Waking from the Water-Dream
When Fang Yingjie woke, his first thought was that he was still in the water.
His chest felt unbearably heavy, as if a sodden stone had been laid across it. Every breath drew up a cold, brackish bitterness from deep in his throat, as though the lake water from that night had never truly drained from his lungs and was still pouring into him, inch by inch. He parted his lips on instinct, trying to spit out the last of it, but only a thin, broken cough came out—so faint and frayed that even to his own ears, it did not sound like his voice.
It was pitch-dark around him.
Not the vast, smothering black of storm clouds pressing down over the lake, nor the whirling darkness beneath an overturned skiff, but the buried darkness of a place sunk deep underground, a place that had not seen daylight in years. The air was thick with damp, mold, rust, and another rank smell he could not name—old blood, perhaps, or rotting mud. It clung inside his nostrils and would not leave.
He coughed again.
This time the pain split through his chest so sharply that white burst across his vision. At the same instant, his right leg seized with agony, a deep, drilling pain that seemed to gouge its way out from the bone and crawl upward through his thigh inch by inch, forcing his whole body to curl in on itself.
That pain was what made him understand.
He was not dead.
And he was no longer in the water.
His fingers clawed downward and found stone beneath him, cold and rough. Damp had gathered in every crack. When he pressed his fingertips into it, chill moisture seeped up at once. It was not like lake water, which swallowed a man whole in one violent gulp. This cold seemed to rise from the depths of the earth itself, creeping through his palm, his wrist, his arm, and slowly into his bones.
Fang Yingjie lay there in a daze for a long time.
Only after what felt like an age did the shattered fragments begin to rise back into his mind.
Wind.
Rain.
Thunder.
Wang Yan's voice, cracking as she shouted, "Hold it down!"
The short oar flying from her hands.
The sharp crack of splitting planks.
The freezing lake crashing down over his head, black water rolling through his vision, water in his ears and nose, his right leg yanked violently downward by something below as his whole body sank straight into the depths.
After that, there had been nothing.
He jolted and tried to push himself up.
But the moment he braced on one elbow, pain tore through his right leg as though a knife had been driven into the bone. He crashed back onto the stone floor at once. A sweet metallic taste rose into his throat, and cold sweat broke over him in a rush.
"Yan... zi..."
His voice was so hoarse it scarcely sounded human.
Even to himself, it seemed to come from somewhere impossibly far away, dragged up from a great depth.
No one answered.
A hollow opened in Fang Yingjie's chest.
He tried to call out again, but his throat felt scraped raw with sand and gravel. The instant he opened his mouth, all that came was another fit of broken coughing. By the end of it, the wet stone on his chest seemed heavier than before, pressing down until even the darkness before his eyes began to swell and pulse.
Then, out of the blackness, a sound rang out.
Not water.
Iron.
A chain.
Only the faintest clink.
Yet in that tomb-like silence underground, it was so clear it was almost shrill.
Fang Yingjie went rigid.
Only then did he realize he was not alone in the cell.
There was a man sitting in the shadow opposite him.
He sat low against the stone wall, his head bowed, a tangle of hair hanging down, his beard covering almost half his face. Far beyond the cell door, there seemed to be a dying oil lamp somewhere in the corridor. Its dim yellow light seeped through iron bars, damp air, and darkness, and managed to catch only the jut of a gaunt cheekbone, a strip of torn clothing, and a pair of eyes sunk terribly deep.
They were gray and unfocused, clouded as ash.
And yet they were still cold enough to make the blood run chill.
He looked like a man who had endured too long in darkness—so long that the warmth of the living had nearly been worn out of him, leaving behind only something hard as cold iron, something that could not be ground down and would not break.
Heavy chains pinned him in place.
Not the ordinary sort used to bind a prisoner.
Dark iron bands ran from his shoulders down across his ribs and waist. In places they had stuck fast to torn cloth and hardened scabs. More terrible still, the cloth beneath both shoulders had collapsed in a way no living body should, as though some heavy piece of iron had been driven through him there long ago and left him nailed into the shape he was now.
Fang Yingjie could not make out the wounds clearly.
But one glance was enough to send a chill over his back.
He thought of the stone chamber beneath Biyue Manor.
He thought of Wen Rubi.
He thought of the pale bones half-buried in the damp mire.
By all rights, he should have been afraid of this man.
Yet beneath that fear, what rose first was something else—a tight, nameless ache.
This man was nothing like the people of the Crimson Flame Palace.
Nothing like those who dressed neatly, spoke in soft voices, and could still smile gently while burying others alive beneath the earth.
He looked, rather, like someone who had been ruined by the Crimson Flame Palace as well.
Ruined for too long, too deeply, too completely.
Even sitting there, he did not seem like a man merely locked in a cell. He seemed like someone crushed beneath years, iron, and the damp cold of the underworld itself—crushed until only one last unyielding breath remained in him, and even that refused to break.
Fang Yingjie swallowed.
"Where... is this?"
The man did not answer at once.
He merely tilted his face a little.
Those gray, clouded eyes remained turned in Fang Yingjie's direction, but without any true focus, as though he was not looking at him at all, only listening.
Listening to his coughing.
Listening to his breathing.
Listening to the weakness and fear he could not hide in that single question.
A long time passed—so long that Fang Yingjie almost thought he had never spoken aloud at all.
Then at last the man opened his mouth.
His voice was low and hoarse, like old iron scraping slowly over stone.
"You're awake?"
Fang Yingjie froze.
It was not a pleasant voice.
There was no comfort in it at all.
And yet it was a human voice.
When a man woke in a place of utter blackness and freezing silence, even a voice as cold and near-merciless as that was better than no sign of life at all. Fang Yingjie's thoughts had been in chaos, but the sound of it struck through the confusion and brought back the one thing that mattered most.
Wang Yan.
He forced himself up a little and said in a low voice, "The girl who was with me... where is she?"
Again, the man did not answer immediately.
Only the chains gave a faint rattle.
Then, unexpectedly, he let out a low laugh.
It was very brief.
Dry as dust, with not the slightest trace of mirth in it.
"The first thing you ask after waking is about someone else."
Fang Yingjie stared at him, not understanding.
The man said slowly, "Someone raised you properly."
Fang Yingjie blinked.
"What?"
But the man did not answer that.
He only turned his face a little more this way. Those gray, unfocused eyes were still empty, as though Fang Yingjie himself was not truly there before him. Yet the stillness in him was terrifying, as though he were listening to every hitch in Fang Yingjie's breath, every thread of weakness, every note of panic.
After a moment, his voice turned colder still.
"Who sent you here?"
The Cold Rattle of Chains
Fang Yingjie froze.
His mind had already been heavy and muddled, but that one sentence was like a cold stone hurled into muddy water, striking so hard he could not think for several moments.
Who sent him here?
He did not even know how he had survived. He did not know whether Wang Yan was dead or alive. He had awakened in this lightless dungeon beneath the earth, his whole body aching, his chest and lungs feeling as though they had been flooded with freezing water. Yet the man opposite him spoke as if something had already been decided. There was not even a word of greeting—only the flat beginning of an interrogation.
"I…"
"Li Ying?" the man said.
Fang Yingjie's heart clenched.
"Or Li Pu?"
He did not know the second name.
But if that name was being spoken in the same breath as Li Ying's, then it could not belong to anyone clean. And the moment he heard Li Ying, it was like a needle driven straight through the fog in his head. The foul damp beneath Biyue Manor, the stone steps beyond the hidden door, Wen Rubi's face, tortured until it scarcely looked human anymore, and Li Ying's own face—gentle enough to chill the blood—came surging back all at once.
As for Li Pu, he had no idea who that was.
But dimly, instinctively, he felt that this too must be someone terrifying from the Crimson Flame Palace.
He struggled to sit up.
"I'm not—"
Before he could finish, a violent fit of coughing tore through him again.
It came hard and deep, as though he meant to cough up the water still trapped in his lungs along with the taste of blood. He doubled over, his forehead nearly striking the cold wet stone, fingers clawing desperately at the cracks in the floor. But the stone was slick with damp. The harder he gripped, the colder his fingertips grew, as though even the little strength left in him were being drawn away inch by inch by the chill underground.
The man opposite him did not move.
Not even the chains sounded again.
He simply sat there in the dark, his face tilted slightly toward him.
Those clouded gray eyes were empty, blind to everything before them, yet that stillness was colder than any stare. Fang Yingjie was coughing so hard he could barely breathe, but the other man's breathing did not falter once. It was not cruelty. It was more like a man who had been lied to, deceived, and ground down by all the false tenderness in the world so completely that, even hearing a child cough blood in front of him, he had to wonder first whether the blood itself was real.
Only when the coughing had finally begun to subside did the man speak again, slowly.
"They've gone to real lengths this time."
Fang Yingjie lifted his head. His face was deathly pale, yet an unhealthy heat-sweat had already begun to bead across his brow.
The man kept his face slightly turned, fell silent for a moment, then asked, "How old are you?"
Fang Yingjie had no idea why he was asking that. After a brief hesitation, he answered hoarsely, "Eleven."
The chain gave the faintest sound.
The man's shoulders seemed to stiffen.
It lasted only an instant—so brief it was like a flame wavering in damp air—then he forced it back under that layer of dry, exhausted coldness.
In a low voice, he said, "They even got the age right."
Fang Yingjie grew more confused still.
He wanted to say he did not understand. He wanted to say he was not one of the Crimson Flame Palace's people. More than that, he wanted to ask where Wang Yan was. But his throat felt flayed raw. Before a single question could leave his mouth, pain washed black across his vision.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would never have given his real name to a stranger of unknown origin.
Ever since leaving Mount Hua and making his way south, he had slowly come to understand that in the martial world, some things could not be said carelessly, and some names could not be revealed lightly. Especially not Fang Yingjie. Those three words no longer belonged to a child alone. They were tied to Mount Hua, tied to Fang Stronghold, tied as well to that old case involving his father.
And in these past days, he had already paid too dearly to learn that lesson.
The impostor Fang Zhongyi. The trap at Biyue Manor. Both had taught him long ago that a name, a history, an old bond—any one of them could become a blade in someone else's hand. Under ordinary circumstances, faced with a man like this—unknown, cold, and questioning him like a judge—he would never have given his true name so easily.
He should have hidden it.
At the very least, he should have found out where this place was, and who this man was.
But in this moment his head was burning with fever, his chest felt split apart, his whole body shook with cold, and he did not even know who had brought him here or whether he would live to see morning. And every word from the man opposite kept pushing him toward the Crimson Flame Palace.
Panic rose in him. All he could think of was tearing himself free of those two names.
He was not one of Li Ying's people.
He was not one of Li Pu's people either.
No one had taught him what to say. No one had sent him here.
He was only himself.
Down in this death-cell beneath the earth, true names and false ones seemed to have lost all difference. If he could not even make that clear, then he had no idea what he had left that might convince this man to believe him even a little.
So, fighting for breath, he said in a low voice, "My name is… Fang Yingjie."
At once, the dungeon went still.
Still enough to hear water dripping from the stone wall.
Drip.
Drip.
Each drop struck the stone floor like a knock against the heart.
After what felt like a very long time, the man slowly lifted his face.
He could not see, yet in that instant Fang Yingjie felt as though some old length of buried iron had been dragged inch by inch out of mud and darkness, and the cold of it was beginning to seep into the air.
"Fang Yingjie."
He spoke the name very slowly.
Not as if he were speaking a name at all, but as though he were listening to an old blade being drawn, inch by inch, from its sheath. It was as though that name should never have come from this child's mouth. The moment it did, it struck somewhere deep within him—some place oldest, most painful, and most forbidden to touch.
A tightness seized Fang Yingjie's chest.
Only then did he dimly begin to feel that he had said the wrong thing.
But it was already too late.
"They would dare use even that name."
Fang Yingjie stared at him.
In the next instant, a rush of grievance and fear rose together in his chest.
"My name really is Fang Yingjie."
The man's expression did not change.
"Who is your mother?"
Fang Yingjie barely had to think. "My mother… is the Flying Heroine Zhen E."
His voice was so hoarse that the last few words were nearly ground to pieces by the rawness in his throat. Yet the moment the title Flying Heroine left his lips, the man opposite him stopped breathing for the faintest instant.
Had Fang Yingjie been more clear-headed, he might have sensed that this was different from before. It was not mere suspicion, nor simple coldness. It was more like an old wound buried in flesh for years suddenly being touched through layers of skin and scar. The pain had not yet spread, but the wound had already remembered the blade.
But Fang Yingjie was too cold, too hurt, too frightened.
All he could see was that those clouded gray eyes remained empty. Yet for some reason, the chill around the man seemed to deepen all at once.
Word by word, he said, "You know quite a lot."
Fang Yingjie opened his mouth. "I'm not lying to you."
"No?"
The man gave a short laugh.
It was so brief that the half of his gaunt face hidden beneath his beard only seemed colder for it.
"In this place, there are no cheaper words than that."
The words made Fang Yingjie's chest tighten.
He was only an eleven-year-old child. He had just gone through a capsized boat, near-drowning, pain and injury, and the moment he opened his eyes he had found himself in this ghost-ridden dungeon. If the man before him had looked like a savage enemy, perhaps he could at least have been afraid in a simpler way. But this man did not feel like an enemy.
He was not like the people from the Crimson Flame Palace.
Not like Li Ying, smiling with such softness, speaking so gently, all while pushing the living down into darkness inch by inch. Nor like the man who had worn Fang Zhongyi's face, borrowing another man's features, voice, and old ties to lure people step by step into a trap.
The man before him was cold, hard, strange—like a piece of iron long buried underground. But iron like this had not been born cold. It had been soaked, scorched, and hammered into shape inch by inch until it became what it was now.
The more Fang Yingjie feared him, the more pitiable he seemed.
And the more pitiable he seemed, the less one dared go near him.
Because only a man who had been hurt too deeply would hear a trap in every true word.
Fang Yingjie clenched his teeth and said in a low voice, "I wasn't taught to say any of this."
The man did not answer.
Fang Yingjie went on, "I was at Biyue Manor… we escaped, and the boat overturned."
The moment he reached that point, he remembered Wang Yan, and the color drained further from his face.
"There was a girl too. Her name is Wang Yan. She can row. We fell into the water together. Was she taken too? Where is she?"
The man only kept his face turned coldly aside.
"Finished?"
Fang Yingjie faltered.
The man said, "If Li Ying truly wanted to stage a scene, you would indeed ask that first."
At last, Fang Yingjie felt a flash of real anger.
"I'm not acting!"
The instant he forced the words out, the disordered breath in his chest surged again. His vision whitened. His body swayed, and he nearly collapsed back onto the stone floor.
The man opposite him still did not move.
He only said, low and cold, "The better the performance, the fouler it is."
The words were like a cold needle driven into him, and for a moment Fang Yingjie could not speak at all.
He lay bent over the stone floor, breathing in ragged bursts, and suddenly his eyes burned.
It was not only grievance.
Or rather, it was more than grievance.
All at once, he understood something with terrible clarity: the man before him no longer knew how to believe anyone.
It was not that he refused to believe.
He did not dare.
If a person could still trust easily, it only meant he had not yet been driven to the end of suffering. But this man—this man must have been questioned, deceived, threatened, and tortured so many times that tears looked false, coughing looked false, asking after a companion's life and death looked false, and even one's own name, one's age, one's mother's name—all of it sounded like lines prepared in advance and taught by someone else.
Fang Yingjie thought of Wen Rubi.
Wen Rubi had been imprisoned for so long beneath Biyue Manor by Li Ying that her eyes were gone, and she herself had nearly been tortured out of human shape. If he and Wang Yan had not stumbled into that place by sheer chance, perhaps no one in the world would ever have known that the real Wen Rubi was still alive down in that lightless dark.
And what about the man before him?
How long had he been here?
Did his family even know?
Was there anyone left outside who still remembered him?
Or had he too, like that half-buried skeleton in the damp earth, already been quietly erased from the world by this manor, this dungeon, these people?
The moment those thoughts rose in him, the grievance in Fang Yingjie's chest slowly sank away, replaced by something heavier, duller, harder to bear.
In a low voice, he asked, "Were you hurt by them too?"
In the darkness, the man's very breathing turned cold.
"Don't use that little bit of softness of yours to pry open my mouth."
Fang Yingjie stiffened.
The man's voice grew colder still.
"In a place like this, the more a question sounds like concern, the filthier it is."
Fang Yingjie fell silent.
It was not that he did not want to speak.
He simply no longer knew what he could say.
The damp in the dungeon seemed to grow heavier and heavier, the cold wrapping itself around him layer by layer. But his forehead was beginning to burn. The far-off scrap of lamplight before his eyes wavered in and out. The stone walls, the chains, the figure of the man opposite him all seemed to blur, as though soaked loose in water.
He still wanted to ask one more time about Wang Yan.
But though his lips moved, no sound came.
Only in his heart, very softly, he whispered:
Yan… please don't die.
Sick Bones Beneath the Tide
But the instant that thought passed through his mind, he was the one who sank first.
It was not a sudden faint, nor the clean snap of consciousness giving way. It was simply that the last thread of will that had held him upright until now finally loosened. A moment ago he could still hear the rattle of chains, still hear the cold, hard questions from the man across from him. He could even force himself to sort through names—Li Ying, Li Pu, Biyue Manor, Wang Yan. But now every sound seemed to be wrapped farther and farther away in layers of damp, until nothing remained except the dull ache in his chest and the waves of icy pain rising through the cracks of the bone in his right leg.
Only now did Fang Yingjie truly lose the strength to hold on.
In truth, from the moment he woke, he had already been at the very end of himself.
The chill water he had swallowed when he fell into the lake, the internal injuries from the capsized boat, the old wound in his right leg flaring into agony after the wind and waves had tugged at it again and again, and on top of all that the clammy cold that never left this underground cell—each of them was like an invisible hand pressing down on him, dragging him into a darkness deeper still.
At first, he still knew where he was.
He knew the stone beneath him was bitterly cold. He knew the bearded, iron-bound man sat opposite him. He knew he could not cry, could not shout, could not squander the very last of his strength.
But illness cared nothing for reason. The more a man tried to endure, the more mercilessly it found its way in. Before long the fever began to creep upward from his lungs and chest, while the cold seeped out through the seams of his bones. Heat and chill collided inside him, wildly, without pattern. One moment it felt as if he were being roasted over a blazing fire; the next, as if he had sunk once more to the bottom of the lake. By the end, he could no longer tell whether he was freezing or burning, nor whether that faint yellow light before his eyes was real or only the last fractured gleam of light on water in a dream.
At times, he thought he was still in the lake.
The water was black and heavy, pressing in from every side. Above him there was thunder, rain, and shouting, but all of it seemed impossibly far away, muffled by a great thickness of water. He tried to rise, but something seemed wrapped around his right leg, dragging him down. He reached out desperately, trying to seize Wang Yan, but his fingers closed on nothing except a handful of icy water.
For an instant, he thought he heard Wang Yan's voice above him.
"Hold it down—"
Only those two words, before the wind and rain swallowed them whole.
Panic surged through him. He tried to call to her, but the moment he opened his mouth another mouthful of freezing water poured in.
At other times, he thought he had returned to Mount Hua.
The mountain wind was cool and clean. The sighing of the pines rolled in waves from afar. Zhen E stood beneath the corridor eaves with a half-worn outer robe in her hands, frowning as she told him not to linger where the wind cut through. In the distance, his fellow disciples were practicing with the sword, the sound of steel cleaving the air as clear as a morning bell. At that moment Fang Yingjie felt such a sharp ache in his heart that he nearly stepped toward the corridor for real.
But the instant he took that step, the white stone stair beneath his foot vanished.
The mountain wind turned into the damp breath of the earth below.
The sound of pines became the drip of water.
And his mother's figure was slowly devoured by the dark.
He tried to call out, Mother, but only a broken fit of coughing rolled from his throat.
At other times, he saw Old Daoist Xuan.
The old Daoist looked as ragged as ever, sitting at the entrance of that ruined temple with one sleeve half rolled up, a blade of grass pinched between his fingers from who knew where, his head tipped to one side as he looked at Fang Yingjie with something like a smile and not quite a smile.
"Little blockhead, stop thinking about hitting people first."
"And stop thinking about winning."
"Learn how not to die first."
The words drifted through the dream, sometimes distant as though heard through water, sometimes close against his ear.
Fang Yingjie wanted to answer.
He wanted to say that he had never been thinking about winning, and had never been thinking about hurting anyone.
He only wanted to live.
He wanted to see his mother.
He wanted to know where Wang Yan was.
But the moment he opened his mouth, it felt as though water poured in again, choking him until his whole body curled in on itself.
The men who brought food came several times.
Footsteps outside the iron door. The thud of a wooden bucket set on the ground. The sound of coarse steamed bread being tossed in. A bowl of cold water striking stone. None of it was loud, but down here underground every sound landed like a blunt instrument, knocking slowly against the human heart.
Someone seemed to crouch down and peer at him.
"This little one probably won't last more than a few days."
Another voice answered lazily, "Orders were to keep him alive. Nobody said we had to worship him like a bodhisattva."
The first man gave a low laugh.
"If he lives, he lives. If he doesn't and dies down here, doesn't that save trouble?"
"Save trouble?" The other one sounded as if he spat. "If he really dies and the people above start asking questions, are you going to answer for it?"
At that, the first man fell silent.
A moment later the wooden door sounded again.
The footsteps retreated.
And the dungeon sank once more into dripping water, rust, and dim yellow lamplight.
Fang Yingjie had heard every word.
And yet it was as though he had heard nothing.
He only felt himself growing heavier and heavier.
So heavy that, in the end, he scarcely had the strength even to be afraid.
That was worse than pain.
When a man was in pain, at least he knew he was alive. But now, he found that he no longer wanted to struggle. Let the breath in his chest run wild; let the agony in his right leg bore through him; let the cold from the floor creep into his bones. All he wanted was to curl up where he was, not move, not speak, and not think about tomorrow anymore.
Perhaps this was it.
He did not know where Wang Yan was.
Perhaps she had escaped.
Perhaps she had been captured too.
Perhaps she had already sunk to the bottom of the lake and would never wake again.
His mother did not know he was here.
The people of Mount Hua did not know.
Old Daoist Xuan did not know.
Feng Feiyun did not know.
If Wang Afu's family were still alive, they did not know either.
No one knew he had been locked away beneath the earth.
No one knew whether he would live or die.
Perhaps he would end like Wen Rubi, imprisoned until he no longer resembled a human being. Perhaps he would end like Wen Rubi's husband, reduced to a set of white bones. Or perhaps he would end like the man across from him, forged by chains and years into something half man, half ghost, no longer able to trust even a single true word.
When the thought reached that point, something inside him turned terrifyingly hollow.
So hollow that he could not even cry.
He only curled himself tighter, pressing his face against the wet, freezing stone, and thought dimly to himself:
So this is all this life will be.
Somewhere in the dungeon, chains gave a light clink.
The sound was faint, yet it seemed to drag itself back from very far away.
With his eyes half-open, Fang Yingjie vaguely saw the man opposite him turn his face this way. Those dim, clouded eyes were still vacant. Fang Yingjie could not tell whether the man was listening to his breathing, or whether he was simply too weighed down by chains and old injuries to move. But in the end the man did not come over, and he did not speak. Across the dark, the damp, and that hard cold that had been tempered by who knew how many years, his figure remained like an old piece of iron nailed into the stone wall.
Fang Yingjie no longer had the strength to guess what he was thinking.
He only felt thirsty.
So thirsty that his throat seemed scorched by fire and rasped raw by sand.
The bowl of water was clearly not far away, yet he could not reach it.
He did not know how much time passed. Long enough that the fever had nearly burned even the sound of dripping water out of his ears. Then, suddenly, a soft sound came from across the stone floor.
Clack.
Clack.
Like a broken bowl being nudged slowly along the ground.
Fang Yingjie's eyelids stirred.
A chipped bowl slid across the wet, freezing stone, inch by inch, until it stopped just short of his hand. There was still half a bowl of cold water inside. The surface trembled once, catching the dim yellow lamplight in a scatter of broken sparks.
He did not know whether that water had been thrown down by the guards a moment ago, or pushed over by the man opposite him.
Or perhaps both things were true.
He only smelled the faint dampness of it, and the dryness in his throat sharpened at once. Instinctively, he reached out.
Not far enough.
His fingertips brushed only the rim.
The bowl rocked lightly, and the little water left inside nearly spilled.
Then a low, hoarse laugh came from the darkness opposite him.
"If you don't want to die, don't move like that in such a hurry."
Fang Yingjie lay there, staring blankly at the floor.
The voice was still cold. Still hard. Still ugly to the ear. Under ordinary circumstances it would have sounded like a stone flung down without the least trace of human warmth.
And yet, for some reason, as the fever clouded his mind, those words did not cut into him the way they had before.
They were not comfort.
Still less were they pity.
They were only a hard, cold stone in the dark.
Hard enough to hurt.
Cold enough to bite through bone.
But at least they were real.
It took Fang Yingjie an enormous effort to move his hand forward another inch. At last his fingertips hooked over the rim of the bowl. He panted a few times, then slowly dragged the broken bowl to his mouth.
The moment the cold water touched his lips, he choked, and pain blanched through his chest at once.
Still, little by little, he swallowed it down.
The water tasted terrible.
It carried the dampness of the stone floor, the stale bitterness of an old bowl, and the lingering tang of rust that never left the dungeon.
And yet, as that little bit of cold water slid down his throat, he suddenly felt that perhaps he had not truly sunk all the way to the bottom after all.
There was still a little left.
Only a very little.
Like the last ember hidden deep in a dying wick, still refusing to go out.
First, Learn Not to Die
That tiny ember, after all, did not go out at once.
It was only too small—so small that even Fang Yingjie himself could no longer tell whether it was truly a last living breath still clinging on, or merely some fading illusion left over from a fevered dream.
After the cold water went down his throat, he seemed to clear for a while. But the clarity did not last. Before long, the waves of chill and heat rolled over him again, layer after layer, and dragged him back under. The dungeon was still dark. The stone walls were still wet. That sodden weight on his chest was still there, pressing down like a soaked rock. From time to time the chains across from him gave a faint clink, distant as though muffled beneath water. Someone had come to the cell door and gone again. A bucket set on the ground, a chipped bowl knocking against stone, footsteps receding into the distance—each sound seemed to drift in from another world.
The worst turn came without warning.
By then he could no longer tell day from night, nor remember how many times he had woken and blacked out. Deep underground, there was no sun or moon; in the cell, no watch drum marked the hours. He knew only that the food had been brought, that lamp oil had been replenished, that droplets kept gathering on the stone wall and falling one by one. But this time the fever came harder than before, as if someone had lit a fire inside his bones and then forced his whole body into ice water.
One moment he was so cold his teeth tapped softly together. The next he burned so fiercely that even his breath felt hot.
The breath in his chest was in wild disorder, heaving and dropping, sinking and floating. Whenever he tried to draw in air, it seemed to jam halfway, neither able to go down nor come up. By the end, the pain in his right leg no longer felt like the pain of a single leg. It felt as though his whole body were being flayed open inch by inch by that single agony, until cold sweat seeped even from the cracks of his bones.
He thought he had sunk into the water again.
This time the depths were darker still.
There was no thunder. No rain.
There was no lake above him, and no bottom below.
No one was beside him.
Wang Yan was gone.
His mother was gone.
Mount Hua was gone.
Even Old Daoist Xuan, with his slovenly robe and that lazy, careless air, seemed to recede little by little into the dark.
It was as though the whole world had left him behind.
And that sinking was not the sinking of a body in water, but of the mind and spirit slowly coming apart. At first he still knew fear. Later even fear thinned away. At first he still wanted to struggle. Later even the thought of struggling grew faint. Darkness pressed in from every side, as if it meant to swallow the very last thing by which he still knew who he was.
Just when he was about to lose even the name Fang Yingjie, a lazy voice suddenly rang out from deep inside the dark.
"Little Blockhead."
The voice seemed far away, as though it came from under the eaves of some ruined temple, yet it also seemed close beside his ear.
"Don't sink."
Fang Yingjie tried to open his eyes.
He could not.
The voice came again:
"You don't know many things yet."
"The less you know, the less you should covet."
"Don't think about hitting anyone. Don't think about escaping. Don't think about winning."
"First hold on to a single breath."
"First learn how not to die."
First learn how not to die.
Those four words were like a slender strip of bamboo lowered from somewhere above the deep water, lightly bracing the mind that was on the verge of sinking apart.
Fang Yingjie was not trying to cultivate.
At that moment, he had no strength even to think of training, or circulating his inner force, or guiding it through a full circuit. He was only a badly injured child burning with fever, his lungs still raw from swallowed water, so weak that even turning over would make his vision blacken. If he had any thought left in him at all, it was only the wish to take one more breath—to avoid rotting away soundlessly in this hole beneath the earth.
Yet his body, like a drowning man, instinctively caught hold of a floating log.
That method Old Daoist Xuan had hammered into his bones again and again began, in the blur between waking and delirium, to move of its own accord.
Never mind the pain.
Never mind the cold.
Never mind the rush of water in his ears, the drip of moisture, the rattle of chains.
Never mind the fear in his heart, the grievance, the homesickness.
First hold fast to that deepest thread of breath.
At first that thread was chaos itself, like a tiny lamp in a rainstorm, ready to go out with every gust. One moment it was scattered by the cold lodged in his chest and lungs; the next it was driven upward by the fever, almost wholly beyond his control. Fang Yingjie could not even tell whether he was guarding it, or whether it was dragging him along, refusing to let him fully come apart.
But in the end, he did not let go.
Take one breath.
Let it settle a little deeper.
Take another.
Let it settle deeper still.
This was no lofty state, no miraculous sign. That soaked rock was still pressing on his chest. The bitter metallic taste was still in his throat. His right leg still hurt as though packed with splinters of ice and slivers of steel. Every time he tried to settle his breathing lower, he first had to endure a tearing pain through chest and lungs.
Yet somewhere deep in his energy center, there really did seem to be the faintest trace of warmth gathering, little by little.
It was not bright.
It was not fierce.
It could scarcely be called strong.
It was only like a spark buried under ash.
No matter how savage the cold outside, no matter how violently the fever raged, it did not go out completely.
In the darkness, the man across from him slightly raised the lids that had hung half-lowered.
He had sensed it.
Not with his ears, but with that minute instinct, forged by long years of cultivation, by which a martial artist perceived the subtlest change in the air of a cell.
The child's breathing had been in such disorder that it was nearly broken.
Yet in the most dangerous hour of the night, it had begun, little by little, to sink.
Slowly.
With terrible difficulty.
But it was no longer scattering apart.
The muscles in the man's face seemed to tighten, just barely.
He had heard something strange in it.
The child was not simply hanging on through brute stubbornness, nor had he merely rallied by chance in the middle of illness. In that inhalation and exhalation—ragged as they were, weak as they were—there seemed to be the faintest trace of a method drawing the breath that was on the verge of dispersing back into the body, bit by bit.
The method was shallow.
So shallow it scarcely counted as a technique at all.
And yet it was steady.
But it was not the steadiness used to contend with others, nor the composure of a master facing an enemy.
It was the steadiness of preserving life.
It was a steadiness that did not contend, did not show courage, did not seize a single fraction from the outer world, but only locked that one breath of life—neither fully gone nor fully retained—inside the body and refused to let it scatter.
Like a man standing in floodwater, not splitting the waves, not fighting the current, but shielding the last spark before his chest, refusing to let the water drown it out.
The man opposite remained silent for a long time.
Long enough for the old wounds in his shoulders and back—where iron had pierced and shackled him for years—to begin throbbing again in the damp. The pain crept out of his shoulder blades a thread at a time, as though the instruments of punishment from long ago were still embedded in his bones, ready, at the slightest stir of thought, to tear skin and flesh apart together.
Still he did not move.
He only angled his face slightly and listened to the child curled on the stone floor.
Listened to his coughing. To his breathing. To that one breath that hovered between scattering and holding, and was slowly being drawn back by some hidden method.
Eleven years old.
Calling himself Fang Yingjie.
Calling himself Zhen E's son.
The name was right. The age was right. The mother was right. Even the hard thread of will hidden inside the child's ragged breathing, the urgency he could not suppress when he asked after Wang Yan—there was enough truth in all of it to chill the heart. And now, at such a pass between life and death, the boy still had not truly let that breath go. He was still dragging himself back, little by little, from that murderous fever and cold.
Yet the more it seemed true, the less it could be trusted.
A few words, a fitting age, a handful of details that sounded right, a child's half-dying look in the grip of sickness—how could such things possibly settle truth and falsehood?
It was not as though he had never seen falsehood before.
Over the years, the Crimson Flame Palace had sent him false tidings, false tokens, false old acquaintances, false confessions—so many that even he could no longer remember them all. Crude ones, elaborate ones, vicious ones, gentle ones—what kind had there not been?
Crude deceptions were not the frightening sort.
A single slip in wording, in breath, in timing, and the disguise was easier to expose.
What was frightening was something too convincing.
Convincing enough to touch the one place in a man's heart he dared not touch; he knew it was a blade, and yet he could not help but tremble.
Even this injury, this sickness, this miserable state between life and death—none of it need be outside the scheme.
If the Crimson Flame Palace were truly willing to pay the price, then making a child memorize the names he ought to know, rehearse the old stories he ought to tell, and then throwing him into this dungeon—letting him burn with fever, cough blood, cry for his mother, ask after his companion, using all that suffering to win another man's trust—was entirely within their power.
The phrase a ruse of self-injury sounded simple enough.
But its true cruelty lay here: the suffering it used might be suffering in earnest.
The blood could be real. The pain could be real. The sickness could be real.
And the more real it was, the more easily it deceived.
All the more so because this was a death cell.
In a place like this, the more something resembled the truth, the more likely it was to be the deadliest trap of all.
That minute wavering in the depths of the man's heart was finally pressed down again, bit by bit.
He could not trust it.
At least not now.
Not in the slightest.
In the darkness, Fang Yingjie still guarded that breath in the haze between waking and delirium.
He did not know that the man across from him had lifted his face in the dark and listened to him for a long while.
Nor did he know that his breathing had stirred in that man's heart a wave so deep, so painful, and so swiftly crushed back into silence.
He only burned, froze, and hurt.
When one breath scattered, he gathered another.
When one breath would not settle, he endured a little longer.
By the end, even Old Daoist Xuan's voice had grown faint, and the sound of water in his dream had faded too. Only that spark buried under ash, deep in his energy center, still gave off the faintest heat in the dark.
And by relying on that single point of warmth, he stole one breath of life back from the very gates of death.
A Fading Breath, a Rekindled Will
Fang Yingjie did not truly come awake until much later.
When he opened his eyes, the same far-off dying lamp was still there.
Its flame was pitifully small, smothered by the damp of the underground cell, its light a murky yellow, like a bean of fire on the verge of going out. Water stains mottled the stone walls. Moss crept slowly along the seams of the rock. Somewhere, drop by drop, water fell with unhurried regularity, as though this place had never known sun or moon, and had never cared whether men lived or died.
He lay there a long time without moving.
Everything still hurt.
His chest still felt tight.
His right leg still throbbed in waves, sore and swollen, as though a cold iron wedge had been driven into the gap of the bone; the slightest pull sent the pain boring down into the flesh. And yet, for some reason, that feeling of sinking—of sinking so far down that he no longer even wanted to struggle—had eased a little at last.
He was still alive.
The thought brought him no joy.
If anything, it only filled him with shame.
He remembered the thoughts that had come to him while he drifted in and out, remembered that there had truly been a moment when he had thought that perhaps it would be all right to rot to death here and have done with it.
At that, the tips of his ears began to burn.
Not because anyone had scolded him.
Because he was ashamed in his own heart.
If his mother knew he had thought such a thing, how much would it grieve her?
If Old Daoist Xuan knew that he had only just fallen this low and was already ready to cast himself away, what would he think of him?
And Wang Yan?
Was she still alive?
If she was, then was she somewhere cold and terrified even now, waiting for someone to save her? And if she was dead, was he not even going to ask where she had fallen, or try to find her?
And then there was Mount Hua.
There was Fang Stronghold.
There was the father he had never met.
How could the son of Fang Tieshan, the Dragoncloud Divine Hand, fall into a pit beneath the earth and think first of rotting there?
And all those who were still out there searching for him.
How could he simply die like this?
How could he stop struggling before he had even tried, and hand himself over to the darkness below?
Slowly, Fang Yingjie closed his eyes.
Only then did he truly feel fear.
The fear from before had been forced out of him by darkness, pain, the strange man, and the unknown. This fear rose from somewhere deeper.
It was not death he feared.
He feared the day he might stop wanting to live.
He feared being worn down by this place, little by little, until there was nothing left inside him—until his mother's voice, the mountain wind of Mount Hua, even the sound of Wang Yan calling his name all seemed to come from beyond a great expanse of water, too far away for him to reach.
He feared that one day he would end up like Wen Rubi, destroyed until not even a human shape remained.
And worse still, he feared that one day he would become like the man across from him—alive for many years, yet already forgotten by the world.
No.
He could not become that.
It was a very small thought.
So small it could hardly be called resolve.
But once it appeared, it was like the spark in his energy center that had not quite gone out that night, glowing faintly beneath the ashes.
He had to live.
Whether he could escape or not, first he had to live.
Wherever Wang Yan was, first he had to live.
Whether anyone outside would come for him or not, first he had to live.
If he lived, there would still be a day to wait.
If he lived, there would still be a day to search.
If he lived, there would still be a day to get out.
Many truths in this world sound shallow enough when heard in a warm room under steady lamplight. But in the narrow seam between life and death, what keeps a man from collapsing is often nothing more than one plain, simple thing.
Stay alive first.
He was, after all, only an eleven-year-old boy.
Had he still been on Mount Hua, he would most likely still have been that sickly child sitting beneath the corridor eaves, watching his senior martial brothers practice their fists and swords. His mother was far away at Fang Stronghold, and when she came to see him—though it might be after a very long time—he would remember it for days. But ever since he had left the mountain, false faces, poisoned schemes, the dead, dungeons, storm and flight had come crashing down one after another, as though they had dragged him bodily out of childhood by force.
He was still afraid. He still hurt. He still wanted to cry.
But there were things now that he could no longer wait for others to shield him from.
Very slowly, Fang Yingjie pushed himself up.
This time he did not dare use his right leg. He braced himself on his elbows and left knee, inching upward little by little. He had barely gotten halfway upright before the tightness returned to his chest and cold sweat broke out across his skin. But he gritted his teeth and did not sink back down.
He rested for a long while before he finally managed to sit with his back against the stone wall.
The man across from him still sat in the darkness.
Hair hanging wild, beard covering his face, iron chains weighing over his body—he looked as though he had never moved at all.
If not for the cracked bowl that had earlier scraped its way toward him inch by inch, Fang Yingjie might truly have believed the man was nothing more than an old stone inside the dungeon, rusted over and long since stripped of any living joy or anger.
Fang Yingjie wet his split lips with his tongue and said softly, "Is there any water?"
The man did not answer.
Fang Yingjie had not expected him to.
He lowered his head and searched around until he found the broken bowl not far from his hand. There was still a little cold water left at the bottom, muddied with a trace of grit. He lifted it carefully and drank two small mouthfuls, then stopped, not daring to gulp too fast.
The water was so cold it made his stomach clench.
But that very coldness cleared his head.
When he had finished, he set the bowl back down and leaned against the wall again, slowly regulating his breath the way Old Daoist Xuan had taught him.
At first it was difficult.
The breath in his chest was like a snapped thread that would not join cleanly again. Every time it sank, a fit of coughing broke it apart; every time it steadied, the pain in his right leg pulled it loose again. When a man was ill, it was hardest of all to gather his mind. And here it was dark, cold, damp, and foul-smelling; even breathing felt like drawing air through the crack of wet iron.
But he did not hurry.
When Old Daoist Xuan had taught him before, he had never said the method could transform a man all at once. The old Daoist had only said that when a person was at his most wretched, he must not reach for too much. If he could hold on to one breath, then he should first hold on to one breath. Only by keeping that one could he reach the next.
So Fang Yingjie held on to a single breath.
He sank one breath.
Guarded one breath.
Kept one breath from scattering.
He asked for no speed.
No strength.
No immediate miracle.
Only that it not come apart.
At last, the man across from him spoke.
"You still want to practice?"
Fang Yingjie opened his eyes.
The man said coldly, "In a place like this, the more you practice, the more you want to live. And the more you want to live, the more you suffer. If what you want is a cleaner end, you'd be better off saving yourself the trouble now."
The words were bitterly cold, and cruel besides.
Yet Fang Yingjie did not feel the same sting he had before.
He had begun to understand, dimly, that the man was not urging him to die.
There was something else hidden in the words, some hard chill worn into him by long years.
If a man had endured beneath the earth for many years, perhaps watched too many others who wanted to live get broken piece by piece, then perhaps he would come to think that the desire to live was itself a kind of suffering.
Fang Yingjie was silent for a moment, then said quietly, "It helps."
The man said nothing, as though waiting to hear what else he could possibly say.
Fang Yingjie added, "At least I won't die of sickness."
He said it lightly, and it sounded clumsy even to his own ears.
But once the words were out, even he fell still.
Because only then, after saying it aloud, did he realize that he truly did not want to die anymore.
It was not that he was no longer afraid of death.
It was that he refused to die like this.
Refused to die in confusion and silence, rotting beneath the earth where no day or night could reach.
The man across from him said nothing more.
Neither did Fang Yingjie.
He only closed his eyes again and slowly drew that ragged breath downward.
This time his breathing was still shallow, still rough, still thrown into chaos whenever it brushed against an injury. But chaotic though it was, it no longer scattered at once as it had before. So he followed that slow, clumsy method again and again, gathering it back bit by bit.
How much time passed, he did not know. Then the chains gave a faint clink.
The man seemed to have shifted his sitting posture.
Fang Yingjie heard it, and something in him stirred, but he did not open his eyes.
Not until the man across from him called in a low voice, "Fang Yingjie."
Only then did he look up.
The man had turned his face slightly, though his expression was still as hard and cold as ever.
"That name is not to be used again."
Fang Yingjie froze. "Why?"
"Because it's filthy."
His chest tightened.
He almost said, That is my name.
But before the words could leave his mouth, he remembered the look on the man's face when he had said earlier, "They dared use even that name."
That had not been simple disgust.
It had felt more like pain.
Pain so deep that he could not bear for others to touch it.
All at once, Fang Yingjie did not want to argue.
Elsewhere, he could say that his surname was Fang and his given name Yingjie, that he was the son of Zhen E, the Flying Heroine, and descended from Fang Tieshan of Fang Stronghold. But here beneath the earth, before a man who had been so ruined by the Crimson Flame Palace that he no longer dared trust even the truth, Fang Yingjie suddenly felt that there was no point in fighting over a single name.
The name was real.
But if, in the other man's ears, the Crimson Flame Palace had already defiled it and turned it into a blade, then for now he could let it rest.
A name did not become true only when spoken aloud.
As long as he remembered it himself, it remained true.
So he only asked softly, "Then what should you call me?"
Silence hung between them for a moment.
Then the man said coldly, "Whatever you like."
Fang Yingjie thought for a while.
He did not want to use that false name again.
When he had been outside, hiding from danger, he had once used a temporary alias: Mu Qi. Later, at the tea stall, he had said with his own mouth that he was Fang Yingjie, the son of Fang Tieshan. At the time, he had thought that at last he would no longer need to hide.
And yet, after all the twists and turns, now that he had fallen into this death cell beneath the earth, his true name had become something the other man would not hear.
A bitter feeling rose in him, but he still said, "Back then, when I was outside and trying to avoid notice, I used a false name for a while. Mu Qi."
The man gave no response.
So Fang Yingjie continued, "If you don't want to call me by that name, you can call me Mu Qi for now."
At that, the man let out a low snort.
The sound was faint, but the mockery in it was plain.
"So many false names."
The words pricked him, but Fang Yingjie did not answer back.
After a while, he asked instead, very softly, "What is your name?"
The chains suddenly rang out, heavy and sharp.
The man jerked his face toward him. His clouded gray eyes still held no focus, yet in that instant Fang Yingjie felt as though something hard and cold had been pressed against his throat.
His heart jumped, and he shut his mouth at once.
The man said, one word at a time, "Ask less."
The voice was not loud, but it struck like the blunt spine of an old blade against stone.
Fang Yingjie pressed his lips together.
He was afraid.
But this time, there was no urge in that fear to retreat.
He only lowered his head and slowly sank that breath back into his energy center.
Then I won't ask, he thought.
There was still a long road ahead.
As long as he did not die, one day he would know.
A Year Beneath the Dying Lamp
In the beginning, the days in the dungeon had no shape.
There was no sight of the sun above, no way to tell the hour below. No cockcrow ever reached him. No distant human voices rose or faded. No morning light came in to tell him dawn had broken; no evening dimness gathered to tell him night had fallen. There were only the drops of water falling, one by one, from the stone walls; the oil lamp outside the cell door guttering between brightness and shadow; the occasional faint clink of iron chains in the dark, as though something buried far beneath the earth had not quite died.
And in such a place, Fang Yingjie slowly managed to grind a little shape out of his days.
At first, he could not tell one stretch of time from another. Each visit from the men who brought food felt like a day. Each visit from the man who tended the lamp felt like another. Sometimes he had only just shut his eyes when he heard the wooden bucket flung down outside the bars. Sometimes it seemed he had slept for a long while, yet when he opened his eyes, the same bead of water on the wall was still sliding from the same seam in the moss.
Only later did he begin to feel out a pattern.
The food-bearers walked heavily, usually coming in pairs. One liked to slam the bucket onto the ground, as though he wanted to jolt even the dead awake inside the cell. The other was lazier. He often waited outside and could not be bothered to spare the prisoners a second glance. The man who brought water stepped more lightly and came less often. On days when those above were in a tolerable mood, there would be half a bowl of clearer cold water. On days when they did not care, there would be nothing left but a shallow smear of cloudy water at the bottom, tinged with the damp smell of the stone floor.
At first, Fang Yingjie could barely eat.
The buns were cold and hard, sometimes with grit clinging to the edges. Once he bit into them, they scraped his throat on the way down. But he forced himself to eat soon enough. Even if he could not swallow, he would break the bun into the smallest pieces, soften them in his mouth, and take them down a little at a time.
He remembered what he had once said to himself.
At the very least, he must not die of sickness.
And if he was not going to die of sickness, then first he had to eat.
If he ate, he would have the strength to sit up.
If he could sit up, he would have the strength to regulate his breathing.
If he could regulate his breathing, then he would have one more breath after this one.
It was a simple truth—so simple that in other days, he might not even have bothered to take it seriously. But down here beneath the earth, it became the only thing he could truly hold on to.
For the first few days, he could barely sit steady at all.
The instant his back left the wall by an inch, pressure would build in his chest. If his right leg shifted even slightly, pain would come boring up through the cracks in the bone. No sooner had he forced his breath to settle than the urge to cough would rise from his lungs and scatter the fragile thread of breath he had just managed to gather.
If it scattered, he gathered it again.
If he could not gather it, he rested for a while—and tried again.
At first he could manage only a few minutes. Any longer than that, and cold sweat would break across his brow and weakness would swim through him until the world tilted. Later he could hold out for ten minutes. Later still, after the food-bearers had gone, he could sit against the wall until the guttering lamp outside was refilled once with oil.
He did not know whether this even counted as training.
Back on Mount Hua, he had seen his fellow disciples practice boxing, swordsmanship, and palm techniques, all with far more force and flourish than this. When a sword flashed out, the mountain wind seemed to answer it. When fists and feet moved, the stone terrace rang beneath them. But all he could do now was sit inside a death cell and drag back, again and again, a breath that wanted to fall apart.
There was nothing impressive about it.
Nothing beautiful.
Anyone watching might not even know what he was doing.
But every time he managed to hold on a little longer, he knew he had moved one step farther away from rotting to death in this place.
As time passed, he began to learn the language of his own body. He learned which pains could be endured, and which meant he was cutting too deep into what little strength he had left. He learned which breaths had truly sunk and settled, and which had only been forced down against his chest and would sooner or later rebound violently upward.
His face was still pale.
He was still thin.
But that dreadful frailty—that sense that the damp itself might snuff him out like a wick—finally began to ebb, little by little.
One day, a food-bearer dropped the bucket onto the floor and suddenly grunted in surprise.
"The brat still isn't dead?"
The other answered lazily, "Tough life, I guess."
The first man peered into the cell again and laughed. "A few days ago he looked like he wouldn't last three days. Now he can sit up."
As he spoke, he seemed ready to thrust out a foot and kick Fang Yingjie.
But that foot had gone only half an inch inside when the chains across the way gave a deep, sudden clang.
It was not loud.
But it was heavy.
Like some old beast crouched in the dark had opened its eyes for a single instant.
The guard froze. His face changed. He muttered a curse under his breath, and in the end did not kick again. He only flung the bun onto the ground, turned, and left.
Fang Yingjie kept his head lowered. Only when the footsteps had faded did he slowly lift his eyes toward the opposite wall.
The man there had already sunk back against the stone again. His breathing had settled. Tangled hair veiled half his face. The iron chains still weighed heavily across his shoulders and back, as though that single sound had been nothing more than a tremor carried through old wounds and rusted metal—nothing to do with him.
Perhaps that clang had not been for Fang Yingjie at all.
Perhaps the man had simply grown sick of watching the guards swagger in front of him.
But the kick had not come down in the end.
Fang Yingjie watched him for a moment and said nothing.
The man across from him did not like to speak.
Most of the time he only sat in the dark with his back against the wall, his face turned slightly aside. His unkempt hair fell loose, his beard hid half his features, and several heavy iron chains pressed across his shoulders and back. Those eyes, long since gone lightless, were hidden beneath the shadow of his tangled hair, almost impossible to make out. If not for the occasional faint breath, Fang Yingjie might have thought he was not a living man at all, but a lump of old iron that had lain soaking in cold water for ten years, twenty.
Fang Yingjie did not know how long he had been imprisoned here, or why he had been tortured into such a state.
He knew only that whenever the guards brought food, they looked at this man with fear in their eyes—and with another thing too, a habitual contempt. It was not the contempt one showed a prisoner. It was more like the contempt shown to some broken old object that could not yet be thrown away.
Once, a guard deliberately tossed a coarse bun too far, so that it rolled to the edge of a puddle.
The man did not move.
Fang Yingjie looked at the half bun, then at him, and slowly shifted over, picked it up, wiped it on the corner of his own robe, and pushed it to where the man could reach it.
The chain gave a faint sound.
The man turned his face slightly.
"Who told you to touch it?"
Fang Yingjie's hand halted.
The man said coldly, "Take it back."
Embarrassed and a little stung, Fang Yingjie lowered his voice. "I thought you couldn't reach it."
"If I can't reach it, that still has nothing to do with you."
The words landed like the flat of a blade across the hand—cold, hard, humiliating.
Fang Yingjie went still for a moment. Then he slowly drew the half bun back. Yet he did not eat it either. He only set it on the ground between them, neither too near one of them nor too near the other.
He did not know how much time had passed after that. He had grown a little muddled from regulating his breathing when he heard the faintest clink of chain.
When he opened his eyes, the half bun was gone.
The man across from him was still leaning against the wall as though he had never moved.
Fang Yingjie said nothing.
From then on, he gradually learned how to deal with him.
If there was a little extra water, he could not hand it over directly; he could only set the bowl in the middle.
If the bun was cleaner than usual, he could not say, "This is for you." He could only break off half and leave it a little closer to the other man's side.
Sometimes the man would not touch it.
Sometimes he would not touch it for a very long time.
Sometimes, even after taking it, he would still stab out a cold remark. "Trying to buy words with this little scrap?"
Fang Yingjie would shake his head.
"No."
"Then why leave it there?"
Fang Yingjie thought for a moment and answered with disarming honesty. "I can't finish it."
The man gave a cold laugh. "You do know how to save face for yourself."
Fang Yingjie did not argue.
By then he had begun to understand something of the man's temper.
He could not ask too much.
He could not move too close.
He could not speak in the language of concern.
The more it sounded like concern, the more suspicious the man became. The truer Fang Yingjie's words were, the more the man insisted on reading falsehood into them. At first Fang Yingjie felt hurt by it. Later, after the hurt had worn thin, he slowly came to understand a little more.
This was not ordinary ill temper.
This was wariness carved into a man one blade-cut at a time.
After living beside him for long enough, there were things Fang Yingjie no longer needed to ask in order to know.
Whenever the underground damp grew especially heavy, for instance, the man's shoulders and back would ache.
He never cried out.
Only the chains would sound.
Very lightly. Very faintly.
Sometimes the noise was like a sleeve brushing stone. Sometimes like an iron ring giving a tiny jerk deep inside the bone. If one did not listen carefully, one would hear nothing at all. But Fang Yingjie had listened for so long that he knew those sounds were not movement. They were endurance.
On some nights, when the pain was especially bad, the man's breathing would sink lower than usual, and he would lean against the wall with half the face visible beneath his beard gone the color of dead ash.
The first time Fang Yingjie saw it, he could not help asking, "Are your old injuries hurting again?"
The man stayed where he was against the wall. Even his breathing did not shift.
"Mind yourself."
Fang Yingjie did not dare ask again.
Yet the next time, he still found himself stealing another look. And the time after that, if there was water in the bowl, he would push it a little nearer to the middle.
That clammy underground damp did Fang Yingjie no good either.
At first the straw mat had offered some thin shield against the cold of the stone floor, but after a few days it turned soft with seepage, sticky and chill beneath the hand, like old hemp left to rot. Fang Yingjie's fever had broken, but the cold still lingered in his body. Sometimes he shivered so badly his teeth chattered, and all he could do was draw up his knees and regulate his breathing in silence.
The man across from him had originally occupied one corner by the wall. The stone there bulged out a little, and the ground was drier than elsewhere.
One night, half asleep, Fang Yingjie suddenly heard iron chains dragging slowly across stone.
The sound was very slow.
One pull. Then another.
As if someone were dragging a body long broken by old injuries through the dark.
By the time he fully woke, the man had shifted to the wetter, colder side.
The somewhat drier corner he had been using was empty now.
Fang Yingjie stared for a long while before saying softly, "I don't need it."
The man kept his eyes closed. His voice was cold as ever.
"That spot digs into the bones."
Fang Yingjie faltered.
The man added, "Don't flatter yourself."
Fang Yingjie pressed his lips together.
After a while, he still shifted over there all the same.
That night, with his back against that drier patch of stone, he slept more deeply than he had in many nights.
When he woke the next day, the man was as though nothing had happened.
Still cold.
Still ignoring him.
Now and then Fang Yingjie would try to speak, and the man would either ignore him or cut the words off at the start.
"I only wanted to ask whether you ever came by waterway before—"
"Shut up."
"I just wanted to know whether outside there might be—"
"Stop fishing."
"I'm not fishing."
"Whether you are or not is not for you to decide."
After hearing enough answers like that, Fang Yingjie spoke less and less.
Truthfully, unless he had to, he had never dared talk much to the man in the first place. He was too cold, too hard. Sitting there, he was like a length of ancient iron buried deep underground. One only had to edge a little too near to feel a chill in the heart.
And yet, though Fang Yingjie shrank each time the man flung a sentence back at him, the hurt never lasted. The moment he lifted his eyes, he would see the heavy chains across the man's shoulders and back, would see the wounds on him so old and new they could no longer be told apart.
Gradually he came to understand that the man's words were hard because his heart had long since been forced to harden with them—as though if it softened even a fraction, something inside him would tear wide open at once.
Fang Yingjie was still afraid of him.
He still felt he was impossible to approach.
But as the fear lingered, pity began, little by little, to outweigh it.
In time, he would sometimes look at the man across from him and be struck by a sudden thought:
Compared with this man, he himself was already fortunate.
He was not pinned through with iron chains.
He could still move.
He could still practice his cultivation method.
He could still remember his own name.
He could still think of his mother, of Mount Hua, of Wang Yan.
He could still wake each day and tell himself: perhaps I may yet get out.
But what about this man?
It was as though he had waited here for far too long.
So long that even the word wait had nearly been ground into another form of torment.
Now and then, people came to question him.
They were not just the ordinary guards who brought food and water. Most times it began with two or three jailers entering first, their footfalls heavier than usual, their manner more restrained. After that, someone in a dark red robe would appear outside the cell.
Fang Yingjie had never once been able to see that man's face clearly.
Whenever he came, the guards would bark at Fang Yingjie to lower his head and retreat to the corner, forbidding him to look up. So he could only stay close to the wall with his head bowed, catching now and then a glimpse from the corner of his eye—a trailing edge of dark red cloth, a pair of black boots standing on the wet stone floor.
Once, that man passed in front of him and the guttering lamp struck the edge of his sleeve.
Fang Yingjie glimpsed only the faintest pattern worked into the fabric—something like flame, or like blood darkened and broken apart by unsteady lamplight. Before he could look again, a guard slammed a hand down against the back of his neck.
"Head down."
He had no choice but to bow lower still.
The man never spoke loudly.
His voice was slow, cold, unhurried, as though the reek of damp, blood, and rust in this underground place had nothing to do with him. Whenever he came, even the guards who usually cursed and barked at everyone reined themselves in. Even the business of unlocking chains, hauling them taut, and bringing out instruments of torture was done with more order than usual.
Fang Yingjie did not know who he was.
He knew only that the instant this man arrived, the air in the cell changed.
And always, the man would say the same thing in that quiet voice:
"Move him aside."
Then the guards would drive Fang Yingjie into the corner, command him to lower his head, and forbid him to look.
So Fang Yingjie lowered his head.
But he could hear.
He could hear chains being wrenched.
He could hear cloth tearing.
He could hear the lash cutting through the air.
He could hear the ragged breath pressed down in the other man's throat.
And he could hear the man in the dark red robe ask, slowly,
"Still unwilling to speak?"
The man across from him would answer in a voice gone hoarse with age, pain, and hatred—hoarse, and cold.
"Get out."
Then would come the crack of the whip, the thud of kicks and blows, the violent strain of chains jerked taut.
Huddled in the corner, Fang Yingjie would claw his fingers into the cracks between the stones, sick with fear and helpless anger.
He did not dare throw himself forward.
He could not have reached them even if he had dared.
He did not even dare cry out.
After they left, he would only push the water bowl over in silence.
Once, the man was hurt so badly that blood covered his lips and he lay facedown on the ground for half a day without moving.
Fang Yingjie waited a long time before asking softly, "Are you still alive?"
The man did not answer.
Fang Yingjie's heart clenched. He was just about to ask again when, at last, the man said in a voice so low it was barely more than breath:
"Are you waiting for me to die?"
Fang Yingjie froze.
Then he said quietly, "No."
The man kept his eyes closed. Only after a long while did he murmur, "Then stop making noise."
So Fang Yingjie stopped.
He only pushed the bowl a little nearer.
A long time passed—so long he had almost begun to think the man would never move again—before he saw a hand as gaunt as bare joints slowly emerge and hook itself over the rim of the bowl.
At that moment, Fang Yingjie let out a breath he had not known he was holding.
And after that breath left him, he found himself startled.
At some point, without noticing when, he had already stopped wanting this man to die.
So the days inched on, one measure at a time.
Sometimes Fang Yingjie felt like the bead of water on the wall.
One drop fell, and there was no sound.
A second fell, and there was still no sound.
But if it fell long enough, even stone would take a shallow mark.
He did not know how long he had been buried in that underground place until one day, while delivering food, a guard cursed offhandedly,
"This damned hole smells the same all year round."
Fang Yingjie went still.
A year.
So nearly a year had already passed.
He sat beneath the guttering lamp, and for a moment something inside him went blank—then slowly sank.
A year, he realized, was not one solid block of time. It was endured meal by meal, lamp by lamp, drip by drip, breath by breath.
At first he had not been able to sit upright for even a short while. Later he could lean against the wall and regulate his breathing for long stretches.
At first the sound of chains had made his heart seize. Later, from a single note of iron, he could tell whether the man across from him was suffering a flare of old wounds or whether someone had yanked on the lock; whether the guards had come, or whether the man had merely shifted how he sat.
At first he had thought he would likely rot to death in this place. Later, each time he woke, he would tell himself the same words before anything else:
Today I am still alive.
Today I still train.
Today I still wait.
And the man across from him still treated him as a snare the Crimson Flame Palace had sent into the cell.
In all that time, there were in truth only a handful of words the two of them ever actually spoke.
But once two people have spent long enough inside the same death cell, they come to know one another all the same.
Poetic Coda
When the water was spent and the lamp burned low, its dying glow fell upon the iron door.
Half a lifetime of chilled bones lay buried beneath the weight of chains and old scars.
Truth and falsehood had long been thrown into chaos by that fiendish palace,
yet one last breath still endured where death should have claimed it.
The cold of the lakebed had not yet faded from a single breath within him,
and deep into the third watch, a thread of warmth still guarded the life fated to remain.
If, in years to come, one asks where his rebirth began,
it began here: with learning first how not to die.
(End of Chapter Thirty-One)