Eagle (4 page)

Ying went to see the Emperor.

The Emperor sent Ying to the fight clubs, where Ying thrived. Ying had felt invisible at Cangzhen, but in the fight clubs he quickly made a name for himself. Still, it wasn't enough. He wanted to be respected. He wanted to be feared.

In a city called Xuzhou, there was a foreign fighter from a faraway island. The man had deep grooves carved into his cheeks, nose, and forehead, and the grooves were tinted a deep green. He looked menacing, and his looks earned him instant respect. Ying decided he wanted the same thing. He asked the foreigner to carve his face, but the foreigner laughed at him. He told Ying that the facial carving was for true warriors only.

Ying attacked the man on the spot, breaking both the foreigner's hands in quick succession. Needless to say, the man didn't fight again for quite some time. Once his hands healed, he did as Ying asked.

The foreigner told Ying that the lines he would carve would be dictated by Ying's inner spirit, and that no one could predict how it would turn out. After two days of excruciating carving and pigmenting—and a month of healing—the final result surprised the foreigner, but not Ying. Ying had been transformed into the dragon he always knew he was. He took his new identity a step further, sharpening his teeth and forking and elongating his tongue. For the first time, people saw his true self. And they ran. Ying loved it.

Ying went on to win the Fight Club Championship and was appointed a major within the Emperor's ranks. His face was a powerful tool, striking fear into the hearts of the men he fought in the arenas and into the souls of the young men he commanded. Ying would simply curl back his lips, and his soldiers would jump over the moon if he told them to. They even took his direction on a suicide mission against Cangzhen Temple, where two thousand of his men went in and only two hundred came out. Several weeks later, he sent his remaining men on another suicide mission against the stronghold of the region's most powerful bandits. All he had had to do was scowl, and they had obeyed.

However, now that Tonglong had betrayed him and he was officially an escaped prisoner, Ying's face
was a burden. He could no longer show it. Leave it to Tonglong to twist Ying's successes at Cangzhen and the bandit stronghold so that the Emperor would lock him in prison. Apparently, fear was not the only tool a person could use to accomplish his objectives. Tonglong had used strategy. Tonglong's plans had unfolded so slowly, Ying had been oblivious to them. Ying would never fall for such subtle trickery again.

Ying took another deep breath of putrid air beneath the wet blanket and popped his knuckles, one at a time. He had already taken care of Grandmaster. Next on his list was Tonglong.

Y
ing spent most of the following day beneath the wet, tattered blanket, only lifting one corner a few times to drink from the heavy rain that continued to fall. He was soaked to the bone and hungry, but there was little he could do about it. He had shown his face and men would be looking for him, especially in the daylight.

The clouds broke just before sunset, the rain softening to a fine mist. Not ideal conditions, but they would have to do. It was time for the hunted to become the hunter.

Ying peeled back the rotting blanket and squeezed dirty rainwater from his short black hair. The foul liquid coursed through the grooves in his carved cheeks,
dripping down onto his Pit Cleaner's uniform. He made a mental note to get new clothes soon.

Ying tore a section of the blanket loose and tied it around his head and face, like a leper, leaving only his eyes showing. The cloth reeked of mold. He stifled a cough and looked at the
qiangs
beside him.

Foreigners’ weapons,
Ying thought.
Weapons for the weak.

All five
qiangs
were slightly different in appearance but worked the same way. Ying had learned about them while serving the Emperor. The user pulled a metal hammer back with his thumb until the hammer locked in place. The hammer was fitted with a small piece of fire stone, and when a trigger beneath the
qiang
was pulled, the hammer released, causing the fire stone to swing forward and strike a metal plate. The fire stone would release a spray of sparks. Most times, one of the sparks would drop through a small hole into a pan that contained explosive black powder. The powder would ignite, in turn igniting a larger quantity of black powder that had been loaded directly into the
qiang
barrel behind a ball of lead. The resulting explosion would propel the lead ball out of the
qiangs
barrel at amazing speed.

Ying knew that Chinese had invented black powder hundreds of years earlier, but it was mostly used for fireworks at celebrations. It was foreigners who had taken black powder and developed these weapons.

Foreign
qiangs
came in many shapes and sizes, from the size of a person's hand to huge “cannons”
that shot iron balls the size of a man's head. Ying knew this firsthand, as it was only through the power of
qiangs
that he was able to destroy Cangzhen Temple with his army of young, unseasoned soldiers. It was a test of the
qiangs’
capabilities, the Emperor had said, and the results were undeniable. The
qiangs
had done the job better than Ying or anyone else could ever have imagined. Ying had even used a short
qiang
hidden up his sleeve to take care of Grandmaster.

Even so, Ying disliked
qiangs.
Using one took little skill and even less honor. Any monkey could fire a
qiang.
He saw them only as a weapon of last resort, nothing at all like the chain whip he wore around his waist. The chain whip was intimate. Using it required you to be close enough to look your opponent in the eye. It was his favorite. However, what he needed to do now required distance.

Ying ran his hand over each
qiang,
selecting three that had covers to protect their firing mechanisms from the weather. He would leave the other two behind.

Ying wrung out the blanket, wrapped up the three choice
qiangs,
and headed out of the alley.

T
onglong stood in the waning daylight, surveying the remains of the Jinan Fight Club. He was surprised by how quickly it had been reduced to rubble.

The building had collapsed upon itself during the fire, leaving little more than a tiered ring of stone walls around the deep pit arena. Fortunately for the city of Jinan, only a few sections of the surrounding buildings had burned, thanks to the heavy rains. Now that the rain had finally stopped, twenty men were in the pit, methodically sifting through charred roof timbers and other rain-soaked debris. Fifty more men combed the fight club's vast network of tunnels, searching for clues to where the children and Ying might have fled.

Tonglong adjusted his long ponytail braid over his
shoulder and watched the recovery operation. In all, he had roughly one hundred soldiers in his charge, plus a handful of individuals who had worked as employees of the fight club. The men varied in age, but most of his soldiers were young, age sixteen or seventeen. This was typical. At twenty-nine, Tonglong was considered an old-timer. His men looked up to him, which was a far cry from how they had felt about their former leader, Ying.

Foolish, arrogant boy,
Tonglong thought with a smile. Ying had been in a unique position. He had entered the fight clubs at age fifteen and been crowned champion before he'd turned sixteen. Also, Ying was from this region and therefore eligible to serve the Emperor by leading a small army.

Tonglong was nearly twice as old as Ying, and he was a former Fight Club Grand Champion, too. However, Tonglong had never been allowed to lead a large force. He was from a region in the south of China, and the Emperor, a northerner, considered him a foreigner.

Tonglong yearned to become a general, and he had realized that if he could get close to Ying, he might have a chance at realizing his goal. If he could position himself as Ying's right-hand man and then arrange a situation in which Ying would fail the Emperor, the Emperor might just give Tonglong Ying's troops. And that's exactly what happened.

The men now under Tonglong's charge weren't very skilled, but they were loyal. Tonglong was doing what he could to whip them into shape quickly, and
they seemed to embrace his rigorous training. To them, anything was better than Ying's constant selfish demands. Ying was clever, but he was too consumed with revenge to see beyond his immediate target. He would have sacrificed every one of his soldiers to accomplish his goals, and his men knew it. They hated Ying for it.

What a waste of talent,
Tonglong thought. Ying was now an enemy, and he would not live to see his seventeenth birthday. Tonglong would see to that personally.

In the meantime, Tonglong would continue with the next phase of his plan—getting close to the Emperor. This was coming along nicely, thanks to his mother's charms. There was also the matter of the dragon scroll map that the children from Cangzhen possessed. If the legends were true, its secret would allow Tonglong to rise to power far sooner than he could ever have imagined. In many ways, finding the children was more critical than finding Ying.

Tonglong frowned. In the past, he had made the mistake of allowing the children to gain possession of several dragon kung fu training scrolls. He had done this to keep the scrolls out of Ying's hands. Unfortunately, Tonglong had incorrectly assumed that he could find the children and take the scrolls back at a moment's notice. He would never underestimate those children again.

Tonglong wiped his sweaty brow and scanned the soldiers in the pit arena below. They needed to find
something soon, before the trail grew too cold. He glanced over at the remnants of the large wooden door that had separated the pit arena from the main tunnel. This was the last place he'd seen Ying and the children. All that was left was a gaping black hole in the pit-arena wall. Soldiers should be coming back out of it anytime now with updated intelligence.

“General Tonglong!” a voice called from the pit. “Over here, sir, if you please.”

Tonglong stared down his nose at one of the fight-club employees, a young man called GumLong, or
Golden Dragon
in Cantonese. Golden Dragon was the fight club owner's number one assistant, and he was making quite a name for himself fighting in the pit arenas. Not since Ying had someone caused such a commotion. Rumor had it that he was only fifteen years old, as Ying had been.

“What is it, Golden Dragon?” Tonglong asked.

“I've found something, sir,” Golden Dragon replied. “I believe it is the remains of LaoShu, the fight club owner.”

Tonglong noted the boy's steady voice. He didn't seem the least bit shaken by what he was looking at. Most people would be horrified if they'd uncovered any sort of human remains, let alone their boss's.

Tonglong leaned over the pit, eyeing Golden Dragon carefully. Regardless of the boy's age, he acted like a grown man. He was mature, wise, and well mannered. He reminded Tonglong of himself.

Golden Dragon swept aside a layer of wet soot
and lifted something from the muck. Tonglong saw a charred human hand. A gaudy gold ring was fused to one finger, and atop the ring sat a large jade rat. The ring was so large, Tonglong could easily see it from where he stood.

Tonglong nodded. “LaoShu, indeed. Well done.”

Golden Dragon nodded back, then turned to the pit entrance tunnel.

Tonglong looked down at the huge doorway and saw one of his soldiers step through it, along with one of the fight club employees. Between them was a prisoner. The prisoner's wrists and ankles were bound with short lengths of rope, but it was obvious they weren't necessary. The man could barely hold himself up. His face and robes were black with soot, and his sallow skin hung from his cheeks like dry parchment. He moaned, “Water, please … ”

“Where did you find him?” Tonglong asked.

“In the farthest tunnel reserved for fight club participants,” the soldier replied.

Tonglong paused. “Isn't that the tunnel where the round eye was being held?”