Book 3: Chapter 31: Prisoners

Lo Meifeng turned to Sen and said, “We can’t let him take us in there. Better by far to die out here.”

Lifen looked appalled by Lo Meifeng’s words. The old man looked sad and a little disappointed. Sen just evaluated what he saw in Lo Meifeng’s eyes. She meant it. She believed with absolute certainty that death was preferable to stepping foot inside that temple. Lo Meifeng obviously knew things about the temple that Sen didn’t. After all, he didn’t think he would have just said that out loud where their captor could hear it. Given that she’d been ready to face being tortured to death to buy him time to escape, though, he couldn’t imagine what could possibly be worse than that. He didn’t want to find out. Lo Meifeng had done more than enough to earn some credit with Sen. If she said death was better, he was prepared to take her word for it. It was with a kind of grim finality that Sen turned his eyes to Lifen.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to come to this.”

“Before any of you do anything foolish, or irrevocable, you must realize you cannot defeat me. Even if you did manage it, you’d simply be caught and brought back by others. Fate brought you here. You cannot escape it.”

“You’re wrong, old man,” said Lo Meifeng with a flat, deadly expression. “We don’t need to defeat

you

. Defeating fate is easy. I just need to kill them, and then myself.”

While Lo Meifeng had the old man’s attention, Sen started cycling lightning and gathering his killing intent. If he was going to out of the world, here and now, he meant to take the old man with him. He also reasoned that he only really had one attack that might slow the old man down. He and Lo Meifeng drew their jians at exactly the same moment. Sen started feeding killing intent and lightning qi into the sword, while Lo Meifeng went into an all-out offensive against the old man. It only took a few seconds for the right amounts of qi and killing intent to gather in the jian, but, to Sen’s horror, the technique refused to coalesce. He tried again. Nothing. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. He withdrew his killing intent and qi from the jian. If he couldn’t use Heavens’ Rebuke, he’d go out fighting the old way.

He launched himself into a gap he spotted between Lo Meifeng and the old man, but it was like trying to land a blow on a ghost. The old man was never where Sen expected him to be. Lifen, perhaps recognizing that she’d be more of an impediment than a help, kept her distance. But she had retrieved her club from her storage ring. Sen had wondered why they were allowed to keep their weapons, and now he knew. The old man simply hadn’t cared that they had their weapons. They were no threat to him. Realizing the futility of keeping the fight going, Sen called out to Lo Meifeng.

“Kill me first,” he shouted. “I’ll keep him occupied.”

“No,” said the old man, and his voice resounded like a divine gong. “Fate will not be denied.”

The old man moved so fast that even Sen’s enhanced vision couldn’t track him. Then, Lo Meifeng went flying toward the temple in a spray of blood. Sen might have tried to help her, but it was his turn next. He never saw the old man. Never heard him. He only felt it when the fist connected with his chest. He heard his hardened bones snap with sounds like stone breaking. The force of that blow launched him into the air. He heard Lifen scream his name, but it was distant, distorted, like something he might hear through a wall. In the last moment of lucidity before the pain of that blow reached his brain, Sen thought that no one had ever hit him that hard before. Then, he crashed face-first into that metaphorical wall of pain. It was beyond anything he’d experienced before. That blow hadn’t just broken bones. It had shredded muscles and damaged the organs in his chest. Then, Sen’s body connected with something, and the world went black.

***

Sen wandered in and out of something adjacent to consciousness for a while. He’d hear people talking, sometimes about him, sometimes not, but the words were like motes of dust in the air. He was aware of them, but they had no meaning or relevance. He was constantly aware that he was in pain, terrible pain, and his mind shied back from it, keeping him asleep, at a remove from full comprehension of that pain. So, he drifted, floating along on the surface of a sea of imagination and dreams. He experienced wonders in that state. He saw worlds beyond his world. Worlds where miracles the likes of which he’d never known were commonplace, and the cultivators wielded a kind of might that his world could never contain or survive. He saw terrible things as well. Dark worlds teeming with demons, where humans were herded like cattle, and slaughtered with as little regard.

And he saw himself as a stranger might. He saw the strengths in his body cultivation, as well as the weaknesses. The Five-Fold Body Transformation was mighty, but it was a mere stepping stone to other things if he could reach them. Yet, his body cultivation was also strange. It had been blessed, or at least altered, with heavenly qi. Refinement by heavenly qi wasn’t part of the Five-Fold Body Transformation. Had he stepped off the road onto a truly new body cultivation path, or was this simply a variation? Could he complete the other steps in the path as intended? The stranger that was himself didn’t know. He observed his spirit cultivation. It was potent, flexible, but there was a certain fragility in it. There were things missing, things that would make it more durable and more resilient. He could sense those things, but, again, didn’t know what they were.

Eventually, though, he couldn’t remain asleep. He was pushed or pulled up to actual wakefulness. He braced himself for the agony he expected but was surprised and relieved to discover that the pain he’d felt, however distantly, was gone. He gingerly pressed a finger to his chest. The bones were healed and felt strong. He let his qi wash through his body, looking as deeply as he could at his muscles and organs. They seemed repaired as well. Although, he wouldn’t trust that until he’d mixed his own healing elixir and let it do its work. He looked around and found himself in what he could only describe as a cell. The walls were stone blocks and unmarred by decorations. He lay on a pallet on the floor. He’d been covered with a thin blanket and there was some kind of pad or pillow beneath his head. Still, Sen could do the math easily enough.

It was perhaps an hour later when the same old man who’d defeated him and Lo Meifeng with such casual disregard entered the cell. He had a tray with food and water on it. He set the tray next to Sen’s pallet and then sat down.

“I am Lan Zi Rui.”

Sen said nothing.

The old man sighed. “I know you can speak. Are you so rude that will not even introduce yourself?”

Sen looked at the man. “Prisoners have no need of politeness.”

“You are not a prisoner.”

“Can I leave?”

“No.”

“Can I see my friends?”

“No.”

“Then, you are a liar. I am a prisoner. One that you forced to come here.”

“Fate brought you here.”

Sen offered no reply.

“This defiance serves no purpose. It only harms you.”

When Sen once more refused to speak, Lan Zi Rui sighed, rose, and went to the door. “I will return tomorrow and try again.”

“Save us both time and don’t bother. I will not cooperate with you.”

“Perhaps,” said the old man, and left the room.

Once the old man had been gone for long enough that Sen was confident he wasn’t going to come back immediately, he rose from the pallet. He searched every inch of the room. Save for the pallet and a narrow window far too small to climb through, there was nothing. He looked at the tray but found nothing useful on it. He even tried the door. He was vaguely disappointed to discover that it had been latched or barred from the outside. Having inventoried the room, Sen inventoried himself. He was dressed in plain robes, but he’d been deprived of his jian and his storage rings.

So

,

they’re thieves as well

, he thought with some bitterness. Although, he could only be so angry, having taken a great many things from the bodies of his fallen opponents. With nothing else to do, he began a close examination of the stone blocks using his earth qi. He was looking for signs of weakness that he could exploit but found none. He was going to have to get out the hard way. Yet, the moment he tried to use his qi to weaken or alter the stone blocks, his qi drained away somewhere, as though pulled down by a whirlpool. He knew that there were ways of suppressing qi, but he’d never heard of anything even remotely like what was happening.

He had similar results using other kinds of qi. He briefly flirted with the idea of trying Heavens’ Rebuke but didn’t dare try it without something to use as a focus other than his body. That only left his body. He tried punching the wall with little to show for it. Sighing, Sen tried kicking the wall. When that accomplished nothing, he tried kicking the wall as hard as he could. He thought that the wall

might

have shuddered slightly. At that rate, assuming they’d let him just keep kicking the wall for as long as he wanted to, he might escape in a few decades. Granted, he had a few decades to spare. Given the option, though, he’d prefer to spend that time somewhere else. Sen looked at the door again. He hadn’t tried kicking that. Walking over to the door, he lashed out at it with his most powerful kick. There was a boom that seemed to reverberate through the entire building, but the door itself looked unharmed. Sen frowned. He tried using qi on the door to similarly fruitless results.

In the end, he decided that the door was probably the weakest link in the chain of his imprisonment. So, he began to kick it at a steady pace.

If one kick didn’t do the job

,

then maybe a hundred will

, he thought. Plus, there was also the possibility that he’d annoy someone. If someone other than the old man came to check on him, Sen might stand a chance in a fight. Clinging desperately to those thin strands of hope, Sen continued his assault on the door. Kick. Kick. Kick.