2 Exile (2)

The moment the riders vanished from sight (and indeed, from plane of existence), the prisoner picked himself up from the floor, looked up at the sky, and swore.

Yes. He swore.

The hurricane of torrential abuse streamed at the Heavens for several minutes before the man found that he had run out of profane vocabulary.

Grunting, the man shrugged off his handcuffs and slipped out of his chains. He knew that they were of no use anymore; the man was no longer bound physically. He stood straight, string at the monolithic confines, cursing his fortune.

The man looked at the monoliths, and walked to the centre of the two, before jogging in a straight line towards the horizon, counting each step.

At two hundred paces, a shining golden chain of light suddenly flickered into existence, it's length stretching from the middle of the towers to the man's head.

It was taut.

The man sighed glumly and walked back to the monoliths. The sun was high up in the sky and had no intention of sinking any time soon.

The heat was annoying.

He pointed his index finger at the sand, before making a rising gesture. But a few weeks ago, such a gesture would have made mountains rise and cities crumble. His single finger could determine the life and death of millions.

Yet now... the sand refused to move.

Even more so, a sharp pain suddenly cut into his heart. The man staggered, before falling to his knees, clutching his chest.

It was his heart. Those advanced in the field of Qi would be able to see the ethereal chain wrapped around his heart, preventing all exertions. A hundred seals on his heart disabled him. Physically, he would be fine, but in regards to his spirit...

The process of using Qi depended heavily of the spiritual heart - each pulsation of Qi through his meridians was solely caused by the spiritual heart.

In this state he was in know, Qi kept gathering and slowly filling his soul, yet he could not use a single strand of it.

It was wholly infuriating.

The man shouted out in anger, his spiked hair falling over his eyes. He tried to push it off, but sand went into his eyes. He yelled in pain.

A great general of old, reduced to this? Pathetic.

The man knew this himself yet did nothing to prevent it. For who else was here in this desolate wasteland to see his sad plight?

After a few minutes, he brought himself together and sat down, crossed legged, in contemplation. The series of events that had brought him here had been in no part his fault, yet there he was, in the middle of the desert.

His elder brother being the one who had put him there.

Despite knowing this, he felt no hatred towards the eldest brother. He too had just been a pawn on the chessboard in game played by two masters.

The man decided to first take inventory of his current possessions. He took off the two sole garments that covered him, and lay them out on the floor.

In the hem of his robe, he felt something.

"Hm?" His fingers examined it, and he found it to be a folded piece of paper.

It had certainly not been there previously.

He suddenly smiled. Perhaps he had not been totally abandoned. His elder brother had always been on his side.

He flicked his fingers, using Qi to cut the robe precisely before he remembered that he couldn't actually manipulate any Qi. The next few minutes were again spent of the ground clutching his chest.

He decided to just rip the fabric, and was rewarded with a folded piece of beige scroll.

Full of expectations, he opened the scroll and peered at its contents. There, emblazoned in beautiful calligraphy, was the phrase:

"The centre of the problem is often where the solution lies."

It had been a favourite phrase of his elder brother.

Perhaps he was alone after all.

---

A half hour later, the man sat still in meditation. He was under the most ramshackle cover that anyone who had had the misfortune to see it had ever seen. It was formed of his one undergarment and three sticks which he had discovered buried under the ground. It had taken half an hour to construct, and was the worst bit of craftsmanship the man had ever seen.

Seldom had he done something and felt so shameful about it afterwards.

Truly a new low.

But he sat there, not in cultivation - for he couldn't cultivate anyway - but instead in deep thought. He was pondering over the words which his brother had given him.

Suddenly he opened his eyes. He had been thinking for just over a minute. I am sure that had it been possible a light bulb would have turned on next to him, such was the expression on his face.

He decided to take his brother's statement in its most literal sense: the solution would be at the centre of the problem.

Grinning, he almost did lightning teleport over to the monoliths, before realising that he couldn't and once again collapsed onto the floor.

After a few minutes, he had recovered sufficiently enough to walk sombrely to the monoliths. With a slight smile on his face, he strode up to the direct centre of the monoliths, before getting in his knees and digging with his bare hands.

It was at moments like this where he missed Qi the most.

After half an hour of hard clawing at the earth, the fruits of his labour were revealed.

There, surely enough, was another scroll.

The man cursed his brothers warped sense of humour and idiotic taste in riddles. Nonetheless, he was grateful.

He tore open the scroll. Thankfully there was no riddle this time.

It was a letter.