Chapter 53: Pot Belly
"Do you think uncle is on the bottom level?" Yanyin asked loudly. "Or the middle? He always told me he preferred middle things. Not too high, not too low. Just perfectly in between. Except for tea. Which he always wanted scalding hot..."
She went on and on about her uncle as we walked further into the belly of the beast.
The inner prison was dimly lit. Some cells we passed were completely empty. Others held miserable cultivators, as their spiritual pathways were forcefully sealed shut with glowing talismans slapped across their chests and foreheads.
Further down, we passed enormous, reinforced cages where heavily shackled beasts of unrecognizable origins breathed in the shadows.
Every so often, we would come across a smaller cell where a human prisoner would press their face against the rusted bars, looking at us with tired, sunken eyes, as if we were aliens descending from the stars.
Aunt Hua, with her cold demeanor, was probably the only face they were used to seeing down in this miserable pit.
Some of the prisoners were pushed to absolute desperation at the sight of us. They stretched their arms out through the gaps in the iron as they begged for us to free them or to offer even a drop of water.
It was a heartbreaking sight.
A single glance at their destroyed, bloody fingernails was enough to tell you they had tried every conceivable method to claw their way out. And a glance at their brutally scarred arms told you they had been severely punished for those attempts.
As we descended even deeper, a strange sound broke through. It was a rhythmic humming coming from a nearby cell. It was surprisingly melodic, yet a bit rough. A bizarrely cheerful tune in a place devoid of joy.
Yanyin abruptly stopped in her tracks. She tilted her head, listening intently, and then turned her body to face the source of the sound.
"Is that it?" I asked in a whisper, as we cautiously approached the cell in question.
The humming stopped the moment the prisoner noticed the movement outside his cage. He shuffled out from the deep shadows of the back wall.
"Is that..." the man rasped. He grabbed the bars and squinted his eyes, pressing his face forward to get a better look in the dim light. His eyes widened in shock. "Yanyin! By the heavens, it’s you! How incredibly exciting to meet you again!"
He gripped the iron cell bars tighter. "And you’re without a blindfold this time! What a treat! You can finally look at my magnificent pot belly, haha!" He aggressively patted his protruding stomach, sending a small cloud of dust into the air, desperately trying to elicit a laugh from the little girl.
Yanyin didn’t even flinch. She didn’t smile, she didn’t step back. She just stood there with her feet planted firmly on the ground, and stared at him with her arms tightly crossed over her chest.
The rest of us in the group exchanged highly confused glances.
"Do you know him?" I asked her.
"Kind of," Yanyin replied, her voice entirely devoid of emotion.
The man in the cell cleared his throat, suddenly remembering his manners. "Ah, I’m Xie Yuanjun," he announced, puffing out his chest.
He attempted to introduce himself to the rest of us with a grand bow, though he couldn’t actually bend more than two degrees.
He immediately turned his attention back to Yanyin. "And who might be these incredibly strong-looking folks you’ve brought along? Your friends? Did you finally manage to get some heroes down here to help save me?"
Yanyin simply raised her eyebrow.
Yuanjun’s forced smile faltered. "Oh, no," he groaned, dramatically facepalming with a filthy hand. "You’re still mad about last time, aren’t you? Listen, I’m so, so sorry, Yanyin! I really am. I just... I have a bad habit of speaking strictly out of impulse.
My mouth moves faster than my brain. Would you please find it in your heart to forgive me? Look, we can still save your uncle! There’s still hope!"
To prove his apology, he dropped to the stone floor and proceeded to try and convince her by doing a few sit-ups. He managed exactly one and a half before he gave up, and collapsed onto the damp floor with a pathetic wheeze.
The absurd exaggeration of his display almost broke Yanyin’s stoic stance. I saw the corner of her mouth twitch as she fought back a chuckle. But she quickly hardened her face once more.
She turned away from the cage, looked directly up at Longwei, and stated with clarity, "I don’t like him. He said my uncle was going to die."
A collective gasp echoed through our group.
Qinyue instantly lost her cool. Her eyes flashed dangerously. "How could you say something so horrific to a little child, you sick bastard?!"
"Hold up! Hold up!" Yuanjun yelped, scrambling backward on the floor and throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I do admit I have a severe problem keeping my thoughts to myself, and I am terrible at reading the room when things are sensitive! But the child is clearly remembering the event a bit too harshly than what I originally said!"
"That’s right," Yanyin nodded. "Silly me, I was remembering it entirely wrong. Let me correct it. Here’s what exactly happened. You mocked me for believing that my uncle was going to be released, laughed in my face, and then you told me that they were going to execute him in a public spectacle."
Another sharp gasp ripped through our group.
Yuanjun scrambled to his feet, stammering and waving his hands frantically as his panicked brain desperately tried to come up with a defense that wouldn’t result in his immediate demise.
Before he could form a coherent sentence, Longwei stepped forward. He placed a gentle, almost paternal arm around Yanyin’s small shoulders, pulling her slightly against his side.
He issued a soft command. "Qinyue. Would you be so kind as to melt down his bars?"
Qinyue’s lips curled into a predatory smirk. "With pleasure."
She stepped up to the cell, raised her hands, and unleashed her qi. The thick iron bars glowed cherry red, then blinding white, then into liquid lava that dripped against the damp stone floor, leaving a molten hole in the front of the cage.
Yuanjun stood frozen, staring at the bubbling puddle of iron that used to be his door. He looked utterly confused for a second, but then his phenomenally dumb, overly optimistic brain completely misread the situation.
He looked past the furious glares of our group, locked eyes with Longwei’s calm, smiling face, and his own face broke into a relieved grin.
"Am I..." Yuanjun asked, his voice trembling with hope, "Am I free?"
Longwei smiled back. It was a pleasant smile. He nodded encouragingly. "Yes, you are. You may come out now."
