Chapter 50-The key

The old man turned his ear toward them while a nervous shudder made his limbs twitch, the metal chains on his body clanging with his every movement.

Zhang Chengling gave Zhou Zishu's robe a furtive tug.

"Shifu ... those chains — do they go through his shoulder blades?"

"Shush," Zhou Zishu uttered in reply, his brows knitting as he looked over.

The chains weren't merely tied around the old man's body, they pierced his scapulas, but also his kneecaps. The flesh around the wounds had rotted away, leaving only exposed bones.

Zhou Zishu reflected that to keep on living like this was no small feat.

An overwhelming stench lingered in the darkened room. It came from the urine and feces strewn everywhere. The old man's clothes had lost their original colors long ago, they barely covered him and made a truly ghastly sight.

When he spoke, the old man's diction was slow and hesitant, as if he had grown unhabituated to speech.

"You... who are you?" he asked in a gravelly voice. "Where's Long... Long Xiao1?"

"Is Long Xiao a cripple who moves around in a wheelchair?" Ye Baiyi inquired. "If so, he's dead. Who was he to you?"

Upon hearing that, the old man gaped blankly for a long while. Then, he opened his mouth wide while an expression of joy seemed to creep across his face. But no sound came out of his parted lips, and his eyes filled with murky tears; they slid down his face, vanishing from view in a split second.

Ye Baiyi didn't pay him mind. He crouched down to examine the metal shackles as the old man oscillated between laughter and tears like a nutter.

A good while later, he extended his hand toward Zhou Zishu. "Lend me your sword," he said.

Zhou Zishu understood that the man in white intended to cut through the chains. Thus, he unsheathed "Baiyi" and handed it over.

Ye Baiyi promptly hacked at a length of chain. There was a resounding "clang", but the shackle didn't even budge. It wasn't even nicked. Zhou Zishu's sword, however, vibrated from the shock.

Zhou Zishu's heart ached just from looking at it.

"Don't... don't waste your energy. It's no use," the old man said.

"What abominable sin did you commit for that cripple to hate you so?" Ye Baiyi asked in reply.

The old man remained silent for a moment. Then, he said, "The only sin... I've committed was to raise... a son like him."

At that, the few of them stared at each other. They realized then why Long Xiao had worked up such a temper after Ye Baiyi told him "unless you're Long Que's son". The glutton was quite a wonder of a man to have correctly predicted such an unimaginable tidbit, wasn't he?

Wen Kexing broke the hush that had fallen:

"When you say 'Long Xiao'," he said. "...You don't mean ' xiao ' as in the character for 'filial piety, do you?"2

The guy was, as the saying went, "lifting the pot that didn't boil"3 — he was pricking at an obvious sore spot. Zhou Zishu elbowed the blabbermouth sharply. Wen Kexing didn't dare dodge; he received the jab full-on and rubbed at his ribs with a pitiful expression on his face.

The old man gave a hoarse chortle.

"It must be karmic retribution for terrible crimes I've committed in a previous life!" he said as reached for the bedpost with his leathery hand and struggled to lean against it.

"And this is the very chamber in which that little ingrate was born," he went on, the flow of his speech growing

more fluent after speaking for a while. "It was my and Yu Zhui's4 room back then. To think that both my wife and I would die between his hands... Ha. If that's not fate, what is?"

"Was Yu Zhui your esteemed wife?" Zhou Zishu asked in a gentle voice.

The old man's face was so wrinkled that, to say nothing of whether it had been ugly or handsome, it was hard to tell whether his expression was one of joy or sorrow. At the name "Yu Zhui", however, the deep furrows gouging his cheeks seemed to relax. A teardrop caught in the crease beside his mouth; it trembled on the verge of sliding down.

"Yes. She passed away giving birth to that child. I built the Marionettes Manor after she was gone, and dismissed all the servants..."

At that, Zhang Chengling cast a stunning glance at Wen Kexing. The glutton wasn't the only man of wonder it seemed: We Kexing had guessed right on that one.

"... I promised Yu Zhui that I would raise the little ingrate," the old man went on, "but he was born a cripple who couldn't walk on his own. So I taught him everything I knew, from the beginning to the end, thinking that at least it would allow him to support himself. Ha!"

"If that's the case," Ye Baiyi said, "why did he imprison you?"

The old man's whole body trembled.

"... He did it for the Yin Yang Manual," he said after a long pause.

Zhang Chengling aside, all three men's gazes sharpened at that. They peered at the old man unblinkingly. Zhou Zishu was the first one to breach the subject.

"Do you mean... the Yin Yang Manual that belonged to Lady Rong?" he asked in a soft tone. The old man nodded.

"By yin and yang upturned, the dead to life returned —" he muttered.

No hard-to-treat ailment existed in the world that the fabled relic from the Physician Valley couldn't cure. If even the Green Temptress sought it hoping that it would heal her face, who else would desire the ancient tome more than an ambitious man who had been born a cripple?

Zhou Zishu's mind raced.

"Wasn't the Yin Yang Manual," he asked, "alongside the Method of the Seal-Hill Sword, and the Hermetics of the Six Combination, sealed away with the Crystal Armour? Do you mean to say that your son thought you were in the possession of the Armour?"

"The Crystal Armour?" The old man sneered and shook his head. "You are wrong, all of you. I forged the Armour myself, back then, but it's only a lock. Even if you had them, its five fragments would be useless on their own. If you want to obtain the treasures sealed within, you'd still need a 'key'."

"Do you have that key, then?" Ye Baiyi asked with a raised brow. "I don't," the old man said in a staid voice.

"If you don't have it, who else could?" Ye Baiyi pressed on.

The old man smiled self-mockingly.

"Of course, you wouldn't believe me. He didn't either."

Zhou Zishu scrutinized the old man. After a long moment, he abruptly asked, "Venerable Mister Long, you know who has the key, don't you?"

The old man turned his head toward Zhou Zishu, appearing as if he could see him. He nodded his head.

"You are right. I do know. But, all those years ago, I took an oath to never reveal the whereabouts of that key — to anyone, and nobody. Long Xiao... Long Xiao went mad because of it."

Ye Baiyi narrowed his eyes.

"Which means that you also know," he said, his tone growing outright threatening, "the truth about what happened between Rong Xuan and his little clique thirty years ago, don't you?"

The old man silently nodded again. But before Ye Baiyi could continue questioning him, he said, "I can't tell you, though. Rong Xuan and his wife were my benefactors; they saved my life. I promised Lady Rong that I wouldn't tell, so I can't."

"Well, that's not up to you, is it?" Ye Baiyi replied in an icy tone.

The old man laughed out loud at that. He laboriously grabbed his knee and raised the articulation pierced by the metal shackles for all to examine.

"What else could you do to me?" he asked Ye Baiyi in a light tone that belied the tense atmosphere. "Long Xiao, that little ingrate, has held me captive for thirty years already. So, what else could you do to me?"

The old man for whom even breathing seemed a chore leaned against the bedpost with a faintly mocking smile curled at the corner of his lips. He seemed to not give a damn about the world.

As Zhou Zishu observed him, he was suddenly reminded of the quote from general Fan Kuai: "I, who have never shunned death, would I a mere goblet of wine decline? "5

He couldn't help but wonder what kind of person Long Que was.

A man of astounding skills, he had forsaken the world and built the eerie and perilous Marionettes Manor because of a single person. Then, because of a single promise to keep a secret, he had spent thirty years of living in purgatory on earth while even his son couldn't loosen his lips...

Zhou Zishu reflected that, in the entire jianghu, there was perhaps not a single person more deserving of the title "hero" than the dying old man in front of him.

At that moment, Wen Kexing's arm suddenly tightened around Zhou Zishu's waist, to the point it seemed he was trying to meld Zhou Zishu's body into his own.

Zhou Zishu frowned and cast the guy a glance, but Wen Kexing was staring at Long Que fixedly. Not a trace of his usual grin remained on his face and, for a second, Zhou Zishu thought he saw a glint of moisture in those dark eyes of his. But then, it flashed by and vanished in the next instant.

"Hey, old freak," Wen Kexing hollered at Ye Baiyi. "Since he doesn't want to tell, just leave him alone, won't you? Stop being a pest."

Ye Baiyi ignored him entirely. He grabbed the old man's arm and spoke in an icy voice.

"I have no interest in the Crystal Armour, or the key, or whatever. The only thing I want to know is the truth about how Rong Xuan and his wife died. Do you know anything about that?"

His grip was forceful enough that bruises formed on the back of the old man's hand. A pained expression surfaced on Long Que's face, yet he still kept saying, "I don't..."

Wen Kexing scowled. He released Zhou Zishu and handed him over to Zhang Chengling.

In a temper that seemingly came out of nowhere, he said, "Old freak, do you plan on shutting it anytime soon?" With that, he struck at Ye Baiyi's back.

As he propped Zhou Zishu up, Zhang Chengling gaped, dumbfounded, at the blur of fists and feet made up by Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi. He couldn't at all fathom why people who had been comrades in arms only a moment ago were suddenly duking it out.

The commotion those two worked up was way shy of being discreet. Soon, the cell that had imprisoned Long Que for so many years was shaken to its foundations as they went at it like a demolition team.

Wen Kexing pulled all the stops: each of his blows was more vicious than the last. "Little prick, what are you playing at?" Ye Baiyi snarled in fury.

Wen Kexing sneered.

"I don't like the look of you and want to kick your ass. Problem?"

Used to ask whenever he didn't understand something, Zhang Chengling turned to Zhou Zishu. "Shifu ..."

Zhou Zishu ignored the boy. With his brows knitted, he was deep in thought: the outline of an idea was emerging in his mind. Then, it snapped into place in an epiphany.

He pushed Zhang Chengling aside, walked up to Long Que's side, and sat down.

"You're wounded?" the old man asked after listening to Zhou Zishu's breathing for a few seconds. "Your son's doing," Zhou Zishu answered.

Long Que laughed.

"Come off it..." he croaked in his gravelly voice. "Look at me — you have it good enough." Zhou Zishu didn't reply and scrutinized the metal chains on the old man's body.

When it came to mechanisms, Zhou Zishu was essentially inept, but as Skylight's former leader, he was quite the expert in the chapter on devices designed for torture. Yet, he still couldn't figure out what material those shackles were made of.

After a few more minutes with no better clue, he gave up his examination and turned to Long Que.

"There is nothing I can do to unfasten those chains," he said. "Now that your son is dead, what about you?" Long Que thought it over before he spoke in a calm voice.

"I think it's time for me to die too — actually, I should have died a long time ago, but he didn't allow it. No one is left to thwart me now. In my whole life, I have only one regret, that of not having done right by Yu Zhui's son. I knew he was my son too, yet I couldn't help resenting him for taking my wife's life. If... If in all those years, I had been a half-decent father to him, he wouldn't have turned out as he did."

Zhou Zishu thought those words rang true and didn't know how to offer comfort. In the end, he opted for frankness.

"You're right," he said.

Meanwhile, Ye Baiyi and Wen Kexing had managed to tear down the roof for real. The both of them jumped out to carry on their fisticuffs, and the dark chamber was bathed in light all of a sudden. Long Que seemingly felt the sun against his skin. He reached out a trembling hand as if to grab it and sighed in contentment.

Zhou Zishu was about to speak when Ye Baiyi's angry bellow thundered from outside.

"Little brat, stop sticking your nose in business that doesn't concern you! Long Que, I'll have you tell the truth about what happened to Rong Xuan no matter what! He was my disciple!"

Upon hearing that roar, even Long Que gave pause, whereas Wen Kexing froze in mid-air with one leg outstretched. The guy ridiculously maintained that pose, as he eyed Ye Baiyi with a, weird out expression on his face.

Indeed, Rong Xuan and Long Que were of the same generation, so if Ye Baiyi was Rong Xuan's Shifu ... Was the old freak as immortal as the fabled thousand years old sea turtles?6

Ye Bayi glared daggers at Wen Kexing before he returned inside. He stood by the bed and addressed the old man while looking down his nose at him.

"Back then, Rong Xuan stole half of the Hermetics from me before fleeing our mountain hermitage," he said stiffly. "He never came back. The Central Plains' wulin is nowadays in turmoil and has issued the Honour Tokens because of artifacts he has left behind. Tell me, don't you think I should know the truth about what happened then?"

"You are Ye... Ye...?" Long Que asked.

"Yes, I'm Ye Baiyi."

Long Que drew in a deep breath and shook his head while sighing.

"Venerable elder, I wouldn't have dreamed that you were still alive..."

— The scene was quite a strange one: a man with white hair and beard was calling a youthful-skinned lad "venerable elder".

After thinking it over, Zhou Zishu cut in.

"When I accidentally ran into the Marionettes Manor's mechanisms, I was met with a pair of automatons, one female, the other male. The other marionettes in the Manor were all bald and faceless, and rather coarsely made. Only those two looked lifelike. Mister Long, were those two marionettes made in the semblance of you and your wife, or that of Rong Xuan and his?"

Long Que shut his eyes.

"Rong Xuan and his wife," he responded after a long pause.

"Well," Zhou Zishu said softly, "in the end, they cracked open each other's skull."

Long Que's hand trembled almost unnoticeably at that. Ye Baiyi pressed on.

"Is it true that Rong Xuan became mad from kung-fu mispractice?"

Long Que nodded silently.

"Yes, it is. He descended into folly before Lady Rong's death. He is the one who killed Lady Rong

1. "pious dragon" - pious as in "filial piety" which is such an important concept to the Chinese

culture that it gets its character.

3. colloquialism translated literally. The phrase contains a wordplay as "lift" and "mention" are homophonous; it means somebody is mentioning something that shouldn't be mentioned.

4. The character also means "to carve", making the name translate as "carved with feathers".

5. Quote from Records of The Grand Historian by Sima Qian. Fan Kuai was a famous general allied with Liu Bang during the Eighteen Kingdoms. He used the line to respond to Xiang Yu (their rival who was at the time more powerful) during the Hongmen Feast held by Xiang Yu as a scheme to assassinate Liu Bang. Fan Kuai's intervention in demonstrating his brave character helped Liu Bang (and himself) avoid death.

6. Another joke around turtles (meaning "bastard"). The original calls Ye Baiyi a "hundred years living turtle, thousand years living tortoise/bastard".