They meet Hong Qigong, who teaches Guo Jing the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms (降龍十八掌) to repay Huang Rong's favours of preparing fine cuisine for him every day during the brief period of time he spent with them.

He fought with Ouyang Feng and won but was bitten by the latter's poisonous serpent, and lost all his inner energy while purging the venom from his body.

He teaches Huang Rong his Dog Beating Staff Technique after deciding to pass on his position as the chief of the Beggars' Gang to her.

The armour was incidentally stained with venom from a rare snake bred by Ouyang Feng and the poison seeps through Yang Kang's wounds into his body and kills him eventually.

Towards the end of the novel, on the summit of Mount Hua, Huang Yaoshi finally consents to his daughter's marriage to Guo Jing.

She feels that Yang Guo bears an uncanny resemblance to his late father in his attitude and behaviour, and does not fully trust the boy.

They eventually defeated the Mongols and prolonged Xiangyang's existence as a Song territory for another 13 years before it finally fell to Kublai Khan's army prior to the events of the sequel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber.

In The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, it is revealed that the couple realise that the eventual fall of Xiangyang is inevitable, so they wrote their knowledge of martial arts and military strategy on scrolls and hid them separately in the blades of the Heaven Reliant Sword and Dragon Slaying Saber, in the hope that future generations would inherit their legacy.

[1] When Guo Jing agrees to meet her on the riverbank, she looks completely different from her earlier image, now that she is clean and dressed in beautiful clothes.

She uses her powers to make huge rocks and boulders form an array and maze to confuse enemies and force them to retreat.

Hong Qigong has a penchant for fine cuisine and could not resist the temptation that he has no choice but to keep his promise and teach Guo Jing.

Huang Rong is a main character in the 2000 role-playing video game Shachou Eiyuuden: The Eagle Shooting Heroes, released by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation.