streamlike flow of his body through
the movements of the Great Circle, the Touching of
the Winds, the Tide Flowing In and Out; for these
guided his body through a routine of rest and repose,
and led him to no suspicion that Tai Chi had any
purpose beyond peace. The clashing recollections
were of an entirely different kind.
The first was the most vivid scene from his past,
save one.
K'ing had passed his eighth birthday. He had
gathered the strength, the patience, and the sense of
the desert necessary to allow him to wander so far
as a day's journey from his home; to find water, or to
go without it; to sleep in the sands as they roiled
about him, and to awaken, refreshed, just before
they shifted so heavily as to bury him fatally. For
years, he had seen Lin Fong wander off in just such
a manner, wordlessly leaving him to keep his peace
at home, to return in a day, or a week, or—as K'ing
became totally self−sufficient—a month. During
these times, K'ing would sit on his haunches in the

doorway, watching for the nomads to come bringing
grain and dried fish, drawing water up from the well,
carving bits of wood, watching the sand and sky, and
meditating. The nomads bringing food... it was such
a part of his life that he never questioned why they
did it. Before he had reflected enough to ask the
question, before he could realize that Lin Fong had
nothing to pay with and nothing to trade, it had been
answered.
Now, in the summer of K'ing's eighth year, Lin
Fong once more trekked silently away, his flimsy
straight white robe blowing at his bony knees, like a
cloud sailing off the horizon.
Once more K'ing squatted in the doorway.
Absently he munched a bit of dried fish, watching Lin
Fong go. The fish, he had been told, came from the
ocean. Lin Fong had been to the ocean. He had
been across the ocean. He had been across many
oceans. But he had said, “The ocean is just like the
desert. Except that there are fish in it. There is no
need for you to go to the ocean; not once you have
fathomed the desert. I suppose some day you will
go. Then you will find for yourself, there was no

need.”
K'ing wondered whether, in his wanderings, Ling
Fong might pass by the ocean. Finishing his piece of
fish and washing his hands in the sand, he arose
and followed the sage's disappearing tracks out into
the desert.
Three days' journey, and the Master's trail passed
no places of water or food. K'ing felt his first pangs of
worry. His parched tongue would barely peel from
the roof of his gooey mouth, and his limbs shivered
strangely. Always on the distant horizon he would
catch glimpses of the ancient wise man's billowing
robe.
“The ocean must be a very long way off indeed,”
he thought to himself.
On the fourth day, the Master passed by a mound
of rock that, even in the far distance, showed to
K'ing's sharp eyes a trace of green between its
crevices.
“I am not Lin Fong,” he reminded himself, and left
the Master's trail. For a whole night he rested,
lapping murky water from a slowly oozing spring,
eating grass that crackled in his mouth. Then he said

to himself, “I could go back home. But Lin Fong
keeps a straight path. If I keep a straight path,
perhaps I will run across him.”
K'ing never thought that the Master might be
angry with him for following. If the old man had no
secrets from the desert or the sky, surely he had no
secrets from Chong Fei K'ing.
The child kept a straight path for two more days.
If Lin Fong had passed the same way, he had left no
trace.
And then, six days into the void of dizzying sand,
the lone boy struggled to the top of a high rise of
packed white pebbles, his ankles sinking deeply into
them, and gazed out across a strange flat plain of
smooth rock. At its center, in the shade of a huge
gray mass of rock, were trees. Beyond them, a
straight shiny double line, cross−hatched with
half−buried, thicker lines, ran from north to south,
disappearing at both horizons. K'ing searched his
memory for the word, as he noted the zig−zag
fences that lined its either side, their tops barely
showing above the sand. “Railroad,” he decided. Lin
Fong had read to him about railroads.

“Crack!”
A sharp, dim percussion echoed to K'ing's ears on
the breeze, and then another.
He had never heard such a sound.
It jangled his nerves with a cutting persistence
that made his spine stiffen.
From somewhere inside him, an echo responded.
Suddenly, spontaneously, a shock of excitement
jolted through him.
He would walk down and see what was making
those sounds.
As he made his way across the face of the
pebble−pile, the noises stopped rising out of the
trees. Then they came again. They came in groups.
Lin Fong had once taught K'ing to count. It was a
strange thing, counting. He had done it, both in
Chinese and in English, and sometimes in French.
K'ing had failed to see the reason for learning to
count in three languages; for although Lin Fong had
warned him that when one thought one was saying
the same thing in English as in Chinese, one was
usually mistaken, this was not the case with
counting; it was always the same. To please Lin

Fong, though, he had learned to count. He had
learned it as a game. He had never seen any use for
it even in one language. But now, as the groups of
sounds traveled disquietingly to him, he got the urge
to count, to see if all the groups were the same.
One... two... three... four... five. Silence. One... two...
three... four... five. Silence.
The crack of the noises cut into him more deeply
as he approached their source. Between the volleys
of sound, which he closed his eyes to capture more
completely, (they were elusive; one could not
meditate on such a sound!) he stared at the trees,
which were beyond counting. They were saplings,
straight and slim, and their leafy branches
shimmered in the breeze.
He was down on the rocky plain.
He was at the edge of a strand of trees, looking
down into a hollow where a clear stream ran.
There was an opening, and a white figure moving
slowly, incomprehensibly in it.
He had found Lin Fong.
The sage's robe flowed with his arms around a
huge brown timber; the biggest, thickest piece of

wood K'ing had ever seen. Behind Lin Fong was a
huge pile of such timbers. Dimly the boy recorded
that these pieces of wood were the same as the
cross−hatchings between the tracks of the railroad.
Lin Fong's body balanced effortlessly against its
staggering load, and the railroad tie floated up, and
around, and down, guided by Lin's arms until it came
to rest, balanced at each end upon a flat rock.
There was a feeling to the Master's movements
that K'ing had never felt before. On the surface they
were as smooth as the effortless dances of Tai Chi.
But while Tai Chi made one's inner tensions flow
outward, until one was in balance with the forces of
nature all around and moved with them, these
actions seemed to be storing tensions up, packing
them into the core of Lin Fong's deceptively powerful
body.
The Master turned his back on the railroad tie,
breathed deeply, and then squared to face it. He
stared down into it, as if to fathom the intricate
patterns of its grains. There was a second's
hesitation, and with fascination and horror K'ing felt
even the strength of his own little body being drawn

out into the muscles of his Master's slowly rising right
arm. In the flash before the arm fell, K'ing suddenly
remembered the heavy, calloused hardness of the
side of Lin Fong's right hand. He had never
questioned it. He had assumed that when he
became old, his hand would come to look that way,
for no particular reason.
From the balls of his feet, through his bent knees,
quivering thighs, and rock−like back and stomach, to
the almost visible bulging of his shoulders beneath
his robe, Lin Fong's body contracted in a blinding
flash of fury. The side of his right hand crashed down
on the timber's center and pulled back—almost, it
seemed, before contact had been made.
The sound was like a thunderhead splitting in
K'ing's sensitive ears. It was cutting, penetrating,
final, issuing from deep in the soul of the wood. The
shock and the thrill slammed K'ing backward in awe
and confusion.
“One,” he heard himself unconsciously counting.
“Two.”
The wood groaned as Lin Fong, eyes once more
boring into the essence of its structure, dealt it

another apocalyptic blow. This time the sound was
laden with crunching, splintering overtones.
“Three.”
K'ing's head spun with the force of violent impact
crashing into his world.
“Four.”
Something in K'ing's blood hardened and sang.
The huge tie sagged between the rocks.
“FIVE!”
Cleanly broken, the timber shot its ends upward
as its jagged, splintered middle stabbed hard into the
ground at Lin Fong's feet.
The jarring mood of harshness was broken with
the timber. Breathing deeply, gazing at the sky, the
Master brought his right foot rhythmically forward,
and raised his hands to cross, palms forward, above
his head. His right foot swung back and pointed
outwardly slightly, and in the same, unstopping
motion his hands broke apart and his arms moved
outward. His palms cupped, as if he sought to raise
himself a fraction of an inch from the ground on the
hot desert air. Then his elbows collapsed lyrically
inward, and his hands crossed upon his chest, palms

down, fingers resting on opposite collar bones.
Finally, his arms swept down, his knees flexed, and
he rested his fingertips on his thighs, completing the
Tai Chi form of the Sun Wheel.
Hypnotized, K'ing stood meekly, feeling an
inexplicable urge to flee from what he had just seen.
Some of the foreign feeling eased out of him as he
watched the graceful, familiar form of the Sun Wheel.
But somehow, he knew that as soon as Lin Fong
was finished, he would look up toward his tiny
observer, to acknowledge the presence which, K'ing
was sure, he had felt all along.
The Master hesitated a ceremonial second, and
then, never altering the smooth Tai Chi rhythm,
turned his face toward Chong Fei K'ing. He smiled
warmly, vaguely, formally; brought his hands
together at his chest; bowed; straightened; and
spoke, his soft voice ringing like a muffled bell across
the empty distance between them.
“You have come six days' journey across the
desert. You are quaking with the power of
unimagined things. My son, hold strongly now to the
peace of the Tao. For what you have now seen, you
will someday master. That you are here means that
you are ready. Son of the Flying Tiger: you are ready
to learn Kung Fu.”
CHAPTER TWO. Son of the Flying Tiger
Son of the Flying Tiger?

The boy's name was Chong Fei K'ing. He had
never been called this other thing. He knew the
English words “Son” and “Flying” and “Tiger.” But
what did they have to do with him?
This was the question he put to Lin Fong, as,
together, ancient Master and bewildered boy made
their way back home across the desert.
“It is time for you to hear the story of your father,”
the sage told him in response.
“You know what a father is?”
K'ing nodded. Like most eight year olds, he had
no inkling of the mechanics of reproduction. But from
stories Lin Fong had read him, he knew about
families, and he knew the kind of a thing a father
was. Lin Fong was like a father to him, but he was
not really his father.
Lin Fong launched into the story. “Ten years ago
there was a great world war growing. You don't know
yet what a war is, because none of our reading or
talking has touched on wars of fighting. But you
know what a country or a nation is. It's a group of

people sharing a common land to organize
themselves together to do what they couldn't do by
themselves... things like building railroads. America
is a nation, and China, and so on.
“Now: fighting. For a war is when nations fight.
You know that sometimes I ask you to do things you
don't want to do?”
K'ing nodded. It had not happened very often.
“Well, suppose one day you refused to do
something I asked.”
K'ing looked up at him with a frown. He knew the
word “refuse,” but he couldn't imagine doing it.
“Yes...?” he asked.
“Then suppose I tried to make you do it. If I
wanted you to jump into the air, and you wouldn't, I
might pick you up and throw you.”
Lin Fong paused as he saw K'ing having a
thought. “But if you threw me,” the boy said, “I would
be up in the air, but I would not have jumped. You
would not have made me jump...”
The Master grinned broadly. “At the age of eight,”
he said, “you are already a great thinker. You are
right. But suppose instead I told you, 'Chong Fei

K'ing, you must jump into the air or I will do to you
what I did to the timbers by the railroad track. I will
chop you in half with my right hand'.”
K'ing's troubled eyes searched the Master's face,
seeking to be saved from the comprehension that
was coming to him.
“What would happen to me then?”
“You would be dead.”
“Aaah,” said K'ing, as if the crux of the problem
had been reached. “What is dead?”
“My son,” the Master answered, “that is the
deepest of all questions.” He paused, as if to let his
remark sink in. Then, “Some day we will talk about
this.” He stopped again, setting the boy for a
transition. “But this is a story about your father, and
about his fighting and facing death. So for now I will
tell you what Americans think death is. For them, it is
simply the end. You feel your heart beating?”
The boy nodded.
“And you see the desert, and you ask questions,
and you eat, and you think?”
K'ing nodded again.
“Americans especially, and many of the world's

people, believe deep down that all this— everything
you do—depends on the body. When you are dead,
your heart no longer beats, your blood no longer
flows. Your body comes apart, and you become like
dirt or water. There is no more you. You are nothing.
For to these people, all things such as dirt and water
are lifeless. They are not dead, because they have
never been living, but living things, once dead,
become lifeless just as they are. These people
believe that there are tiny sparks of life on this planet
called Earth, fighting to keep themselves burning, to
keep themselves from being snuffed out into all the
lifelessness around them.
“I do not expect you to understand this. But the
fish we eat, the rice, the trees that are now timbers,
all these things, once were alive, and now are dead.”
K'ing saw that there was no further to go with this
“dead.” He lapsed into silence for a moment. Then a
burning question forced its way into his mind. “Lin
Fong?”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever make anyone dead?”
Lin gazed quietly out over the horizon. “Did I ever

kill anyone is what you are asking. To make
someone dead is to kill him. Yes, I have killed, if
what you mean is what the Americans mean by
death. I have made men's hearts stop beating, their
blood stop flowing...” He stopped abruptly.
The child pushed on: “How many men have you
killed?”
Lin Fong looked at him piercingly. “I will answer
your question, but you must give me time to count.
While I am counting, think on this: you are a child,
and just learning counting, and here it seems
important. When you become a man, you will not ask
how many men someone has killed. You will ask
whether he has ever done evil in his killing. Now I will
go back in my memory over my life, and the men I
have killed. I have been over this list many times, but
never to count.”
Master and child walked noiselessly over the
desert for an hour, performing their separate tasks.
Chong Fei K'ing thought he had completed his, but
when Lin Fong broke the silence, the shock sent him
into confusion again.
“One thousand, nine hundred and ninety−one.”

K'ing's eyes bored into the old man's with open
disbelief, lost in comprehension seeking relief from
the very source that had caused it. But in an instant
he frowned at himself, remembering. Then a look
came into his eyes that implied a different question.
The sage smiled with satisfaction. Even before
K'ing knew anything of the depth or substance of
evil, he had accepted their opposition in this world.
For a Taoist mystic, seeking only the oblivion of
mindlessness, this would not have been necessary.
But K'ing's blood, the Master knew, was worldly. And
Lin Fong, although to the depths of his being a
Taoist, had early in his life been torn away from the
peace of constant meditation and of learning Kung
Fu in the conflict−free home of his own Master by a
great tragedy which had sent him out into the world.
Then he had found it necessary to augment the
teachings of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu with the
insights of other religions and the questioning of
other philosophies. If K'ing were ever to be so driven
out into the world, the knowledge of its opposition
between good and evil must go with him.
“To the true question,” the Master smiled a little

mournfully, “I can say no more than that I have tried
with all my being to hold to the Tao. But you must
know, Chong Fei K'ing, that this is not enough, and
that my soul is not at rest with the killing I have done.
For it is not enough to think that one has not done
evil, or to believe it. One must not do evil. And in this
life, knowledge of what is good and what is evil is
impossible. This is a great burden to mankind,
perhaps the burden that most Taoists seek to throw
off when they search for peace of mindlessness.”
Lin Fong and Chong Fei K'ing walked another
hour in silence. Then, Lin Fong said, “Now you know
what fighting is, and what death and the threat of
death are; and now you may understand wars. For
wars are just nations that fight against one another.
Perhaps one nation wants another to do something
that it does not want to do. Sometimes it is
something so ridiculous as jumping into the air. Wars
are fought for many reasons—over wealth, or land,
or even for reasons of honor. But we will not go into
this; for all that is necessary now is that you know
what a war is.”
K'ing kept his silence for a time, and the Master

glanced more than once at the troubled cloudiness
that had come into his eyes. But finally, his gaze
cleared, and he asked Lin to continue with the story
of his father.
The sage took the rest of the morning reciting
history.
In 1937, on the eve of the Japanese invasion of
China, a retired American combat pilot who had
turned to death−defying aerial acrobatics, and who
had written a famous book on combat aviation, had
been invited by Madam Chiang Kai−shek to survey
the preparedness of the Chinese air force.
By 1941, Japanese planes, virtually unopposed in
the air, had made a bloody pulp out of China's cities
while the Rising Sun spread its scarlet stain over
more and more of Asia. This man had gone to
America, and bought planes for the Chinese, and
brought back the one hundred most deadly combat
pilots in the history of warfare from the army and
navy and marine bases of the United States to fly
them.
That afternoon Lin Fong told how he himself had
made his way to Burma at this time.

He had arrived in Rangoon just after a squadron
of this American Volunteer Group had been
wrenched from their training program by the bomb
blasts of Pearl Harbor and sent to defend that city. In
Rangoon were the docks and the rail head that
formed the western end of blockaded China's
wartime supply line. From there, the materiel without
which Chiang Kai−shek's armies would have
perished set out on its torturous journey over the
Burma Road. The American Volunteer Group was to
defend this city against the Imperial Japanese Army
Air Force, with its thousands of planes and
experienced, fearless pilots.
After all this had been told, Lin Fong and Chong
Fei K'ing went to sleep in the sand.
When they awoke and pushed on toward home,
the Master spent the morning telling the boy all about
air war; about various kinds of planes, about great air
battles of history, and about his father's genius for
fighting in the sky. He described in great detail the
planes of the Flying Tigers, which were called Curtis
P−40Cs. They had been rejected by the British
because they were not good enough to send against

the Luftwaffe. These planes were heavily armored,
possessed great fire power, and were faster than the
Japanese planes in level flight or in a dive; but they
climbed more slowly and could not turn as tightly or
maneuver as well. He told how the Tigers had
painted the noses of these planes with shining white
teeth and gaping red mouths.
Then he told how K'ing's father had trained his
pilots.
His tactics had been unorthodox at that time. He
had taught them to fly in pairs, with the lead plane
going in for the kill while a wing man protected him.
He had forbidden them to engage in dog fights with
the more maneuverable Japanese planes, but had
showed them how to drop in shuddering
power−dives out of the sun onto the backs of enemy
formations, blasting Rising Suns out of the air with
their thundering guns. He had taught them how to
slice through fighter cover to get to the bombers that
had made so many Asian cities into charred and
bloody masses of ruins, and how to dive out of
trouble and regain the sun again quickly for another
lightning−bolt attack.
“There are lessons in this,” the sage told the boy,
“for all fighting is in the end the same...”
When he was done with all this, Lin Fong told a
story. He told it in English, which the boy knew as
well as he knew Chinese. He told it with excitement
in the memory.
“It was December 25—Christmas Day to the
Western world—in 1941. There were twenty−five
American fliers at an air base called Mingaladon,
near Rangoon. Twenty−five; no more.
“Two days before, this Hell's Angels squadron of
the Flying Tigers had fought its first battle. They had
lost two planes, the Royal Air Force five, and the
Japanese ten. It had not been good enough.
Rangoon had been heavily strafed and bombed.
Three thousand people had been killed.
“The streets were running with blood. The city
was burning. Bands of looters ravaged it, spreading
horror. The war supplies without which Chiang
Kai−shek's army would have perished were sitting on
the docks, and if they were not burning, there were
no more coolies to unload them; they had all fled
from the terror of the bombing.

“On Christmas Day the Japanese returned.
“I was standing by the side of the runway at the
Flying Tigers base at Mingaladon. I had slept there
for two nights, waiting to see the planes take off for a
battle and keeping my eyes open in case the
Japanese had hired dacoits—Burmese robbers who
terrorized the jungle highways in armed bands—to
attack the base or do damage to the planes.
“Suddenly three men ran to their planes and took
off. I thought there would be a battle. But I had to
wait.
“Some time later ten Tigers scrambled, and the
roar filled my ears as they streaked off into the sky. I
made my way to the docks of Rangoon. But as I left
the base, I heard one lone engine coming from the
north−west.
“Now you must know that the history books say
during this second air battle over Rangoon, your
father was over five hundred miles away at the main
Flying Tiger base at Kunming, in China. But the
Tigers' planes could travel three hundred and
forty−five miles in a single hour, and at that rate it is
not far.
“I watched the lone plane land and taxi to the fuel
pumps. On the road to the docks, I heard another
hovering overhead and saw a single plane climbing
into the sun.
“I had not been at the docks long before I heard a
sound like a beehive on the horizon. History says
that there were sixty Japanese bombers and twenty
fighters. The formations split over the Rangoon
River, and the planes that did not go toward the air
base at Mingaladon headed straight for us.
“The Tiger planes were nowhere to be seen as
the bombers bore down on the docks. But suddenly,
there were ten vertical streaks in the sky. Like sharks
through a school of small fish, the Tigers tore
downward into the Japanese formation, guns
flaming. One bomber burst into a flash of fire.
Another smoked and reeled downward. I watched as
it exploded on a hillside. Then a third dropped down
out of formation, a Tiger pouring lead into its tail as it
faltered. It nose dived and shattered into the Gulf of
Martaban.
“The Japanese formation was broken. The Tigers
dove through it, and the Japanese fighters could not

catch them. The bombers flew in twos and threes
now, and far away I could see the squadron of Tigers
climbing back for another attack. You must
understand—all of this took place in a little more time
than it takes to tell it. At the same time, other Tigers
were fighting another battle with Japanese pursuit
planes high above. Now and then a Rising Sun
would fall from the heavens into the Gulf or onto the
land.
“The main Tiger force came back again,
screaming down in dives that shuddered with the
force of gunfire. I could not believe my eyes. Five
Nakagima bombers fell from the sky in the space of
several minutes, and the rest dropped their bombs
into the rice paddies and jungles and fled.
“The battle raged on, as the planes with the red
jaws and grinning teeth fought the invaders away
from the docks.
“And then, with the Hell's Angels flying low,
chasing the strays from the first broken formation,
another wave of bombers appeared; twenty, with
eight fighter escorts. The Tigers could not regain the
sun for an attack, so they skimmed low over the sea,

and suddenly, as one, turned upward and slashed
into the formation from underneath. The noise of
their guns was like the Last Judgement.
“Until this time I had seen nothing of the lone
plane that had arrived at Mingaladon to refuel after
the others had left. If you ask the historians who
have written about this battle—and there are many,
for it is one of the most glorious tales in all the history
of warfare—they will tell you that there was no lone
plane. But if you ask those who did not take cover,
but who stood out on the docks with me and watched
the fight, they will tell you that just as one Tiger
named Smith blew up a Japanese bomber at such
close range that its flying pieces crippled his plane,
they saw a single, droning black dot against the sun,
among the highest clouds.
“This single plane that hovered above the battle
for so long, conserving gas and waiting, was not
supposed to be there. The Flying Tigers were
forbidden to fly alone. And in fighting forces, you
must understand, the commander is not supposed to
risk his life; he is supposed to stay out of the battle,
directing the action. Now this may sound wrong to

you, but there was only one man like your father, and
had he died in this battle, the Flying Tigers would
have been without their guiding genius.
“Another Tiger plane, flown by a man named
Overend, had taken heavy fire, and its controls were
all but gone. It made for the jungle in a slow flat dive.
“A third, flown by a man named Dupuoy, its guns
jammed, rammed one of the lighter, more fragile
Japanese planes, exploding it and sheering off
several feet from its own right wing. This plane also
limped off toward the air base at Mingaladon.
“Now the rest of the Hell's Angels were far away
chasing the fleeing Japanese past the Mouths of the
Irrawaddy and on over the Bay of Bengal. The few
ancient planes of the Royal Air Force were battling
several that had circled back in a last attempt to
bomb the docks. These planes were so bad that the
R.A.F. suffered many casualties. But you must know
that the Royal Air Force fights well. Of fifty ships in
the harbor, only one was bombed that day.
“Now, suddenly, out of the clouds, came a new
wave of Japanese fighters—streaking in hard, thirsty
for the blood of the Royal Air Force, and of those

Tigers whose planes were crippled. There were
thirty−five of these. I counted them myself. The
history books say nothing of them. Perhaps the
historians were hiding in the rice paddies; and none
of us who saw could tell of it, for the Flying Tigers
later came and told us, 'You saw nothing. If you talk,
the Japanese will learn that our leader sometimes
does these things, and the next time they will send
one thousand planes into the sun, searching for the
single Tiger who hovers over the battle until the time
is right for him to strike.'
“But I, Lin Fong saw this. And later, I was told of
all that happened in the air; of the radio
communications between the Tiger pilots, and of the
thinking that your father used. And this was how it
was:
“Smith was fighting his damaged ship back
toward the base alone. He could see no other
Tigers.”
Suddenly Smith's radio talked with a hard,

familiar, yet unexpected voice. 'Smith, this is Old

Man above you; repeat, Old Man above you. I am
your cover. Eighteen bandits at fourteen angels and
closing. Limber your guns. Can you climb?'
'Negative.'
'Proceed to Mingaladon. Do not deviate from
course. I will miss you by six feet in a power dive, full
throttle, head on. Repeat: do not deviate from
course. Proceed to Free Beer.'
“The Japanese closed hard on Smith. He was

barely out of the range of their guns when suddenly
the mad snarl of an engine from nowhere burst upon
them. Their victim split in two before their eyes, and
gave birth to grinning white teeth, scarlet jaws, and a
propeller that flew into their faces like a threshing
machine.
“They opened fire, and their light guns chattered.
But then the low thunder of the Flying Tiger's 50's
crashed upon them.
“The Japanese fired constantly, wildly.
“The Flying Tiger fired with the rhythm of a scythe
through grass.
“Between each of his short, clipped phrases came
a blinding flash and then a sharp, final retort. The
armor on the gas tanks of the Japanese planes was
too thin, and the Flying Tiger was bursting these one
by one as he dove at eight miles a minute, dancing
his ship through a maze of crazy gun fire, right and
left, up and down. He was like a child running
through a room full of balloons, popping them with a
pin.
“On this first attack there were five such flashes,
five such sounds, and the Japanese scattered out of
the path of this death−machine. They left Smith
alone and turned tightly—those unlucky thirteen that
were left—to free themselves of this lone menace: to
get quickly onto his tail and blast him from the sky.
“After any such attack, the Tigers always
screamed away in power dives, leaving the enemy
behind. But this Tiger could not afford such a luxury;
for his escape would mean the death of Smith, and
the loss of−his plane. So he did what he had
forbidden his pilots to do; he pulled back on the stick
and shot the nose of his ship straight upward,
challenging the remaining Japanese to a dogfight.

Thirteen to one.
“He had got some distance on his enemies, for
they had to turn as he pulled upward. Now you must
understand that these planes, going straight upward,
will stall, and if the pilot does not have all his wits
about him, they will spin out of control and smash to
the earth. As the Japanese came up beneath this
lone P−40, it reached the height of its vertical climb,
and its engine went silent. Slowly, it half−rolled and
peeled oft. Then it plummeted straight downward into
the Japanese guns, its engine roaring once more to
life.
“Now the Japanese, a fearless people, found fear
flying their planes. They moved erratically in the face
of this bizarre attack. But the Flying Tiger flew
methodically, delicately, never wasting motion, never
wasting lead. He raked cockpits, tore off wings, cut
ships in half. I tell you, there was much of the blood
of the Imperial Japanese Air Force flowing in the
skies on that day. On this second run, four Rising
Suns fell like autumn leaves from the sky, and three
more limped off, controls shot away, gas tanks
leaking. The Flying Tiger left the wounded to find

their own deaths, as he careened after Smith in a
long dive. He was sure they would follow.”
'Old Man to Smith; I've thinned them out a little.

Want to save my ammo. How's your's?'
'Smith to Old Man; lots of 30, some 50. All hot to
shoot.'
'Do you have lateral movement?'
'Affirmative.'
'Can you get to that cloud at eleven o'clock?'
'Affirmative.'
'What is your air speed?'
'Three−three−oh.'
'Maintain three−three−oh. Enter the cloud. If I set
up a target for you, can you hit it?'
'I'll be fucked if I can't.'
'That's right. I am coming into a climb in front of
your cloud. Will come into gun range of lead bandits
as they cross your sights. Come out with all switches
on. Don't miss.'
'Order received and understood. Out.'
“The Flying Tiger waited a few seconds until the

distance was right between himself and the closing
pursuits. Then he tore upward in a hard climb.
“Over his radio he could hear the Japanese
chattering with glee at his stupidity. Their planes
could out−climb his. And that stalling tactic would not
work twice.
“A little outside of gun range they caught him in
their sights and opened up.
“His ship bounced to the right, and then back.
Their eyes glued to his tail, they followed his every
move as they closed rapidly. Why did he not take
refuge in that cloud?
“Suddenly the cloud itself burst forth with the
screaming lead of death. The two lead Japanese
ships burst into thousands of searing pieces, and the
rest flew through the hail−storm, bits of hot metal
slashing at their fragile crafts. They scattered as the
Old Man tore back down into them.”
'Old Man to Smith. Nice shooting.'

'You run a good gallery.'

'Hey, look at that one disabled Jap heading for
the base!'
'Yeah
—if he runs that crate into the hangar, he'll die a

happy man.'
'Can you wipe that bastard out before he spills the

Beer?'
'Affirmative.'
'Good. Have urgent business elsewhere. See you
later.' Then, 'Smith...'
'Smith here.'
'Draw me a cold one will you?'
'Order received and understood. Out.'
“Then the lone plane climbed away into the sky

again, searching for the crippled planes of two more
Tigers.
“The Flying Tiger found Dupuoy struggling to
maintain speed, flying with brilliance as he made up
for the lift lost from his right wing and correcting for
the torque of his propeller which threatened to send
him into a fatal spin. Seventeen Japanese fighters on
their way to strafe the base at Mingaladon were
about to overtake him.
“This time the Old Man held the heights behind
the enemy. He dropped on them from behind,
gunning down two. The rest scattered, thinking that
they had been ambushed by a whole Tiger
squadron. A moment's confusion, and Dupouy
escaped. The Flying Tiger twisted and turned in his
dive, blasting Japanese planes as they drifted across
his sights. On this run I could see your father destroy
five enemies.
“Then two of them decided that they would gladly
give their lives if they could rid the skies of the
invincible menace. They bore in on him head on in a
Kamikaze attack.
“They expected him to dive toward safety.
“The nose of his plane made a dipping motion,
and they drove their ships down after him. In my
mind's eye I could already see this horrible
three−plane crash, and the pieces of flesh settling
downward toward the earth.

“But then the Tiger's nose pushed up, and his
ship rolled till one wing pointed to heaven, the other
to earth.
“It is hard to judge distances in the air from so far
away, but for a moment the three planes looked like
one. The wing of one of the Japanese planes could
not have missed the cockpit of your father's by more
than a few feet. Yet he used to fly in acrobatic shows
with three planes tied together by short pieces of
rope. He had his eyes open, and his mind clear.
“There was a thundering crash, like a bomb
exploding in the sky, and smoking shower of
wreckage floated downward. The two Japanese
planes had collided.
“The P−40 righted itself and flew off.
“You should have heard the cheering from the
tiny group of us that stood in the open on the docks
of Rangoon.
“But the Flying Tiger was not finished. There was
still Overend's plane, trying to find a place to crash
land in the jungle. The lone P−40 turned to where a
dozen Japanese fighters were just setting upon him.
“For an instant, the hills blocked our view. But I

climbed a mast of the ship, and then I could see.
“The Japanese planes were poised for their dives
of death as Overend pulled in his landing gear and
prepared to skid down in a rice paddy. You see, he
could have bailed out, but he was fighting to save his
plane. It was one twenty−fifth of the whole Tiger
force.
“The Old Man ducked down behind a hill and
waited. As the Japanese peeled off, one by one, for
their attack, he erupted up out of the ground, guns
blazing into their bellies. There was a blossoming of
fire over the swamp. One... two... three enemies
went down, and a fourth came into his sights. But his
guns were silent.
“My heart jumped to my mouth. His guns were
jammed, or were empty. That was what I thought.
But it was another trick.
“Breaking off suddenly, he looped, flying on his
back, showing his underbelly to the planes that
descended upon him. They forgot the damaged ship
in the rice paddy and took off to wreak their
vengeance on this terrible executioner, who had first
led them slowly.

“But then, suddenly, the P−40 snapped around,
and its throttle slammed to the firewall.
“The Japanese screamed over their radios for any
of their planes that could cut off his escape over the
housetops of Rangoon. When they found no help,
they broke off and strafed the city.
“Their bullets tore at the fragile buildings and
mowed down fleeing coolies, panicked women,
confused children, ancient beggars, crippled
soldiers.
“With an angry snarl the lone plane shot into the
sky and looped to set back upon them.
“At that moment, four Hell's Angels returned from
over the Bay of Bengal.
“So intent were the Japanese fighters on their
mission of murder that they did not see the lone
plane shooting up and coiling back like a cobra, to
strike them from out of the sun. They heard, but
could not translate, the messages that came over
their radios through the smoke−filled air.
“Hell's Angels, this is Old Man. Repeat, this is Old

Man. No Free Beer yet. I am low on fuel and ammo.
I've been playing games over here. Do you have any
lead left?”
“Old Man, this is Headman,” came the reply. “Fuel
for twenty minutes maybe. More lead in my ship than
in my guns. What's up?”
The Flying Tiger spoke into his radio even as he
slammed his throttle once more to the firewall and
screamed down for the kill. “Ten butcher bandits
strafing the city. I am closing. Repeat, I am closing.
Do what you can. Out.”
“And then those lethal guns ripped their streams

of fury out of his raging dive. One enemy ship
shuddered, fell, and cartwheeled through the low,
brown rows of houses, bursting into a ball of flame
that meant a setting sun. Another came into his
sights, and, controls shot away in his desperate
climb, it flew for the sun until it stalled. Then it
fluttered slowly, lazily almost, into the bay.”
'Headman to Old Man. We get the idea.' 'Good

thing. My guns are empty.' 'Take a rest.'
“Four Tigers rolled and peeled downward in

whining, blasting dives. The Hell's Angels had taken
over. The lone Tiger plane buzzed softly away over
the rooftops toward Mingaladon.
“The history books say that Headman's plane
landed that day with one pint of gas. They do not
record that another plane, after hours of full−throttle
combat, landed on fumes. They do not even record
that it was there.
“But I, Lin Fong, saw these things with my own
eyes. There was only one man in all the world who
could fly like that. It was the Flying Tiger, and, Chong
Fei K'ing, you are his son.”
CHAPTER THREE. Protector of the

Nomads
On the last day of their homeward journey

through the desert, Lin Fong recited to K'ing an
ancient creed whose origins had long since been
forgotten, which his Master had recited to him just
before he had begun to learn Kung Fu.
Young boy! You are to learn Kung Fu? Listen

then to the names of the blows, for they
|j will lead you to their secrets. Knife Slash. Knife

Point. Hammer. Ram's Head. Scorpion. Pounding
Wave. Monkey. Rock Smash. Tiger Claw. And the
kicks: Lightning Kick. Dragon Stamp. And the
parries: Whipping Branch. Leaping Deer. Boulder.
Swooping Bird.
To learn these, you must at first attend to the

Masters. But to become a Master, you must watch
the pounding wave, the swooping bird, the whipping
branch. For the forces of Kung Fu come not from

man, but from nature; and each true Master
meditates upon the forces of nature, till he draws up
from within himself that soul which is part of nature;
his part of it. You must be still, and take into yourself
the rhythms of the ocean, the tree, the bird. Then,
when the time comes, the forces of evil will be as
little able to touch you as they are able to halt the
pounding wave, dodge the whipping branch, catch
the swooping bird.
But this is not enough. You yourself, out of the
deepest rhythms of the Cosmos, must find a Way
between these motions as effortless as the motions
themselves; you must turn the pounding wave into
the whipping branch, and mix it with the kick of
lightning. You must meditate until your mind is gone,
and ride the currents that connect all things without
stumbling. Then, when the time for fighting comes,
your earthly self will perch above you on a branch,
singing the tune to which your body dances through
danger.
You must be ready for death at every moment, so
that you will not fear it. Then you will happen not to
die. And if in the fight you are truly riding the Wind
that Blows in the Void, if you have found the Tao and
are travelling on it; if all thought of vengeance has
left you, and you are alone on the monsoon sea,
using its very currents to keep from drowning; then if
your time has come to pass by what men call death,
you will merge with the waters gracefully, and no
trembling part of you will be left behind to feel pain.
Lin Fong and Chong Fei K'ing had been home for
several days, and the child's training in Kung Fu had
begun. On the first day, Lin had given the boy many
long hours of demonstration, beginning with
one−man forms, and then going through the
separate parts of two−man forms, sometimes using
the young boy as a dummy and sometimes using an
imaginary opponent.
Finally he closed his eyes and folded his arms
across his chest. “Now, you will see me fight seven
imaginary enemies at once. I am imagining them to
be all around me, and I build each one up in turn out
of nothing, making him a certain height and weight,
and giving him certain strengths and certain

weaknesses—but only so much of this as I could
determine by a quick glance before a fight. All you
will see at first is old Lin Fong jumping and whirling
and slashing by himself in the desert; but later,
perhaps you will be able to see these imaginary
enemies as vividly as I now do, and will be able to
construct some for yourself, so that you may practice
in this way.”
Lin Fong continued to stand still for another few
moments. K'ing watched with fascinated curiosity.
Suddenly, Lin's hands shot out sideways, and his
legs likewise jumped in a flash to a fighting stance,
his toes curling into the hot sand.
At first, when Lin Fong suddenly slashed out with
arms and legs, and began whirling and ducking and
spinning, K'ing could see no more than an
indecipherable blur of lethal motion.
But after a time, his eyes became quicker, and he
was able to count the number of different attacks and
defences that he was carrying on at the same time.
K'ing could not imagine himself at any time
approaching the Master from any direction without
being chopped to pieces, and finally, after Lin Fong

had stopped four or five times to rest and give the
boy a chance to think, he found that he could in fact
put imaginary enemies in seven places at once, and
see how Lin Fong was dealing with all of them. But
most of all, he was taken with the consummate
balance and rhythm of Lin Fong's movements. He
knew that it would be years before he could do
anything like this.
When Lin Fong was satisfied that the young boy
had a good over−all idea of what Kung Fu was, K'ing
began to learn its actual practice as any other
beginner learns, by perfecting several basic
stances—among them the Horse−Riding Stance and
the Stance of the Cat. Lin Fong told him these
postures would make him feel the different attitudes
one might assume in fighting Kung Fu style, but that
they were stylized and largely of ritualistic value. In
confronting a live and dangerous enemy, one would
not profit much from squaring off in the Horse
Stance, even though the position—knees flexed, feet
spread far apart, fists clenched palms−up at the
sides with elbows pointing straight backward—was
an especially solid and powerful defensive one, and

prepared one to spring quickly to either side or to
deliver a wide array of blows and kicks. Likewise, the
Stance of the Cat, with the right foot reaching lightly
forward, toes grazing the ground as the knee flexed,
and the left foot bearing most of the weight nearly
perpendicular to it behind, was a stance that gave
rise to quick, graceful movement in any direction,
and was especially adapted to slashing, clawing, or
poking attacks and sharp, high kicks, as well as to
swift retreats. But, Lin Fong said, unless the age of
ceremonial combat returned, it was usually a waste
of time and an affectation to assume these postures
at the beginning of a fight: better to attack with speed
and surprise, or to defend instinctively, and leave the
posing to fighters who wanted to impress people.
The Master assured K'ing that if he practiced these
routines well, he would find himself automatically
assuming many stances for split−second intervals
during combat, when he needed the advantages that
they offered. But their primary use was to fit the
young boy's body to the basic forms of Kung Fu
combat; to train his sense of balance, and to put him
in touch with the source of his body's potential for

action.
Chong Fei K'ing found these stances, and the
movements that grew out of them, natural and easy
after his years of Tai Chi discipline, although at first
he found it difficult to make attacking movements
with the brutal finality that they required. The Master,
though demanding and relentless in his pursuit of
perfection, smiled often on his protege's efforts. After
long practice sessions, he sat on his haunches
watching the boy draw water from the well, nodding
his head in satisfaction.
On the fifth day, he said to K'ing: “I never doubted
that you could become a Master. You have come
only a few tiny steps on a road that is a thousand
miles long, but you move with the ease and speed of
the wind. No other pupil would I have taken into my
home and agreed to teach before his tenth year. In
all of China—and I have searched the country for
many years, seeking children to teach—there is
none but the Son of the Flying Tiger whom I would
have reared nearly from birth for this purpose,
knowing that the very blood of his father and mother
assured that he could become the greatest of the

Masters.” He drank a little water and gazed up into
the sky.
The child glowed momentarily with warmth and
pride, but the mention of his mother brought a
questioning look into his face. “Lin Fong?” he began
tentatively.
The sage nodded his head in short, slow
movements. “I know,” he said. “Now you will ask me
about your mother. Let me say only that, as your
father was a man among men, your mother was a
woman among women.” He broke off. Then he
turned to regard the boy closely. “The story of your
mother is full of myth and mystery. Someday you will
hear it, but not for many years, and not from me.”
Then, as if to take K'ing's mind off the subject, he
made a startling revelation.
“A companion is coming for you. Another boy.”
He stopped to assess K'ing's reaction to this
news. The child only looked up and, in his own wise
way, said, “Yes?...”
“Yes,” Lin Fong grinned. “This is the only boy in
China besides you who I wish to have as my pupil.
He is ten years old—nearly two years older than you.

His name is Kak Nan Tang.” Lin Fong paused. “At
least,” he said, returning to the subject that still
raised questions in the boy's mind, “you know the
story of your father. Kak knows nothing of his
lineage, nor will he hear anything of it from me but
that it is as great and glorious as yours. The two of
you will be my pupils partly because of the
circumstances of your births...”
No sooner had Lin Fong finished this short
speech than an unexpected shout carried to the ears
of Master and boy across the desert sand.
K'ing looked up and saw two nomads, an old man
and a young girl, struggling toward them, exhaustion
and barely−stale terror written in their desperate,
lunging movements.
But Lin Fong saw something more. He saw his
old friend Ton Te Ming, with his five−year−old
granddaughter Sui−ding, their faces twisted with
what only could have been the impact of a recent
confrontation with death. He knew that some great
tragedy had befallen the small, impoverished tribe of
this old patriarch, and that soon Chong Fei K'ing
would have an answer to a question that to the

sage's knowledge the boy had not yet asked—the
question of why passing nomad tribes, from their
impoverished stocks of food, kept an old recluse and
his young pupil supplied even in the very hardest of
times.
Lin Fong took a deep breath, and felt strength
rising in his ancient limbs. He walked a few steps out
into the desert to meet his friend of many decades.
His visage was impassive. A brief second passed in
which his consciousness went blank. As always
before a battle, he took an instant to plunge down
into the depths of his mind, and to unite briefly with
the ever−flowing currents of the cosmos—to grasp at
the strength and peace of the Tao.
“Lin Fong!” the old man gasped, and from a
distance of ten feet the Master could see his cheeks,
wrinkled, the color and texture of walnuts, lined with
the salt of dried tears.
“Lin Fong, we have been attacked! Ton Chan and
his family are butchered! The guts of our sheep and
cattle lie stinking in the sun near the Place of the
Steep Rocks.”
Lin Fong's gaze remained steady as, deep down,

his heart wrenched and burned. Ton Te Ming's son,
slaughtered with his young wife and all his children!
A younger man perhaps would have questioned how
such a thing could have happened to these simple
desert people: for who could be their enemies? But
Lin Fong knew that the winds of evil blew
everywhere, and he had long since ceased to search
for their source.
The Master turned sharply to K'ing. “Fill a pouch
with food, and bring two skins of water. Hurry!”
Then he turned back to Ton Te Ming, whose eyes
moved restlessly, trembling in their deep sockets as
he told the story.
His tribe, forty people in all, with their camels and
tents and flocks, had been making for the Place of
the Steep Rocks, where large formations of granite
jutted up out of the desert for nearly a mile. It was
the only oasis for hundreds of miles where they
could water their beasts and let them graze in the
grasslands nearby.
But before they could approach the watering hole
that lay just beyond its first northern spire of rocks,
they had been confronted by a single, tall man with

bushy hair, who in a strange dialect and fearsome
tones had told them that evil spirits had taken over
the place, and that they must pass around it and
never return; and that they must tell all the other
tribes never to approach the Place of the Steep
Rocks again.
The elders of the tribe had conferred, and had
told the man that if they were forced to move on,
their flocks and they themselves would surely perish;
and that they would try to propitiate the evil sprits
after the manner of their fathers and grandfathers
and great−grandfathers down through the centuries.
The man with the bushy hair, dressed in a
strangely ancient−looking leather skirt and wearing a
sabre in his belt, had told them that the spirits could
not be propitiated; that they were led by the spirit of
Genghis Khan himself; and, his eyes growing thin
and hard above his high Mongol cheekbones, had
hissed at them, “If you stay, the ghost of Genghis
Khan will take his bloody toll among the strongest of
your number.” Then he had left.
Ton Te Ming had withdrawn a distance of a few
hundred yards to the edge of the rocks, and there he

and the other elders had set to discussing what to do
next. Ton Chan, his strong and fearless son, had
scoffed at the threats and drawn his skinning−knife.
Suddenly, without warning, the thundering of
hooves had filled the air, and half a dozen screaming
horsemen had descended upon them, long, curved
sabres flashing.
The first of them had beheaded Chan with a
single stroke, and, as the rest of the stricken tribe
scattered, the invaders had hauled his family from
their tent and executed them. Then, stopping only to
bum their tents and disembowel their sheep and
cattle, the men had retreated, still screaming, into the
rocks.
Lin Fong had his own ideas as to why someone
might want to keep the nomads away from the Place
of the Steep Rocks, but there was no time to explore
them now, nor any need. The Master knew that they
would learn the nature of the evil they faced soon
enough.
“The boy and I leave immediately,” he said. “Do
you wish to go with us, or to remain here with the
child?”
Sui−ding, her hardy but somehow delicate beauty
all but lost in the panic that still played in her wide,
dark eyes, gazed up trembling as her fate was
decided.
Lin Fong knew the answer before he spoke. “The
girl will stay,” Ming said. “No one would dare to harm
her in the house of Lin Fong. Myself—I will go with
you, though I die on the way!”
Lin Fong stared down at him. “You will not die on
the way,” he said simply. “You will not die because
you are ready to die, because you no longer care
about life.”
Chong Fei K'ing, returning with the food and
water, heard with surprise a grim hardness in the
tones of his Master's voice. The sounds awakened in
him the same echoes that he had felt when he had
first heard the sharp noise of cracking timbers near
the railroad tracks.
They brought forth the same feeling that had
electrified him upon hearing the tales of his father's
battles.
Lin Fong took the food pouch and water skins
from him. “Take Sui−ding inside,” the Master

instructed, “and show her where the food is kept.
Show her also the trap door that leads to the hollow
beneath the house. Tell her that if anyone
comes—anyone at all—she is to hide there and not
come out until our return. Go quickly.”
K'ing did as he was told, leading the little girl
inside and noting with satisfaction her quick grasp of
her instructions even in her almost paralyzed state of
fear. By the time he had emerged from the house,
Ton Te Ming was standing at Lin Fong's side, some
strength seemingly having returned to his
grief−racked body.
“How many days' journey is it to the place?” the
Master asked.
“We have walked two days,” Ming said, “but the
girl needed water, and we went by the way of the
Spring of the Three Trees. Also, we slept.” He said
this almost with shame. “Straight across the desert,
we may reach there by morning.”
“Good.”
Lin Fong threw the water−skins over one shoulder
and the food pouch over the other and, dressed only
in his thin robe, and weaponless, he set out at a fast

pace across the sand. Chong Fei K'ing had to trot
once in a while to keep up with his rapid pace, and
Ming himself soon was breathing hard.
Not a word was spoken between the three until
nightfall.
Then, as the sun set over the slowly heaving
waves of the desert, staining the sky a wide and
deep orange, Lin Fong turned to K'ing. “You must
know,” he said, “that these are men and not spirits
we are facing; that these tales of Genghis Khan and
these men with sabres are but a deception. In this
age of guns, but few men rely upon their own bodies
or such weapons as sabres to do their fighting.
Chong Fei K'ing...”
The boy could feel that instructions were coming.
He was silent.
“If you hear the noises of guns, which I have often
described to you—if you see the flashes of their
muzzles, if you hear their bullets whizzing through
the air—you must bury yourself in the sand where no
one can see you, and you must stay until the fighting
is over. Do you understand?”
The Son of the Flying Tiger did not like this much,
but he nodded his head in agreement.
Before the sun rose the next morning, the Place
of the Steep Rocks was in sight on the pale horizon.
Ming had told the rest of his tribe to retreat three
days' journey to the south, and to await him there.
Now the Place of the Steep Rocks was silent as Lin
Fong lay on a low ridge, his head peeking over to
gaze at its thick gray towers of rock and the few low
scraggly trees that grew in their shade.
After a moment, he crawled back down and
walked to where his protege stood with Ming in a dry,
rocky gully.
“We will approach from the north,” he said simply.
“We will walk across the desert straight to the place
and we will see what happens. There is no use trying
to conceal ourselves. They will have lookouts
posted.” He turned to Ming. “Do you think that any of
their number will recognize you?”
The old man squinted into the sun and frowned.
“Only the tall man with the bushy hair,” he said. “If he
is there, he will know me.”
“That is not good,” Lin Fong said, as they followed
the gully northward. Lin Fong's eyes searched the

ground, and in a moment he came up with a sharp
piece of stone that looked like flint. He handed it to
Ming. “Cut off your hair with this,” he said, “until you
are all but bald. He will never know you then.” As
they continued their march, the old man wordlessly
obeyed, leaving a trail of long, gray, wispy hairs
behind him. When he was finished, Chong Fei K'ing
could hardly recognize the old nomad himself.
The sun was just beginning to rise as the trio
swung back to approach the steep rocks from the
north. “At least,” Lin Fong said, “If we come toward
them this way, they will not suspect that we have
anything to do with the tribe of nomads that has fled
to the south. They will treat us as newcomers, and
perhaps we may learn something.”
Chong Fei K'ing's pulse quickened as his
calloused bare feet felt hard stone under them
instead of soft sand. The first tower of rock was
placidly lifeless as they passed beneath its shadow.
Lin Fong was making for the watering−hole. K'ing felt
trapped.
But they neither saw nor heard any signs of life.
Lin Fong had purposely avoided going past the

carnage that the murderers had wrought, or even
going within sight of it. “If they are here, and they are
watching us, then they will know that we know that
something is wrong if we go by there.”
The trio walked all the way to the watering−hole.
Although they were not thirsty, Lin Fong made them
kneel down and lap up the water with their tongues.
The air was perfectly still about them on this
windless day, and the ripples in the pool spread the
lemon−yellow morning sunlight out over the clear,
shallow water as it would have on any other desert
morning.
The water was perfectly pure, and the bottom of
the pool was black, and K'ing, looking from his own
reflection to those of the two older men, noticed for
the first time that while the eyes of Lin Fong and Ton
Te Ming were dark, his were blue, like two holes of
sky in his face. He had never seen eyes like his
before, and they were to him a mystery.
Lin Fong stopped lapping the water. Droplets of it
streamed from his drooping mustache. His eyes
were bright, and his expression showed no trace of
alarm as he whispered, “I have heard sounds. There

are at least three men in the rocks watching us. Do
not look up. Let us follow the caravan trail back
toward the sheltered place where the tribes make
their camps. Then these men will talk to us.”
Lin Fong arose and took the lead, and they
walked the path slowly, their feet crunching on the
thick layer of dried camel dung that the ages had left
upon it. They entered a slim aisle between sheer
faces of brown rock marbled with white streaks. Lin
Fong put a hand on the boy's shoulder, and glanced
back at Ming. The gestures meant, “Be ready.” A
glint of light off a rock face had told Lin Fong that
someone with something metal was standing in the
center of the path around the next corner.
CHAPTER FOUR. The Spirit of Genghis

Khan
And there was something with metal there.

As it came into sight, a horse snorted and
stamped, and the blinding flash of light struck K'ing's
eyes, reflected off the chest of its rider.
This was a strange thing, from another age, that
the trio beheld; a man sitting high on a
thick−chested, pure black horse, whose nostrils
flared and quivered, and whose spirited eyes flashed
wildly at them. Its rider was dressed from head to toe
in an ancient Chinese suit of armor. His left hand
held the horse's reins. His right arm extended rigidly
down to a clenched fist poised just over his right
knee. In the fist was a short, heavy sword, which
pointed up and out, forming a perfect V with the line
of his arm. Its razor edges and needle tip glowed
brightly in the sunlight. Beneath the crown of a heavy
plumed helmet, a pair of dark eyes, framed by heavy
black eyebrows and arching Mongol cheekbones,
stared angrily out at them. Chong Fei K'ing had
never seen anything like this, not even in books.
Lin Fong stopped, the boy and Ming a step

behind him on either side, and looked up as though
just mildly surprised. He gave a short nod of
non−committal greeting. Then he folded his arms
across his chest, and, putting his left foot just slightly
forward, let his weight rest on his right. He gazed up
and down at the spectacle rather curiously, as one
would look at a museum exhibit. K'ing could see
traces of bushy black hair escaping from beneath the
helmet. He was sure that notice of this had not
escaped Ming.
The figure on the horse was still for a moment,
and it was clear to K'ing that he expected these
broken−down old men and this defenseless child to
flee immediately at the mere sight of him.
Then, without warning, the sword flashed forward
and pointed straight at Lin Fong's chest. A voice
spoke from beneath the helmet: “This is a forbidden
place! You must leave and come here no more!”
The dialect was strange; K'ing could barely follow
it.
But Lin Fong knew the Mongolian dialect
perfectly. Answering the horseman in kind, he said
softly, “You are dressed up as Genghis Khan. But

Genghis Khan has been dead for more than seven
hundred years. So you are not Genghis Khan.
But—neither you nor Genghis Khan himself could
keep Lin Fong from walking this path if he chose. No
man owns this desert, nor the Place of the Steep
Rocks.”
“Old man!” the voice from beneath the helmet
thundered, “the Spirit of Genghis Khan lives in this
place with many other warlike spirits; if you disturb
them, the sword of the Mongol will tear you to pieces
and carve out your heart!”
Lin Fong smiled with amusement, as one might
smile at a child who had said something charming
but ridiculous.
“I, Lin Fong, am a follower of the Tao. There are
not many spirits, and there are no warlike spirits;
there is only one spirit, the Spirit of the Cosmos. I am
not a superstitious old fool. What is here in the Place
of the Steep Rocks that makes you want to keep an
old man from it?”
The armor rattled, and the reins in the horse's
mouth grew tight. The sword flashed as it raised high
toward the sky.

K'ing could see Lin Pong's knees flexing as his
curious museum pose turned imperceptibly into the
Stance of the Cat. A gentle hand brushed against his
robe, and another against Ming's, motioning them
sideways and backwards.
Already too many words had been spoken.
The horse reared, and the rider threw his body
forward onto its neck, and his spurs dug into the
black stallion's sides. The chest of the huge beast
surged into motion, and the sword plunged toward
Lin Fong's chest.
K'ing dove behind a rock.
As the gleaming blade bounced toward Lin Fong
on the horse's right side, the Master attacked; he
launched out in a low, turning dive away from the
horseman's sword hand, and toward the beast's
oncoming hooves. Missing them by fractions of an
inch, he seized the rider's left foot as it jounced in the
stirrup, and yanked backwards.
The rider's face smashed down onto the horse's
neck. He tried to hold on, but the horse kept running,
and his legs split wide in his heavy suit of armor, until
his foot yanked out of the other stirrup and he rolled

over the horse's back, crashing heavily to the
ground.
The sword flailed wildly, making hollow swooping
noises in the air as he scrambled hard to regain his
footing.
There was a disturbance in the rocks above, and
K'ing saw three men with sabres catapulting
downward. Desperately the boy searched his mind
for something he could do, but he knew that if either
he or the old nomad tried to help, they would only get
in the way.
The Spirit of Genghis Khan brought his sword
down hard on the armor that covered his ankle, and
K'ing shut his eyes to avert them from the horrible
sight of his Master's hand being cut off. But no
sooner had K'ing closed his eyes than they flashed
open again; for he told himself, “These things which I
am now seeing, I may some day have to do, and
sooner or later I will have to face the sight of blood.”
So it was that he missed only the quick release of Lin
Fong's hand from his adversary's ankle, and the
sword starting to raise for a death−blow while the
Mongol drew his free foot quickly back under him.

Now a lightning−kick erupted shoulder high,
crashing into the swordsman's armored elbow,
driving his arm up and back; and another kick sent a
heel crashing into his opposite knee, tearing at the
fibers of his struggling body. So fast did the blows fall
that K'ing could not count them, until the sword flew
from the hand, and a Monkey Blow caved in the side
of the face, and Lin Fong, finding the weakness in
his enemy's armor between the helmet and
breastplate, delivered a clean, thrusting knife−point
blow to the windpipe, smashing an Adam's apple and
sending a doomed man staggering off to choke and
drown in his own blood.
But even before the Spirit of Genghis Khan had
been laid to rest, the blade of a sabre was slicing
through the air, as its wielder charged headlong at
the whirling dervish in the long, flowing white robe.
But to Lin Fong, his death blow had been only a
formality. Even before he had dealt it, his body had
been moving to meet the new attack.
Now the sword's too−wide arc, and the
swordsman's over−anxiousness for simple murder,
proved fatal.
Lin Fong gauged the sweep of the sword−point,
and sprang lightly leftward. The polished steel
swished downward past him, parting the thin gauze
of his robe, but leaving him untouched; and before
the assassin could stop his charge and mount
another attack, the hardened side of the Master's
right hand chopped out in a backhand blow that
caught a passing neckbone from the rear and
snapped it with a shuddering shock; and a knee
pounded upward into a vulnerable groin; and a
lifeless body tumbled over it and fell heavily onto the
sharp rocks. The sabre clattered off like an old piece
of junk metal, ringing sharply on hard surfaces as it
went.
There was no hesitation in the Master's dancing
movements. The end of one blow had long been the
beginning of another. It would be several years
before Chong Fei K'ing would be able to fight this
way: to plan the whole of a battle with a number of
assailants from start to finish in an instant, as one
would choreograph a dance, predicting their
movements and yet allowing always for the totally
unexpected.
As his first attacker slumped over his knee Lin
Fong pirouetted as a ballet dancer on the ball of his
left foot. His right hand whipped like a branch in a
wide sweep that met the midsection of the second
assailant, and his head snapped backward out of the
path of his downward−slashing sabre. His vulnerable
head acted as a lure. But then the lure had
disappeared, and there was only death left.
Lin Fong, in teaching K'ing the rudiments of Kung
Fu, had shown him how to strike sharply with such
hand blows and to pull back almost before they were
delivered to prepare for defense or for another
attack. But this time the Master's blow followed
through as his right foot hooked delicately but firmly
behind the legs of his adversary, and Lin threw the
stunned body into that of the last attacker. As the
dazed man fell to the ground and Lin Fong leapt over
him, he almost absent−mindedly snapped the toe of
his right foot up under his chin, cracking his head
hard against the rocks and splitting it open.
Now Lin set upon his lone, last enemy in this brief
struggle, and kicked and smashed him from so many
angles at once that in an instant he had absorbed

enough lethal blows to kill ten men. Blood welled in
his mouth, staining the white of his teeth with
surprised scarlet as he fell, the base of his spine
thudding like a dropped piece of timber onto a brown
boulder of granite.
Lin Fong stood absolutely motionless for perhaps
two seconds. K'ing would soon learn that, after such
an episode, Lin was at once listening for sounds of
more trouble—in these situations he trusted his ears
more than his eyes, for they could give him news at
once from all directions—and also playing back to
himself the feelings and the images of the previous
moments.
Then Lin turned to them. “We must climb the
rocks now,” he said. “Here, as in aerial warfare, he
who holds the heights has the advantage. We must
be silent, and see what is really happening in this
Place of the Steep Rocks.” Quickly finding a trail, the
three followed it until they saw a way to climb upward
to the heights.
Just before they reached the top, they stopped to
rest briefly. Lin Fong turned to K'ing. “If there is
shooting with guns here, there will be no sand for

you to bury yourself in. So you must do your best to
hide in the rocks; perhaps you can find yourself a
small cave. Do not worry about me. I do not feel that
I will die here, but one never knows, especially when
there are guns, which there are bound to be. But if I
do die, do not linger with my body, wherever it lies.
For whether I, Lin Fong, will somehow be conscious
without my body, and be off to another world; or
whether I am nothing but my body, and will become
strewn through the dust and wind, and my parts will
become one with the earth and sky and water; it will
not matter. For I have spent a long time staring at
this desert, and now I am ready, if I run into bad luck,
to be part of it.”
The boy was alive to the atmosphere of hate and
death all around them, and had to force himself to
listen to the Master's words. But Lin Fong was not
finished.
“Chong Fei K'ing,” Lin said to him, as if hurriedly
to tell him something he should know in case the
Master would not have another chance to impart it: “I
will not know until I have died what death is; but I do
know that, even at your age, you must strive to be at

peace with the unknown future. For the peace of the
Tao is the peace of a man for whom death is
welcomed into life as part of it, whatever death may
be.”
Now the trio gained the heights, and crept behind
a rock whose long, level, gray top would have
seemed, in less dangerous times, like a balcony. It
served them as a parapet. Lin Fong peered over it.
Directly below, in a large hollow among fifty−foot
cliffs that were broken by entrances only to the north
and south, lay three buildings, newly constructed.
Their walls were mortared rock, and their heavily
timbered roofs were dappled with camouflage paint.
There was a large one whose rear butted up against
the cliffs to the east, and whose boarded front porch
looked out on the trail that cut through the valley's
middle; a smaller one, perhaps thirty feet to the
south of it; and another one across the trail, a little
further south, in front of which a dozen camels, most
of them pack animals fitted out as ordinary nomad
beasts, were tied to a long rail. Their drivers sat
around a fire in the thirty foot space between the
buildings.
But these were no ordinary camel drivers, these
dozen men who lay about napping or talking or
dredging up food from a huge iron caldron that sat by
the side of the fire; for Lin Fong could see even
through their clothing that their bodies were hard and
strong and young, and their faces were dark and
squinting with ruthlessness.
And all about them lay guns: high−powered rifles,
pistols and shoulder holsters, and submachine guns.
At the edge of the group stood a thickset monster
of a man, dressed in a black tunic of silk that shone
with orange sequins in intricate design: obviously the
leader. Standing slightly behind him at his sides were
what Lin assumed to be his bodyguards. Although
they wore pistols at their hips and cradled
high−powered rifles in their arms, Lin could tell from
their short, belted white robes, and loose, short white
pants, that their final resort would be to judo. And if
they were here, they must be Masters.
As he reported these findings to his two
companions, Lin Fong was certain that, as yet at
least, he had not been spotted.
Now he left the old nomad and the young boy in

each other's care, and made his way first east, then
south, and finally west again, sneaking up through
the rocks until he had reached a point twenty feet
above the rear of the main building. Now that the
sides of the structures were fully in view, he was not
surprised to see that they were windowless and
completely sealed off except for a few cracks in the
mortar through which gun muzzles could fit.
Lin Fong was surprised that no one had yet run
across the bodies of his earlier victims and sounded
the alarm. For such an elaborate setup, whose
purpose he still had not stopped to question, surely
the Place of the Steep Rocks would be ringed with
armed sentries patrolling regularly. He guessed there
would be at least a half a dozen of these.
The Master did not wait for the alarm to be
sounded. He could have slipped away, but there was
no hope of escaping into the desert with an old
nomad and a young boy. These people with their
camels would surely find them, and they would be
easy prey. The only way to get out was to go in.
The decision took no more than a second. Lin
leapt out away from the cliff, and, staring in his silent
flight to see whether he was being sighted over the
edge of the roof, collapsed into a small, almost
invisible heap on the camouflage paint. Then he
scuttled across it, gained its edge, and leapt.
To Lin Fong, who now flew through the air toward
an impossible fight, and even as he went prepared to
lash out with kicks and blows that would strike before
he landed, there was never more than one body
fighting him, whether he was fighting one person or a
body of people. This was a very large body into
which he now descended. It would surround him. In
fact, it would engulf him. But it was no matter. He
was on the way.
Ni−Tang Chang, standing between his two huge
Japanese bodyguards surveying his operation with
supreme confidence in the impregnability of his
fortress, suddenly saw a flash of white cloth
catapulting past his head; and before he or anyone
else in the tiny area could realize that they were in
trouble, Lin Fong's feet, held tightly together, had
bashed in the skull and broken the neck of the leader
of his caravan, and his left hand had knifed in to
spear the throat of a driver as he turned.

Screeches and cries erupted in the mad
scrambling as Lin Fong dropped, rolling, to the
ground, and lashed out with a lightning kick that met
a groin.
He sprang sideways to kick in the backbone of a
man who scrambled wildly for a gun.
Chang's bodyguards jumped their rifles to their
shoulders.
But Lin Fong had foreseen this, and, presenting a
target almost impossible for the bulky weapons to
follow at such close range as he whirled and dove
and leapt and struck, being careful to use the
scrambling, panicked enemies as screens, he kicked
a rifle behind the huge cauldron by the side of the
fire then dove behind it himself.
The cauldron did not cover his body completely,
and a bullet grazed his calf, as many more clanged
into the cauldron, making it jump and wobble and
inch back toward him.
But when he pointed the barrel of the rifle over
the top of the cauldron and fired several random
shots from the semi−automatic weapon toward
where Chang and his bodyguards stood, they dove

behind them into a side door of the main building and
slammed it shut.
Lin leapt up, firing from the waist, cutting down
first those who had raised guns nearly high enough
to fire at him.
Then he dove for the thick, metal−plated side
door, making it impossible for those inside to train
their weapons on him through the thin muzzle slits in
the mortar.
His weapon blazing, he put an end to all life within
gun range.
Now, the world's greatest Master of weaponless
fighting had gained a short instant in which to think
and plan.
This was not the first time he had used a gun. As
he had told his young protege, “Weapons are evil.
Their only purpose is for violence, and with weapons
one may kill without looking into the eyes of one's
victim. Remember this: it is very important. If one is
to kill, one must ask oneself, 'Could I look into the
eyes of this person who is to die at my hands?' If the
answer is 'No,' then one may have fallen heir to the
greatest burden a man's soul can carry. Of course,

even if one can answer 'Yes,' that still does not mean
the killing was justified...” But on the other hand,
there was no mystique about weapons for this
Master of weaponless combat. For him, they were
merely extensions of the body. The high−powered
rifle worked like a knife−point blow at long range.
The bomb worked like a hammer−blow. And in his
time, Lin Fong had been called upon to use many
weapons.
Suddenly his super−sensitive ears, which had
been ignoring the commotion behind the metal door
at his back, and listening for sounds of outlying
sentries closing in, picked up a tiny, creeping noise
from the cliffs above the building behind him.
It came again, and when he had firmly fixed in his
mind the direction of its source, he leapt suddenly
out from the partial shelter of the building wall into
the open, staring his adversary straight in the face.
With the smoothness of an arrow that flies
through the air and suddenly stops dead, embedded
in a tree, Lin Fong swung the rifle until the sentry's
chest slammed into focus between the crosshairs.
There was no worry whether the man who

tracked Lin with his own rifle would squeeze his
deadly trigger first. Such worry would only interfere
with the concentration needed for shooting. Lin had
been taught from infancy by his own Master to block
out all doubts that might hinder the directness of his
attacks.
Perhaps this was why he firmly squeezed the
trigger of his rifle and sent a soft−nosed slug
crashing into the sentry's head a half a second—a
half a second that amounted to an eternity—before
another finger could pull another trigger.
The body slammed against the cliff wall as though
it had been hit by a train, and then crumpled, a small
hole in its forehead, the back of its head blown out.
The hot rocks dripped with rapidly darkening
splashes of blood that flowed between white, jellied
bits of brain.
As Lin Fong first raked the side of the building
with fire to force back the muzzles that now began to
poke out at him, and then regained the safety of the
door, Chong Fei K'ing watched from high above.
The boy felt the surge of his father's blood in his
veins. He found himself breathing deeply, and his

tiny limbs became impatient.
It was true, Lin Fong had told him to hide.
It was also true that the Master had put to rest
one armored man on horseback, three men wielding
sabres, a dozen murderous camel drivers, and one
sentry with a high−powered rifle.
But even K'ing's inexperienced mind realized that,
as Lin also knew, there would be outlying sentries
guarding the distant approaches to the Place of the
Steep Rocks who would now be closing in on the
battle scene. And then there were the men who were
left in the main building below.
The boy thought to himself, “Lin Fong has told me
to hide because he does not want me to be killed.
But he has also said that if I am to become a Master,
I must not fear death. Must I wait until I become a
Master of Kung Fu before I stop fearing death?
“Some day I will die, that is certain; and whether
or not there is anything to be feared from death, what
does it matter, compared to the length of all eternity,
whether I die today, or in seventy years?”
He meditated briefly on these things, and then he
thought, “Lin Fong has told me to hide myself... But

there are many men seeking to kill Lin Fong, and if
he dies, Ton Te Ming and I will be on our own in this
den of murderers.”
The phrase “on our own” struck him forcibly. If Lin
Fong were to die, why then, would not Chong Fei
K'ing suddenly have to become his own Master? He
could never be such a Master to himself as Lin Fong
was to him, but he would have to make do as best
he could.
Coming suddenly to a decision, the boy tapped
Ton Te Ming on the shoulder. “I am going,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE. The Killing of Sasho

Yakai
The old nomad felt that he should restrain the

boy; but so great was his awe of Lin Fong, the
protector of the nomads, and of anyone who stood
near him, that he looked upon Chong Fei K'ing
almost as a god. And besides, there was a depth, a
finality, deep in the clear blue eyes of the Master's
young protege that told this old patriarch of the
desert that his efforts would be of no avail. He
nodded fatalistically.
K'ing made his way among the cliffs to the place
where the dead sentry lay.
He shuddered at the gore and the blood.
Then he looked abstractly at the high−powered
rifle that lay still gripped in the hands of the dead
man.
Lin Fong had told him how guns worked. He knew
that with this one, you had to look through the tube
with glass at either end that was mounted over the
barrel in order to find what you wanted the bullet to
hit. He had been told how some guns were loaded,
but not this one.

Gingerly he tugged the complicated mechanism
of metal and wood from the dead man's grasp and
lifted it to rest on his lap.
It took him perhaps thirty seconds to see how the
long, curving clip of ammunition fit into the slot
beneath the barrel, and he took it out and replaced it
once or twice. Then, searching the pouch at the
dead man's waist, he retrieved several more such
clips and put in a fresh one.
The words of Lin Fong echoed in his ears: “With a
weapon you may kill someone without looking into
his eyes.” But the boy remembered that the question
that decided whether or not one should kill in this
way was not, “Can you look into his eyes?” It was
“Could you look into his eyes, if you were there to do
it?”
Chong Fei K'ing did not as yet have any thorough
idea about what death was, but he had seen men die
that day, and he had seen them try to kill Lin Fong.
He thought to himself, “If this is what death is, then
surely I could look into the eyes of these murderers
as they died?” And besides, Lin Fong had shot this
very man whose rifle he now had.

Lin Fong had told him that weapons were used by
the same rules as the body was used in Kung Fu,
and that he was learning Kung Fu and not the use of
weapons first because weapons were a temptation
to careless killing, but second because the human
body itself was the most complicated of all things,
and if you could learn to use your body then you
would know how to use simpler things like guns and
knives if the necessity arose.
K'ing looked down to see Lin Fong throw his rifle
on to the top of the building and then vault up after it.
As the Master moved toward the building's front,
and the roof of a porch held up by heavy timbers,
K'ing scampered away through the rocks with his
new−found weapon, moving northward and
downward until he had reached the valley floor.
Then, still keeping hidden among the huge boulders
that littered it, he crawled and ran eastward until he
found a hiding place behind a rock about fifty yards
across from the building's front door.
Lin Fong heard noises among the rocks. He lifted
his rifle.
But he could see no target.

Then, he saw, from the northern and southern
ends of the valley, groups of men darting back and
forth toward him.
The outlying sentries had grouped at the valley's
ends, and were closing in.
The sage could now see that the crisis point in
the battle had been reached, the point at which there
could be no thinking or planning, but only
continuous, single−minded, dancing action. There
were heavily armed men in the building beneath him.
There were half a dozen men converging on him
from north and south.
He was trapped.
He leapt down from the roof and poured slugs
into the jamb of the front door, blasting away at the
timbers, shattering the inside bolt, and blowing it
open.
Then he raced to the side of the house, stopping
to rip an ammunition pouch from a dead man and
jam a fresh clip into his weapon. He shoved the
muzzle into one of the chinks in the mortar and raked
the interior.
Shots were already ringing off the stone walls

from the converging sentries as Lin, in a shower of
lead and rock−splinters, raced to the front of the
building again.
His back to the wall, he inched up to where a gun
muzzle was beginning to point, and a pair of eyes
were beginning to peek, out of the front door.
Putting down his weapon softly, he lunged into
the aperture.
He caught the gun muzzle in his powerful fingers
and forced it upward. He kept the body of the huge
Japanese between himself and those in the almost
pitch black interior.
Streams of gunfire poured out. Those inside were
desperate. Ni−Tang Chang, his submachine gun at
his hip, gladly sacrificed the life of his bodyguard in
the hope that he would at the same time cut down
this seemingly all−powerful attacker.
But so quickly did Lin Fong, his hands still
grasping the muzzle of the giant's submachine gun,
whirl away and dive inside, that only one of the many
bullets that tore through the giant's body touched him
with its largely spent impact, and that harmlessly
grazed his thigh.

Lin Fong heard a shuffling toward the far end of
the room, and breathing from across it, as he looked
up to find himself under a huge table covered with
jute bundles.
For an instant there was a stand−off; his
adversaries did not want to reveal their locations with
muzzle flashes until they could be certain of their
target.
The packages on the tables above Lin Fong were
wrapped with twine. Breaking loose several long
pieces, he quickly lashed his weapon to a table leg,
and then tied one end of a ten−foot piece in a loop
around the trigger. To cover the sounds, he threw a
package down along a wall, and drew a burst of fire
from a far end of the room. Then, holding an end of
string in his hand, he silently crept forward beneath
the table toward where he believed his closest
adversary to be.
Soon he could hear breathing sounds as he
stifled his own breath and drew upon his inner
strength to sustain him.
He yanked the cord.
Bullets shot wildly out of the gun behind him as it

chattered away against the table leg. Immediately a
thickset figure rose and blasted away at his decoy.
Lin lunged forward, found a pair of legs in the
darkness, and tackled them, snapping the massive
body above into another table so hard that a spine
cracked.
Lin's eyes fastened upon a new weapon which
now lay at his feet, but his instinct told him to spring
over another of the tables. His arching dive carried
him onto the back of a monstrous bodyguard, whose
gun swung to meet the attack a fraction of a second
too late. The Master's left hand grasped its muzzle
and twisted it, turning against a thumb, and his right
slashed down hard for the killing blow.
But although the gun came free and dropped to
the floor, the giant's head shot backward, and Lin's
chopping hand, instead of hitting his skull at an angle
which would have sent shock waves to its opposite
side and fractured it, hit at a slightly different,
non−lethal angle. Lin instantly sensed that his
adversary, far larger and far more powerful, skilled
enough to evade a deadly and unexpected Karate
blow, was more than a ruthless killer: he

was—physically at least—a Master.
His Japanese opponent, fear in his heart at
having so narrowly, escaped such a masterful
stroke, reeled a step backward.
There was a sudden, chilling freeze. The two men
stared at each other in the faint light that filtered
through a nearby wall. Instinctively Lin Fong moved
to the Stance of the Cat as he took in the Japanese's
heavily calloused, massive right hand. Almost as
quickly his adversary assumed a Horse Stance, and
glowered at him murderously. His low voice blasted
the silence away: “I am Sasho Yakai,” he bellowed.
Lin Fong's eyes narrowed into a hard, ruthless
grin. “And I,” he said, “am Lin Fong.”
Lin's penetrating gaze detected the slightest
quivering in the immense bare muscles of the man's
huge forearms. If Sasho Yakai was indeed a master
of Karate, he knew the name of Lin Fong.
There was not an unhumble bone in all of Lin's
body, but the sage was not averse to using his
reputation as a weapon against a man forty years
younger. He smiled, all emotion whirling away in the
vortex of his thought as he dove deeply for the

strength of the Tao. Then: “A violent man shall die a
violent death. This is the essence of the teaching.”
The salutations were over. Sasho stepped
forward in short, chopping, balanced steps, his fists
clenched tightly at his sides.
Lin Fong's eyes seized the whole of his hulking
form, instantly surveying the structure of its muscles
and its balance. In less than a second, he had
launched into a combination of a dozen moves which
would mean certain death for his rival.
Faking a slashing blow with his upraised right
hand, he drew the first motion of a Whipping Branch
parry from Sasho's left, and set himself to counter
either the right−handed Ram's Head punch, or the
left−footed Dragon Stamp kick. When the Ram's
Head came at him straight and hard, his Leaping
Deer block sent it harmlessly upward, and his knees
flexed as he dropped to a semi−crouch.
A left−handed Knife−Point flashed toward his
midsection. He smashed it with a sharp Monkey
Blow, and the hand pulled back, a finger bent and
broken.
A Raised−Hoof kick, just a flash quicker than Lin

had expected, missed his groin but caught his thigh.
Sasho's foot had moved so fast that it had been all
but invisible. But they were fighting a fight of invisible
speed, and although Lin Fong's leg buckled slightly,
he was impervious to the waves of pain that
emanated from it; they were diverted and dissolved,
and suddenly the Master felt an overpowering surge
of white−hot fury. Already his iron right hand had
clamped down on Sasho's kicking foot and thrust
upward, setting up the subtle rhythm of imbalance
that he sought. Sasho's countermove was too
conventional; a slashing left hand that sought to cut
Lin's wrist.
And that was the error that killed Sasho Yakai.
For the Master had not meant, as Sasho thought,
to throw him over backward. Lin Fong had patience,
and like a chess player, his body planned each move
far in advance. Lin had noticed the slightest
imperfection in Sasho's original stance; it−took eyes
that could bore into the grains of a railroad tie, and
pave the way for a hand to break it, to see Sasho
leaning a fraction of an inch too far forward. Only Lin
Fong could dog the trail of such a minute

imperfection through the desperation of a
hand−to−hand, life and death struggle, magnifying it
little by little until it meant his enemy's death.
Now the forward motion of Sasho's left−hand
smash overcompensated for the imbalance that Lin
had created by throwing him slightly backward, and
brought his center of gravity fully half an inch further
forward that it should have been.
For a flash his left side was open.
Lin Fong ignored the opening, knowing that
Sasho had already felt it and was moving to cover it.
Letting Sasho defend against a blow he had never
intended, Lin saw that only one more quick diversion
was needed to set up a good death−shot at this
formidable adversary. He faked an Elephant Kick, his
right knee jabbing shortly but convincingly toward
Sasho's groin; and now the huge body, although on
the surface solidly positioned, was deep down to its
spine swaying like a tree about to fall.
A left−handed Tiger Claw streaked in to rake
Sasho's face.
A left foot flashed in behind his right to make his
retreat into a tiny stumble.

Then the right hand of the Master, fingertips as
hard as a lance, darted in, spearing Sasho's solar
plexus.
Half−blinded, his nervous system short−circuited
to the point of breakdown,, Sasho's arms and legs
lashed out wildly: he was a deadly fighter even
though himself half−dead. Lin Fong shot in through
the maze of disorganized but lethal blows to deliver
his favorite, supremely deadly Knife−Point to the
throat, and it was over.
Outside, Chong Fei K'ing had watched his Master
disappear into the foreboding front door of the low
stone and wood structure that sat in the placid heat
perhaps a hundred yards from him. He had heard
bursts of gunfire from within, and then there had
been what seemed to him like an interminable
silence of perhaps three minutes.
Now the boy watched closely as the sentries
wound their cautious way up the trail from either end
of the valley and came within fifty yards of the
building. In moments they would be bursting into the
shelter in which Lin Fong—if he was still
alive—waited alone. Balancing the rifle on a rock

before him, placing its butt up against his shoulder,
and instinctively steadying the stock with his left
hand as his right found the trigger, he looked through
the scope.
It was very simple. All one had to do was put
these thin crossed lines on the glass up against one
of the running figures, and then make the gun shoot.
He caught a figure in his sights. But then thought,
“No, I will wait until they have almost reached the
door. That way there will be no place for them to run
when I begin shooting, and none of them will be able
to run around behind me.”
Neither Lin Fong nor Chong Fei K'ing had thought
about the broken old nomad they had left quivering
in the shelter of the high rocks.
But Ton Te Ming, perhaps shamed by the bravery
of Lin Fong's young protege, or perhaps surprised by
the thought that someone so all−powerful as Lin
Fong might actually need help, had gradually found
his own way downward. He had watched K'ing at first
puzzle over the rifle, and finally aim it. He
remembered the Master's concern for the safety of
this naive child, and thought he could do no better

than protect the boy's rear as best he could. Armed
with no more than an old skinning knife which had
stayed, all but forgotten, in its sheath at his belt,
crawling inch by inch, he came up behind Chong Fei
K'ing, stopping about fifty yards away. Now he
crawled to the invisible safety of the split in a large
rock from which he could look out at the boy and up
the valley toward anyone who might come at him
from the rear. There, he waited.
Lin Fong was not idle during his few minutes of
respite inside the building. He tore the jute covering
from one of the hundreds of bundles, and inside he
found many lengths of beautiful, raw Thai silk. In the
center of the package, he found a large carved
wooden Buddha. A smash of his hand shattered it,
and white powder spewed forth. Opium.
It was no surprise. But it was bad news. These
smugglers, with their heavily fortified camp, could
only be part of some huge smuggling network, and to
attack part of that network was to attack all of it. He
supposed that, if he and the old Nomad and the
young boy managed to escape, leaving no one alive
who had seen their faces, it might be a long time

before the leaders of the ring suspected that the
attack had not come from agents of some
government—China's, or the government of some
country for which the opium was bound—or from
some rival ring. But they had their ways, and sooner
or later they would find out, and then they would
come to murder Lin Fong and anyone who was with
him.
Curious now, Lin used valuable seconds moving
to the dead body of the thick−set man whose spine
he had cracked. He glanced at the face.
Ni−Tang Chang. Lin Fong had fought him and a
number of his henchmen once in Shanghai, and had
let him live. Perhaps it had been a mistake, for
Ni−Tang Chang was a lieutenant of an ancient Tong
that long ago had split off from the other Tongs to
become one of China's most powerful crime
syndicates. Lin Fong now realized that he had
attacked an organization with a subterranean army
that would have put many of China's War Lords to
shame.
Then there was a pounding on the porch, and the
Master was not ready.

Briefly he wondered, as he scrambled for a gun,
whether he would now pay for his moment of
curiosity with his life.
There were five of them, rushing from the sunlight
upon the building's wide open door; two
sub−machine guns and three rifles, all talking. Lin
Fong wasn't one to sit around watching the action,
but in this case he had no choice. It was over before
he could get off a shot.
Chong Fei K'ing, huddled in the rocks with his
unfamiliar weapon at his shoulder, had done what
everyone does who first fires a rifle; he had pulled
the trigger instead of squeezing. His shot had gone
high. It had caught the lead sentry in the shoulder
instead of in the midsection.
K'ing had felt the rifle jerk in his hands just as the
shot was fired, and he said to himself, “This thing
must remain still as I work it. My hands must be very
smooth. It must be as if nothing at all has happened
but the firing pin meeting the back of the shell.” So,
aiming again two seconds later, picking out a target
from among the group as it panicked at being caught
in a cross fire, he gently squeezed off a round.

He was staring through the scope, trying to see
whether his shot had found its mark; but this time in
his gentle squeezing of the trigger he had continued
to hold it down, and to his surprise, the
semi−automatic weapon continued firing. “This is a
very easy thing,” he said to himself, as the bullets
hammered out in a steady stream and he swung the
scope from target to fleeing target. The weapon had
a tendency to climb into the air, and now K'ing made
his bursts shorter. Between them, he rammed in
fresh clips of ammunition.
“This is so easy—I see now why Lin Fong told me
that I must ask myself questions before I use such a
thing.”
From then on, as the figures continued to fall and
a few stray bullets whizzed past his ears, he asked
with each new body that came between the
crosshairs, “Could I now look this man in the eyes?”
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
Now Lin Fong himself was firing out through the
chinks in the wall of the building, finishing up the

work that his young protege had started.
Chong Fei K'ing felt a rising of the hairs on the
back of his neck.
Suddenly, from fifty yards behind him, there was
a solid crack of a single shot and a piercing scream.
The boy dove sideways. A bullet smashed into
the rock which had sheltered him, sending hot slivers
jabbing into his thigh.
A quick, electric wave of pain speared through
him, and he thought, “I have been shot.”
But then he looked down at his leg, lifting his robe
to examine the flesh. There were only a few small
bright red marks, with the tiniest bit of blood oozing
up out of them. He moved the limb. It still worked.
The valley was still. K'ing looked up over his rock.
Behind him, he saw a last lone sentry slumped over
a rock, and Ton Te Ming, shivering slightly but
smiling broadly, rising up from over his dead body,
his knife bloody in his hand.
The battle was over.
From inside the building, Lin Fong peeked out to
see the boarded porch in front, and the dusty ground
beyond, littered with lifeless bodies. Not far away, a

dozen camels still gnashed their teeth, and kicked
and yanked at their ropes.
The Master emerged onto the porch.
There was the slightest movement to his left. He
swiveled his gun to meet it.
The camel driver K'ing had winged with his first
shot was stirring. Blood was flowing from a wide
wound just below a collar bone, which had been shot
away. Lin walked over to the man and snatched a
knife from his belt. Then, stripping off his shirt, he
stuffed it into the gaping wound. By this time the old
nomad and the boy were at his side.
“We have a problem,” the sage said. “This man
who is living; we cannot kill him now, nor leave him
here to die. We must try to save him. But if he lives,
then he will know who we are, and these
smugglers—for that is what they are, opium
smugglers—have a strong hold upon him. If he goes
from us, he will not escape them, as far as he may
run. He will have to tell them who we are. But still,
we must try to save him.” Looking down at the now
unconscious body, he was unsure whether this was
possible, but he would try.

The Master turned back to the main building, its
grey stones and brown camouflage−painted roof now
seeming altogether innocent in the clear,
unthreatening light of the desert morning.
But, remembering what was inside it, he felt a
sudden burst of rage. Throwing his weapon to the
ground, he attacked one of the huge columns that
supported the front porch with the hardened edge of
his right hand. Slashing again and again, as a man
would slash a tree with an axe, he sent angry sounds
snapping like a pack of mad dogs down between the
valley's silent spires of rock.
Six, seven, eight blows, and the wood groaned
and shuddered.
Then the corner support buckled and broke, and
the roof above it came thundering down, spewing
stones from the top of the wall beneath it out over
the corpses and yellow−red dust and camel dung
and bits of straw.
Lin Fong stormed into the building, overturning
tables, casting packages of silk and wooden figures
and opium all about. Finding a lantern, he emptied its
oil onto one of the tables and lit it.

A muffled explosion of sunset orange flamed in
the darkness, and jute and silk and wood caught fire.
In seconds, the flames were searing at the heavy
timbers of the roof.
A tall column of smoke arose, a dense black
smudge in the otherwise crystalline air.
He repeated this performance at the two other
buildings. Then, hurriedly fetching four camels and
setting the rest free, he lashed the wounded enemy
across one of the saddles.
They set out.
As the camels smoothly left the valley behind, Lin
Fong reached back to throw a blanket over the body
that balanced on the saddle of the camel beside him,
keeping the sun from its flesh, and at the same time
making it look like any other burden that a pack
beast might carry. With the Master already beginning
to explain to Chong Fei K'ing what opium was and
how smugglers worked, with all of them glancing
anxiously and often over their shoulders, they set out
for home.
CHAPTER SIX. Kak Nan Tang
The day went, and the sun sank out of the sky, as
three figures rode their fugitive camels across the hot
wasteland. A fourth beast trailed behind them, drying
trickles of blood dribbling down its sides, leaving a
broken trail of crimson in the dusty powder.
Lin Fong, despite the danger that a new caravan
of smugglers would arrive at The Place of the Steep
Rocks immediately after they had left, and even now
might be making wide circles in the desert searching
for them, insisted on making frequent stops to
readjust the bandages on the maimed body and to
spurt water onto the unconscious man's cracking
lips. The boy never questioned that this should be
done; but as he turned over Lin Fong's account of
the evil which had befallen the tribe of Ton Te Ming,
and now realized that his isolated desert world could
at any moment be punctured by shafts of vengeance
reaching it from as far away as Shanghai or Hong
Kong or the opium fields of Indochina, he wondered
greatly about the world that lay so far beyond him,
and about how such evil could have come to be in it.
Now he ran over Lin Fong's explanation of opium

for the hundredth time. He had no difficulty in seeing
that if a person in some country wanted opium very
badly, and if the government of his country did not
allow its people to have this opium, then those who
wanted it would have to pay highly for the services of
those who brought it to them. Neither did he have
difficulty seeing that the greed of these people for
money would lead them to risk spending their lives in
prisons, or perhaps even losing them. And from
there, it was not difficult to see how they could bring
themselves to kill to keep this from happening.
What K'ing did not understand was why anyone
would want the opium in the first place. For, in
explaining to the boy how opium was obtained from
the flower called the poppy, Lin had said, “The opium
poppy has been made by men into a symbol of the
evil which may be drawn out of the good in this
world; of the ugliness which may be distilled from the
beautiful. For when the milky juice is taken from the
unripe capsules below its flower, and dried in the air,
and then eaten or smoked in a pipe, it produces in a
person's mind a counterfeit of the peace of the Tao.
The danger is this; every man longs for the peace

that comes from losing the fear of his own death.
You have already felt such peace in your
meditations. And having found that peace, you will
want to meditate again. So the opium smoker finds
that he will want his peace again.
“But you, when you meditate, learn well the road
to and from mindlessness, and can find your way
back again from it in a flash, or can dwell in it as long
as you wish. For he who has found the Way knows it
with the most perfect of all knowledge, since he has
made it. But the opium smoker knows not how to
attain his peace without an earthly substance. Thus
he depends upon things of this earth to make him
forget that he is of this earth. He has not stared into
the Void, but rather has turned his back upon it,
setting earthly substance against earthly substance
in a manner which traps him in his body. He does not
know how to attain this peace without this earthly
substance. Thus he does not have the strength that
comes from knowledge, but the weakness that
comes from flight.
“Deep in his heart, the opium smoker knows he
has done this: but once he has felt his counterfeit

joy, he has sold his soul to his body, and his body to
his opium, and again and again he must turn to it, to
keep from the hard task of facing the truth.
“He is in bondage to a substance which he cannot
take with him at the hour of his death.
“Then the fear which has made him do this sets
his soul against itself, and keeps him from passing
peacefully into the final rest of the Tao. For to the
end, his body will cry out in the manner in which he
has taught it to cry out, and the fear which he has
buried will well up out of him with increasing strength
as he sees what he has lost. And again he will bury it
more deeply with opium. And again it will strike back
up at him with vengeance. Until at last he will take
too much opium and it will kill him.
“He will not have gone out to meet death face to
face; it will have come upon him from behind. And if
there is any death which is final, it is such a death.”
K'ing asked Lin Fong whether he himself had ever
smoked opium.
“Yes,” Lin said.
“It is best not to. But I was young, and eager to
experience everything. Fortunately, after much deep

meditation, the effects of opium are a trivial thing.
The poppy does nothing to your mind which you
could not do to it yourself if you wished.”
This was what K'ing could not understand; why
anyone should depend on a substance to do for him
what, if he wished, he could do for himself.
He put aside these thoughts when, a while later,
Lin Fong announced that the wounded man was
dead.
As they buried the body in the sifting Gobi sands,
Lin wondered aloud whether his chances of living
would have been better if they had left him in the
Place of the Steep Rocks. He did not seem to take
into account that, had the man stayed and lived,
revenge would have descended upon them with
shuddering swiftness. K'ing asked the Master about
this.
“You and I have already made our peace with the
Cosmos,” he said. “But I do not believe this man
had.”
After the body had been covered, Lin stood for
several minutes gazing pensively at the tiny swirls of
sand that the wind moved over it. Then he mounted

his camel again, and they moved on.
They reached home just before sunrise, with K'ing
asleep, tied to the saddle of his camel. Ton Te Ming
was a nodding picture of exhaustion. Lin Fong,
however, had long perfected a technique of
meditation which allowed him to rest both mind and
body while he performed certain minimal functions,
such as camel−riding. Now he was as awake and
alert as ever.
They found Sui−ding buried under a pile of
boards beneath the house. She was healthy and
well, but had gone into hiding at the approach of their
small caravan. Even after their voices from above
reassured her, and even after she saw her
grandfather staring down into the pit, smiling at her
tiny form, her eyes grew wide; for her grandfather's
head had been shaved, and his thin, weathered face
had a strange and discomforting appearance.
The little girl was filthy with desert grime that had
made a gray paste out of her sweat and tears. Her
fine, silky black hair was matted and caked. After a
few minutes, her grandfather, temporarily revived
with the joy of retrieving her, carried her out to the

wooden washing tub beside the well.
When they were gone, Lin turned immediately to
K'ing. The boy felt he had suddenly grown into a man
as the Master said, “We must get rid of these
camels. For if the smugglers come here and find
them, we will all be shot. I would like you to ride one
of them, and lead the rest, a day's journey to the
north. By tomorrow morning, you should arrive at the
Spring Where the Water Oozes Slowly. You
remember the place?”
K'ing nodded.
“There you should release the camels and return.
It would be best to walk first half a day eastward, so
that you may sleep at night without danger.”
Lin Fong looked at him questioningly, as if asking
whether he was willing to take this responsibility and
whether he approved of the plan.
K'ing was not used to being asked for his assent,
and he responded slowly but firmly.
The Master's face broke into a smile. He placed
his hand fondly on the boy's shoulder as they walked
outside to tie the camels together. As K'ing rapped
the knees of the lead beast with a stick and watched

it descend, Lin said, “I will see you in three days. By
then it will not be long before your new companion
arrives. When he does, a whole new life will start for
you.”
The boy mounted the lead camel as the Master
continued: “This is a difficult and dangerous thing. If
anyone comes across you and asks where you got
these camels, or what you are doing with them, you
must tell them you are taking them to Mandal Gobi
for your father, who is selling them to Idrish Mon. He
is a powerful man there, and this will help you.
“If they are suspicious, or if you are followed, you
must ride all the way to Mandal Gobi, and there seek
out Idrish Mon. Tell him that Lin Fong has sent him
these camels. When you are alone with him, you
may tell him the whole story, and make sure he tells
everyone he has bought them from some man he
knows in China.
“This man is an old friend of mine and you may
trust him with your life.”
Then the Master had another thought.
“If ever you need help in this world, this man will
give it to you.”
K'ing wondered at this: for Lin Fong had as much
as said, “If I should die...”
While Lin Fong had been speaking, K'ing had
been aware that Ton Te Ming had filled the bath tub
and was taking off Sui−ding's robe to put her in it. He
looked straight at the Master and recorded his
instructions well enough, but he found himself
wanting to observe the activities at the well. For he
knew that some day he would grow into a man, and
Sui−ding into a woman, and he had heard many
tales about something called love between men and
women. The idea that women were somehow
opposite to men intrigued him; he had often
wondered why every child had to have both a mother
and a father.
Now he was curious to see Sui−ding without her
clothes on; for he knew that everyone wore clothes,
and that one was not supposed to remove one's
clothes in public. When he had a chance, he glanced
over at Sui−ding's tiny, naked body. He was shocked
to see that beneath her small, slightly protruding
belly, between her skinny, slightly bowed legs, there
was nothing where there ought to have been

something. But some deeply buried instinct told him
not to stare at Sui−ding in the presence of her
grandfather or Lin Fong, and not to ask about it at
the time. Perhaps he would ask when Lin told him
and his new companion the story of their mothers.
The Master, lost in his own thoughts, gave the
boy a long look, as if to see whether he had been
visibly changed by the battle at the Place of the
Steep Rocks, and especially by having, at his young
age, already killed and faced death. He well knew
that, had he chosen, he could have left the boy at
home with Sui−ding. But he was not afraid that the
Son of the Flying Tiger would grow up too quickly.
And further, although the boy had experienced
little, he had heard about and imagined much. Lin
had told him many vivid stories, and had read him
many more; and with each one, he had been careful
to liken things that he was so meticulously describing
to the surprisingly large number of things around
their desert house which could be used for such
comparisons. For instance, he had said, “The barrel
of a gun is metal, like the hinge on this trunk. But it is
long and hollow.” He had drawn a picture. Then, “We

will wait until sunset, and I will pick out for you from
the sky the color of gray−blue that its metal is.” By
this process, the child had been able to build an
imaginary world which in many respects very closely
resembled the world he would soon be experiencing.
But while most children, including the boy who was
soon to be K'ing's companion, were born into worlds
of bewildering complexity, and from the first were
forced to sort out from the many things around them
those they wished to understand, this boy had the
world outside the desert filtered through his own
imagination, layer by layer, in an order which Lin
Fong thought reflected the importance of its aspects.
So it was that, although there were many things
which were common to the ordinary child of which
K'ing had no knowledge, there were other, more
profound things with which the boy had the most
immediate acquaintance—such as the difference
between good and evil, and perhaps even the Tao
itself, of which it has been said, “The Way that can
be trodden is not the timeless Way.”
So it was that K'ing, at his young age, was at
once the oldest of men and the youngest of children.

For it was not until after he had grasped these more
profound things that he had come to learn how a
book worked or how to fight Kung Fu style; and it
was even later that Lin described to him cities and
wars and farming and famous men. The child's
desert world was bleak, and so he lived in his
extraordinary imagination the stories and situations
described to him by his Master.
Now Lin realized that, having heard so many
descriptions of war and killing, it was as though the
boy had lived through these things himself. The
Master saw that K'ing had not really faced the
prospects of killing and dying only the day before. He
had faced them many months before, and had faced
them over and over.
The Master held his hand up in parting, as if to
say, “You are a man now, and you can take care of
yourself. I will see you when you return.” Then he
gave K'ing's camel a slap, and sent him off on his
mission.
K'ing could not resist glancing back over his
shoulder as he went, and, past Lin Fong's retreating
form, he saw Ton Te Ming pulling his granddaughter

out of the tub. As if to confirm his earlier astounding
finding, he stared once more between her legs.
There seemed to be a tiny crease there, atop a slight
bulge.
Then Sui−ding, perhaps sensing that she was
being watched, stared up at him.
He turned his head and kicked his camel.
K'ing reached the place that Lin Fong had spoken
of easily, and let the camels go. He was sorry that no
one had asked him any questions or followed him.
He would have liked to go to Mandal Gobi and to
meet Idrish Mon.
On the way home, he was assaulted by a vicious
sandstorm which at times buried him almost to his
knees, and lashed the sand so furiously into his face
that he had difficulty breathing even though he held
the cloth of his robe over his mouth.
By the time he returned to the house of Lin Fong,
it was as peaceful and silent as ever, and the Master
was sitting cross−legged in his rickety tower, gazing
off into nothingness.
K'ing spent the next few days practicing Kung Fu
forms by himself, and mulling over both the events at

the Place of the Steep Rocks and the remarkable
difference between Ton Te Ming's granddaughter
and himself. In his daily meditations, he sometimes
found himself disturbed by his memory of Sui−ding,
and resolved to ask Lin Fong whether such
memories were to be welcomed and meditated upon,
as for instance the sound of a bell, or whether such
meditation would make him more dependent upon
earthly things, and he should whirl them away into
the well of mindlessness.
The sun rose and set five times, and then, in the
middle of the sixth day, Lin Fong, who usually ended
his periods of meditation at nightfall, came suddenly
down from the tower.
He walked over to where K'ing was experimenting
with several fighting stances, and was gratified to
see the boy carefully calculating the strengths and
weaknesses of each. Although the boy had only
been shown the barest rudiments of Kung Fu, his
mind was so clear, and his body so strong and
well−controlled, that Lin suspected he would be able
to practice creditably with Kak Nan Tang, who had
begun his study of Kung Fu with a very competent

Master at the age of five—a little too young, Lin Fong
felt—and who, the Master knew, loved nothing better
than to show off his already highly developed
knowledge of many of the martial arts.
“I see that Kak Nan Tang approaches,” the
Master said. “There is a cloud of dust high on the
southern ridge.”
Then he disappeared into the house.
K'ing stood for half an hour watching with some
uncertainty as a small form grew less small across
successive dunes.
Finally the shape became more than a shape.
K'ing could tell first that the boy was slightly
stockier than himself, a bit taller, and that he walked
with a bounce in his step that made him surge
forward in the middle of each stride.
Next he noted the dark skin and jet black hair that
brushed in ragged points down to his thick black
eyebrows.
Soon he could tell that Kak's face was full, and
that his widely spaced eyes stood above a flat nose
with broad, shallow nostrils; that Kak's wide, high
cheekbones and broad jawbones narrowed into a

small, firm, yet barely defined chin. His ears were
large and protruded slightly. His mouth was small,
with the full lower lip and turned−up corners that
suggested a hint of a deeply hidden grin.
It was an ambiguous face from a distance— not
one that K'ing immediately trusted nor one that he
immediately suspected. And his bearing was the
same—either adventurous or aggressive, but K'ing
could not tell which. Lin Fong had told him that he
might feel these things about Kak, but that these
sudden uncertainties were to be expected now.
Kak was within fifty yards. The shadow of his
hidden grin broke to the surface, and K'ing could see
large, white teeth, the top front two showing a slight
separation between them.
Just this suggestion of a smile was all K'ing
needed to make him feel that things would go well
with Kak Nan Tang.
As the waiting boy rapidly added details to his
previously blank picture of his new companion, he
was aware that the other boy was staring back at
him with the same steadfast curiosity. It suddenly
struck him that he had never given much thought to

what he looked like. He had never seen a mirror, and
it had never occurred to him to confront his reflection
in water. He now had a difficult time imagining how
his own appearance struck the boy who was rapidly
approaching him. He knew that his face was leaner
than Kak's; that his eyes were deeper set, and of
course, startlingly blue above his high cheekbones.
He knew that his nose was more Western than it was
Oriental, that his lips were thinner than Kak's, and
that his chin, although roughly the same round
shape, was not lost in vestiges of baby fat as was
the older boy's. But he had no idea at all how a
stranger who was roughly his peer would judge him.
Kak wore simple dress—a robe like those of K'ing
and Lin Fong of thin, rough cotton; only Kak's was
deep blue, and had some simple embroidery around
the bottom of stylized trees and dragons and strange
cliffs. On his feet, he wore straw sandals, and over
his shoulder he carried a shiny leather pouch. Its fine
craftsmanship and delicate tooling seemed subtly to
contradict his otherwise unassuming appearance.
As Kak's grin widened imperceptibly, K'ing had
the feeling that he could see beneath it the kind of

strength and sense of self that had made Lin Fong
believe this boy was capable of becoming a great
Master of Kung Fu.
Kak halted five feet from K'ing and threw his
pouch to the ground with a kind of finality that said,
“Ah, I have finished my journey.” He looked straight
into K'ing's eyes, and said, “I am Kak Nan Tang.” His
head inclined in a slight bow toward the younger boy.
K'ing thought the gesture formally correct but
slightly cold.
“I am Chong Fei K'ing,” replied the Son of the
Flying Tiger. He wondered whether Kak's city
upbringing, or his additional two years of life, had
pushed him much farther toward the world of such
formalities. But Lin Fong had told him that people in
different places acted very differently, and he did not
think much of it.
After this greeting, Kak silently held his ground,
gazing persistently at the younger boy as the
seconds dragged by. K'ing found himself becoming
uneasy. He felt something unexpected coming.
Suddenly Kak's body dropped low into a strange
and dramatic fighting stance. His left leg shot out

straight in front of him, and he crouched with his
weight on the right foot. His left hand was upraised in
the slashing position, but his right stuck up behind
his head, its fingers held in a rigid claw.
The younger boy flinched back. His eyes fastened
on Kak's in a curious, penetrating stare.
The grin which had disappeared began weakly
returning.
K'ing continued to stare, and finally brought forth
a playful yet half−mischievous smile from the older
boy's face.
Lin Fong had told K'ing that he would begin two
man Kung Fu forms when Kak arrived. But he had
not said that this practice would begin so soon. Still,
K'ing was familiar with the forms, and although Kak
Nan Tang had omitted the usual salutation and
adopted a strange stance, he decided to put up as
best a defense as he could.
Analyzing Kak's posture closely, he went into a
sideways semi−crouch. Most of his weight rested on
his slightly turned back foot, and he found his left
hand, the fingers spread and somewhat rigidly bent,
in a clawing position six or eight inches in front of his

chin, while his left, more widely open as for a Rock
Smash Parry, hung palm−out about three inches in
front of his stomach. It was not a dramatic stance,
and certainly not in the tradition of Kung Fu as a
stylized brand of formal combat. But Lin Fong had
told the boy that the strength of Kung Fu was that it
used the body as a whole in all of its offensive and
defensive potential, as opposed to sport fighting like
boxing, which forbade the use of the legs and was
done with gloves, or wrestling, which did not allow
striking with the hands or feet. So he felt free to
place his body in a stance which would best allow
him to use all of it as seemed to be required in the
face of Kak's challenge.
Now Kak inched toward him, bobbing his head
slightly, as if to view his defenses from a number of
different angles. Although his eyes were now bright
and playful, and although he exaggerated his
bobbing now and then to the point where he
caricatured himself and even chuckled shortly at his
movements. K'ing had the distinctive feeling that
beneath it all there was something important about
the encounter. So he himself began to move forward.

In a short time the two were standing toe to toe.
Suddenly Kak's body shot upward, and his foot
flashed nearly to K'ing's face in a leaping Lightning
Kick.
K'ing, who had at least had some practice in
evading such blows, shifted sideways, his right knee
grazing the ground as he deflected the blow upward
with his left forearm in a Leaping Deer Block.
Suddenly Kak's hand shot out toward the younger
boy's face in a swift Side Hammer Blow. K'ing batted
it away with a Whipping Branch Parry.
Kak's groin seemed to lie open to a sharp Ram's
Head Punch, which K'ing could deliver by swiveling
to face him straight on.
But K'ing was cautious. He did not believe that
Kak, so much older and more experienced, would
leave himself open to such a thing unless it were a
trap. As he half−swiveled and faked the jab, and then
drew back, he could see that, had he completed it,
his arm would have been overextended.
Kak recoiled at the fake, and at the same time
dropped his right shoulder and straightened his right
arm for a Knife−Point to the face.

K'ing, throwing his left foot forward in a springing
motion like that of a Cossack dancer, swept his arm
upward to parry the blow, and at the same time
aimed his right in a palm−down fist at Kak's
midsection. The swiftness of his movement surprised
even himself.
Slightly off−balance, the older boy sprang
backward, and Kak thought he could see a shadow
of a grimace of frustration cross his face. But Kak
managed to deliver a weak Raised−Hoof Kick with
his right foot as he hopped on his left in the yielding
sand.
K'ing brushed the kick aside with a left−handed
Rock Smash Parry, faked a sharp jab with his right
toward Kak's throat, and then faked a reaction kick
with his left foot. Kak was close to full retreat.
But when K'ing came at him with a slashing left
toward his momentarily exposed kidney, the older
boy brushed the blow inward instead of
outward—and then, diving for the retreating arm,
caught it and yanked hard across the front of his
body.
To his surprise, K'ing found himself falling: his

feet, for an instant, had been parallel, one behind the
other, making him an easy prey for such a simple,
but to him unthought of, tactic.
Now the older boy wrenched his arm back
around, spinning him like a top and sending him
sprawling to the ground.
K'ing felt a momentary flash of disappointment;
but it was only a flash, for suddenly Kak's full weight
fell on him.
He tried to break Kak's hard hold that pinned his
arms to his sides. The sand flew as the two rolled
and squirmed spitting dust.
K'ing did not know what was going on, for he had
no understanding of games or of the kind of fighting
that went, with them. He resisted Kak gently in his
confusion, until the older boy broke out laughing.
Had he known that K'ing, only two short weeks
before, had never heard of Kung Fu nor dreamt of its
existence, he surely would have been astounded.
K'ing, less accustomed to laughter and still
somewhat perplexed, searched the timbre of Kak's
voice for a false ring. But, finding none, and at the
same time suddenly seeing amusement in the ease

with which he had been duped, also began to laugh.
Now the two bodies tumbled and twisted,
stopping more than once to breathe as their joviality
increased. When they were completely exhausted,
they found themselves lying next to the well, a good
thirty yards from where they had started. They
crawled into its shade and lay there panting.
It had been a strange greeting, for Kak had never
met a boy at once as wise and as naive as K'ing, and
had treated him much as he would have treated the
other students of Kung Fu in the village from which
he had come. But K'ing had met his playful probing
challenge well, and whatever doubts either boy might
have had were dissolved in the pleasure of
relaxation.
In a few moments Lin Fong appeared.
K'ing simply sat in the shade and watched the
Master walk to a position in front of them and look
down with a half quizzical, raised−eyebrow smile.
But Kak scrambled quickly to his feet, stood rigidly
upright, and bowed deeply from the waist.
K'ing glanced up at Lin Fong questioningly, but
the Master returned him a reassuring look. Then he

put his hands on Kak's shoulders and looked deeply
into the boy's eyes.
“It is good that you are here,” the Master said
simply. He paused. Then, “I see you have been well
schooled in the traditional ways of showing respect
to your elders. While you are here, these formalities
will not be necessary.”
The old man paused a moment.
“I see that your Kung Fu practice turned to play
as soon as Chong Fei K'ing was thrown to the
ground.”
K'ing and Kak glanced sideways at one another,
fearful that they had somehow violated the
seriousness of their undertaking. But the Master
said, “That is well. For in addition to the strict forms
of Kung Fu discipline, it is necessary to play. That
way, you may see what you are aiming at: for your
goal is to master the forms so completely that you
may learn to play with them, even in the heat of a
battle to the death.” His brow knitted slightly and he
added: “Although perhaps when that happens, the
play is more like the playing of music than the
playing of games.”
With this, the Master smiled down on the pair and
once more walked off.
The two boys looked at one another, as much as
to say, “Well, that's over.” Kak had not been there
half an hour, and already K'ing was feeling how
much closer he immediately was to this boy than to
Lin Fong, who, although he smiled often, almost
never laughed, and certainly never played games.
Suddenly K'ing leapt upon his new−found friend,
and once more the two were rolling over and over
and grappling in the sand.
After several minutes during which K'ing once
more felt the exhilaration of pure play whirling away
whatever doubts remained about Kak Nan Tang, the
older boy rolled free of his grasp, and stood perfectly
still, his hands straight down at his sides, in a
gesture that dared K'ing to leap at him. The younger
boy took the dare, inching up toward him and then
lunging out to pin Kak's arms to his sides in a
bear−hug.
Kak's legs did something which K'ing could not
see, and suddenly he found himself staring at the
sky, his body spinning dizzily; and then he was lying

on his back in the sand.
He laughed at the trick. Whatever it was, it had
been a good one.
Kak took up his position again, and they repeated
the exercise, this time with K'ing looking down to see
what his feet were doing. He almost saw, but not
quite, and ended up laughing on his back once more.
The third time, Kak faked with his feet, and
somehow broke K'ing's hold with a dippling twist of
his torso. Before K'ing knew it, a hand had grasped
him behind the knee, and he had swooped to the
ground yet again.
Still laughing, he gazed up in curiosity.
By this time Lin Fong had risen and strolled over
to watch. K'ing turned his quizzical gaze toward the
Master.
“Jujitsu,” Lin Fong said. “It is the Nagewasa type,
which teaches the art of throwing. I do not think you
have even heard these words. You see, Kung Fu is
only for fighting at a distance; if you were good at it,
it would be hard for anyone to get his arms around
you in the way in which you got your arms around
Kak Non Tang. But as it happens, men do

sometimes get a hold on you. Then, it is well to know
Jujitsu. For while Kung Fu teaches many things that
may be of use in such a situation, Jujitsu adds many
more. It is a Japanese form of fighting which, like
many other forms, you will learn in time. We have
begun with Kung Fu, because it best schools the
mind and the body in quickness and control, and
especially the mind, since it is the freely dancing
body which most easily moves to the music of the
Tao. Once you have learned Kung Fu, many other
kinds of fighting, such as boxing, will seem only
limited forms of it, while other kinds, such as Jujitsu
and wrestling, will be seen to be somewhat different.”
Lin Fong walked away, leaving Kak to
demonstrate to K'ing a few more of the throwing
techniques of Nagewasa, with the younger boy
giggling in amazement from his seat on the ground
after each demonstration.
CHAPTER SEVEN. Masters of the Blue

Circle
The very next day Lin told them as they awoke,

“After your morning meditation, I will tell you a story.”
He glanced back and forth between them.
“Now, we will go our separate ways for a time,
while we meditate upon the wisdom of the ages:
The Tao gives rise to One

And One divides to Two
And Two gives birth to Three
And Three begets Ten Thousand Things.
Ten Thousand Things in harmony

Combine the movement of the
Ying and Yang.
A violent man will die a violent death.

This is the essence of the teaching.
For the next hour, the three sat in total silence in

their lotus positions on the floor.
When Lin Fong, after his manner, rang the deep,

brassy gong to end the period of mindless−ness,
K'ing noticed all too quickly that Kak Nan Tang was
looking out the windows and door, and tapping his
finger on his knee nervously. This was not a person
who had just returned from far away and was
surprised and delighted at the smallest thing in the
world in which he had awakened.
But then Lin Fong said, “Let us go outside.” And
K'ing, deciding once more that Kak's style of
meditation was not to be wondered at but to be
accepted, eagerly followed.
The two boys sat opposite Lin Fong in the partial
shade of the sand fence to the east of the house.
The Master began immediately.
“Thousands of years ago this desert was an
ocean floor.”
He paused to glance at the boys. K'ing was as he
would have expected. Kak seemed to be rapidly
coming to understand his manner, and the older boy
abandoned his impatience and let his imagination
paint the picture Lin Fong described.
“The waters were surrounded by rich lands
covered with deep forests and rolling pastures full of

grass and flowers. Fruit trees bloomed on the
hillsides in careless abundance. Wild rice waved in
the lowlands—enough to feed millions. Sheep and
cattle and horses and water buffalo wandered freely.
The cycles of living and dying, unreal where
indifferent Nature reigned, moved on in the
untouched and untouchable wilderness.
“And then there came a wandering tribe from a
faraway land.
“They came seeking nothing, blown on the Wind
in the Void. The legends say they had moved from
Atlantis to Elysium to Eden across the face of the
nearly vacant earth.
“They came to the edge of the ocean that was
here. They made their way slowly around it to the
north. They came upon a thin arm of land that
stretched far southward, out of sight, into the water.
“They followed. They came to its end. Across a
narrow channel was a fabulous, fertile island that
had been cut off from the mainland for thousands of
years. At its center, snowy peaks jutted toward
heaven. Around them were trees taller and fatter
even than the ancient redwoods and sequoias of

America. In the foothills they found every kind of
edible plant known to man. Along its shoreline,
fish−crowded seas pounded onto rocks and wide
stretches of sand. This was the most perfect of all
places.
“They settled on the island. They founded a city.
They called it Zhamballah.”
Lin was gazing off to the north. He could feel the
boys following the current of his story.
“The myths of every civilization have contained
men's dreams of such a Celestial City, where the
only law is the law of Jove, which every person
follows as easily as the sun rises and sets or water
flows downward. Some say these dreams are
imaginings of the impossible. Others say they are
true memories: memories of the City of Zhamballah,
which really existed here.”
He turned to them. “It is known that there were
fabulous cities here in the Gobi before it became a
desert. There is still a city of Zhamballah here, more
perfect than men may imagine. Its perfection does
not rest on the foundations of worldly cities. It rests
on the indifference of the universe itself. It rests upon

the Way. It moves and changes, yet it is eternal.”
He turned away again.
“It is said the city of Zhamballah thrived in isolated
perfection for ten thousand years. Other tribes
wandered to the banks of the great ocean, and
across the channel separating the island from the
mainland a bridge was built, and in its center a
portal. All those who passed through it took the Way
to Zhamballah, and passed without effort into the
eternal, living peace of the Tao. But the Tao was not
yet named, for it needed no name.
“And then forces deep within the earth moved.
The sea around Zhamballah began to drain away.
The wet breezes turned dry, and then hot. Over the
course of centuries the sea dried up to flat, salty
pools. Zhamballah became a desert mountain
surrounded by a thousand Dead Seas. The springs
that had burst forth from its sides in cascades of
crystal water slowed to trickles and then stopped.
The forests petrified and were covered by the dust
that blew from the parched plains.
“At first the people of Zhamballah tried to
preserve their Celestial City. They dug wells and

irrigation ditches, and turned to planting where once
they had only had to harvest. But on the salt plains
where surrounding seas had been, nothing would
grow. Food became scarce; water scarcer. Escape
across the hostile desert was fraught with danger.
Those who remained never knew whether those who
had set out from the city had reached a new haven
or perished on the journey. No one who left ever
returned.
“Those who stayed were unwilling to forsake the
remnants of their city of perfect peace—for they
knew the harmony they had discovered in that place
could be transplanted nowhere else. But men fell to
fighting as they staked out claims and hoarded food
and water and things of value, such as gold, which
might buy them. Slowly the city of Zhamballah turned
into an earthly city, and then into a living hell; and as
it did, the Blue Circle was born.
“The Blue Circlo was composed of a dozen
descendants of the original founders of Zhamballah.
They alone could see that although it was a real city
existing on the face of the earth, its perfection rested
in another realm—the realm of the spiritual peace

their ancestors had found there.
“At first when men started bickering over land and
food these men tried to convey their vision: the
spiritual was being overcome by the shallow and
worldly.
“When later the lootings and murders and
vendettas broke out, they studied the nature of
violence and how to turn it back upon itself until it
melted away. They invented methods of fighting
which defeated fighting itself. What their methods
were we do not know. Perhaps they were like those
of Tai Chi Ch'uan or Kung Fu.
“These men gave away their land and their food
and their water and went about confronting violence
wherever it broke out, melting it away with the skill of
Perfect Masters. But the people came to hate them,
for in their presence no one could gain an
advantage. “If some of us do not die, then all will
die,” they said. “Let the law of nature reign, and let
the strongest survive!” But the Masters of the Blue
Circle were the strongest, and they said, “Let the
food and water that is here be divided evenly. Let
each do with a little less, and depend more for

strength on the nourishment that comes from
meditation.” They tried to teach people the way in
which they dove deeply into their own souls to regain
there the true peace of the City of Zhamballah, and
to show them how few earthly things were then
needed. If all had followed them, all would have
survived on what remained of food and water.
“But then there arose a leader among those who
hated the Blue Circle. His name was Zedak, and he
said, 'The Blue Circle uses magic to put us under
their spell. They have put the City of Zhamballah
under their power with their ways of fighting. What is
food enough for them is not food enough for us. We
will all starve while they await our deaths and seize
upon the moment to capture the peace of
Zhamballah for themselves. We must fight magic
with magic. We must kill them.'
“Zedak gathered a huge force of the strongest
men in Zhamballah. They robbed and looted until
they had gathered up all the city's food and water.
The Blue Circle fought them at every turn, but there
were too many: wherever there was not a Blue
Master, the people lost everything. Then Zedak led

his men to the face of a cliff at the side of the
Mountain of Heaven at the center of Zhamballah. His
men massed behind him. He wore a blood−red robe
and a crown. He flew into a frenzy, conjuring demons
and spirits with his spell: 'Let the mountain part
before the powers of Zedak, that out of the hellfire of
its bowels we may take strength to shed the blood of
the Blue Circle!'
“A crack streaked down the face of the mountain,
white and burning, jagged as lightning. A smoking
fissure opened the mouth of a huge cavern. Its
entrance dripped with blood. Out of the thundering
sound came the words: 'By the power of Zedak is the
Red Circle born!' Zedak led his army inside. The
fissure closed behind them.
“Thirteen days later the wind rose over
Zhamballah. Dark clouds appeared to cover the sky,
and the people said, 'There will be rain!' But then the
thunder crashed dry and hard about them, and the
smell of gunpowder filled the air.
“The Blue Circle felt the magic of Zedak in the
storm. As one they dispersed to the edges of the city
and hurried the people to the Golden Square at its

center. They took the stations of the winds: two each
to the north, south, east, and west; one each to the
points between.
“The storm descended from the north. The
Masters to the north turned their faces toward
red−hot pellets of rocky hail. They raised their arms
to the storm and as one cried a single word:
'Zhamballah!'
“The molten hail did not touch them. Not a stone
fell inside the magic circle of the Blue Masters.
“And then there arose a chanting from the
thousands in the Golden Square. They faced the
north and then slowly turned to the points of the
compass: 'You shall be the Masters of the North
forever! You shall be the Master of the Northeast
forever! You shall be the Masters of the East
forever!'
“And then the side of the Mountain of Heaven
crashed open. Out marched the Army of the Red
Circle.
“Never has there been such a terrible sight. They
were armed with the horrors of hell. Zedak himself
rode a spiny dragon with the teeth of the

sabre−toothed tiger spurting forth the poison of the
cobra; the talons of the eagle lashed boring holes in
the granite before it as it moved. At the end of its tail
was a cluster of white−hot spikes.
In Zedak's right hand was a whip of fire. In his left
was the sceptre of the Kingdom of Darkness,
studded with jewels and the eyes of the dead.
Behind him his soldiers rode alligators and elephants
with deadly, curving tusks. They led grizzly bears
and Bengal Tigers, and creatures slimy with the
green ooze of swamps never seen. At their feet a
thousand deadly snakes slithered and hissed. They
were armed with bows of glowing metal and swords
and maces and lances more terrifying than any the
world has seen. Before Zedak's sceptre as he went
there were explosions: for the Lord of Darkness had
given to him alone the secret of gunpowder.
“They set upon the Masters of the North. The first,
in a mighty leap, soared over the dragon's head. He
was the Master of the Northern Sky. He set upon
Zedak as the whip of fire flamed across his back and
the sceptre of the Kingdom of Darkness smote his
forehead. But the whip of fire turned to water and

flowed away; and the sceptre shattered to dust and
blew on the wind. The Master of the Northern Sky
sent Zedak tumbling from his dragon and they rolled
to the ground in a death struggle.
“The Master of the Northern Earth attacked the
dragon. Whirling between the clatter of its talons on
the rocks, he moved like a ghost to the throat of the
beast as it reared and spat poison into his eyes.
Blinded, he heard the sounds of the dragon's
breathing in the channels of its throat, and as the fire
of its breath billowed around him he darted like a bat
to grasp the scales of its neck in his fingers. The
dragon thrashed but could not throw him. It struck
with its fangs but could not reach him. The Master's
feet were bare, and with his toes he gripped and tore
like a monkey. The dragon's green scales fell like
rain, and the Master bored into its flesh. He opened
its throat with his bare hands. Green blood gushed
out and washed him away as the dragon withered
and twitched and fell and died.
“Now Zedak, in his death struggle, summoned all
his power and all his forces. The Master of the
Northern Sky slashed and kicked and tore at him; but

his soldiers rushed to his aid, and now the Master
fought a hundred men.
“Their weapons could not touch him as he danced
to the music of slashing swords and thrusting
daggers. Soldiers fell all about him as his flashing
feet battered their bones to pulp and punctured their
flesh and his knifing hands speared out their eyes
and opened their throats and ripped out their guts.
“Zedak escaped. He led his army surging past the
Masters of the North and into the Golden Square.
They set upon the people of Zhamballah and
butchered them even as the Blue Circle closed in
upon the Red. Swords bit the flesh of screaming
women and children as men struggled and fell, their
skulls punctured by the sharp spikes of maces, their
backs impaled on the daggers of darkness. Snakes
slithered on the rainbow stones, striking at the ankles
and calves of those who tried to flee. Alligators and
bears and strange and horrible creatures which were
powerless against the Blue Masters ate the flesh and
sucked the blood of ordinary mortals.
“Of all the people of Zhamballah, only one
survived: a small boy whose mother had climbed to

the top of the jeweled Tower of Peace at the
Square's center. As she stood there praying to the
sky, an arrow from below pierced her back, and she
fell upon the infant's body.
“The Master of the Southern Sky flew to the
tower's top and raised his arms to the heavens. 'May
a blue cloud poisonous to all others shield this boy
until the fight has passed!' he commanded. The blue
cloud descended as he leapt from the tower and fell
upon the soldiers of the Red Circle.
“The fight in the Golden Square raged on till
sunset over the corpses of the people of
Zhamballah. The Master of the Northeast stamped a
thousand poisonous snakes to death with his bare
feet. The Master of the Southwest grasped the jaws
of a grizzly bear and tore them apart, ripping the
bottom jaw off. In a burst of blood he wrenched off
the animal's head as its huge claws raked at his
back. With the bottom jaw of the grizzly bear he
struck right and left among the soldiers of the Red
Circle, turning the magic of hell back on them as he
sunk the huge and lifeless teeth into their flesh.
“The Masters of the North pursued Zedak as he

rushed among his soldiers casting spells that opened
the ground beneath and revealed the seething
cauldron of bubbling lava in the depths of the earth.
But the Master of the Northern Sky leapt over the
fissures, and the Master of the Northern Earth cast
spells to close them again; and Zedak could see that
the end was near.
“There were but a hundred of his soldiers left as
the light of the sun faded and stars appeared in the
sudden blackness above. The Masters of the West
grasped alligators by the tail and flung them into the
Red Circle as it grew tight around its leader.
“The last and mightiest of the soldiers of the Red
Circle forsook their futile weapons and set upon the
Masters of the Blue Circle with their bare hands, their
teeth, their kicking feet, their knees and elbows. For
now they saw that their weapons had been powerful
magic working against them.
“For every Blue Master there were eight Red
Circle fighters. The last four, the strongest, formed a
square around Zedak, who entered into a trance as
the death struggles raged all around him.
“The Master of the Southeast was smothered by

a landslide of bloodthirsty bodies as eighty clawing
fingers grasped to dig out his heart. There was a
seething mound of violence on the rainbow stones of
the Golden Square. But the Peace of Zhamballah
was with him. In the sweaty darkness he picked out
the fingers as they touch him and snapped them,
clamping them under his arms and between his legs
and twisting, biting them off with his teeth, crashing
them against the stones with his elbows. The mound
of bodies burst forth with the shape of his body as he
fought his way upward like lava from a volcano,
kicking behind him, slashing before him, elbowing to
his sides. To be near him was to be dead. Red Circle
soldiers reeled away from him, blinded, choking,
crippled. He set upon them and finished them as
they called upon the powers of darkness and of
Zedak to save them. They did not know that Zedak,
in his trance, was offering them up to the Prince of
Darkness as a sacrifice—their blood for his escape.
“The Master of the Eastern Sky turned and ran
when eight soldiers of the Red Circle came after him.
Of all the Masters, he was the most devious, and
killed most quickly: for his enemies took him to be

fleeing, and each wanted the honor of putting an end
to him. He ran for ten seconds until the fastest of the
Red Circle soldiers was on his heels and the rest
were strung out in a line behind. Then he turned and
buried his Knife Point in the leader's gut, whirled and
crashed in the face of the second with his elbow,
kicked in the groin of the third, speared out the eyes
of the fourth. The toe of his bare foot lanced up
under the chin of the fifth. The sixth fie tripped, and
broke his neck from behind with a pounding fist as
he fell. The seventh and eighth ran from him
together, but he caught them and in a flying leap
cracked his heels against their backbones, snapping
their spines. They sprawled at the feet of Zedak's
bodyguards, who looked past them as though they
were stone.
“All of the Masters of the Blue Circle met their
tests. Some pursued the last of their enemies
through the city, up the sides of the Mountain of
Heaven, out into the desert. The Master of the
Southern Earth caught the last of them near the peak
of the Mountain of Heaven and threw him screaming
down the face of the very cliff that had opened at

Zedak's command.
“But the price of Zedak's escape had been paid to
the powers of darkness. Their cups ran over with
blood, and from deep in the underworld they heard
his incantation as the Blue Circle closed around him:
'May the poison of the Red Cloud surround me as
the poison of the Blue Cloud surrounds the Tower of
Peace, that I may go forth and found your city on this
earth. May the Red Cloud surround me and my
warriors until we have built within it the Tower of
War!'
“The pores of Zedak's skin opened and from them
the poisonous mist of his own blood flowed forth.
The Red Cloud obscured him, and the Blue Circle
Masters could not approach it. They were consumed
with dizziness and knew that if they entered it, they
themselves would fall under Zedak's power.
“As the moon rose and shed its soft light over the
scene of carnage and the barren plains of the desert,
the Red Cloud moved off. Fissures opened in the
ground behind it which the Blue Masters could not
close. The Red Cloud disappeared over the southern
horizon.
“The Masters of the Blue Circle brought the infant
who had been saved by the Blue Cloud down from
the Tower of Peace. They placed him in the center of
their mystical circle as they sat and meditated.
“For three years they trained him in the art of
fighting and filled his soul with the secrets of inner
peace.
“Then they sent him southward on the trail of
Zedak. As he went, they told him: 'We are not of this
earth, nor is Zedak. But we from our City of
Zhamballah, and he from whatever evil city he has
founded, may send forth emissaries to the world of
men. Do not be deceived; for the City of Zhamballah
is real, and when you need it, you will find it again.
The way to it will be clear to you among the sand
and gravel and rock of the Gobi. The city will sink
into the ground, yet above it the heavens will still
pour forth their golden light, and the sky will be blue
in its infinite depth. You and those you choose to be
Masters of the Blue Circle on earth will fight the
fights of men, until all the earth is covered with the
Peace of Zhamballah. When we call you or those
you have chosen, or when you need our guidance,

then you will be here among us.'
“The boy they called the Master of the Earthly
Center, and they sent him off. He found and trained
eleven other Masters. He fought against the
emissaries of Zedak until he chose a successor and
was called back to live in Zhamballah for all eternity.
In time the new Master of the Earthly Center chose
his successor, and himself returned to Zhamballah.
So it has gone up to the present time.”
Now Lin Fong turned away from the boys, who
sat mesmerized on the ground before him. His
ancient crystal eyes swept the sands of the desert,
and his robe blew about his bare legs in the wind.
Then he turned back to them. “I am now called the
Master of the Earthly Center,” he said. “And
you—you have been chosen by the Masters of
Zhamballah to carry on the earthly fight of the Blue
Circle. That is why you are here.
“You are to become members of the Blue Circle.
This will happen in a manner that will not be of my
choosing. The best I can do is to prepare you as I
know how, in the manner in which I myself was
prepared by my Master before me.

“All of life is a test and a trial, and you will be
tested by life itself. If you hold fast to the Tao, a time
will come when you will be initiated into the Blue
Circle. This will be the strangest and most important
event of your lives. You will be initiated by others,
and yet you will be alone. How this will happen you
will not understand until the time has come. When
the time comes, you will know it.
“That is all I have to say.”
CHAPTER EIGHT. The Promise
In the weeks and months that followed, Chong

Fei K'ing almost automatically measured time not
from the date of his birth, nor from the date of any
other significant event that he could remember, but
from the date of Kak's arrival. The two boys, not only
out of necessity, but out of mutual desire, became
spiritual companions.
The days and weeks rolled slowly by, and late
summer turned to autumn, with no effects on the
desert other than a slight chilling of the wind and an
almost imperceptible dampening of the air. The
nomads, on their way to their permanent winter
encampments, were almost ceremonial as they
presented their last large bundles of wheat and millet
and dried fish and vegetables—obtained at the small
depots they passed on their travels—to Lin Fong.
Then came the screeching cold of the winter,
driving the sand across the barren landscape with
sharp, frozen fury, and occasionally mixing it with
small, hard flakes of snow. It seemed only to change
the color of the dunes and level them out a little as it
drifted in their hollows.

Spring followed, all but lifeless, with only a few
tiny plants that took root around the stone
foundations of the house and at the edges of the well
to show that even here, where there was so little to
nourish growth, regeneration was intended.
Chong Fei K'ing and Kak Nan Tang, throughout
these months, followed an almost rigid pattern of life
that, despite their confinement, they found full to
overflowing—although the highly active and
impatient Kak once in a while gave small evidences
that the lack of adventure frustrated him.
Each morning Lin Fong arose with the sun, and
shortly afterward the boys were awake.
After a simple breakfast followed a period of
meditation of between one and two hours.
Then came Kung Fu practice, with the Master's
eye ever on the boys' rapidly flashing bodies and his
mind ever reading theirs with unerring accuracy.
“K'ing,” he would say, “you must move your elbow
just a bit further out for your Monkey Blow. I see you
fear some small imbalance will arise from your left
foot if you do this. But if you turn it slightly, and feel
your bone as a rod against with the tendons pull...”

K'ing would try again.
“Not quite... you must snap the elbow more
sharply. Once more, now... and again... and again.
Do you feel it?”
At first it was plain that the boys' styles differed
sharply; for Kak was aggressive, and the Master was
constantly pointing to weaknesses in his defenses
brought on by over−enthusiasm; while K'ing
instinctively fought more defensively, and took joy in
turning away a blow and causing Kak to stumble or
draw back. He did not much like striking Kak's
midsection or brushing his throat with a Knife−Point
that, with just a little more pressure, would have
been fatal.
Lin Fong pointed this out to them. He said, “You
two boys are opposites, like the Yin and Yang.”
He referred to the dual principles of positive and
negative, symbolized by the circle divided into black
and white halves by a line in the shape of an S, each
half with a dot of the opposite color in its curve of the
S.
“But each of you must try to take the strengths of
the other, and rid yourselves of your individual

weaknesses, so that each of you will become a
single Yin and Yang.
“K'ing must strike out with more conviction. Kak
must learn to turn blows aside and use the strength
of his adversary against him.
“You both must embody the movement of the Yin
and Yang, which moves in all directions and yet
nowhere. You must make the Yin and Yang turn to
each other and back again.”
Eventually—to a large extent, at least—each boy
reached his balance. This was achieved more
through meditation than through practice; and
especially a startling meditation upon what Lin Fong
called the Urge to Kill.
He told them, “This urge is buried deeply in both
of you. It is buried deeply in all men, civilization has
forced it down. Kak is more temperamental, and
therefore he perhaps occasionally has felt evidences
of it stirring—especially when he becomes frustrated
in practice because he thinks he is not progressing
fast enough. He must try to bring it fully to light, to
feel its power, and to practice whirling it away in the
Wind that Blows in the Void. K'ing perhaps has never

experienced it. He must, in meditation, try to dredge
it up and feel it; for if he does not, he will not begin to
learn to dissipate it, and someday it will come upon
him suddenly and he may do evil.”
After each long morning practice session, there
was another short period of meditation. K'ing spent
many of these at first trying to feel this Urge to Kill,
but Lin Fong had warned him only to attempt this
when his mind was completely clear, and not to use
any small feelings of irritation to help him bring it
about.
Finally one day, to his own terror, he succeeded.
His young body shook, and his blood boiled; but he
steadfastly maintained it—directed toward no
one—until he could make it ebb away at will. From
then on he meditated upon it daily, until he could
control it perfectly, and was satisfied that it would
never rise unless he called it up in order, in the
peace of his own isolation, to whirl it away again.
After one such session, Kak asked, “Could it not
be that in some desperate fight, one might want to
call up this Urge to give one added strength?”
Ling Fong looked at him penetratingly. “No,” he

said.
These short meditation periods were followed by
lunch, after which came an hour or two of reading
from books and discussions about anything the boys
cared to ask about—ocean voyages, ancient history,
politics, foreign languages, literature.
Then came an exercise period, during which Lin's
careful prescriptions sculpted the boys' bodies to
pictures of compact and mobile power.
“These exercises are not to make you into hulking
musclemen,” he said.
“For in Kung Fu, movement comes first, and
bulging muscles cannot send their power in all
directions. You will become very strong indeed. But
more important, you will have unending endurance in
your bodies to match the unending will which your
meditations are giving you.”
There was some lifting of weights, and there were
many exercises from the Western world which were
used to build strength that could not come from
lyrical movements like those of Tai Chi, which the
boys continued to practice. But there were also a
bewildering variety of stretching exercises, and there

was endless running. Even in the coldest of winter
winds, in the most hostile of blizzards, they dressed
in layers of quilted cloth or garments stuffed with
cotton, and ran for several miles in the deep sand.
Immediately following this every day there was
another Kung Fu session. Lin Fong said, “It is what
you learn when you have passed the state of
exhaustion that your body best remembers.”
Often there was also the studying of foreign
languages, religions, and philosophies. The boys
entered into deep discussions of them with
brilliance—sometimes nearly generating heat, when
one of them became stubborn on a point—and
eventually found that Lin Fong, although a Tao−ist to
the core, had a wide knowledge of such things. He
even denied some of the teachings of the Taoist
sages in favor of other ways of approaching certain
matters.
So impressed was K'ing with the Master's
knowledge that he asked him whether he had ever
written.
“Oh, a long time ago,” he said, brushing off the
question. “But never in Chinese.” He seemed to think

deeply for a moment. “But I will tell you this. Before I
die, I intend to write down all the things—you might
call them secrets—which I know that my pupils are
not likely to stumble upon by themselves. When I do,
I will put them into that carved ivory box over
there”—he pointed to a box that sat on the mantle
—“and if you or Kak ever think of it after I am gone,
you may open it. The key, as you know, is on this
string around my neck...”
This satisfied K'ing, who had often noticed the key
but never bothered to wonder about it.
But Kak, overhearing, said “Why do you not tell
them to us now? Suppose the box is lost somehow?”
The Master smiled. “There is much else I have to
tell you before they can be revealed. But to satisfy
you, I will think on them tonight, and I will put them in
the box tomorrow. That way you will know they are
there.”
A few days after this exchange, K'ing entered the
house to find Kak standing before the mantle, his
eyes closed, his hands upstretched like those of the
Praying Mantis, his fingertips lightly brushing the
outside of Lin Fong's ivory box. K'ing was mystified

as Kak, suddenly awaking from a sort of trance at his
approach, drew his hands down and turned a little bit
too casually to glance out the front door. Aware that
K'ing had seen him, he said, “I have never examined
that box closely before. It is very minutely carved. I
was meditating upon the shapes on it...”
K'ing thought this entirely possible, since Kak's
meditations, he had learned, sometimes took much
more concrete forms than his own abstract flights of
fancy. But then he noticed that on Kak's wrists were
two strange−looking wooden bracelets decorated
with bits of Imperial Yellow Paper, which were
inscribed with characters in red ink. He asked Kak
about them. The older boy pursed his lips and stared
at the floor for a second. “They are peachwood,” he
replied.
This was enough for K'ing; for he and Kak and Lin
Fong had had many discussions about Taoist magic;
and although there were in the few treatises Lin
Fong had on the subject no mentions of bracelets,
K'ing knew that it was peach−wood which was
supposed to contain the vital shen−magic that gave
force to charms written with peachwood pens, to

divinations scratched in sand with peachwood rods,
to swords and daggers made of peachwood.
There was no need for K'ing to speak, for Kak
knew that his attitude toward magic was the same as
Lin Fong's. And the Master had said, “It is difficult to
tell what is magic and what is not. Certainly all of life
is a miracle, and the forces of the Cosmos defy our
comprehension. But to attempt to influence them
with magic is idle superstition and worse; for it
implies that one wishes to control them rather than to
be at peace with them. And further, the belief in
magic signifies the belief in many diverse powers,
spirits, and gods, and often the belief that one may
trick or fool them. But there are not many powers, as
Taoists who have turned to magic have stained the
purity of the world's most perfect religion hold. They
would clutter the Way with obstacles of their own
invention. Magic works only on oneself, and since it
is not grounded in truth, the magician always works
Black Magic upon his own soul.”
But K'ing was aware that, in spite of this
injunction, Kak often studied books on Taoist magic
from Lin Fong's library not as one interested in

learning about strange customs, but as one who was
unwilling to turn his back on any possible source of
power that might aid them in bringing the city of
Zhamballah to earth once they became Masters of
the Blue Circle. Lin Fong was inclined to allow Kak to
do this—he was aware of the nature of Kak's
interest—in hopes that he would come on his own to
a clearer understanding of the impotency of magic.
But K'ing wondered what the Master's reaction would
be if he knew that Kak was actually trying to practice
magic.
Kak, at the same time, wondered whether K'ing
suspected that every time the younger boy bested
him in Kung Fu practice, he performed certain rituals
designed to throw the advantage back to him.
The boys stood thinking these thoughts for
perhaps a minute. Then Kak said, “I was trying to
find whether the secrets in the Master's box have
magical potency—whether they are charms or spells.
For it may be that he denies a belief in the power of
magic now because he thinks we are not ready to
wield that power yet.”
K'ing shook his head. “I am sure,” he said, “that

they are at once the greatest magic in the world and
no magic at all.”
Kak removed the bracelets and put them into his
pocket. K'ing never saw them again.
The boys' days always ended well after sunset,
with more meditation and afterward with sound and
deep sleep.
This routine continued for five years. It was
interrupted only by the periods during which Lin Fong
retired to his tower to meditate, or went wandering
off by himself into the desert.
At first the boys stayed home during these
periods and it was then that Kak devoted the most
time to conditioning his hands. K'ing had chosen not
to do this yet. Lin Fong had said to them, “Do it or
not, as you wish. The conditioning of the hands is
better suited to Kak's style of Kung Fu than to K'ing's
anyhow.” So Kak spent many hours hammering on
rocks and boards, until he could strike them with
astounding fury while feeling no pain.
But after the first winter the boys took to roaming
the desert together when Lin Fong was physically or
mentally absent.
In later years, K'ing lost the memory of most
individual days spent at home. But he remembered
his journeys with Kak Nan Tang almost footstep by
footstep; for the older boy had great excitement for
these adventures, and he communicated a great
deal of it to K'ing. There were many things he could
show the younger boy and tell him about.
The first time the pair wandered, without food or
water, out into the desert for a destinationless
journey of a week, it was at Lin Fong's suggestion.
But K'ing was so immediately taken with the older
boy's self−confident, almost brazen attitude toward
the wasteland and all things and people in it, and he
took such joy in augmenting his knowledge of the
world in which Kak had grown up—the world of cities
and civilization—with the accounts of one whose
enthusiasm for them was still fresh, that he began to
look forward to these trips with eager anticipation.
For the first few years, the boys did not so much
as approach a town; and when later they did, it was
not so much the clusters of mud or straw huts, with
their camels and dogs and small children running in
the streets, their small shops, their little temples, that

excited him, or caused him to worry or wonder. It
was more the person of Kak Nan Tang himself.
At first the things Kak showed his companion
were simple, but nevertheless things which would
never have occurred to K'ing. He would take a rock
whose surface had been rendered scratched and
lustreless by the desert's windblown sand. Cracking
it open on another rock, he would reveal the bright,
shining facets of a fresh surface. The boys would
each take half. Assuming the lotus position, they
would spend many hours in fascinated contemplation
of its intricate structure.
Later, Kak would occasionally pull up a small
plant by the roots, and they would marvel at the thick
stem dividing and dividing itself into the infinity of tiny
tendrils that allowed the plant to drink.
On others of their expeditions, Kak and K'ing ran
across wandering nomad tribes. Although K'ing was
always on the lookout for the Tribe of Ton Te Ming,
the only news he could get of them was that they
had gone far to the northwest and had never
returned.
In later years, K'ing was to reflect that it was in

these meetings with the nomad tribes, rather than in
their lone journeyings, that he began to see how
different Kak really was from himself. Whether, as
most often happened, they ran across the tribes at
watering holes, or whether, as occasionally, they
crossed paths with them in the arid wastelands
between, if they were not recognized immediately,
they were always questioned by the elders as to how
two such young boys came to wander on foot with
little or no food and water in such hostile country.
It was always Kak who answered: “We are the
pupils of Lin Fong.”
Usually this reply was more than enough to
banish all questions, and to bring an almost
awestruck look onto the faces of these venerable old
men; and also to bring offers of food and shelter,
which were always graciously refused.
These encounters always made K'ing
uncomfortable. Although the Master had well earned
his appellation, “Protector of the Nomads,” Lin Fong
himself had said, “Some of these people, I fear, think
of me as a desert deity rather than as a simple
follower of the Tao. And although those that bring me

food do so out of friendship, and know me, those
who do not wander this way think I am more than a
man.”
And K'ing himself was acutely aware that he
himself had never done anything to help these
people. Rather he had lived his whole life on their
charity. In fact, he owed his very life to one of their
number. Perhaps this was why he was content for
his companion to answer, although it was to Kak,
since he was obviously the older, that the elders first
turned anyhow.
K'ing could hardly deny that Kak's habitual
response was the most economical. Several times,
at his insistence, Kak had tried other responses. But
the elders would never be satisfied that the two were
not dangerously lost runaways until they had got the
truth. And when they had, they were always
impatient that it had taken so long to get what they
considered a satisfactory answer; after which they
were embarrassed that they had questioned the
boys so closely and, perhaps, condescendingly.
This last reaction made K'ing more uncomfortable
than ever. So he had to agree with Kak that the

direct way was best.
It was too late before K'ing realized that it was not
so much Kak's words as his intonation of them that
was disquieting. He came upon this revelation when,
one late spring day in the fourth year of their training,
they crossed paths at a watering hole with a tribe
who had never heard of Lin Fong. It was a Mongol
tribe from the far north—and a relatively rich one, as
K'ing could see by looking at the fine, sleek horses
ridden by the tribal leader and his sons, the long train
of pack camels bearing large and elaborate circular
tents, and the large herd of fat and healthy sheep
that bleated and surged forward at the smell of water
that lay ahead of them in a wide pool. The oasis lay
in barren flatlands several miles from a ridge of
mountains whose streams were all but exhausted as
they trickled down to add their waters to those of an
isolated underground spring.
The tribal leader's rock−like face betrayed a
suggestion of warmth and an impending offer of the
famous Mongolian hospitality so readily and
unquestioningly given throughout the desert. He
leaned forward and spoke from beneath a four−sided

hat with upturned flaps of fur and an onion−dome
crown of scarlet silk. He nodded a rather formal and
somewhat puzzled greeting. “May I ask how two
young boys come to be stranded in these
wastelands with no mounts? I see you seem to carry
no food or water...”
“We are the pupils of Lin Fong.”
The chieftain smiled and straightened. “I have not
heard of this Lin Fong. But we have been this way
many times before, and I know his dwelling is not
nearby. Does the fact that you are his pupils serve to
feed and shelter you when you are far from his
house?”
Kak stiffened with surprise and rankled at this
sarcastic remark. “Lin Fong is the greatest Master of
Kung Fu in all the world. He wanders the desert
alone for weeks at a stretch, and has no need for
earthly substances such as food and water, nor for
the help of beasts in making his way. It is a small
thing for us, his pupils, to wander to the middle of
nowhere for a day or two.”
The chieftain frowned at this sharp and
disrespectful reply and turned to his two sons behind

him to see whether they had heard of Lin Fong. The
older of them, a fierce−looking man of perhaps
twenty with a long, ornately carved dagger−handle
protruding from a sheath at his belt, caught the regal
tone of Kak's reply, and his short temper flared. “Any
fool may starve himself if he wishes. My father was
concerned for your safety. As for your Lin Fong,
whoever he may be, you had better be careful of
boasting of his fighting prowess in the presence of
those of us who are born fighters, for he is not here
to protect you. If I were in the mood to be as boastful
as you, I would tell you that my brother here”—he
pointed across at a slim, sharp−eyed boy from
whose camel pack protruded a wickedly curving and
brightly painted bow—“is a champion archer who has
won many prizes in the National Day celebrations at
Ulan Bator.”
“A curse upon the evil of weapons,” Kak replied.
“They are the child's playthings or the coward's way
of killing.”
Now the younger brother's eyes flamed and he
hunched forward threateningly on the neck of his
beast. “Speak softly,” he hissed. “You taunt an

arslan!”
K'ing, his head reeling with the sudden
vicious−ness of the encounter, gazed at the older
brother. He could clearly see the calm ruthlessness
of the “lion”—a Mongolian born of the breed who
down through the ages had wrestled to the death in
stadiums to the far north for the pleasures of
God−kings and their courts, and who had emerged
as the greatest wrestler in the nation. Now, he knew,
contests were fought by careful rules, and deaths
were unheard of. But to be styled an arslan, one had
to have at least become National Champion...
K'ing could see, in the hands that gripped the
reins, fingers that could choke an enemy to death in
seconds; in the powerful arms, strength to tear and
dislocate and smother; in the great thick muscles of
the calves, the power for a life−snuffing scissors. He
could feel the total calm of the battle−tested
champion who, in a country where every male child
dreams of becoming an arslan, had risen to take his
place as the mightiest of the mighty. Was it Black
Magic that had brought to this part of the desert a
fighter worthy to do battle with Kak Nan Tang?

The chieftain cut short the exchange. “We need
no more words from you or your kind.” He glanced
over his shoulder at his sons to be sure no further
words were spoken. The tribe moved off toward the
watering hole.
K'ing turned to leave. They did not need water,
and they had meant to cover many miles on the
route back to Lin Fong's house by nightfall. They had
hoped to reach the ruins of an ancient city a half
day's journey to the south and sleep among the
caves of its ruined dwellings. But Kak, seething
inside, sauntered after the tribe and down to the
watering hole. He folded his arms as the nomads set
up their camp several hundred yards to the east and
gazed disdainfully at the women as they watered the
camels and filled vessels for cooking. K'ing could not
make him hear a word.
Then the arslan led his horse to the water. It bent
to drink ten feet away from Kak Nan Tang.
K'ing whispered to his companion, “Nothing but
evil can come of our staying here. This man has
done nothing to you. And anyhow, there is a way for
violence to be avoided. If you will not take it, I will

take it alone.” He turned and stalked off, hoping Kak
would follow.
He was two hundred yards off to the south when
suddenly Kak's shout cut like a whip across his back:
“Are you afraid of this leech who calls himself a lion?
There is no place for fear in the hearts of the Masters
of the Blue Circle!”
K'ing would have kept going but for the effect he
knew these words would have on the proud son of a
Mongol chieftain. He bolted back toward the
waterhole.
The wrestler wordlessly dropped the reins to his
horse and moved toward Kak like a slow freight train
about to crowd a cow from the tracks. Then: “It would
be better for you if you had some fear.” He stooped
to his low posture and his arms weaved out before
him, searching for an opening.
Kak took no dramatic posture. He gave no
warning of what was coming other than the clear
blazing of his black pupils and the slight shifting of
his feet to grip the sand. His hands rose
imperceptibly. “Another step,” he said, “and you have
lost your left eye.”

The arslan's temper burst all bounds. “Run before
you lose your life!” he growled. He had closed to
within kicking range. K'ing was still far away.
“If you want death, you shall have it.” Kak's voice
gurgled like running blood.
The wrestler knew of Kung Fu fighting. He was
well protected as his body swayed and the muscles
in his shoulders worked in deep waves.
For any other accomplished Kung Fu fighter, the
champion would have been a fair match, for
Lightning Kicks and Tiger Claws and Knife Points
could hardly be swifter or surer than the movements
of Mongolia's greatest wrestlers. And once the arslan
had closed on his enemy, catching a flying foot or
shooting in beneath a blow to score a fall, all the
jujitsu in the world could not have saved his victim
from a swift and crushing death.
But while the wrestler had nearly the quickness of
a Kung Fu fighter, Kak Nan Tang had nearly the
strength of a wrestler. His Iron Hand was instant
death; his quickness was rivaled in all the world only
by that of his own Master and his younger
companion; and he had spent every day for four

years studying the science of sudden death. To him,
the moves of the lion were dull−witted and
transparent.
It was over in seconds. Kak caught up with his
enemy's rapid series of fakes and threw four or five
of his own, offering kicking legs to grab at, flashing
arms to catch, and smashing elbows to parry at
close range. The wrestler's static posture, his
inability to leap four or five feet backward parrying
blows in the air, his habit of boring in no matter what
the cost, made Kak's victory a foregone conclusion.
The arslan grabbed for a forearm as a Knife Point
thrust at his gut. His elbow was met by a stunning
Rock Smash Parry from Kak's free hand. A Raised
Hoof Kick cracked the hard point of a shoe against
his shin, a Low Dodge and Counter evaded his high
grasp and sent a Ram's Head Punch thrudding into
his ribs. When his hand clamped down on the wrist
of Kak's attacking left, the Kung Fu fighter's right
elbow crashed into his chin with a withering Monkey
Blow, and his left knee lifted as his captured hand
yanked downward. The wrestler's wrist, caught at
just the right angle, cracked on Kak's kneecap. Now

the free hand coiled upward like a cobra and struck.
Its fingertips plunged into the socket of the Mongol's
left eye. Kak's Eagle Beak dug the eyeball cleanly
out.”
The wrestler's screech rose above the
pandemonium as women ran screaming back toward
their camp for help. The blood−curdling sound cut to
the quick of the desert. His arms flailed as he
stumbled blindly backward, blood spreading a red
veil across his face and down over his throat and
chest. Kak threw the eyeball at him. He had proved
what he wanted to prove. Now he moved in for the
kill.
So intent was Kak on final annihilation that he did
not see the archer fitting an arrow to the string as he
ran from the camp toward them.
So piercing were his victim's screams that he did
not hear K'ing's heels throwing up tiny jets of sand,
nor the sound of toes digging deeply as K'ing left the
ground ten feet from him in a flying leap.
K'ing's arms crashed into the fat part of Kak's arm
as the archer loosed his deadly missile.
K'ing had seen the bow drawing back out of the

corner of his eye. He knew the aim would be true
and that the arrow would fly to Kak's heart. He
marked the place where Kak's heart would have
been. As his companion sprawled off his heels to the
ground, K'ing opened a space between his retreating
legs. The razor−edge of the hunting arrow's head slit
a tiny cut in his calf as it whirred between his legs,
through the cloth of his robe, and bit into the water of
the oasis.
Kak's fury at K'ing's intervention vanished as his
ears played back the sound of the arrow's flight to
him. Now, as men with guns came running from the
camp and the archer fitted another shaft to the string
and closed deliberately on him, he leapt at the
maimed wrestler's pony, which still stood placidly by
the waterside. His body pasted itself to the horse's
hidden side. The fingers of his right hand seized its
mane. His right ankle hooked up over the animal's
back, and his left arm hugged its throat from
beneath. His head tucked in behind its neck. With his
free left foot he kicked the stallion hard in the rump. It
reared and bolted. It was far out into the desert, and
Kak was up on its back and riding hard on the tribe's

strongest animal before a pursuit could be mounted.
At a deadly range of thirty yards the archer turned
his aim to Chong Fei K'ing.
The Son of the Flying Tiger stood straight upright
and stared into the archer's eyes.
The bow bent and the string pulled past the
Mongol's ear. Already he felt the tip that would bring
down a Bengal Tiger homing to his enemy's chest.
There were running footsteps behind him. His
father's voice commanded him to hold. But the
fingertips had parted.
K'ing watched the fingertips. When they slipped
smoothly apart, all chance of changing the arrow's
path of flight was gone. At that instant his arms flew
up and he rose to his toes, pivoting sideways and
sucking his stomach in. The arrow tore through his
robe fractions of an inch from his gut. Its feathers
caught the cloth and tugged at him as it followed the
first into the water.
A hard hand came down on the archer's shoulder
as the chieftain whirled him around and shouted at
those who brought rifles to bear on K'ing to hold their
fire. “Are you blind?” he screamed at his son. “This

boy was trying to save your brother's life!”
The boy, for the first time in his life so filled with
rage that he dared to defy his father, wrenched free
and struggled to arm his weapon once more. “He
saved his friend's life! My arrow would have torn his
heart out!”
His father caught him and ripped the bow from his
hand. Then he turned to K'ing, who stood over the
fallen lion wiping blood from his face with his robe.
The chieftain's chest heaved with the white heat of
barely−controlled fury as the half−blind arslan, the
pride of his life, stumbled to his feet and then fell into
the shallow water. “Go!” he yelled at K'ing.
There was nothing the Son of the Flying Tiger
could do. He turned his back and strode swiftly,
silently after Kak Nan Tang.
He did not catch up with him until the next
morning. He found him hiding among the ruins of the
ancient village. Kak showed himself when he saw
that K'ing was alone.
K'ing, although he had thought deeply on the
encounter, had no idea what he would say to Kak.
His problem was solved when Kak, seemingly

unrepentant, spoke first: “I see that you too escaped
unharmed from those animals. I suppose they
thought you were attacking me and not trying to save
my life?”
K'ing frowned angrily at him. “I was trying to keep
you both from killing and from being killed,” he said.
“You were wrong to fight him. He was proud and
hot−tempered, but you provoked him out of pride.
You used the power Lin Fong has given you for a
horrible purpose.” K'ing and Kak spent the rest of the
day arguing over the incident. At first Kak insisted
that he had been justified. But as K'ing went over
every word that had been spoken, every expression
and gesture, in the way Lin Fong had taught him,
Kak's stubbornness began to ebb. For a long time
K'ing was not certain that Kak's increasingly
repentant tone was sincere; for as Kak realized that
at the very least Lin Fong himself would not have
approved of his actions—even that Lin Fong might, if
he heard about the incident, decide that he was not
fit to be a Master of the Blue Circle and banish him
before his training was completed—he began to be
concerned about whether K'ing would tell the Master

about it. “If you tell him,” Kak argued, “then I will
have lost my chance to repent of my terrible mistake
and learn from it. You have been raised by the
Master from birth, and thus have the advantage, for
you know his mind as well as you know your own.
But I was raised until my tenth year in a worldly city
where people believe that pride is important and that
revenge may be taken for insults. I tell you this truly:
that one mistake is enough to make me see the dark
forces which have remained buried deeply within me
from my childhood, and that I will meditate upon
them day and night until I drive them out, so that I
will never do such a thing again as long as I live. I
will act as you acted, which was right. I have never
before asked anything of you, but now I ask this—will
you promise not to tell Lin Fong that I have done this
terrible thing? For it may be that you yourself have
done smaller things out of his presence that were
evil, and yet you have not lost the greatest−dreams
of your life because of them.”
In the end, K'ing promised. He promised because
he believed that Lin Fong did not need to be told
whether things were going wrong with Kak Nan

Tang, and because he did not want to have any
power to make the Master think ill of his friend. For
the power Lin Fong had given to Kak was already
great—perhaps greater than Kak himself knew—and
K'ing could only hope that his companion, with his
support and the help of the Master, could make
peace with himself and keep from using that power
to do evil. Had he not promised, he would have
made an enemy of Kak forever. Perhaps Kak then
would have turned on Lin Fong and fought against
the Blue Circle and everything it stood for.
Still, the promise weighed heavily on K'ing for
many weeks, and he spent hours torturing himself
over the question of whether he had been right to
make it. After a time, as Kak displayed more tact in
dealing with the nomad tribes they met on their
travels and often asked Lin Fong questions about the
good and evil of certain kinds of conduct while they
were at home, K'ing began to feel that all would turn
out well.
But months afterward, as they approached the
spring of their fifth year in the Gobi, K'ing's promise
came back with a vengeance to haunt him. For one

day the Master took him aside and, to his
astonishment, said, “There are certain things I have
learned about Kak Nan Tang— things which I cannot
tell you of—that trouble me deeply. It pains me to
ask you this about your friend, but I must. Do you
know of anything that might be interrupting the peace
of his meditations, anything that might be making
him incline toward the evils of Black Magic, anything
which might make you suspect that he would use the
powers I have given him for dark purposes?” K'ing
was unable to speak.
CHAPTER NINE. The Challenge
It was late summer, almost five years to the day

after the arrival of Kak Nan Tang at the house of Lin
Fong. In all that time K'ing had heard Lin Fong echo
his own doubts about Kak's vision of the Tao and the
mission of the Blue Circle but once. Outwardly Kak
was a fine boy— fifteen years old, tall and strong,
handsome in his own rugged and cavalier way, a
fighter fit to challenge the greatest Kung Fu Masters
of the ages. K'ing, who had grown rapidly in the
proceeding months, was now a fraction of an inch
taller than his companion even though he was two
years younger. Although from a distance strangers
were captivated by his spectacular, more
conventional good looks, from a closer range they
found this impression superficial in comparison with
the piercing genius and clarity of vision manifested in
his sky−blue eyes. Together the pair was impressive,
and their fame throughout the desert was almost as
great as that of Lin Fong himself. K'ing wondered
whether Kak was at peace with himself inwardly, but
he tried not to let these questions disturb him; for he
felt that if his companion was falling from the Way,

the Master would do all that was possible to help him
regain it.
Several weeks before Lin Fong had taken them
aside and said, “In the time that you have been with
me, I have opened my mind and searched it
everywhere, and I have made it pour forth to you
everything that I could discover in it about Kung Fu
and all other forms of hand−to−hand combat. And I
have done my best to impart to you whatever
feelings I have about the mission of the Blue Circle,
which seeks to spread the peace of the Tao across
the earth. You have journeyed across the desert
together seeking wisdom; you have taken far deeper
journeys into the depths of your minds during hours
and days of meditation; and you have practiced
Kung Fu night and day with an intensity that only
those with great inner strength could have
maintained. At the beginning it seemed to me there
was an infinite number of things I could teach you
about Kung Fu. My mind and my body barely knew
where to begin, and my plans for your teaching ran
for years in advance. But you both emerged as
Masters more quickly than I thought. Now I find that I

sometimes repeat myself, and that often you are
anticipating what I will say.
“You are to stay here with me in the desert until
you undergo your first trial. I cannot tell when the trial
may come. But my feeling is that it will not be long.”
***
It was a day much like the day on which Kak had
arrived.
The warm, ripe, dry winds marched evenly across
the endless dunes. High above, the transparent air of
mid−summer had turned humid, forecasting the
coming of such a rainy season as the desert knew.
The three began a complicated talk about some
Kung Fu techniques which Lin Fong had
experimented with as a youth. He had discarded
them because he was unable to perfect them. Now
the boys set their minds to work on the problem.
Suddenly from far out over the rocky southern
ridge half a mile from the house, they heard a
strange, low−pitched rumbling.
It was an engine, and its noise rose quickly in
jagged, piercing rhythms. Soon the vehicle mounted
the ridge and swung in its surging course to head

straight toward them.
It was an American Army surplus jeep, fitted with
wide tires for desert travel. From its very sound and
the hard manner in which it was driven, K'ing could
tell that evil was on the way. His mind flashed briefly
back to the battle at the Place of the Steep Rocks,
and to Lin Fong's prediction that some
day—although it might be many years—vengeance
for their victory there would be visited upon them.
As the three stood watching the machine thrust
itself toward them over the sand, K'ing was well
aware that Kak felt none of the apprehension that
passed back and forth between himself and Lin
Fong. Kak undoubtedly felt that, since he had not
been able to go out into the world, the world had
come to him.
The jeep stopped outside the sand fence. A tall
blond man got deliberately, ceremonially out of it.
K'ing could tell at once, as much from the shape
of his heavily muscled body and his aggressive
bearing as from his narrow battle−formed Western
features, that he was as American as his vehicle. He
turned to face them. His eyes did not bother to linger

on the house or its surroundings, but fastened firmly
on Lin Fong.
K'ing was surprised to see that he wore the
traditional tunic and baggy pants of formal Kung Fu
combat; except that the uniform was white, and
emblazoned upon the front of the tunic was an
ornately embroidered image of a Bengal tiger. Its
exaggerated claws grasped forward, and its red
mouth gaped with huge, sabrelike teeth.
So forceful was the intruder's presence that it took
a moment for K'ing to realize that he was not alone.
Two boys about Kak's age descended from the jeep
on the side away from them and made their way
around it to stand behind their Master.
Suddenly the air was thick with the threat of
deadly combat. Lin Fong gazed at this man whom he
had never seen shrewdly, with mystic recognition.
He bowed politely, and waited to see whether he had
correctly fathomed the stranger's purpose.
“You are Lin Fong,” the man said, with a finality
that made K'ing recognize with a shudder that he
was not encountering Lin Fong, but beginning an
ancient ritual.
“I am Lin Fong,” the Master affirmed, in a tone
that said, “I have wondered all my life when you
would come. And all my life, I have been ready.”
“It is said that you are the wisest of the sages,
and the greatest of all Masters of Kung Fu.”
Lin Fong was silent. His face betrayed no
acknowledgement.
“It is said,” the man intoned, “that you preach of
the Tao, and that you call yourself a good man.”
K'ing rankled. He had never heard Lin Fong claim
to be a good man.
“But I, who have rid myself of my earthly name
and taken the name of the Norse god Loki, a name
charged with the horrors of evil, deny that there is
any good or any evil!
“There is nothing but man and the chaos of the
universe which seeks to snuff out life. All of life is a
fighting, and man must carve for himself out of the
chaos a monument, which at the moment of his
death, he may laugh at as it crumbles!
“So I am here, and we will fight—−you for your
Tao and your good and evil, or perhaps for your life,
and I for the passing eternity of the moment of battle.

For it is only in dancing with violent death that a man
is truly a man.”
K'ing's body quivered with the simple
awesomeness of this challenge.
He scrutinized Lin Fong closely as the Master
gazed steadfastly into Loki's eyes. Lin Fong was
trying to feel whether Loki's statement had come
from his very deepest depths. As the Master shook
his head slowly in cold−blooded rejection of the offer
to combat, K'ing knew that he had found nothing
deeper—not even the tiniest space in which his
words might move to start doubts in Loki's mind.
K'ing could feel Kak frowning inwardly. His eyes
were wide at his Master's refusal to do battle. K'ing
saw Kak's weight shifting slightly onto the foot away
from Lin Fong, as if to dissociate himself from the
Master.
Loki looked at Lin with the look of a man who has
caught an animal in a trap, and who knows that
though the animal's brain seeks wildly for escape,
there is to be no escape.
“You will fight,” he said. “For if you do not, you will
die like a dog. And your pupils—are they ready?”

Lin Fong was silent. K'ing's face was an
impassive copy of the Master's. But Kak's very
presence, although he stood stark still, radiated
white heat.
Lin Fong smiled a smile of infinite wisdom.
“Death is death. A dog dies just as a man; just as
any living thing. You may kill me in whatever way
you like. I have no care for the manner of my going.”
K'ing's mind glowed with the brilliance of his
Master's stroke.
For Loki had come not for killing, but for fighting.
Now Lin Fong's indifference to death left him
powerless.
But at the same time K'ing could feel
fore−shadowings of revulsion for the Master
emanating from Kak's clouded gaze. K'ing could
easily see that, were Lin Fong wrong—had Loki
really come for killing and not for fighting—it would
be Lin Fong's duty to fight him and kill him if he
could.
This “if he could” lingered in K'ing's mind. For
though the Master's age had not taken much from
him, K'ing could see at a glance that his adversary

would be formidable; although less so if he had
come for killing, if he had come to do evil, than if he
had come for fighting, and was Evil itself. But if he
was this latter, Lin Fong would, according to his
Way, seek to turn the currents of his thought upon
themselves, and dissolve them into the peace of the
Tao.
Loki spoke again. His blue eyes glazed over
beneath his sun−bleached hair until they were as
mirrors.
“You will fight. At some point, all men will fight.”
Then he turned and wordlessly led his proteges
back to the jeep.
He drove off a few hundred yards and proceeded
to set up a camp.
As soon as Loki had left, Lin Fong turned to his
pupils, a look of almost terrifying seriousness on his
face.
“You must not fight this man,” he said, looking
from one to the other, his gaze boring most
penetratingly into Kak's nearly−defiant eyes.
“You must not fight him nor his followers. For he
does not do evil: he is Evil. He is, knowingly or

unknowingly, an emissary of the Red Circle. He may
be a member of it, or he may be an ordinary mortal
whose evil ways have put him under their power. But
this is something that the Masters of Zhamballah, the
true Masters of the Blue Circle, know which I do not.
This I do know: that he must not be fought or killed.
Whoever seeks his death will fall from the Way and
come under the power of the Red Circle. He has
been sent by Zedak to fight and kill me and win you
away. He will be powerless over you unless you try
to break his force with your own. If you do, then you
yourselves will become evil.”
He looked directly at Kak now. “Kak Nan Tang,
beware: for you know better than I how intoxicating
this man's words are to you, and if you let yourself be
drawn into this fight, you will fall from the Way and
rage off into the world yourself as the power of Evil
incarnate. I speak plainly to you: this is not the fight
of a man. If you fight it, you will be beyond salvation.
I have never ordered you to do anything. But now I
order you: take, along with the power I have given
you, the peace of the Tao. Without it you will be
overcome by the urge to fight and kill. I order you: do

not fight!”
Then he walked off and ascended his tower.
There he plunged deeply into meditation.
K'ing watched the fate of his world hang in the
balance as Kak, giving no sign of how Lin Fong's
words had struck him, turned to him. “I know who
this man is,” he said. “He is not Loki, nor is he any
spirit or emissary from the Red Circle. His name is
Samuel. That is the only name he is known by. He is
the greatest Master in the West—the greatest in the
world after Lin Fong. But he is evil. He has murdered
thousands.” Then Kak turned angrily away and
paced out into the desert.
K'ing himself emulated the Master and sought the
peace of mindlessness. But his trance was broken in
the late afternoon by the snarl of Loki's jeep
returning.
The tunic with the raging tiger on its breast
moved, two shadow figures behind it, to a point lust
outside the sand fence. There, Loki folded his arms,
and, his body as rigid as rock, stood, his hard,
threatening gaze casting a pall over the dwelling of
Lin Fong.
Loki maintained his position until sunset. Lin Fong
remained in his−tower.
K'ing found himself meeting Loki's gaze and
holding it until he saw him not as a human being, but
as a piece of furniture, or as some inanimate object.
K'ing knew that never in a million years would Lin
Fong come down from his tower to face this enemy.
He would starve, and go out of his body —he would
shrivel to a skeleton in the wind and rain and
sandstorms—before he would do this.
But he knew that Loki now was playing not upon
the feelings of the unreachable Lin Fong, but rather
on those of his vulnerable protege.
K'ing knew Kak. He knew Kak understood Lin
Fong's ideas of Good and Evil. If Kak made the
wrong choice, it would not be out of ignorance, but
out of his grappling with himself and his urge to scale
life's highest heights and plumb its deepest depths;
to drink to the fullest, to miss nothing; to face all
challenges, and to triumph.
For two days Loki maintained his vigil from
sunrise to sundown outside the house of Lin Fong.
K'ing stared, and wondered whether, if he had to, he

could fight a good fight against this man. He told
himself that, after five long years of days and nights
of Kung Fu, he could battle creditably even with the
Master; but the fact that he, unlike Kak, had chosen
not to condition his hands, would put him at a huge
disadvantage. And even more important, he
wondered whether the Urge to Kill, which he had
long since faced and banished, would not be
necessary in such a struggle. But, he realized, this
was the urge that joined the will to fight with the will
to escape one's own death; and he quickly sent
these doubts whirling away.
As K'ing struggled hour by hour with these
thoughts, and became accustomed to Loki's evil
presence, Kak spent long hours in the turmoil of his
own disturbed meditations, staring down into the
sand with a ferocity that could have melted it, or
pacing like a man in a jail cell out into the desert and
then returning.
On the third day, just as the sun showed its
flaming orange rim on the horizon, Lin Fong
unexpectedly descended from his tower.
Lin Fong, without a word to K'ing, went to the well

and drew up water to drink. Then went inside to eat a
little food.
At nightfall Kak returned and settled silently onto
his sleeping pallet. He closed his eyes, and seemed
to sleep. But K'ing and the Master exchanged
glances as he tossed and quivered— either with the
power of turbulent dreams or with clashing emotions
that would not let him rest.
K'ing lay awake all night, listening to Kak's ragged
breathing and the sounds of his limbs as they jerked
and quivered.
By morning, Kak had lapsed into a deep sleep,
and in the light K'ing gazed at his face. The
once−bright eyes were sunken in their sockets. His
once−fat cheeks seemed hollow. His head looked
strangely like a fleshless skull.
But the depth and apparent peace of his rest
gave K'ing hope.
That afternoon, when the sun was at its zenith,
beating down upon the desert sands and the house
of Lin Fong with naming fury, Loki stirred in his silent
vigil.
To K'ing's eyes the slow, decisive movement was

like a mosaic coming to life.
Kak Nan Tang was sitting by the side of the well,
staring down into its black depths. Lin Fong and
K'ing stood together in front of the house, watching
Loki and his followers as they made their way toward
them.
Loki's eyes bored straight into those of Lin Fong.
K'ing could see that he would attack.
Loki was fifty feet away, and then thirty, and then
twenty. The Master's hands hung loosely at his
sides. He gazed past Loki as if he were seeing
through him.
Ten feet, and then five feet, and Loki's right hand
began to rise, and his eyes glowered with murder.
And now reality slammed at K'ing with its devastating
explosion: Lin Fong was going to die.
Loki's hands slashed downward with the bloodlust
of the executioner's axe to squash the frail, grey
haired skull.
But Lin Fong was gone.
The hand cut its lethal path downward through
the bottom of the sky.
Loki leapt, a furious mass of scything blows and

bone−crushing kicks and clawing fingers and
pounding knees and bashing elbows.
***
There was a cosmic sandstorm on the desert.

The winds rushed the breath out of the boy as they
sliced his face with tiny knifing crystal bullets.
Out of the howl of the wind, out of its powerful
curses, the boy drew music; out of the force of the
wind, he took strength.
***
Every lethal attack, Lin Fong evaded or parried.
The air was clouded with dust and the noises of
lungs drawing desperate breaths.
Cries screamed forth from Loki's twisted mouth;
cries of birds of prey streaking downward, talons
clutching; of the rumbling roar of a cave−in deep in a
mine shaft; cries of the cracking explosion of the
gunshell, and of the fast, fatal flight of the bullet;
cries of cows slaughtered and of men under torture.
But the cries echoed into the wasteland, empty.
Lin Fong did not seek to put a distance between

himself and Loki. Rather at times he seemed briefly
to close on him, only to melt through him in a flash
and come out behind, already parrying Loki's next
attack. The Master, K'ing suddenly saw, was dancing
with death!
After the first horrible rush when K'ing had made
Lin Fong dead in his mind, the blood cleared from his
head, whirling away in a freshwater stream that
welled up deep within him.
Now he could see.
In fact, the action seemed to slow before his eyes
in order that he might grasp it fully. Seconds before
he had been sure that, had Loki come at him with
such an attack, he would have withered and died
with the first rush. But now, as Loki raged on and on,
K'ing in his mind matched imaginary actions of his
own to those of the Master. He saw that Lin Pong
was doing nothing that he himself could not do. He
began predicting the Master's movements now as his
eyes fastened on Loki's body and his comprehension
covered it like a huge net. Chong Fei K'ing saw
many, many chances for the Master to attack; and
although all were fraught with danger, he knew that

even in Lin Pong's old age he could, if he wanted, kill
this man. Lin Fong was truly the greatest of the
Masters.
Suddenly the closeness of the two bodies, and
their ever−flowing rhythms of attack and defense,
turned them in K'ing's mind into the Yin and Yang.
This vision opened in K'ing a well that reached to
the very depths of Lin Fong's Way: for the Yin and
Yang were in eternal opposition. But neither one was
truly good or evil. This far had Lin Fong
compromised himself in this encounter with Evil
itself, that now Good and Evil were dissolved, and
both rode smoothly on the whirling currents of the
world's indifference.
Suddenly the furious pace of the fighting slowed.
Occasionally Lin Fong had to turn back new attacks
as Loki's rage welled up once more within him. But
after a time the sounds of panting were the only
sounds left in the still air, and Loki and the Master
stood facing one another.
Lin Fong's visage betrayed the slight smile of the
mystic.
But suddenly Loki turned to his followers.

Some signal had been given. The taller of the two
raced toward Kak, and the other toward K'ing; and
now the proteges of Lin Fong were put to the test.
K'ing's blood flooded his brain for an instant as he
smashed aside a high kick and a sharp punch and
dodged an elbow and danced aside in the face of
another combination of kicks.
He saw an opening for the death blow, and his
human blood cried out to him to put an end to the
battle.
So strong was this urge that he fought himself for
an instant, and a Knife−Point lanced into his gut,
blanking his consciousness in a swirl of numbed
nerves.
K'ing's body fought without eyes and without
mind, arms and legs now on their own, sensing
danger with deeply primal power and fending it off
while awaiting their Master's return. But when, an
instant later, K'ing came rushing back to himself, he
was miraculously alive. Now his body slipped
smoothly into the simple work of evasion.
He had become as Lin Fong.
With the first attacking rush of his followers, Loki

had descended upon Lin Fong again—surely not
thinking that he could kill the Master, but intending to
keep him busy while his followers went to work.
The fight had also come to Kak Nan Tang. His
eyes were bright with joy and fire.
In an instant Loki's pupil lay withering on the
ground, the muscles of his thighs and back
convulsing uncontrollably from the impact of Kak's
ruthless but calculated blows.
Now Loki's pupil gazed up into the inferno of
Kak's eyes.
Kak made a threatening move to put an end to
him.
The boy was not at peace with his own death. He
whimpered and cringed.
“I should claw out your guts with my fingers,” Kak
hissed down at him. “But now that you see how
worthless your sniveling life is, I will let you keep it!”
Then he folded his arms and, unmindful of the
spectacle of Lin Fong and Chong Fei K'ing whirling
and darting and dancing behind him, wandered off
into the desert.
No sooner had Kak turned away than Loki, who

had seen his protege fall and whimper for his life,
broke off his pursuit of Lin Fong and stood stark still.
Then he walked calmly over to the wounded boy and
with a single kick squashed out his brains.
Chong Fei K'ing felt his adversary melt away.
Only the dimly flickering electricity of passing
death disturbed the tomb−like stillness that
descended before the house of Lin Fong.
Loki turned slowly to his remaining protege.
“That is how cheap life is when one flees from the
joy of one's own death and ceases to stare fearlessly
into the abyss.”
Loki and his remaining pupil faded away to their
camp.
The form of Kak Nan Tang was small already on
the southern ridge.
Lin Fong and Chong Fei K'ing stared at each
other. K'ing's mind was full of Kak Nan Tang and the
horrible fate of the enemy whose life he had
somehow brought himself to spare. But Lin Fong
said, “Kak Nan Tang is beyond us now. Either he will
come back of his own accord, or he will stray from
the Way, perhaps never to find it again. But the fight

he now fights within himself is no longer a fight we
can help him to win. We will put him out of our
minds.”
That was all.
Later, K'ing and Lin Fong talked of the sudden,
surprising attack of Loki.
“It was very brilliant,” Lin Fong said. “For he had
come to realize that I would never fight him as he
wished, and had said to himself, 'I will go butcher this
man. If he lets me kill him, I will be sorry, for I will
have lost the chance to fight the greatest fight of this
age. This will make my soul sick. But if I go without
the will to butcher him, he will see through me, and
when at the last moment I pull back, and he still
stands unshaken before me, he will have his victory.
So I must take the gamble that he will follow his Tao
and try to turn my power onto his lustreless Way.
Then I will surely smash his defenses and kill him.
And at the last, he will surely give way to the urge to
fight.' Yes, this man is very deep. The depth of Evil is
as deep as the depth of Good.”
Kak Nan Tang did not return that night. Lin Fong
and Chong Fei K'ing slept soundly in the hope that

he had left the desert forever, and would somehow
find the Way again in the course of his world
wandering. Perhaps he would see how his fighting
back had snuffed out the life of Loki's follower, even
though he himself had not done the killing. Perhaps
he would realize that he should have taken the
course of his Master and his companion.
But the next morning, Lin Fong awoke troubled.
He went outside and sniffed the air.
He felt the breeze with his fingers.
He looked all around him, as if to take a strong
grasp upon his small world—house, sand, and sky.
Then he ascended his tower, climbing the rungs
of its ladder slowly, feeling the familiar wood almost
with fondness. Instantly his body became a shell,
and he flowed out of himself to ride across the lands
and oceans his body had once traveled upon the
Wind that Blows in the Void.
Suddenly the house of Lin Fong became no more
to Chong Fei K'ing than the pile of boards that it had
always been for the Master. The world of the desert
collapsed into meaningless−ness.
Then Kak Nan Tang returned.

His dark form appeared on the southern ridge just
as it had on the first day of his coming; only now the
thrusting of his lethal limbs across the sand spewed
rays of darkness out before him, and his black,
rage−clouded visage flamed forth with the fires of
hell. He strode past Chong Fei K'ing as if he did not
exist, and halted before the tower of Lin Fong.
There he stood, and there he waited.
At sundown, as the shadow of Lin Fong stretched
long and thin across the sand and then melted
invisibly at its edges into the coming night, the sage
rose slowly. He stood and turned, his eyes sweeping
the wide arc of the compass until the arc had
become a circle.
Then he descended.
He stood before Kak Nan Tang, and his thin lips
parted. “You have killed them,” he said. “I saw their
bodies from the tower the moment I ascended it.”
CHAPTER TEN. The Murder
Kak stood completely silent for a moment, his

defiant gaze seeking something to confront in the
dimensionless vacancy of the Master's eyes. His
body tensed, as though his control of it would help
him in the coming fight. “Yes,” he said. “I killed them.
Both of them.”
Now his dark eyes flamed. His words came in
ruthless torrents. Years of self−denial parted. The
veil of deception that had long hidden the evil soul of
Kak Nan Tang was torn asunder.
“Yesterday when I was attacked my very
body—the body which you have trained—rebelled at
fleeing, rebelled at defending without attacking,
rebelled at the sight of unopposed evil taunting me,
and lashed out! My mind forced out all your empty
words. For you are a coward even though you have
no fear. The blood of life sang to me, and my soul
danced to the music of the fight.”
His voice rose angrily.
“I would not have this shame any longer—the
shame that will not let me rest. The shame of the
cowardliness which you have thrust upon me!”

His voice fell to a low, mean hiss: “I did not kill
that boy yesterday. So great was the power I had
over him that I chose how I would make him
powerless! Before I struck, I saw the way he would
fall, and felt every pain that would be in him! I felt
with him the fear of death as he cowered and I
triumphed!”
“It was not for you that I let him live, but for
myself: Kak Nan Tang! I let him live because I
wanted the fear that I put in him to live. I walked
away to leave him trembling through the rest of his
days with the terror that I might someday return.
“But then his Master killed him.
“His Master did right to kill him. For he was
nothing but a fighting body with a fighting heart torn
out of it. He was worthless as a camel without with
legs!
“But then, when Loki had killed him, I knew that I
had killed him first. My Way had split off forever from
the Way of Lin Fong.”
Then his head shook slowly in rejection of the
teaching of Lin Fog.
“Your Way leads nowhere but to the barren

wastelands of a desert life. You push aside the cup,
and die before your time with your endless empty
trances!”
He stopped, furor bubbling on the surface of his
face.
“You are no Master, nor are you fit to be a
Master!
“Once you went out into the world. Enough of
your senseless babbling of Good and Evil! For you
went, if you were ever a man, as all men go: to fight!
To fight, and to defy your death! To fight, and to
triumph, and to stand over your fallen enemy, feeling
the precious blood of life still coursing through your
veins, to feel your lungs sucking in the air and
making you dizzy with joy!
“But in your worthless old age, when an evil man
comes upon you, you make him into a god— and
you run from him like an old fool with terror in his
heart because he has offended a god!”
Now the fire in Kak Nan Tang's soul raged out of
control: “But this man was not a god! For I have
fought him, and I have killed him and his worthless
disciple, and I have strewn their guts on the hillside,

and torn off their heads with my bare hands. I have
smashed their heads like eggs on the rocks of the
desert! I have tasted their blood, and eaten their
flesh!
“Their bodies lie there even now, their blood
boiling in the sun. And soon the birds of prey will
come to eat their share—to pick the eyes out of their
skulls and clean their stinking flesh from the pieces
of their shattered bones!”
Kak's eyes suddenly grew small, as his mind
swirled away to the memory of the battle.
“It was pitch black and I entered their camp. They
were asleep in their tent.
“I lit a torch and flung it in upon them.
“They awakened from their sleep to see me
standing before them, orange in the light of the
flames.
“Loki spoke to me in the tones of a deity. But I
looked at him with the coldness of human slaughter.
And even to himself he became no more than a man.
“He said, 'You have come to take up your
challenge.' Then he called to his pupil.
“I said to Loki, 'My fight is not with this lamb which

you would put before me, that I may butcher him. My
fight is with you! After I have killed you, then I will kill
this other worthless fool.'
“He bowed.
“I stood upright.
“'You are bowing to your own death,' I told him.
“Then we fought.
“From the first I knew how I would kill him. For I
had seen him fight Lin Fong.
“He was hard, relentless, powerful: he had the
Urge to Kill welling up out of him.
“He has left many bruises on my body.” He pulled
up the sleeve of his robe and shoved an arm purple
with welts into Lin Fong's face.
“But I had seen from Lin Fong how to give him the
death blow: and where Lin Fong would not attack,
Kak Nan Tang did!
“This man had not the patience to wait to spill the
blood he thirsted after.
“At first I fought him without striking, just as you
did. I closed upon him. I flew through him. I whirled
by him, working upon his mind with the power of
many chances to harm him passed over, until he

ceased to dance.
“He began to work.
“I could feel the tiny quivers of doubt that passed
through him. “We fought on.
“Parts of his body started to go their separate
ways, each one lusting now for relief, for an instant
of rest; for the feel of smashing the body which
would not let them rest.
“Loki's body was stronger than yours. His hand
blows—the Ram's Head and the Knife Slash—were
faster and harder.
“But his limbs had taken over their own control.
“I worked at each of them with parries that gave
him pain, jabbing my fingers like lances into his
arms, cracking at the bones of his legs. And my
feet—my feet were far faster than his.
“I was tiring him.
“I had known this American did not have the inner
strength for a long battle. He called too early upon
the Urge to Kill.
“I took it from him and gave him back the
cowardly urge to live.
“Now the outer defenses were battered, and even

his follower lost faith as he foresaw the end of this
battle in the moonlight. For his master had always
killed quickly.
“Now I pretended myself to be tiring. I laid a trap
for him!
“I breathed as I have never breathed before: hard,
and desperately. I sailed upon the rush of strength
that I drew from my feigned weakness.
“I mounted a furious assault, Lightning Kicks that
smashed his weary arms and grazed his chin;
Knife−Point blows that speared toward the pit of his
stomach.
“I pretended it was a desperate attempt to finish
him before I myself faltered!
“Then, screwing up my face in feigned agony, I
lunged at him with a clumsy Tiger Claw.
“I flaunted before him my open groin, the path to
his salvation!
“But when his foot flashed out, I whirled my back
to him and showed him the Iron Hand falling Uke a
guillotine upon his skull: too late for him to stop it!
“Ah! But I did not strike the death blow!
“I crushed his cheek bone and sent blood welling

to his mouth.
“Then I heard footsteps in the sand behind me.
His follower, seeing the fight decided, dove into the
burning ruins of their tent, and clawed among them. I
chased him.
“I saw the gun−barrel rise up out of the ashes in
his hand, glowing Evil in the moonlight.
“But my toe snapped the bone of his arm, and my
fingers raked the cowardliness from his eyes.
“Through the blood that splattered upon his face,
Loki stared to meet the grin of certain death.
“Now I went slowly, marching in upon him with
blows that battered and numbed his arms and legs.
“I worked inward as his defenses crumbled, till at
last he fell backward, a crimson sea gurgling in his
throat.
“I rested my foot on his neck as his body jerked
and quaked.
“But now I could not make fear come forth again
in his eyes: for he knew he was dying, and already
beyond the mercy I would never show him.
“When I crushed his throat flat I listened to the
music of the tiny sounds of death. I saw the final,

lifeless glaze make clay out of the whites of his eyes.
I knew that I had not fought him. I had murdered him!
“And thus it will be with all who challenge the
power of Kak Nan Tang!”
Kak's body shivered, and his eyes darted, a
horrible reflection of the tale he told.
The stream of words which had slashed like
sabres at the breast of Lin Fong died away to their
cold conclusion:
“And thus it will be with you.”
The veil of Kak's robe parted, and from it his hand
pulled forth the gun.
Its muzzle floated free in the desert air.
Pulled by the power of the turning earth, it aimed
its tiny hollow of blackness at the heart of the old
man.
Lin Fong stood as though listening to an ancient
tale told yet another time.
There were no last words for Lin Fong. He had
none.
The impulse from the heart to the trigger was
sent. The trigger jerked backward, and the firing pin
descended upon the back of the shell, denting it

sharply.
The blast tore aside the curtains of the sky,
revealing utter blackness and blinding light. The
fissures of earthquake split the ground to its molten
core.
The small, carefully shaped bit of lead reached
Lin Fong's skin. It parted the layers of muscle, and
passed into the cage of ribs that enclosed his slowly
pumping heart. This it punctured, and passed
through chambers of crimson until it entered into the
space of a lung.
Then it moved out again, forcing its way through
soft walls and silky barriers until it found the sunlight
once more.
It was finally halted by the numb insistence of a
few inches of desert sand.
Lin's body still stood as red sea water spread
rapidly to stain his white robe.
The eyes of Chong Fei K'ing widened to see the
whole universe, and his destiny in it, as the Master's
hands traveled upward and outward toward Kak.
The fingers made a choking motion.
Kak's mouth opened in a noiseless scream of

horror.
He staggered backward. Could bullets not kill this
man?
But then he grasped once more at the power of
the gun.
He emptied it into Lin Fong's body even as it
slumped and toppled to the ground.
CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Fight
Chong Fei K'ing sorrowed not an instant longer

over the passing of Lin Fong than the Master himself
would have.
Boldly he closed on Kak Nan Tang.
He did not think of the might of this man who had
killed three times since the last rising of the moon.
He did not so much as remember the softness of
his own hands.
He never doubted what his task was.
He never doubted he should kill Kak Nan Tang
now.
***
“Loki!” his voice thundered.
The judgement spun Kak around to face him.
K'ing stared into eyes that showed no traces of fresh
murder; eyes that crackled with the pure Urge to Kill.
“Not Loki!” came the screeching reply, “But Kak
Nan Tang! For Loki is dead, and I am alive! I have
made my name greater than the name of Loki!”
Kak took a step backward as K'ing bore down on
him.
Then, as the sun set and the moon filtered its first
soft rays through a high gauze of streaming clouds,
he attacked.
***
Brown limbs flashed in the eerie light as the
hurricane tide of Kak's hate broke over K'ing's
impenetrable defenses. His blows fell like
sledgehammers; his kicks came like battering−rams.
Darts and lances answered, pouring through the
holes in his armor: darts and lances from a fortress
built of air.
Kak had thought to kill at once.
Compared to Loki, who was Chong Fei K'ing? Let
all his mindless meditations save him now!
But out of the void of the desert wasteland, the
Eagle Beak of K'ing's fingers plucked at his eyes,
and the Scorpion of K'ing's back−handed knuckles
rapped at his temples. His bludgeoning assault
suddenly became a sieve.
Quickly Kak shoved back the Urge to Kill and kept
it like coiled spring deep in his guts while he
struggled to grasp the whole of the body which in his
mind he had already dismembered.
Kak's vision cleared, and now he danced. Sinking

to his knees, exploding upward, swiveling, striking,
blocking, parrying, evading, he gained equilibrium.
Now two death machines were set against each
other, to battle till one broke.
Kak leaped, legs bunched at his chest: a flying
double−kick. His Iron Hands slashed downward to
protect his legs and groin.
With joy he watched as K'ing evaded, leaning
sideways and back, leg rising to puncture his kidney
with a snapping toe.
Half of the double kick lashed out to knock away
K'ing's attack. The other foot thudded its heel into
K'ing's thigh, missing his groin by inches.
K'ing rolled to his back on the sand.
Kak descended upon him. A Knife−Point stabbed
at K'ing's face.
K'ing snapped his head away and parried blindly.
His body rolled.
K'ing's foot blindly felt the pull of a target as his
neck flashed into range of Kak's Iron Hand.
A shuddering shock jarred Kak from his guts. His
attacking hand turned to defense as he fought off
waves of oblivion. He rolled away, spitting sand.

K'ing shot upward. He pounced on the body that
flailed desperately away from him like a wind−blown
leaf.
He was met by a Knife−Point that stabbed his
shoulder.
He clawed at Kak's eyes.
A Hammer Blow slammed the side of his head,
splitting the skin. Blood ran with sweat in thin lines
over his face. His eyes clouded and stung.
Kak found his footing.
K'ing's Boulder Block met Kak's Ram's Head.
Kak's fist all but shattered.
K'ing brushed away a Lighting−Kick and surged
forward. A thousand feet exploded in Kak's face, and
he staggered back.
K'ing came at him, four limbs flashing in fakes
and attacks as he sought to shake the blood from his
eyes and put an end to Kak Nan Tang. A Buffalo
Horn speared Kak's kidney with a single knuckle. A
Pounding Wave crashed almost fatally over his
head.
Kak stumbled to the porch of the house of Lin
Fong. He put one of its supports between himself

and his enemy as he shook his head to clear it.
A flash of K'ing's foot snapped the thin board.
Mud and straw fell onto them as K'ing's right hand
pounded across Kak's retreating back.
Kak's desperate whirl carried him once more to
the sand.
K'ing leapt from the porch at him. His Dragon
Stamp pounded Kak's knee.
A Monkey Blow smashed pain into K'ing's shin.
Kak fought his way to the well. His head was
whirling. He put the stone between himself and his
enemy.
The well−bucket dangled between them. K'ing
ripped down the bucket and its frame. He leapt
across the mouth of the deep shaft. His flying
Dragon Stamp grazed Kak's disappearing shoulder.
A Rock Smash caught K'ing's ankle hard. His
body shuddered, poised over the darkness of the
well. Kak's Iron Hand flashed at his stomach.
Even as he fell, K'ing's Rock−Smash blunted
Kak's blow, and his free hand seized the arm that
dealt it.
They would go crashing down the death−hole

together.
K'ing thought only of the blows he would strike
before they hit the water, and how he would drown
Kak in the abyss.
But Kak's body held to the ground outside the
well, and K'ing felt a Knife−Slash descending to
crack his arm and break his grasp.
He hauled against the arm. His feet shot out of
the well as his head dipped more deeply into it.
Kak's blow fell on his leg as his feet thudded into
a skull.
Kak was dazed as K'ing found himself for an
instant helplessly scrambling, hung by his stomach
on the curving stone wall. He came upright with a
blind Swooping Bird Parry, both hands rising up and
out to deflect whatever Kak threw. A Tiger Claw
glanced harmlessly aside.
K'ing regained the sand again and stared at the
hateful broad nose and shallow nostrils that flared to
suck in air. Now Kak's black hair ran with the blood
that K'ing's hard kick had brought forth.
Kak was groggy.
He feigned blackout.
K'ing speared at his eyes.
Kak blasted upward, smashing K'ing's chin with a
Monkey Blow. K'ing saw it all but too late. A subtle
twitch of his head kept it from killing.
K'ing fell backward.
Kak reached down and drew from the pool of
darkness that was his soul.
Weakly K'ing warded off blows and stumbled as
Kak's heels sent him reeling with Dragon−Stamp
after Dragon−Stamp.
K'ing saw an opening. He lanced his clawing
fingers into Kak's face, tearing a fat cheek. He kicked
himself free.
Then they raged out into the desert, whirling and
leaping and thrusting; over the sand fence, over
patches of hard rock and stretches of loose stone.
They fought their way back again.
Pain and exhaustion slowed their movements as
they swam in the murky waters of delirium.
Kak stumbled into the house. K'ing dogged his
heels, kicking and slashing. Kak gained into the tiny
kitchen and seized a knife from a shelf.
K'ing threw an iron pot at his head and leapt upon

him.
The knife slit his side.
His Hammer Blow on the back of Kak's knife hand
drove the knife's point into Kak's thigh.
Kak released the weapon to parry a blow to the
face.
They careened out the back door, leaping and
stumbling over the stone oven.
An iron poker sang through the air.
K'ing ducked. The black shaft whizzed through his
hair.
He countered, combinations of blows and kicks
forcing Kak into retreat.
The poker flew off.
Chong Fei K'ing and Kak Nan Tang fought the
battle of death from sundown to sunrise.
The body of Lin Fong lay cooling in the shroud of
his blood−soaked white robe.
Through the late night hours the dance moved
with the fury of a pace too rapid to reckon.
In the dank, hollow hours of the morning, it
slowed to the primal crawl of pain and exhaustion
past feeling. It became a pure battle of will.

The moon was still high when a rock−like foot
crashed into K'ing's face as he rolled in the dust,
catching his lower lip and punching a tooth through
it.
It was starting to wane when a knifing finger
glanced off Kak's throat and K'ing's nails scraped
layers of skin from it.
Every instant, each knew: the tiniest error was
instant death.
There were times when Chong Fei K'ing deeply
wished for this death: the death that Lin Fong had so
well taught him to accept. But each time he whirled
away this wish: for he would not die to escape the
torture of the fight. Nor would he let Kak Nan Tang
loose into the world.
More than once, he thought that death had come
to him.
And more than once he thought that he had killed
Kak Nan Tang.
The moonlight faded into the heartless
fluorescence of the dead hours.
The strength had long since gone from their
bodies.
Kak's slashing blows came weakly. Now the very
heaviness of his hands weighed against him.
In the deepest pit of the night, two animals bared
their fangs and claws: to devour, or be devoured.
Their sweat ran salty with the blood of their open
wounds. They rode on the thin stings above the
battered pulp of their bodies.
Now Kak snarled and muttered, his wild black hair
pasted with dirt and gore to the battered purple flesh
of his forehead. His blue robe was torn.
He searched for a way to break K'ing's will as
they lunged and countered and parried in slow
motion. His stance had turned to the lumbering of the
grizzly bear.
His lips quivered as if to speak.
Over his shoulder, K'ing's eyes grasped briefly at
the strength of the wind and the sand and the black
sky, as the first traces of morning light appeared.
Kak's eyes tracked his. A Pounding Wave
crashed into the brief opening.
K'ing was ready. He limped aside.
Once more Kak's thick lips parted. His throat was
a white paste of foam stained scarlet.

He choked on his words. Blood gurgled in his
throat.
He strained again.
His eyes flamed dark flames. Then, the killing
words came forth:
“It was your promise...” he gasped; ”... it was your
promise to me that killed Lin Fong!”
K'ing went pale with furious hate and the Urge to
Kill. Drunkenly he lunged forward.
A stinging handful of sand erupted into his eyes.
Out of the blinking, gritty blindness, a hammer
cracked his head, and a dagger sunk into his gut,
and a club thudded into his groin.
He left his body behind and dove deeply for the
peace of the Tao.
The music of the Wind played to him.
Out of the dim indifference of the faraway stars,
words came with the music:
“It is a lie!”
And then he was rolling, and his legs kicked out.
The spinning of the earth and sky stopped. He
dug his toes into the bottomless desert sand.
The sound of his own panting screamed to him.

He rose, and more thoughts echoed: “If you have
spent your last, then so has Kak Nan Tang! And if he
has not, then you have not!”
Out of the blur he saw a shadow stalking him.
He kicked at it.
It melted, then returned.
He kicked at it again.
The form came clear.
The agony of his body he now left behind. He
knew he might die from his wounds when the fight
was over. But he would not die before.
And then the east lit up with pale pink light that
flamed rapidly toward the life−giving clarity of the
morning.
And the Son of the Flying Tiger said, “With the
first fire of the sun's rim on the horizon, I will spend
my last. For now we are as shells, empty but for our
wills; and the Good and Evil that is in us must fight
alone.”
K'ing could feel the sun coming.
It was the first rising of the sun after the death of
Lin Fong.
Lin Fong!
The sage's tower stood topped with a band of
light. The barren gray wood caught the sun's rays
and burned with them.
And then the band of light that spread across the
desert flashed on to the forehead of Chong Fei K'ing.
He glanced at where the body of Lin Fong had
lain all night.
The sun's rim flashed with quiet conflagration
over the desert's edge; and then its light, diving
deeply to the soul of Chong Fei K'ing, drew up an
answering shaft of brilliance: for the sage's
blood−stained robe was empty!
K'ing froze in horrified amazement.
The words were out of his mouth before he could
look again.
“The body of Lin Fong is gone!”
These were the only words in all of the world's
languages which could have opened the tiniest crack
in the will of Kak Nan Tang. They made his startled
eyes leave the body of his prey for an instant. Even
before they had settled on the bloody robe, his mind
in panic had called them back. But it was too late.
Chong Fei K'ing had spent his last. It was his

sudden seizing upon Kak Nan Tang's last and only,
tiny fear: that Lin Fong was immortal.
The scream of the mutilation of Kak Nan Tang
scarred the very desert as the fingers of the Son of
the Flying Tiger raked his face.
A lightning−flash instant of doubt—or a second's
horrible sight of the truth: time enough to name, but
never time enough to kill.
Kak staggered back, hands clutching his forehead
where two bloody gouges oozed deeply from his
eyebrows to his hairline: gouges that would never
heal. Gouges that would mark him for the rest of his
flight around and around the world. Gouges that
branded him with the indelible mark of evil.
K'ing stared at his fingers as they dripped blood,
still in a position he had never dreamed of. What
force had formed them that way in their flight, he
would never know.
Kak reeled off, his cries choked with vomit as he
fell to the sand and crawled and then struggled
upright again. Clutching his forehead, blinded with
his own blood, he clawed his way over the sand
fence.
K'ing made a slogging step to follow.
Then he fell.
He could not make his limbs work.
The form of Kak Nan Tang disappeared,
shrouded in screams, over the southern ridge.
EPILOGUE
Chong Fei K'ing lay from sunrise to sunrise where

he had fallen. Had Kak Nan Tang returned, he could
have put an easy end to him as he slept.
But Kak Nan Tang did not return.
As K'ing lay unconscious, as motionless as his
dead Master, the blood clotted on his wounds under
the baking rays of the desert sun, and the forces of
nature coursed through his body, busy with the work
of repair.
But when he awakened, he was all but paralysed.
His stiff muscles would not move, and when he
forced them, he opened wounds everywhere.
By evening, he managed to crawl to the well and
let the bucket down to draw water from the shaft that
had nearly been his tomb.
It was another hour's work to struggle into the
house and search out food.
The next day, his body rapidly gaining strength,
he buried the body of Lin Fong where it lay. The
Master's tower was his gravestone.
As he lowered the torn corpse into the pit he had
scratched out of the sand, K'ing caught sight of the

key that still hung on its thin thread around Lin
Fong's neck.
The ivory box—and Lin Fong's last legacy of
secrets!
His heart filled with joy at the thought of learning
yet more and deeper mysteries from his Master; and
these last teachings would surely be the deepest of
all.
He forced himself to meditate over the grave of
the Master before going to get the box.
As he did, one thought, one desire, emerged: to
find and kill Kak Nan Tang. Until he did this, it would
be his life's work.
As he came out of his trance, two revelations
struck him at once.
The first was that Kak would not flee him, alone,
to remote corners of the earth. Kak would never
disappear without a trace. Rather, he would ally
himself with the evil forces of the world wherever he
found them—−for Loki had, even at the price of his
own life, won Kak over to the Red Circle.
The second was that, sooner or later, Kak would
remember Lin Fong's ivory box. Then he would know

that the last and the greatest of the powers of Lin
Fong had fallen into the hands of his arch−enemy.
Whatever Lin Fong had written, it would aid him by
striking Kak's heart with the fear of the unknown
magic he believed it contained.
K'ing went into the house and took the box from
the mantle over the fireplace. With it and its key, he
went outside and, for the first and last time,
ascended Lin Fong's tower.
There, with the breeze blowing quietly past, he
fitted the key into the box and opened it.
He removed a single sheet of paper.
He stared at it with stunned incomprehension.
His brow clouded as he strained to understand, to
forgive, to whirl away his disappointment.
Then, suddenly, Chong Fei K'ing laughed.
The soul of the Master laughed on the wind with
him.
The sun sparkled on the pure, white, empty sheet
as it left K'ing's parting fingers and floated to the
ground.

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K'ing Kung−Fu #1: Son of the Flying Tiger

This page copyright © 2006 Silk Pagoda.

“Master replaces Master in the bodily cycle of

RANGOON, BURMA. 26 DECEMBER, 1941. In a

the American Volunteer Group in Rangoon. Give up

fighting! Son of a bitch, every time one of those

The Americans, finished ridiculing Radio Tokyo, went

A pair of squinting eyes glanced up, smiling

a Flying Tiger,” the Yankee corrected gently. Then,

“I have not been to Cincinnati in a long time. San

the Yankee lifted the bottle to his lips.

fact that he had just squashed someone's brains out

—almost gently, as the RAF lieutenant saw it from

By this time there was a lot of .45 calibre artillery

dacoits who were still living. But while Western eyes

A split second before, a tough jungle bandit, a

scuffles; everyone that needed to be dead was

Lin Fong looked down at his blood−spattered shirt

—the kind of deep breath you take on a fresh spring

The first phrase, in English, struck the Flying

obviously a purely rhetorical

“Lin Fong?” said a calm, deep voice that moved

—only this time a little differently—the Flying Tiger

CHAPTER ONE. The Gobi, the Master,

The Gobi Desert is a dead pit of sand and gravel

the growing boy, “that everywhere on earth and in

lay beyond; and when occasionally he moved his

protege, that it took K'ing years to realize that he

imagined a world without them. Day after day the

it was that in their lives, none of these things were

art of going along the Way.”

these times, K'ing would sit on his haunches in the

go. Then you will find for yourself, there was no

eating grass that crackled in his mouth. Then he said

Fong had read to him about railroads.

counting; it was always the same. To please Lin

huge brown timber; the biggest, thickest piece of

even the strength of his own little body being drawn

boring into the essence of its structure, dealt it

inward, and his hands crossed upon his chest, palms

CHAPTER TWO. Son of the Flying Tiger

Son of the Flying Tiger?

know what a country or a nation is. It's a group of

right. But suppose instead I told you, 'Chong Fei

“Americans especially, and many of the world's

Lin gazed quietly out over the horizon. “Did I ever

“One thousand, nine hundred and ninety−one.”

“To the true question,” the Master smiled a little

K'ing kept his silence for a time, and the Master

made his way to Burma at this time.

because they were not good enough to send against

from the terror of the bombing.

dove through it, and the Japanese fighters could not

sun for an attack, so they skimmed low over the sea,

directing the action. Now this may sound wrong to

for the blood of the Royal Air Force, and of those

Suddenly Smith's radio talked with a hard,

familiar, yet unexpected voice. 'Smith, this is Old

“The Japanese closed hard on Smith. He was

challenging the remaining Japanese to a dogfight.