Chains in the Deep
I am Yang Xue of Zhejiang. I write this not out of hope but in despair. There is no longer anything left for me but madness.
***
I leave my techniques here, so that they will not be lost. They are all that I can impart from my days in the jianghu.
***
I am here in the depths, bound by chains, my trusty spear sealed underneath the rock, my qi suppressed by the needles that are locked into my pressure points. I have not been more helpless in all my life, but I will survive.
***
I will curse his name for every day I live. He considered me a traitor when I fled from the massacre he bid me commit, but I can not be loyal to such a man. I have found that the Tujue have proven to be more honourable than my people ever were.
***
I was told that it was for the good of the country. That the flow of the ley lines needed to be disturbed by a terrible calamity to bring about fortune and prosperity. I was willing to take on that role. But not like this.
***
I served him for thirty years. We grew up together as children, but adulthood has driven us apart. I do not know him anymore.
***
I wonder what has become of my children. I can only hope he has not gotten his hands on them. I entrusted my daughter to young Bulun, but…
***
I remember that the man who I regarded as my sworn brother, my trusted liege, took away the woman I loved in front of my eyes. He violated her and made me watch, and with his own hands he sewed my eyes shut. He cut her and made me hear her scream, and with his own hands he sealed my ears. He raised her body to my lips and made me smell her death, and with his own hands he cut off my nose.
***
I will live, and escape, and make Li Ming pay for what he has done. He thinks he can leave me here to starve and rot and I will die, but he is mistaken. My dear Yumen had left behind herself as her final gift, the strength I needed to tear the chains from the boulder, and as the means by which I will record my words.
***
Concentrating on the flow of your internal energy, you slowly but surely counteract Yang Xue’s technique, reversing the ebb of qi and drawing it away from him. What he is doing comes almost trivially to you now that you are aware of it: using Yuanshi Hundun, you begin consuming his energy slowly, transforming whatever you can leech into your own chaotic qi. Before you can go any further, the old man realizes what is happening and breaks away, releasing his grip on you. You leap up, but a swift backhand from him sends you flying. You crash against the wall painfully and crumple to the ground. Even with your new understanding of your internal energy, there is no way you can defeat this man at your current strength.
As you crawl to your feet, you see that Yang Xue has turned his attention back towards Qilin. She is awake, and is backing up against the walls. You quickly dart in, putting yourself in between her and the old man yet again. He stops, his posture utterly still.
Tilting his head, the disfigured general lets out a long, terrible laugh that echoes off the walls. “You… care for this girl, don’t you?” he says, his voice hoarse from years of disuse. He seems rather more lucid now, compared to when you met him in the tunnels above.
“Not at all!” you shout back, “It’s because I don’t like you. I’m just not letting you have the meal you want, old man.” He arches his back backwards, a horrible grin on his face. “Youngsters nowadays. You will see. Oh. A year or a month or a week later you will either die to save her, or her to save you. I will sit and watch which will happen. Food… it tastes all the better if you wait for it.”
“Is that all you have left, General?” you ask, challenging the old man. “Just the desire to eat? What about your vengeance?”
He begins shaking violently. It takes a while for you to realize that Yang Xue is giggling silently. “Of course… not. I would rain down a storm of blood on the pugilistic world, if I could! I… and… Li Ming… him too…” His brow furrows, his expression darkens, and you can feel the air beginning to swirl about the chamber. “Why not escape together with us, then, General?” you try, though you are not sure whether setting this mad man loose on the surface world is the brightest idea. Still, you do not think you can find a way out if he gets in your way. Yang Xue titters lightly. “There is no way out. No way out of this madness. I do not need to leave anyway. I will wait for Li Ming to return and to kill him. He will be here one day. He cannot forget me. He cannot have forgotten me. No.”
It sounds like he is a little too far gone to be easily reasoned with. As the old man continues muttering to himself, he wanders into the entrance passageway, half-concealed in the shadows. “But there is one way out,” he says, looking up. “I can throw you up to the bottom of the bottomless pit. Haha. Bottom of the bottomless pit. In fact I can teach you everything, young one. Everything I know. You can be my spear, my weapon to strike at the twisted world of the jianghu. All I need is an offering.”
“Let me guess,” you say, “food?”
“Oh, how did you know?” chuckles Yang Xue.
“Just a hunch,” you sigh. “Do you need me to capture rats for you, old man?”
“Rats?” he spits. “Why would I want to eat that right now? You need to show your sincerity, youngster. An arm will do. Take it from the girl, it is not like she has any use for her limbs right now. It does… more good inside my belly. More purpose. It is only right.” You try to find some words in response to his ludicrous request, but as the chains rattle you realize the old man has already wandered off.
***
As you pondered what steps to take next, you took some time to master the fundamentals of the kicking technique that Yang Xue had inscribed on the walls. The name of the technique was Wuying Leipo Kick (无影雷破脚, Shadowless Thunder-Breaking Kick): true to its name, the moves were fast and powerful, reliant on strong, soaring leaps to attack the opponent with your legs in mid-air without touching ground even once.
“So, are we really going to have to give him an arm?” asks Qilin. In the span of a week she has recovered on schedule, but the both of you were facing another problem. Yang Xue had been coming by and slaughtering the rats for his own consumption. He had made no moves to eat you or Qilin for now, apparently having forgotten his own words, but you were forced to fight him for rats whenever he arrived. Most of the time you lost, though sometimes you managed to steal a rat or two from the old man, to his screaming protests. He never ventured far into the chamber, however, preferring to just suck in the rats physically with his internal energy from afar. The first time you saw a squeaking rat flying through the air, drawn to the man’s palm as if by magic, you could not believe your eyes.
You had been left relatively unmolested besides that, but you could not find a way out no matter how hard you searched. The passages in the caves seemed to be endless – you dared not venture too far lest you found yourself lost. At least you had managed to get a fire going in the chamber, making it a bit more hospitable.
The fish in the waterfall cavern had been too difficult for you to catch in the end; it seems that the pool extends a lot deeper and further underground than you had expected, and any careless attempts to capture them would only send the fish hiding deep beyond your reach. The stream, however, must be flowing somewhere – perhaps it would lead to the outside of the caverns eventually.
***
A. You attempt to approach Yang Xue again for aid in leaving the caverns. If you submit to his request for an arm, whoever gives it would be too weak to escape, even if Yang Xue were to throw them up.
1. You will sacrifice Qilin’s arm, learn what you can from Yang Xue, and escape the cave. You will return for her later.
2. You will sacrifice your own arm and ask to have Qilin escape. You will not have her die down here. Besides, you will then have plenty of time to absorb Yang Xue’s knowledge.
B. You refuse to submit to the old man’s mad request. There has to be a way out of here, since he managed to make it to the upper tunnels previously.
1. You will just have to improve your rat-catching skills in order to survive; you will continue searching for a way out from the tunnels in the meantime.
2. You will take the plunge and jump into the stream, allowing the flow to take you where it will and hoping for the best.