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A man can see without his eyes, but he cannot see without his heart.
Hua Manlou learned this truth after his sense of sight was taken away from him at a young age. But he's for...
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Slender fingers tapped, over and over against smooth cloth. A quick, stolen sideways glance to his companion who had only been able to rejoin him after an uncharacteristically long stretch of time. But, Lu Xiaofeng opted to silence himself. He was a guest in the Hua family home, and Hua Manlou deserved to have some private time with the young woman he seemed to like.
"Here," Hua Manlou said, catching his attention.
Lu Xiaofeng turned himself towards his friend completely, prepared for anything. "Brother Lu, put this on," he removed his red ring from his finger, placing it onto the table.
"What? Why?" he asked quizzically. Perhaps he wasn't ready for anything, but almost everything. "It's not my sixtieth birthday; what're you doing giving me presents?"
Hua Manlou merely grinned, again gesturing for him to put the ring on. "Just put it on. I want to tell you something."
"Hmm... Okay," he agreed, slipping the ring onto his middle finger where it fit most comfortably. "I've put it on; go ahead and tell me."
An odd silence lulled over Hua Manlou, before he pulled himself away from the table they both shared and stood up, pacing around the room a few steps. There was a heaviness in the air that Lu Xiaofeng could feel, as his friend's eyes glossed over with a certain pain that he had never seen before.
Blindness had never seemed to bother Hua Manlou, but it seemed that the person who took his sight away held a type of power over him that no other man could have.
"That night... I heard my father fighting in the tunnels underneath our manor grounds..."
A door slid upwards as the young Hua Manlou approached the dark tunnels, leaving the darkness of the night for a different type of darkness. Clashes of swords could be heard not far in the distance, and he recognized the sound of his father's grunts. Another man seemed to be fighting with him, but he was not sure who.
The young child slowly stepped deeper into the tunnels, even as the original door at the entrance closed behind him. The light was only brought to his eyes through the slits in the ceiling and the sides of the tunnel.
Beneath an offering table was a small open area, large enough for a child of his size to fit through. As he leaned closer down to the gaping area, he heard his father's voice more clearly. He was down there, fighting with his enemy.
Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was bravery within the young child to do such a reckless act, but he climbed underneath the table, soon finding himself sliding down quickly down the path before landing hard against the stone ground beneath him.
