Meanwhile, let me tell you what was up with Qinyue and the gang.
Liangyu was sitting at the restaurant’s corner table with Han nervously hovering by his side, while Qinyue paced back and forth like a caged tiger.
"You think we should go?" she asked Liangyu, stopping mid-stride to pin him with an expectant look.
"Go where? The plan was to wait, wasn’t it?" Liangyu replied.
"Yeah, and we waited, didn’t we? It’ll be lunchtime in about an hour! We can’t just sit here wasting our time!"
"You guys are hungry?" Han asked innocently, completely missing the tension.
"Not now, Han. We’re in the middle of something very important," Qinyue snapped.
"You know," Liangyu interjected, seizing what he thought was an opportunity with a poorly concealed hopeful smile, "since there’s nothing much we can do really, wanna go travel around the town? Explore the places?" He even threw in a wink for good measure.
"Oh yes! Tourism’s been real dry lately, as you must know, so you won’t really find any proper guides around these days. But I can definitely show you around if you’d like!" Han offered enthusiastically.
Qinyue paused, considering this for a few moments while tapping her finger against her chin. Then she said, "Hmm. Of course you can! Let’s go!"
"Wait, really?" Liangyu’s eyes lit up like a kid on his birthday, practically glowing with excitement.
"Yeah, take us to where you think the soldiers might’ve taken Ziyang and Jian," Qinyue said with extreme determination.
Liangyu’s face fell faster than a stone in water. "Oh, come on! Where are you even gonna find them?! They’re most probably talking to the king right now, having some important diplomatic conversation for us or whatever."
"You don’t exactly know that for certain," Qinyue countered, crossing her arms. "Maybe they were taken straight to prison. Han told us the king’s been completely cuckoo for the past month. What if he’s not even interested in mundane affairs like meeting a few nobodies who thrashed a handful of his soldiers? He might not even care."
"That’s actually a real possibility," Han added helpfully, nodding along.
"Stop enabling her, you don’t know how insanely violent she can be when she gets an idea in her head," Liangyu groaned, rubbing his temples.
You know, to be completely honest, even
I never would’ve imagined this in a million years. But at that very moment, Qinyue cooked up something so brilliantly insane, it would probably make our ancestors stand up and applaud from their graves.
She gave Han a disarmingly warm smile and walked up towards him slowly and deliberately.
The poor dude immediately started clenching the ceramic plate he held in his trembling hands. She got close, too close for comfort, and spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone, "Han, aren’t you tired of this?"
"Tired... of what exactly?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
"You really don’t realize what’s happening to you? To all of you?"
"What’s... what’s happening to me?"
"Not just you. You all. You poor folks being forced to stay in perpetual lockdown, being systematically extorted for money, being beaten up for asking questions, and even killed without consequence... Han..." She paused for dramatic effect. "You’re being oppressed."
"I’m being... oppressed?" Han repeated, as if testing out the word for the first time.
Liangyu rolled his eyes so hard they nearly got stuck in the back of his head.
"Yes," Qinyue said with grave sincerity, placing a hand on Han’s shoulder. "You’re being terribly, brutally oppressed. Don’t you want to fight back? Don’t you want to rise up against your oppressors? Don’t you want to... revolt?"
"Re... revolt? But I’m just a simple restaurant worker-"
"Doesn’t matter who you are! Alone, you’re just a tiny, insignificant, weak little nobody," Qinyue declared.
Han looked visibly hurt by that harsh assessment, but Qinyue obviously didn’t couldn’t care less. She never does when she’s on a roll.
"But together," she continued passionately, "along with all of you other weak nobodies, do you know what you become?"
"What... what do I become?" Han asked, leaning forward with wide, eager eyes.
"You become... a somebody."
Liangyu almost got up right then and there to facepalm himself into oblivion. This was beyond ridiculous.
"I’m... I’m a somebody," Han said slowly, and it actually seemed like he was genuinely inspired by that utter bullshit she was feeding him.
Qinyue leaned in even closer and whispered intensely, "For Ironbell."
Han physically shivered with what looked like righteous rage and shot up from his seat! "For Ironbell!!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, fist raised in the air.
Now, let’s get back to me and Jian and our own predicament. We could now either distract the guard, yet once again, and try speaking with the mysterious old guy in the other cell through the bars, or we could just thrash the whole damn place and talk to him face to face like civilized people.
Given how much the mighty Zhang Rui had annoyed the living hell out of me with his pompous attitude and casual cruelty, it was definitely, without question, going to be the latter option.
Jian got into position, centering himself, as I moved backwards to give him some much-needed space to work his magic. He began his earth cultivation technique, summoning thick, gnarled tree roots from deep within the ground. The stone floor cracked under the natural pressure.
Zhang noticed the increasingly violent rumbling and walked towards us suspiciously, his hand moving to his weapon. "What’s going on-"
With a single powerful shot, Jian’s massive roots exploded through the prison bars like they were made of paper and hit Zhang right square in his smug face, knocking him completely unconscious before he could finish his sentence. He crumpled to the ground in an undignified heap.
"That’s what you get for whipping an old dude who couldn’t even protect himself," Jian said with satisfaction.
We immediately ran towards the cell where the old guy was being held. Not so surprisingly, every single cell we passed on our way was completely empty. Not a single soul anywhere other than me, Jian, and that mysterious old dude. When we finally reached his cell, we saw something way worse than what we had imagined.
"My God..." Jian muttered, his voice hollow with shock.
The old guy was barely a skeleton wrapped loosely in flesh. It looked as though he wasn’t just slowly starving to death, he was clearly suffering from some kind of terrible, wasting sickness that was eating him alive from the inside out.
He looked up at us with sunken, haunted eyes and immediately cowered in fear, pressing himself against the back wall.
"It’s okay, we come in peace!" I said quickly, raising my hands in a placating gesture. "We’re the good guys, I promise."
Jian broke this cell open too with another swift application of his cultivation, and we both knelt down beside the frail old man, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible.
"I’m Ziyang. This is Jian. What’s your name, grandfather?" I asked gently.
"Ming... Ming Lian," he replied in a raspy, barely audible whisper.
Yup, he was definitely talking about Mei Lian.
I took out Mei’s sketch from my pocket and showed it to him. "Is this Mei Lian your-"
"My granddaughter!" he interrupted desperately, suddenly finding strength in his desperation. "She’s my granddaughter! Can you save her? Please, you have to save her! I beg you!" Tears began streaming down his face.
"Okay, okay, calm down. First things first, we need to get you out of here safely," Jian said firmly but kindly.
He carefully lifted the helpless old guy as gently as he could, and together we carried him towards the entrance, supporting his weight between us. On our way back, we noticed Zhang had completely disappeared.
"Where the hell is Zhang?!" Jian asked, alarmingly.
"I don’t know, maybe he regained consciousness and went away to call for reinforcements. Honestly, I thought he’d stay unconscious for way longer than that. It was barely a few seconds, that hit should have kept him down for at least several minutes," I said, concerned.
We proceeded to make our way out as quickly as we could while supporting Ming Lian, and we finally made it. All of a sudden, we could hear the distinct rumbling of what sounded like dozens of soldiers approaching rapidly.
Judging by the heavy, rhythmic sounds, they were carrying serious weapons. Swords, spears, battle axes, you name it.
And lo and behold, nearly fifty heavily armed soldiers appeared before us in formation, with a bruised and furious Zhang leading them at the front.
Turns out, the prison wasn’t really that far from the main palace after all.
Zhang locked eyes with me, and said through gritted teeth and rage, "You fuckers are SO DEAD!"
That uptight bitch. Did he really have to bring fifty of them just for the two of us?! Talk about overkill.