When the Lamp Burns Low, the Coal Glows On
Some stretches of life are endured one day at a time; yet when one turns back to look, they seem no more than the brief flicker of a lamp between brightening and extinction.
By the end of it, so many years had passed that even Fang Yingjie no longer cared to count them.
The men who brought food had changed. The straw mats had rotted and been replaced, then rotted again. The water stains on the stone walls had sunk deeper and deeper, and even the curses outside the iron door had taken on unfamiliar accents. Other than that, this place seemed never to admit that time had passed at all. It hid the years instead in mildew, rust, lamp soot, and layer upon layer of accumulated cold.
But bones, in the end, could not conceal the work of time.
On Fang Yingjie, the frame of a grown man had fully emerged.
His shoulders and back had broadened; his waist had steadied. The long years in the cold dungeon had not made him broad or powerfully built, but they had worn away, bit by bit, the sickly frailty that had once clung to him. His wrists, arms, and back now held the firm weight of an ordinary young man's sinew and bone. Sitting there, he no longer looked like someone merely propped against a wall to keep breathing. He looked like a stone that had lain for years in freezing water and yet, somehow, had never softened or crumbled.
His old illness had truly receded as well.
The root of that early weakness—the one that used to leave him coughing until his chest and lungs seemed fit to split whenever cold touched him—had been slowly burned out over these ten years. Now, no matter how chill the underground air or how heavy the damp, his complexion would only grow a shade darker, his breathing a little lower. He would no longer be dragged down by sickness until he curled into a corner, unable even to catch a full breath.
His right leg had healed too.
Not merely to the point of being usable.
It no longer hindered him at all.
To rise suddenly, to turn, to spring forward, to plant his foot—he could do all of it steadily. Even when the damp crept back up from the earth and left the bone with the faintest trace of soreness, it no longer slowed him. The injured leg that had nearly cost him his life on that rain-lashed night upon the lake had, by now, all but withdrawn from his body, leaving behind only the palest and deepest of old scars.
He still could not truly be said to know how to fight.
But the ordinary guards could no longer strike him down with a casual palm and leave him crawling for half a day, as they had in the beginning. Had he truly met some common wanderer of the martial world, he might not have been so easily overpowered any longer—not with the strength and ferocity he had gained.
Yet Fang Yingjie himself rarely thought about any of this.
Because while he had been growing into this shape, little by little, the man opposite him had been wasting away in the same darkness, little by little.
That man had truly grown old.
When Fang Yingjie had first awakened in this dungeon, he had thought the man like a slab of iron. Cold, hard, rusted, heavy—as though no amount of damp, no amount of torture, could do more than blacken him further. Nothing, it had seemed, could ever truly wear him down.
But iron, too, could grow thin.
Over the years, Fang Yingjie had heard it happen.
The man's breathing sank lower with each passing year. Whenever the chains stirred, the breath pressing in his throat also seemed to weigh heavier than before. Sometimes, merely changing the way he sat would draw forth the faintest muffled sound from deep in his shoulders and back, as though old wounds and iron rings had tugged against the bone together.
He could not see.
Those dim gray eyes had long since lost all light. No lamp, however near, could cast a gleam into that dead ash. And still he kept the habit of turning his face slightly when he listened—listening to voices, to footsteps, to the weight of keys outside the iron door, to whether the guard on duty had changed that day.
The chains on his body no longer seemed merely to bind a man.
They seemed to have locked themselves into his bones.
Old injuries in his shoulders and back had been pierced through and ruined years ago, and the movement of his inner force had been sealed tight. Fang Yingjie did not understand how much of that had to do with higher martial principles, but he could vaguely sense this much: the man's foundation of inner force had not been destroyed from the beginning. If it truly had been destroyed, he could never have lived to this day. And if he had been an ordinary man, he could never have endured it this long.
But no matter how deep the foundation, it could not withstand such grinding year after year.
Whenever his inner force rose toward the shoulders and back, it was stopped.
Whenever the old wounds flared, they dragged everything back again.
Cold and damp seeped into his bones. Poisonous injuries clung to him. Hunger and exhaustion wore at him together. And every so often, men from the Crimson Flame Palace would drag him out and brutalize him all over again.
Under that kind of attrition, year after year, even the profound strength that had once lain in him had been worn hollow, little by little.
Not in one sudden collapse.
Like lamp oil, it had been consumed thread by thread.
And still he had not died.
Still he had not bowed his head.
Even now, when anger rose in him and the chains rang sharply, the guards would sometimes shrink back half a step without thinking.
But Fang Yingjie knew that was no longer because the man's body could truly endure it.
It was because he refused to fall.
Because somewhere in his heart meridians, a last remnant of breath still remained.
Because in his bones there was still one unyielding breath that would not bend.
Over these years, one of them had slowly grown to manhood in the depths of the earth.
The other, in that same darkness, had been slowly burned empty.
The steadier Fang Yingjie's steps became, the thinner the man's breathing grew.
The heavier Fang Yingjie's bones and sinews became, the more the chains on the other man's shoulders and back seemed to have sunk into the bone itself.
One was like coal slowly kindled beneath a bed of ash.
The other was like the oil in a dying lamp, cooked away little by little.
The contrast was too clear—so clear that there were times Fang Yingjie scarcely dared look too closely.
He was afraid that if he did, he would see too much. He would see that the chains on the man's shoulders and back had grown heavier than they were years before. He would see that each time the man leaned back against the stone wall, he did so a little more slowly than he used to. He would hear, in the cough that occasionally pressed up from the man's throat, not only the old wounds, but the hollow decline of something failing deep inside the bones.
And yet the man remained hard.
So hard that he seemed unwilling even to let others witness his decay.
Sometimes, when the guards brought food, they would deliberately kick the coarse bread farther away, rolling it toward the edge of the damp. Before Fang Yingjie could move, the other man's chains would give the faintest clink.
It was not a loud sound.
But the guards, hearing it, would still instinctively pause.
Even knowing that this old prisoner had long since been locked down so thoroughly that he could no longer truly strike, even knowing he was blind, even knowing the old wounds in his shoulders and back had shattered the flow of his inner force beyond repair, they still feared him. That fear was buried deep—buried behind curses, behind kicks against the door, behind the unconscious slowing of their steps every time they came too near the chains.
Fang Yingjie saw it all, and his heart grew heavier for it.
Because he knew that what made them fear the man now was no longer his body, nor any real strength left in it.
It was the shadow of an old name.
It was that breath in him which even the Crimson Flame Palace had never managed to break entirely.
But a shadow could not be spent in place of life.
There were nights when the damp belowground turned so bitter that droplets ran down the stone walls in strings, and even the straw mats felt soaked through with cold mud. Sometimes, while regulating his breath, Fang Yingjie would open his eyes and see the man opposite him slumped deeper into the dark than usual, as though he were a lamp pressed down by the wind—its wick still alive, but no longer able to give off light.
At times Fang Yingjie would push the bowl of water a little nearer toward the middle.
Without speaking.
The man did not speak either.
Only after a long while would that gaunt hand emerge from the darkness to hook itself over the rim.
Even when he drank, he remained slow, cold, deliberate—as though even this slight trace of being cared for by another had to be ground down until it looked like nothing at all.
Gradually, Fang Yingjie learned to pretend he had not seen.
So the two of them went on like that, each guarding something the other could not expose.
One refusing to admit that he had already begun to fail.
The other not daring to admit that he had already seen the failure.
Until the day the air in the cell changed without warning.
First, it was the men bringing the food.
The guards who came at ordinary times had heavy footsteps; before they arrived, the wooden bucket and iron ladle would already be knocking together. But on that day, the footsteps beyond the iron door were much lighter, much steadier. Not one man, either—at least three or four. Their steps fell in order on the wet stone of the passageway, one behind another, as though they had been instructed beforehand: no disorder, no noise.
Fang Yingjie had been sitting with his back against the wall, but at the first sound he opened his eyes.
Over the years belowground, he had learned to distinguish footsteps.
The ones who brought food. The ones who brought water. The ones who replaced the lamp oil. The ones who carried out torture. The red-robed interrogators. Each kind had its own pattern. But these footsteps were not the ordinary tread of a meal delivery, nor the purposeful approach of a routine interrogation.
They sounded more like someone was coming.
Someone important.
Before long, the light beyond the iron door brightened too.
It was not dazzling, but it was steadier than usual. A dim yellow glow spilled through the bars and stretched over the wet stone floor, until even the little patch of standing water there caught a cold glimmer. It was as though this underground passage—so many years unacquainted with order—had been hastily put in some semblance of shape, if only so it would not look too wretched in the eyes of whoever was coming.
Something in Fang Yingjie's chest sank.
Then, in the next instant, he caught a trace of fragrance.
Very faint.
So faint it might almost have been imagined.
But in this dungeon there had only ever been the smells of mold, damp, rust, old blood, and the sourness of cold coarse bread. Any scent that did not belong here would be noticed at once.
The fragrance was soft, clean, almost warm.
Like incense slowly burning in some heated chamber. Like powder long hidden in the sleeve of a woman's robe. It seeped little by little through the chill damp of the corridor. It did not cover the stench of the prison—yet somehow, precisely because it could not, it felt all the more piercing.
Fang Yingjie's breathing caught.
At once, he thought of many years ago.
Biyue Manor.
White walls beneath black tiles.
Warm porridge.
Clean lamplight.
And the woman whose voice had always been gentle, though her smile had chilled the marrow in one's bones.
The chains opposite him gave a sudden sound.
Not the faint, dragging stir of old wounds flaring.
Not the dull scrape that came when the man shifted his posture.
This was light, brief, and taut—as though a length of frozen iron had suddenly been drawn tight.
Fang Yingjie lifted his head and looked over.
In the darkness, the man had somehow straightened a little.
He still could not see.
Those dim gray eyes remained open and empty, with neither light nor focus in them. But his face had turned toward the iron door, as though listening to those footsteps, as though identifying that thread of fragrance.
Fang Yingjie had never seen him like this.
Over the years, the red-robed men had come, and he had not feared them. The guards had tortured him, and he had not feared them. Even when the chains were hauled hard enough to wrench his old wounds, he would endure it with cold contempt, at most pressing out a low laugh or a single "Get out" from his throat.
But now, the air about him was different.
Not fear.
Something colder than fear.
Like a man who had long known that certain filthy things would one day come for him again—only he had not expected that after so many years, it would come once more, carrying with it that same old fragrance, and walk slowly to his door.
Fang Yingjie had just opened his mouth to speak when the man said in a low voice,
"Do not speak today."
His voice was hoarse.
And heavy.
Fang Yingjie froze.
After a moment, the man added, "No matter what you hear in a while, do not make a sound."
That second sentence came even lower, almost swallowed by the footsteps drawing nearer and nearer outside the iron door.
But Fang Yingjie heard it clearly.
In all these years, the man had rarely warned him like this. When he did speak, it was usually to bark at him coldly, to mock him, to tell him to shut his mouth, to stay out of it, to get back to his corner. But this time there was no sneer in the words, no anger.
Only a vigilance so deep it had been pressed almost beyond sound.
A sense of foreboding rose suddenly in Fang Yingjie's chest.
In a lowered voice, he asked, "Who is coming?"
The man did not answer at once.
Outside the iron door, the keys sounded.
Once.
Then again.
Slower than usual, and more measured.
As if even the one opening the door did not dare be careless.
That faint fragrance drew nearer.
Fang Yingjie could even hear the softest brush of cloth passing through the narrow draft of the corridor. In any other place, the sound might have brought to mind a warm room, lamplight, a woman's robes.
But here in the dungeon, it was colder than chains.
At last, the man forced a few words out of his throat.
"A filthy thing."
Fang Yingjie's chest tightened.
The lock fell.
The iron door began, slowly, to open.
The Bloodied Head, the Broken Heart
After the iron door opened, it was not human voices that came in first.
It was fragrance.
The scent was nearer now than before, drifting softly through the crack of the door and spreading inch by inch across the damp stone walls, the stale reek of old blood, and the bitter tang of rust. It belonged, by rights, to warm chambers and gauze curtains, to lamplight and flower shadows. Here in the dungeon, it felt like a drop of clean water fallen into filth. The cleaner it was, the fouler everything around it became.
Then the lamplight stirred.
A corner of a skirt appeared beyond the threshold.
Li Ying stepped inside.
After all these years, she had hardly changed at all.
She was still as soft and immaculate as ever. Her hair was arranged without a strand out of place. Her clothes were neat, the cuffs pressed flat with the finest of woven patterns. Even walking into this underground death-cell, the hem of her skirt had not picked up so much as a fleck of mud. Under the wavering lamp, her face looked smooth and pale, her smile gentle, a trace of tenderness resting at the corners of her lips. She was still the very image of Madam Wen from the waterside pavilion in the front court of Biyue Manor, asking whether their porridge had gone cold, whether their medicine was too bitter, whether they had slept well through the night.
Behind her came five crimson-robed experts of the Crimson Flame Palace.
None of them spoke. Their robes were a dark, blood-muted red, their footfalls light and steady. The moment they entered, each man took his place as if he had long since grown used to such scenes. Their presence was not ostentatious, yet the air in the dungeon, already oppressive enough to choke a man, seemed to sink another layer.
Fang Yingjie stood against the wall. One glance was enough to send cold running down his spine.
Li Ying, however, seemed not to notice the damp, the cold, the blood, or the chains.
She merely lifted one sleeve slightly, as though the smell offended her, or as though she were brushing away dust in idle passing. Then she smiled and said lightly, "After all these years, it still smells the same."
Her voice was warm.
Warm enough to make Fang Yingjie cold to the bone.
He looked at her, and for a moment his mind wavered.
He did not know how long he had been down here anymore. He only knew it had been a very long time—long enough for a sickly child to grow into the frame of a young man; long enough for the old weakness to leave his body and for his right leg to mend; long enough for the man across from him to burn down from hard iron into the last trembling flame of a lamp nearly spent.
And yet Li Ying stood there as though time had simply passed her by.
That face was scarcely different from what it had been all those years ago.
If anything, it had grown more lustrous.
No trace of age touched the corners of her eyes. No weariness lay between her brows. Even the smile at her lips looked as though it had been fed by something cold and supple and sinister—grown finer, grown softer, grown more uncanny year by year.
Fang Yingjie felt his chest tighten.
Li Ying was looking at him as well.
Her gaze moved from his face to his shoulders and back, then trailed slowly down to his waist, his wrists, the way he stood. It was not the look one gave a child not seen in years. It was the look one gave an instrument that had at last been shaped into something useful.
Her smile deepened.
"Ten years."
Something boomed in Fang Yingjie's head.
Ten years.
The words were like an icy hand closing around his heart.
So it had already been ten years.
Not a few bitter years underground. Not three, not five, not some endless blur of days too long to count.
Ten.
He had sunk beneath the lake at eleven.
He was twenty-one now.
What about his mother?
What about Mount Hua?
What about Wang Yan?
Was there anyone outside who still remembered him?
All those thoughts surged up at once, only to be crushed back down by the wet, airless weight of the dungeon. Fang Yingjie felt the lamplight sway before his eyes. The breath in his chest nearly failed him.
Li Ying only said softly, "Our young master of the Fang family has grown into quite something."
She took half a step closer, studying him now without any attempt at concealment. There was even a faintly seductive curve in her smile.
"You were so frail then. White as paper. A gust of wind might have blown you over. But now you've grown sturdy. Your shoulders have opened. Your waist has steadied. Even this leg of yours..."
Her gaze dipped lightly downward.
"It has healed too."
Cold flooded Fang Yingjie's limbs. He took half a step back.
"What are you here for?"
His voice came out hoarser than he had expected.
Li Ying tilted her head slightly, as though she were humoring a child who had spoken out of turn.
"I came to see the two of you."
Fang Yingjie stared at her, his breath rising sharp and fast in his chest. At last he forced out the name that had lain buried deepest in him all these years.
"Where is Wang Yan?"
The smile at Li Ying's lips paused for a fraction of a moment.
Then it softened further.
"You really are devoted."
She gave a light sigh, half pity, half amusement.
"Ten years in this hole, and you still remember that little girl?"
Fang Yingjie's face went white. He stepped forward.
"Where is she?"
Li Ying looked at him and answered at a leisurely pace, "What would be the point of keeping something that had no use?"
Fang Yingjie went rigid.
Li Ying said softly, "She was dealt with long ago."
The words fell very lightly.
So lightly they struck like a needle slipping soundlessly into the heart.
Fang Yingjie's lips moved, but for a moment no sound came out.
Wang Yan.
The girl who had shouted at him to hold it down in the rain on the lake.
The girl who had clutched a white rabbit in her arms and still remembered every waterway in secret.
The girl who had pushed the boat with him, fled Biyue Manor with him, and gone under into the black lake with him.
So in the end...
He did not dare think further.
Something inside him caved in all at once, and black water rushed up to fill the hollow.
Across from him, a chain gave the slightest clink.
Li Ying heard it.
She turned her head slowly and looked toward the man in the darkness beneath the weight of the chains.
"Great Hero Fang has borne it very well all these years."
Fang Yingjie jerked his head up.
Great Hero Fang.
He had heard those three words in the martial world before.
But here, in Li Ying's mouth, dropped into this dungeon and laid upon that blind, wasted, chain-bound figure across from him, they struck like thunder. Fang Yingjie's mind went blank.
He stared across the cell.
The man was still leaning against the stone wall.
His hair hung in tangles. His clouded eyes stared without focus. His beard covered half his face. Chains dragged down his shoulders and back. The iron rings, the old wounds, the torn clothes, the crusted blood, the ten years of damp and cold—everything had worn him into something scarcely human.
Fang Yingjie had looked at him for ten years.
He had feared him, pitied him, been cursed by him, and been watched over by him in silence.
He had listened to the sound of his chains, listened to his coughing, listened to the way his breath would sink low when pain became too much.
He had pushed bowls of water toward him. He had taken beatings for him. He had refused a road to freedom for him.
But never—not once—had he dared join the man before him to the name he had heard all his life.
The Dragoncloud Divine Hand.
Fang Tieshan.
His father.
"No..." Fang Yingjie's voice shook. "That's impossible."
Li Ying laughed softly.
"How is it impossible?"
She sounded as though she had finally been waiting for this moment, and her voice was gentle to the point of cruelty.
"Your father was at your side for ten years, and you never knew?"
Fang Yingjie felt as though something had slammed straight into his chest. He looked at the man across from him, then back at Li Ying.
"What did you say?"
He could barely hear his own voice.
"You're lying."
At that moment, the man across from him spoke coldly.
"Enough of this."
His voice was hoarse, but cold.
"You've been putting on the same play for ten years. And now you've changed the scene?"
Li Ying turned to him, her smile unchanged.
"Great Hero Fang is still as suspicious as ever."
The man said coldly, "The Crimson Flame Palace's little double act only gets fouler the longer it runs."
Li Ying sighed softly.
"Look at you. Your son has been beside you for ten years, and you dared not acknowledge him. Now that I have spoken it for you, you still refuse."
She moved closer by slow degrees, letting her eyes travel over him.
"The Dragoncloud Divine Hand, Fang Tieshan, in his day—what a hero you were. How many in the martial world spoke your name with light in their eyes? What ordinary woman could have looked upon a man like you and not been moved?"
The man said nothing.
Li Ying's voice softened further, as though she were speaking of some old regret she genuinely cherished.
"I thought then that a man like Great Hero Fang, had he been born in another age, might not even have lost to the Hegemon-King of Chu."
She smiled slightly, though the tenderness in her eyes only grew stranger and more poisonous.
"And I, Li Ying—by beauty, by wit, by means—was I truly unworthy to be your Consort Yu?"
A chill crept through Fang Yingjie's whole body.
On a theater stage, those words might have carried a kind of tragic tenderness. But here, spoken in this dungeon among chains and old blood and damp stone, they had only one flavor left in them.
Filth.
Li Ying did not seem to find them filthy at all. If anything, the more she spoke, the softer her voice became.
"You be the Hegemon-King of Chu, and I will be your Consort Yu. You hand over Dragoncloud Palm, and I will give you every pleasure under heaven—everything softest, warmest, most intoxicating. You and I, one hard and one yielding, one yang and one yin, together day after day—would that not have been better than wasting away here into dry bones?"
She laughed softly.
"But Great Hero Fang's bones were too hard."
From the darkness came a low laugh.
It was as cold as an old blade scraping over stone.
"Consort Yu?" He spat. "And you think you're fit for that?"
Li Ying's smile did not falter.
He said, one word at a time, "Harlot."
The word struck like a rusted blade against rock—cold, blunt, heavy.
Li Ying did not grow angry.
If anything, her smile deepened.
"After all these years, your insults have not improved."
Then she turned to Fang Yingjie. Her eyes moved over his face inch by inch.
"But this child, now... there really is something of your old look in him."
The cold in Fang Yingjie's body deepened under her gaze.
Li Ying said slowly, "Give him a few more years, and perhaps he may prove useful too. Great Hero Fang would not be my Hegemon-King of Chu—perhaps a younger one might do instead."
From the darkness came the sudden crack of chains.
It lasted only an instant, but the sound was terrifyingly heavy.
Li Ying seemed delighted by the reaction. She turned back with a faint smile.
"What is this? Great Hero Fang can be moved to haste after all?"
His face had gone as cold as iron.
A moment later, he let out a low laugh.
"Haste?" His voice was badly hoarse, but the mockery was still there. "You, Li Ying, spent ten years putting on a show with some nameless boy in front of me, and now you change to this kind of filthy little farce. And you call that enough to make me hurry?"
Li Ying's smile remained.
"Nameless?"
she said softly. "Great Hero Fang, at a time like this, you still insist on calling him that?"
He answered coldly, "Who he is is not for you to decide."
Li Ying gave a soft sigh.
"You deny it with your mouth, but your chains answered first."
He said nothing more, only turned his face back toward the darkness.
Li Ying, however, looked as though she had already gotten what she wanted. Her smile deepened further.
"So be it. The Fang family has always prided itself on hardness, has it not? I should like to see what remains when that hardness reaches the very end."
She paused, then said lightly, "If Zhen E were to see what you look like now, I wonder whether she would even know you."
Fang Tieshan seemed to go rigid for a single instant.
It was not a movement.
It was his breath.
Fang Yingjie knew that breath too well after all these years. When the crimson-robed men tortured him, he could stay cold. When chains bit into old wounds, he could endure. When the Crimson Flame Palace humiliated him, he would answer with nothing more than a cold laugh.
But the moment the name "Zhen E" was spoken, that thread of breath he had held down for ten years seemed to tremble beneath the lightest touch.
Fang Yingjie himself was struck just as hard.
Mother.
He looked up almost on instinct.
Li Ying saw it. Her smile turned soft.
"No need to rush," she said. "You will be seeing her very soon."
She lifted a hand.
One of the crimson-robed experts stepped forward.
He was carrying something wrapped in a cloth of blood-dark fabric.
The cloth was old, the blood on it gone dull and brown-black. At the corners it had gone stiff in places, yet the damp of the dungeon had soaked it through until it sagged with weight. Layer upon layer of dark stains pressed over each other, impossible to tell whether they were old blood or whether something had later seeped through them again. A stale, clotted smell mingled with mildew and leaked faintly from within.
Fang Yingjie only looked once, and it felt as though a hand had clenched shut around his heart.
Li Ying took the bundle and lowered her eyes to it, as calm as if she were looking at some ordinary household thing.
Then she tossed it lightly down before Fang Yingjie.
It landed with a dull thud.
His whole body locked up.
He did not dare look.
But his eyes were pinned there, held fast by something stronger than fear.
Li Ying spoke softly.
"Your father cannot see."
She bent slightly, her voice so low it was almost at his ear.
"You identify it."
"Tell me— is this your mother?"
Fang Yingjie's mind went blank.
One of the crimson-robed men stepped forward and flipped back one corner of the bloody wrapping.
Just once.
Under the dim lamp, through the bloodstains and the tangle of hair, Fang Yingjie saw a hairpin.
He knew that hairpin.
Zhen E had worn it when she came to Mount Hua to see him in years past. It had never been a lavish ornament, only something elegant and plain, with the faintest pattern carved along its tail. When he was little and sick in bed, he had often woken to find his mother sitting beside him, and the lamplight would rest motionless on that pin.
Then he saw a lock of familiar hair.
He saw half of a pale face beneath the blood.
He saw the shape of those brows and eyes.
In that instant, something split straight through his chest.
Ten years of darkness underground—the damp, the chains, the cold crusts of bread, the dying lamp—everything fell away in a roar.
There was only one thought left in heaven and earth.
Mother.
His mouth opened.
No sound came the first time.
The second time, it tore itself up from the depths of his throat, hoarse beyond anything human.
"Mother—!"
The cry rang through the dungeon, and even the chains seemed to shudder with it.
Fang Tieshan could not see.
He could not see what lay inside the bloodstained cloth.
He could not see the hairpin, or the blood, or the face Fang Yingjie had called for in dreams for ten years.
But he could hear.
He could hear something inside that child's chest break.
That cry of "Mother" was not a cry so much as something splitting out of bone.
Fang Tieshan shuddered violently from head to foot.
The chains broke into wild clamor around him.
His face, in the dim light, had gone a ghastly white. His clouded eyes stared into emptiness, seeing nothing, and yet it was as if that single cry had dragged him bodily back more than twenty years.
Zhen E.
The name he had not dared think of through endless nights, and yet had never been able not to think of.
This child...
This crying...
It was too real.
Too real to seem like an act.
But was not the most terrible thing about the Crimson Flame Palace precisely this—that it could make the false seem truer than truth itself?
The blood could be real.
The pain could be real.
The crying could be real too.
Fang Tieshan bit down hard.
He could not believe it.
He absolutely could not.
And yet his body still trembled.
Fang Yingjie lunged forward. Before his fingers could touch the bloodstained cloth, a crimson-robed man stamped one foot down on the edge of it and cut him off cold.
"Do not touch it."
Darkness rushed over Fang Yingjie's vision. All the strength seemed to leave his body at once.
"Mother..."
He tried to cry out again.
But the breath caught in his chest. Something sweet rose in his throat, and he fell straight to the ground.
"Wake him with water," Li Ying said lightly.
A basin of cold water was thrown over him.
Fang Yingjie convulsed and woke with a choking cough.
Water streamed from his hair, his face, his collar, cold as though the black lake had been poured over him again. He opened his eyes, but there was no focus in them. He stared only at that bundle of bloody cloth, his lips trembling.
Li Ying crouched before him and watched him.
"If you and that little girl had only stayed obediently where you were back then, would you ever have had to suffer these ten years?"
She lifted a hand as though she meant to brush the water from his face.
Fang Yingjie jerked his head aside to avoid the touch.
Li Ying did not take offense. She merely smiled.
"I gave you a chance."
Then she rose again and turned her gaze back upon Fang Tieshan.
"You have seen an old acquaintance," she said. "You have recognized your son. Now it is your turn."
Fang Tieshan let out a low laugh.
It was hoarse as blood ground out through rust.
"Recognize?" he said. "Li Ying, and even now you still think you can get anything out of me?"
Li Ying sighed softly.
"Great Hero Fang misunderstands me."
Her voice was mild.
"I am not asking today."
She lifted a hand.
All five crimson-robed experts moved at once.
Two went for Fang Yingjie.
Three closed in on Fang Tieshan.
Fang Yingjie struggled violently, his eyes gone bloodshot.
"What are you doing?"
He was no longer the child who could be struck flat with a single palm. But the two crimson-robed men were far from ordinary jailers. One on the left, one on the right, palm force steady and heavy, they seized shoulder, arm, ribs, and wrist, and in the space of a breath forced him back down against the stone.
Fang Yingjie roared and sank his breath, trying to twist free.
One of them drove a fist into his stomach.
The blow blackened his vision at once. The breath in his chest broke in chaos. The other man caught him by the back of the neck and slammed him down to his knees on the wet stone floor.
"Watch."
Li Ying's voice came from ahead of him.
Fang Yingjie fought all the harder.
The crimson-robed man holding him gave a snort, slid one hand from the back of his neck into his hair, and yanked hard, forcing his head up.
The swaying lamp, the chains, the crimson robes, and Li Ying's gentle face all crashed into his sight at once.
His eyes split wide with fury. He tried to hurl himself forward again, but a kick landed in his side and drove him nearly flat to the floor. Still the hand in his hair held fast, refusing to let him lower his head.
Li Ying only said, slowly, "Watch carefully."
Her voice was soft, like a patient lesson to a disobedient child.
"Watch what I am going to do to your father."
"The next time..."
She turned her head and glanced at Fang Yingjie, the smile in her eyes fluid and bright as water.
"It will be your turn."
All the blood in Fang Yingjie's body seemed to go cold.
He wanted to close his eyes.
But the crimson-robed man pinning him had clearly expected that. One hand clenched mercilessly in his hair, while the other clamped his jaw and fixed his face forward by force.
He could not look away.
He could not lower his head.
His vision went dark in waves. Blood and cold water blurred everything, yet he was still forced to see the lamp rocking, to see the crimson-robed men restrain Fang Tieshan, to see the chains drawn up inch by inch.
The three crimson-robed experts clearly did not dare treat Fang Tieshan lightly either.
For all the years of piercing irons through his body, for all his blindness, for all that the pathways of force in his shoulders and back had long since been almost sealed by chains, the sinews and meridians of his limbs were still intact, and the thing inside him had never truly bowed. One man pinned his shoulders, one locked down his wrists, and the third sealed the last remnants of movement in his chest and back with inner force.
The chains snapped tight.
A heavy, muffled sound was forced up from Fang Tieshan's throat.
Li Ying stepped closer.
In that instant, Fang Yingjie felt the whole death-cell grow colder.
He saw only a glimpse.
Only that one glimpse, and his stomach turned over.
At once he thought of that night years ago beneath the bed in Biyue Manor, of the filthy things Li Ying and Feng Wuji had done behind the curtains.
But what he saw now was viler than that.
It was no act between man and woman.
Or rather, Li Ying was borrowing the shape of such an act.
But down here, that shape had already been stripped until all that remained was the instrument of punishment. There was no tenderness in it. No pleasure. No closeness.
The art Li Ying cultivated—this Yin-Flame Source-Draining Art—could not steal a man's strength from a distance. Its vilest feature was precisely this: it had to seize upon the joining of yin and yang and turn what should have belonged to human desire into a bridge for draining a man's source and devouring his inner force.
She borrowed the form of coupling, but what she enacted was the theft of a man's vital essence.
It was torture.
It was a wicked art.
It was humiliation.
It was a blade that wrung out a man's final dignity together with the last of his life-root.
Fang Yingjie surged up violently, as though he would rather tear himself apart than remain held there.
A crimson-robed man punched him across the face.
The world went black for an instant.
When he opened his eyes again, the lamp, the robes, the chains, and Li Ying's gentle face had all broken into a blurred wash of blood-red shadow. His head was still forced up, but he could no longer see clearly.
And so everything that remained became sound.
The chains.
The rustle of cloth.
That stifled sound trapped in Fang Tieshan's throat, as though even now he refused to let it out.
And Li Ying's breathing, so light and soft it was almost impossible to hear.
Fang Yingjie did not know what he was hearing.
He could not distinguish the workings of meridians, nor could he hear the flow of inner force. Under ordinary torture, pain was pain, blood was blood. Chains tightened, bone and flesh were broken, and no matter how hard a man was, there would always come a moment when his breath gave way.
But this was different.
Fang Tieshan's breathing did not break all at once. It hollowed out by inches.
As if someone were not beating him, not cutting him, but reaching through flesh and blood to draw away the last thing still left inside him, little by little.
That was the most poisonous thing about the Yin-Flame Source-Draining Art.
It was unlike ordinary toxic arts when they erupted, and unlike the vivid pain of sword or blade. It borrowed the shape of desire, but what it enacted was the theft of a man's source. Tenderness became the bridge. Flesh became the lure. As breath and touch entangled, that thread of soft, sinister force wound itself around the victim's vital essence and drew it out by imperceptible degrees.
An ordinary man caught in it would afterward feel only exhaustion, weakness, heaviness of mind, and think he had merely indulged himself too far. Even a first-rate master, unless he was exquisitely sensitive to the movement of force, might not realize until his inner breath had settled again that the root of his strength had already been damaged.
Fang Tieshan, of course, could feel it.
But what use was that?
The pathways of force through his chest and back had long since been locked shut by chains and old wounds. Two decades of cold prison and punishment had ground the foundations of his strength down to the last remnant of flame. And now Li Ying, with the Yin-Flame Source-Draining Art, was not taking mere fleshly pain, nor a moment's inner force. She was taking the last warm spark at the very root of his life.
It did not strike a man down in one blow.
It hollowed him out.
Like a lamp already almost dry of oil.
The wick was still there, burning faintly.
But now even the last trace of oil was being drawn away, smilingly, thread by thread.
Fang Tieshan did not beg.
Not once, from beginning to end.
There was only the repeated tightening of chains.
Only the muffled sounds forced to the limit of endurance.
Only that last surviving breath in him, drawn thinner and thinner between iron shackles and humiliation.
In the end, Fang Yingjie could not even close his eyes properly.
Blood and cold water blurred his sight. Everything before him had dissolved into wavering shadows. He knelt pinned on the wet stone floor, his hair still twisted in a merciless fist, his fingers clawed into cracks in the stone until the nails tore back and blood seeped out to mingle with the damp.
His whole body was shaking. The breath in his chest surged up again and again, only to be beaten back each time by fist and foot.
He could do nothing.
Nothing except listen.
Listen to his father being tortured.
Listen to his father being humiliated.
Listen to his father's breathing sink lower and lower.
He did not know how much time passed. Perhaps a long time. Perhaps only moments.
At last Li Ying let out a soft breath.
The fragrance in the death-cell seemed even stronger now.
She stood there and calmly gathered her robes back into place, smoothing her sleeves. Her hair was still immaculate. If anything, her face looked more lustrous than when she had entered. In the dim lampglow, that composure was more chilling than the perfume had been.
The three crimson-robed experts released Fang Tieshan.
His body fell heavily back to the stone floor.
The chains crashed into noise.
But they did not snap taut again at once.
Fang Yingjie's heart dropped.
Li Ying lowered her eyes to Fang Tieshan and smiled faintly.
"Even heroes can be emptied."
Then she looked at Fang Yingjie.
"Grow well."
"You are younger than he is. Perhaps you will remain useful longer."
The bloodshot in Fang Yingjie's eyes looked ready to burst.
"Li Ying—"
His voice came out as though ground up from blood.
But Li Ying no longer paid him any mind.
She raised a hand.
The crimson-robed men let go of Fang Yingjie and wrapped the bloodstained bundle once more. The moment it was lifted, Fang Yingjie lunged at it like a madman, only to be blasted back against the wall by a single palm strike. Bright sparks exploded across his vision.
The iron door opened.
The fragrance withdrew.
One crimson shadow after another disappeared through the doorway.
Li Ying was the last to leave. At the threshold, she turned and gave him one final look.
She still wore that same gentle expression.
"Next time," she said softly, "try to be obedient."
The iron door swung shut.
The lock dropped with a heavy, final sound.
The dungeon fell dark again.
A Fading Lamp, a Life Preserved
The fragrance had not yet faded.
Neither had the smell of blood.
The two scents tangled together like a soft, cold snake, creeping slowly along the stone wall.
Fang Yingjie lay sprawled on the ground for a long time without moving.
It was not because of the pain.
It was because he did not dare crawl over.
He was afraid that the moment he did, the moment he reached out and felt for breath, he would discover that Fang Tieshan was no longer breathing at all.
The dungeon was deathly still.
The dripping water was still there.
The guttering lamp was still there.
But the breathing of the man opposite him had grown so faint it was almost impossible to hear.
Fang Yingjie jerked up his head.
"Senior…"
The moment the word left his mouth, it felt as though something pierced his own chest.
But the word Father was still too heavy, too heavy for him even to touch.
There was no answer.
His face changed completely. Struggling, he dragged himself forward.
Everything in him hurt. The places where the man in crimson robes had struck him throbbed as though split apart beneath an iron hammer. His chest kept tightening. The taste of blood kept rising in his throat. But none of it mattered.
He crawled to Fang Tieshan's side. The instant his hand touched the man's shoulder, he shuddered from the cold.
Too cold.
Not the cold of the dungeon.
The cold that seeps out from the bones when a life is about to scatter.
Fang Tieshan was half collapsed against the stone floor, his face veiled by disordered hair, blood staining the corners of his mouth. Old wounds, fresh wounds, and the marks pressed into him by iron chains had all mingled together until the sight was almost unbearable. His chest rose and fell only slightly, faint as the last thread of smoke from a dying ember.
This time was different.
Fang Yingjie knew it in an instant.
Over the years, he had seen Fang Tieshan beaten. He had seen the chains tear him until flesh and blood blurred together. He had seen him lie motionless for half a day after the men in crimson had finished with him, only to reach out in the end and slowly hook a bowl of water toward himself.
But this was different.
This was not torn flesh.
It was not an old wound flaring up.
His life was coming apart.
Fang Yingjie's hands were trembling violently, yet he forced himself to steady them.
First, support him.
Slowly, he lifted Fang Tieshan and drew him against the crook of his arm. The chains were heavy. They jolted Fang Tieshan's shoulders and back, and another thin line of blood welled at his lips.
Fang Yingjie whispered, "Don't move… don't move…"
He did not know whether he was saying it to Fang Tieshan, or to himself.
He wiped the blood from Fang Tieshan's mouth with his sleeve, then dragged the water bowl closer and tipped it to his lips.
The water would not go down.
It only ran from the corners of his mouth.
Fang Yingjie's eyes burned red with panic. All he could do was press his knuckles carefully at the side of Fang Tieshan's throat, trying to help him swallow even a little.
It was useless.
He tried to help regulate his breathing next.
That too was not enough.
Inside Fang Tieshan, everything felt hollow.
His breath was in chaos, his meridians dead and still. The little life that remained in him seemed ready to leak away from his chest, his fingertips, his throat, all at once.
Fang Yingjie's throat tightened.
No.
This would not do.
Then he thought suddenly of Old Daoist Xuan.
He remembered the ragged old Daoist telling him:
"Little blockhead, stop thinking about winning first."
"First, learn how not to die."
For ten years, that method had saved only himself.
It had kept him from dying of sickness, from freezing to death, from being beaten to death, from letting his last breath scatter into the darkness.
But now…
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and looked at the man in his arms, a man almost drained to the very last drop of life. Abruptly, he clenched his teeth.
Whether it worked or not, he had to try.
He settled himself slowly.
One hand supported Fang Tieshan. The other avoided the old wounds in his shoulders and back where iron shackles had ruined the flesh, and pressed instead against the place just below the heart on his back where a trace of life still remained. Closing his eyes, Fang Yingjie forced down his own breath, which had grown so chaotic it felt ready to explode.
One breath.
Then another.
His chest still hurt.
His insides still churned.
The side of his face was still numb.
But he could not lose control.
If he lost control, Fang Tieshan would truly be gone.
From the depths of his energy center, he slowly drew up that sliver of strength he had nurtured bit by bit over ten years.
He had never done this before.
Never sent his own inner force into another person.
At first, it moved with agonizing slowness, as if it did not know the road. Barely had it risen from his energy center when the pain in his own battered body caught at it and made it falter. Cold sweat burst out across Fang Yingjie's brow at once. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to steady it. He did not dare rush. He did not dare force it.
He could not drive it in.
He could not slam it forward.
He could not shake apart Fang Tieshan's already failing body any further.
So he fed it in one thread at a time.
It was not fierce.
It was not cold.
It did not contend between yin and yang.
There was nothing tyrannical or sharp about it.
It was not like a blade. Not like fire. Not like the cutting inner force of the great masters of the martial world.
It moved slowly.
But it was deep.
Like charcoal banked beneath ash for ten long years—perhaps not bright, but able to endure the whole of a long night.
Or like a hand lifting gently beneath a collapsing beam and holding the roof up from below.
Fang Tieshan had already sunk to a great depth.
He could no longer hear the dripping water, nor the chains, and even Fang Yingjie's voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.
He only felt himself falling.
Falling into emptiness.
There was no light there, no wind, no pain.
The chains that had weighed on him for so many years, the old agony embedded in his shoulders and back, even the hollow chill left behind after Li Ying had drained him away inch by inch a moment before—all of it seemed to be receding.
He was too tired.
In these twenty-odd years, it was not that he had never thought of death.
He simply had not been allowed to die.
He had always told himself that Zhen E was still outside somewhere. That child whom he had never held, never taught, never even truly laid eyes on was still outside as well. If one day he could truly crawl out from beneath the earth, even with only half a life left in him, he would still go back and look once upon Fang Stronghold, look once upon Mount Hua, and tell Zhen E with his own mouth that he had not bowed his head, had not handed over what belonged to the Fang family.
He had clung to that single thought and forced one breath after another through more than twenty years.
But now even that last thought seemed to have been crushed out by Li Ying's own hand.
If Zhen E were truly dead, where was there left for him to return to?
If that child had really died long ago—or if even the one before his eyes was no more than another snare laid by the Crimson Flame Palace—then for whom had he been holding on all this time?
More than that, what had happened just now had stripped him bare, wringing out the remnants of his dignity, his last sparks, his blood and breath, inch by inch.
All at once he felt tired.
Truly tired.
If he simply sank now, perhaps that would at least be clean.
And then, just at that moment, a current of breath entered him from behind—very light, very slow, fed in a little at a time.
Fang Tieshan's spirit jolted faintly.
The current was weak.
Compared to many kinds of inner force he had seen in his prime, it could not even be called powerful.
But it was astonishingly steady.
It did not struggle outward, nor seize inward. It did not burn. It did not freeze. It did not force his ruined meridians to answer it. It merely supported the life in him, little by little, as that life was on the verge of scattering.
It was not the Greater Yang Art of the Mount Hua Sect.
The Greater Yang Art was supremely yang—broad, vast, and sweeping, like the sun climbing over the eastern mountains, forceful and magnificent.
Nor was it one of Mount Hua's softer yin arts.
Still less was it the venomous yin flame of the Crimson Flame Palace.
This current had no sharp edge.
But it was deep.
It could bear weight.
It could uphold.
At the very edge where a fading breath was about to break apart, it could force that last breath to remain.
Fang Tieshan's heart gave a violent shudder.
His eye for martial arts had once stood at the highest level.
Blind though he now was, reduced though ten years in an iron dungeon had left him to nothing but dying embers, the moment a current of inner force entered his body, he could still discern its roots.
And this child's breath was not of any school he knew.
And yet—
Yet somehow it possessed a strange, indescribable harmony with the very root of the Fang family's Dragoncloud Palm.
Back then, when Fang Tieshan had driven Dragoncloud Palm with the Greater Yang Art, it had been mighty beyond compare, fierce and massive. When his palm struck, it had been like dragons rising with the clouds, its force enough to crush the spirit of any opponent. But in the end, that had still been Mount Hua's blazing yang fire used to stoke the Fang family furnace.
Powerful it was.
Fearsome it was.
But it was also fierce, and costly.
Like borrowing another household's fire to burn one's own furnace.
This child's current, however, did not drive, did not force.
It was as if it upheld the furnace from within its very roots.
As if it were the flame that ought to have lived in that furnace all along.
It did not hurry to flare toward the heavens.
But it could burn long, and never go out.
A monstrous wave rose suddenly in Fang Tieshan's heart.
When I used the Greater Yang Art to drive Dragoncloud Palm, I borrowed Mount Hua's fire to burn the Fang family furnace.
But this child's breath…
It is as if the furnace fire itself was born inside the furnace.
Fang Yingjie had no idea what was overturning itself inside Fang Tieshan.
He knew only that the breath he sent into that ravaged body vanished the instant it entered, like breath fed into an old furnace that had nearly burned itself empty.
It was not that there was no response at all.
But the furnace walls had long since cracked, and the base had hollowed out. More than twenty years of chains and torture had ruined Fang Tieshan beyond measure, and Li Ying had just now used a sinister yin-flame method to draw away the last layer of his vital essence in secret. Fang Yingjie sent in one part, and more than half dispersed through old wounds, broken meridians, and empty hollows. Of what truly remained, only the barest scrap was left.
But that scrap was life itself.
If he stopped sending it, Fang Tieshan's breath would break.
So he kept going.
His face turned paler and paler.
Cold sweat dripped from his brow.
The wound in his chest throbbed where it had been strained again, and the copper-sweet taste rose in waves to his throat. He bit through his own lip, but still did not dare stop.
At last, the man in his arms moved—very slightly.
"Boy…"
The voice was so low it was almost inaudible.
Fang Yingjie's whole body went rigid.
But his hand did not stop.
With great difficulty, Fang Tieshan said, "Enough."
Fang Yingjie acted as if he had not heard.
He kept sending his breath.
Fang Tieshan's own breath came in broken threads.
"Boy… stop."
"If you go on exhausting yourself like this…"
A little bloody froth rolled from his throat. His voice grew hoarser still.
"You'll collapse first."
Fang Yingjie answered in a low voice, "I won't stop."
Fang Tieshan seemed to want to struggle free, but he no longer had even that much strength.
"My affairs…"
He paused to gasp.
"Have nothing to do with you."
The words were like a cold needle.
Years ago, if Fang Yingjie had heard such a sentence, he might have been hurt. He might have fallen silent. He might have lowered his head.
But now, his eyes red, he only continued to feed that thread of breath into him, steadily and without wavering.
"They do."
He said it softly.
Yet there was not the slightest retreat in him.
The ragged breath in Fang Tieshan's chest shuddered violently.
They do.
The words were too light.
And far too heavy.
Fang Yingjie knew he still did not believe.
Did not believe he was Fang Yingjie.
Did not believe he was Zhen E's son.
Did not believe these ten years, or the crying, or Li Ying's revelation, or the blood, or the pain, or the fact that he had refused the path of survival and was now nearly draining himself dry to save him.
He had said his name.
He had said his age.
He had spoken of his mother.
None of it had mattered.
In this dungeon, every truth had been defiled by the Crimson Flame Palace.
Suddenly, Fang Yingjie no longer wanted to explain.
He only lowered his head and kept sending that thread of breath into him.
And then, very softly, he began to hum a tune.
It was not a Mount Hua air.
Nor was it the old mountain song he had hummed in broken fragments over the years in this dungeon.
This tune was lower, softer, and in its trailing notes there lingered a touch of the old accent of Shandong. When he had been little, and too sick to sleep soundly, Zhen E would often sit by his bedside and hum it to him.
He had been too young then to know where it came from.
He had only known that whenever his mother hummed it, her brows and eyes softened in a way they did not at other times.
Sometimes she used it to coax him to sleep. Sometimes, halfway through, she would fall silent, as though remembering someone far away, and a place far away.
Fang Yingjie had once asked her what tune it was.
Zhen E had stroked his forehead and said, "It is an old tune from your father's home country."
He had been too young then. He remembered only the melody, not the pain inside those words.
And now, in the death-cell beneath the earth, holding a man who stood on the brink of death, he finally hummed that tune aloud.
Fang Tieshan went utterly rigid.
In that instant, it was as though a bolt of thunder had struck him.
This was not a Mount Hua melody.
It was not some common song of the martial world the Crimson Flame Palace could have prepared at will.
It was an old tune of Shandong.
A tune often heard in the wind of Fang Stronghold in years gone by.
A tune Zhen E had once laughed at him for not understanding, and yet had secretly remembered all the same.
A tune they had heard one night outside Fang Stronghold after their marriage. The moon had been white that night. Zhen E had sat beneath the corridor eaves, tapping lightly on the railing with her fingertips, humming half a line after the melody she had heard, then frowning that she had not gotten it right.
Fang Tieshan had laughed at her then.
Zhen E had shot him a sidelong glance and said, "When we have a child, I'll use this to lull him to sleep."
He had said, "An old Shandong tune—can a soaring heroine like you really sing such a thing?"
Zhen E had replied, "If it is a Fang child, of course I can."
Those voices, that moonlight, those old memories long since buried beneath chains, blood, darkness, and more than twenty years of torture, came surging back in one great flood.
Fang Stronghold.
Zhen E.
The child he had never met.
No.
Not a child he had never met.
The child was here beside him.
He had survived one breath at a time in this death-cell for ten years.
He had coughed, fallen sick, endured beatings, stood in the way of punishment meant for him, and even turned back from the very threshold of survival.
He was not some trap sent by the Crimson Flame Palace.
He was the child he and Zhen E had had together.
The son he had thought he would never see in this lifetime, who had instead spent ten years beside him in the blackest place imaginable.
The desire for death that had already sunk deep inside Fang Tieshan was suddenly seized by that old melody and dragged back by force.
So it was not all gone.
Zhen E's voice was still here.
The Fang family's old tune was still here.
And their child was still here.
At last, the cold hardness in Fang Tieshan's face cracked.
That fracture did not begin in his face.
It began in the deepest place inside him, the place he himself had frozen shut for ten years, and broke open with a sudden crash.
Tears rolled from those dim, lightless eyes.
He was blind.
But the tears were still warm.
"You…"
Fang Tieshan's voice trembled until it no longer sounded like his own.
"Yingjie…"
Fang Yingjie's hand jerked violently.
The thread of inner force almost broke.
He gritted his teeth and steadied it, but his throat closed all at once.
Fang Tieshan lifted a hand.
That hand had wasted down to little more than bone and joints. Its fingertips trembled violently. The chains tugged at his shoulders and back, and he could not raise it very high. He could only grope until at last he touched Fang Yingjie's wrist.
"It was not that you did not seem to be him…"
His voice was so low it sounded ready to break at any moment.
"It was that I did not dare admit it."
Fang Yingjie's tears finally struck down in earnest.
Over the years, it was not that he had never cried.
But beneath the earth, tears were too extravagant. Crying did nothing. No one would come. In the end, tears only spent what little strength one had left.
But now he could no longer hold them back.
He lowered his head. His voice was so soft it seemed afraid of shattering something.
"Father…"
The instant the word left him, Fang Tieshan trembled again.
As though iron and stone had at last been covered once more in flesh and blood.
But Fang Tieshan did not let that one word drag him into helpless softness for long.
He knew there was no time.
He also knew that his life was only being held together for the moment by the current Fang Yingjie was forcing into him. It had not truly steadied.
He turned his hand and gripped Fang Yingjie's wrist. His voice was raw.
"Listen."
Fang Yingjie's eyes were red, yet he still did not dare stop.
Fang Tieshan said, "If you could live ten years beneath the earth, then you are no useless thing."
Something caught in Fang Yingjie's throat.
Fang Tieshan went on, "What the Fang family must preserve is not the four words Dragoncloud Divine Hand."
He spoke very slowly.
Each word seemed ground out from dying embers.
"It is backbone."
"It is the structure of the art."
"It is the way a man must live."
Fang Yingjie bit down hard and nodded.
Fang Tieshan continued, "Dragoncloud Palm… does not rest on ferocity alone."
"Ferocity is what anyone can see."
He drew a breath. The ragged remnant in his chest nearly scattered again. Fang Yingjie hurried to steady his inner force.
In a low voice, Fang Tieshan said, "The true skill lies in being able to uphold."
Fang Yingjie's eyes were full of tears, but he did not dare let a sound escape. He only answered softly, "I'll remember."
Fang Tieshan's fingertips tightened slightly.
"In those days, I drove Dragoncloud Palm with the Greater Yang Art. Powerful it was—but it always felt as though I were borrowing Mount Hua's fire to burn the Fang family furnace."
He paused. It was as though it took the last of his strength to say the next sentence.
"But the breath in your body…"
"It is as though that furnace fire was born within the furnace itself."
Fang Yingjie froze.
He did not fully understand.
But he knew this much: his father was placing a road into his hands.
He was just about to ask more when suddenly, from deep within the prison corridor, there came the faintest sound.
Very faint.
So faint that the dripping water almost swallowed it.
Not the tread of a guard's boots.
Not the measured step of the Crimson Flame Palace's crimson-robed men either.
This sound was lighter. More drifting.
It was so light it scarcely sounded like footsteps at all. More like the tip of a slender bamboo cane touching wet stone once, and then vanishing.
Fang Yingjie had not yet made anything of it.
But Fang Tieshan's expression had already changed.
Those dim, clouded eyes turned slightly toward the iron door. All the breath left in him tightened at once.
"Do not make a sound."
Fang Yingjie stopped breathing instantly.
A moment later, Fang Tieshan added in a whisper, "Not one of Li Ying's people."
Fang Yingjie's heart lurched.
In the darkness beyond, that faint sound came half a step nearer.
This time even he heard it clearly.
Like wind.
Or like bamboo.
Poetic Coda
Blood-lamp light lays bare cold bones behind an iron gate;
yin flame steals the shattered soul of a fallen hero.
Ten years' reunion seems no more than a dream,
until one old tune breaks through the scars of doubt.
A hidden spark within the furnace bears the dragon line;
embers under ash carry on a father's grace.
Then suddenly bamboo sounds pierce the iron dark—
the dying lamp has not gone out; it still shines for the one returning.
(End of Chapter Thirty-Three)