Shuli Go Stories Vol. 3: The Stories They Tell

Part 6

Lian estimated it was one day later when the appointment came due. In that time she hadn't seen or heard from another soul. She'd called out to the other prisoners a few times but received no reply. She could barely even hear their breathing, quiet as the dungeon was. No other prisoners were delivered, and nobody did a thing to any of the existing victims. She expected a day without food or water was enough to wreck most people, especially given the soul-deadening conditions of the dungeon and its eerily silent denizens.

Shuli Go, however, could go days without water and weeks without food and still survive, and in a meditative trance that could be stretched out even further. Lighter and more attentive than sleep, but deeper than conscious meditation, the Shuli Go practice was closest to remaining perpetually in the mental space just before one falls asleep: the signals of the body numbed and the mind drifting back and forth between darkness and activity. Lian had gone into the trance for days at a time when food was scarce or her body needed to recover without the risk of falling asleep.

The result was that Lian was little worse for wear when her two guards returned, searing her eyes with their torch for a moment, then pulled her out of the cage and roughly dragged her along the ground.

"Water, please," she begged, adding a hoarseness to her voice she hoped was convincing. All she received was another slap across the face however. She again held back the urge to kill them both, realizing that they were moving her with purpose further down the dungeon. She was about to meet the one in charge of using the Book of Dragons.

That one wound up being a tall, thin, bespectacled man, in his mid-twenties, no older. He had the thin wrists and gaunt cheeks of an academic, and as he stood over Lian she saw he had the eyes of a soft-spoken, gentle and kind scholar. The guards tied Lian down with thick ropes at the thighs and stomach to a hard bamboo chair, but left her hands bound in chains on her lap above the ropes.

Aside from the torch the guard carried, there were a series of candles on a long stone table in front of Lian and behind the scholar. It was more than enough light for Lian to make out a number of books, alchemical implements, and surgical tools on the table. But she couldn't spot the characteristic golden reflection from the supposed Book of Dragons on the edges of any of the tomes.

"Zhu Zhuyang," the scholar said with a smile shallow and deeply unsettling. "Although I assume that's not your real name, it is a pleasure to meet you." He held his hand up to his chest and closed his eyes softly. "I, am Wong Gafung." He smacked his lips lightly as if savoring a tasty meal, and that's when Lian realized he was truly, absolutely psychopathic. It was her torture he was savoring, pre-emptively.

"I...I did nothing wrong," Lian stammered, the fear in her voice no longer an act. She could tell before he'd even laid a finger on her that the intellect in his face had been turned towards something so inhumane he no longer thought that existing in a dungeon and working by thin candlelight was odd or extreme. Wherever he'd come from – University, refugee camp, another dungeon – he had found an environment in which his natural tendencies could thrive. Lian pulled against the ropes holding her and found they were too well tied for her liking. Her pulse quickened involuntarily, and at once the stench of the dungeon air reappeared in her nostrils, almost making her gag.

"It does not matter what you did," Wong replied, an easy-going nature in his voice. "All that matters is what you will do."

"What's that?" She asked, allowing her natural urge to resist to sneak out of her voice as she tugged against the ropes and tested the slack on her wrist chains. She could reach the ropes on her thighs easily enough, but the ones on her stomach were just out of reach on account of the wrist bindings.