Edition note: An independent English rewriting of the Chinese argument, shaped for English-language readers.
Guo Jing and Yang Kang receive their names before they are born. Qiu Chuji, who has only just met their fathers, chooses characters recalling the Jingkang Incident—the capture of the Northern Song emperors almost eighty years earlier. A national catastrophe is placed inside two children's names before either has drawn breath.
Soon the children become the stakes in a wager. Qiu Chuji will find and train one; the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan will train the other; eighteen years later the students will fight to determine whose teaching is superior. The adults undertake the search out of loyalty to murdered friends, and their sacrifices are real. The Seven Freaks spend six years finding Guo Jing in Mongolia and ten more teaching a boy whose slowness continually frustrates them. One companion dies during the search.
That devotion does not make the wager disappear. They teach Guo Jing for his sake and for their own account. Every failure threatens not only his future but their honor at the appointed contest. Their impatience, harshness, and love grow from the same investment.
Other teachers give differently. Ma Yu secretly teaches breathing and movement without claiming Guo as a disciple, because helping openly would violate the contest. Hong Qigong exchanges techniques for Huang Rong's cooking and asks for no institutional allegiance. Zhou Botong teaches from boredom and play. The same martial knowledge can be a stake, a returned favor, or a game. Only the first arrives with a future debt already attached.
The formal duel never occurs as planned. By eighteen, Guo Jing and Yang Kang have become persons rather than the two symbols imagined at the wager's beginning. Yet the bet has already done its work. It decided where they grew up, who taught them, what they learned, and how adults interpreted their successes and failures.
No one involved is faithless. The teachers give years, blood, and lives. The trouble is exactly that their gift and their claim are inseparable. The novel never records anyone asking the two children whether they wished to carry it.
Based on the Sanlian Bookstore edition of Jin Yong's Legends of the Condor Heroes; later revisions differ in some details.
版本说明：中文原作；简体与繁体同页切换。
两个孩子的名字，是在他们出生之前定下的。
那天在牛家村，郭啸天和杨铁心留一个道士喝酒。道士叫丘处机，杀了一个汉奸，正被官兵追。两家的妻子都怀着孕，主人请客人给孩子取名。
丘处机取的是"靖"和"康"，理由说得很清楚：靖康之耻，不可不记。
这两个孩子还没有出世，名字里已经装进了一件他们出生前八十年发生的事。取名字的人跟这两家人当天才认识。
那一夜还发生了另一件事。杨铁心的妻子包惜弱在屋外发现一个受伤的军官，心软，把人救了下来。那个人是金国的六王子完颜洪烈，被丘处机打伤的。他见了包惜弱一面，回去就勾结了南宋的官府。
郭啸天死了，杨铁心失踪了，两个怀孕的女人各自被冲散。
丘处机去追凶手，路上因为一场误会跟江南七怪打了一架，两败俱伤。事情弄明白之后，双方言和，接着定下一件事。
那件事是这样的：丘处机去找杨家的孩子，江南七怪去找郭家的孩子，各自教十八年，十八年后在嘉兴碰头，让这两个孩子比一场，看谁教出来的更强。
七怪当场应了。
这是一场赌，赌注是两个还没找到的婴儿。
赌的双方都是好人。丘处机是全真教的高道，江南七怪在江湖上以义气闻名；他们定这个约的时候，出发点是替死去的朋友照看后人。这一点书里没有含糊过。
只是这个约里有一条：这两个孩子将来要在众人面前打一场，用来分出教他们的人谁高谁低。
七怪找了六年才在蒙古大漠找到郭靖。找到的那一天，书里写他们六年的辛苦一日之间得了回报。
"回报"这两个字用得准。那六年他们走遍了半个中国，风餐露宿，为的是一个自己没见过的孩子；找到之后，那个孩子就是他们这六年的收成。
然后是十年的教。
这十年在书里写得很实在，也不好看。郭靖资质极钝，一招要学别人十倍的工夫；他老实，肯下苦功，就是学不快。七怪一天比一天着急：十八年是有期限的，而对面教的那个孩子据说聪明伶俐。
他们越急，手上越重，话越难听。这些在书里都留着，金庸没有替他们抹掉。
他们教他，不只是为了他。
七怪里死了一个。张阿生为了救韩小莹，死在陈玄风手上——那一战是找郭靖的路上撞见的。他死的时候，那个赌约刚开始没几年。
后来还有别的人教过郭靖，形状都不一样。
全真教的马钰在山上住了两年，每夜教他上下悬崖、教他呼吸吐纳。他没有告诉郭靖这是什么，也没有收他做徒弟，还嘱咐他别跟七怪说——因为那个赌约不许别人插手，他要帮这个孩子，只能瞒着。
洪七公教他降龙十八掌，起因是他抢吃了黄蓉做的鸡，觉得过意不去。他教得很随意，一掌一掌地给，也没有要郭靖入丐帮。
周伯通在桃花岛的洞里跟他玩了几个月，教了他双手互搏，又哄他把一本经书从头到尾背下来。他没说那是《九阴真经》。他做这件事的理由是闷。
同样是把东西给出去，有人是拿它下注，有人是拿它还人情，有人是拿它解闷。只有第一种，给的时候附着一份将来要交的账。
十八年到了。
那一场比武最后没有按原样打成。郭靖和杨康在江湖上已经碰过很多次面，两个人早就不是那个约里的两个符号了。
但是那个约把该做的都做了：它决定了这两个孩子在哪里长大、跟谁学、学什么、被怎么对待。它做完这些事之后，才轮到这两个人自己开始做点什么。
柯镇恶后来在桃花岛上认定黄药师杀了自己的五个兄弟，从此把这笔账记到郭靖头上，也记到黄蓉头上。这件事是误会，误会解开之前，他对郭靖说过很重的话。
这七个人从头到尾没有做过一件亏心事。他们把一个陌生婴儿养大，教了十年，死了一个兄弟，最后又赔进去五个。他们付出的是真的，那个赌约也是真的，这两件事在他们身上是同一件事。
书里没有一处写过，有人问过这两个孩子愿不愿意。
注：本文所据为金庸《射雕英雄传》三联书店版。人物、情节与引述均出自该版本；新修版在若干处另有改动，与本文所论不涉之处不另作说明。