Linghu Chong (令狐沖): The hero of the novel. He was an orphan who was raised and taught by Yue Buqun. He is the senior disciple of Huashan Sect, and is a carefree happy-go-lucky fellow whose main loves in life are swordplay, drinking, and (beginning in the middle of the series) music. During the middle of an imposed exile by his master for his frivolous behaviour, he chances upon a cave, where he rediscovers the long lost techniques of all five of the allied schools and sects, along with countermeasures devised by elders of the Sun-Moon Cult, their sworn enemies. A chance meeting with a reclusive, formerly renowned Huashan grandmaster, Feng Qingyang, opens his horizons of swordsmanship and the martial world. Due to several incidents, he spends much of the novel forced to fight without the us