A Wuxia Tale: Blades and Flowers

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(WANG HUA)

This is not good. Oh, this is not making me happy. Not at all!

I ran fast towards the Wang Estate, pushing my legs to moved faster to get home. I was practicing with LiAn in the brothel when the news came to me. It was like being kicked in the gut by my Baba. The kind of kick that could throw me several feet in the air and will bring me down to the ground where I cannot move because it was just too shocking and painful. Thats what it feels like to hear that Jin was hurt. That someone stabbed Jin and that someone is my twin brother.

Jin and Dao. What in the world are they doing now?! Oh! I could kill them both!

I went straight to the library where I saw my Father standing still with that thoughtful look on his face. An expression my Father has when he is thinking deeply about something.

"Tell me he is alive," I said to Father when he noticed me coming in.

"Your brother is fine," Father said.

"How sure are you of that?" I asked with deep concern. "Father, they said the incident happened almost a week ago and Dao was thrown in the Mughal prison when he was arrested at the scene where it all happened. That means Dao has been in that Mughal Prison for a week now. How is he fine if they are torturing him there?!" I shouted the last question as my emotions finally spilled.

My twin brother is in prison, enduring unspeakable torture in the hands of those barbaric Mughal and we are standing here doing nothing for Dao.

"Aren't you worried about Prince Jin?" Father asked me.

"Why will I worry about him when I couldn't even do anything to help my own blood in this situation?" I replied snappishly. "Father, maybe its time we pluck Dao out of that place..."

"Your brother is fine," Father said.

That frustrate me some more. "Stop telling me he is fine! He is in prison, getting tortured!"

"And you shouting at me is not helping him! You being hysterical is not helping!" Father shouted back at me. "I received reports from my people in the Mughal Kingdom that your brother is still alive and relatively doing fine under the circumstances he found himself into. A situation he did to himself. This is his fault."

"And if we don't do anything to help him, it'll be our fault if Dao comes back here damaged." I said.

Father closed his eyes. "We have to be patient. Your Baba is gathering information. He said he will inform me as soon as he got all the details about this latest...thing your brother did..."

"Since when did Master Dayu wait for anyone to hand him anything before he moves?" I asked.

"Since your Baba asked me to stay still," Father's eyes and tone sharpened at me. "Moving without a plan could kill your brother. He is already in prison. If we give them more reason to be angry, it'll be easy for them to slit your brother's throat and just send his rotting corpse to us. We will not give them anymore reason to make this situation worse. We will keep still because they have your brother hostage in that prison. Do you understand that?!"

"Argh!" I shouted in extreme frustration at feeling helpless. I flexed my fingers, opening and closing my palms into fists, as I try to think. Its hard to do that when all I could think about is riding on that kingdom and blundering my way into that prison to get my twin brother out of there.

With my strength, I could maybe do it. And if Baba will help me...the possibility of that rescue being successful is almost guaranteed.

But Father is right. The Mughal Kingdom has Dao hostage. By the time we got to the prison, they would've already killed Dao to punish us for thinking of saving him by stealth.