WangXian Forever Book 10

Chapter 51: The Dam

Hui Gai has never had cause to worry about Zago. She's a capable demoness who, through her quiet intelligence and show of bravado, often masks her diligence and her strong moral compass. She has a fearsome sense of righteousness that is only perhaps matched by Wei Ying, and since his PengYou is the best person Hui Gai knows, that's a real compliment.

So when he shows up at her location, the situation is mildly arresting.

Zago is standing precariously upon a wet boulder hanging over the Yangtze River, where the current is smashing over and crashing through lesser stones in its way. Now, he might be thinking she's here for the scenery, except she's dangling a man upside down over the waters by his leg.

Whatever is going on here, she must have an excellent reason for this, he thinks.

Zago is almost one and a half times his size, and the man is making an awful racket in the dying sunlight. She scowls at him as Hui Gai hovers in front of them, and the red-faced man shrieks even more.

"If you're going to kill me, then do it now! Don't dangle me like bait over the river!" He yells.

"Are you perhaps trying to get someone's attention?" Hui Gai asks him coldly, checking out his own talons nonchalantly. "Only because she's running out of patience, so you better watch what you say." He grins at Zago. "Why ARE we here?"

"I caught this little rat trying to blow a hole in the newly patched up dam," Zago snarls. And then nearly drops her prey when the unmistakable odour of urine hits her nose as it trickles down the man's robes, a wet, smelly patch on his clothes. Zago makes a face at Hui Gai.

"So why are we still here?" Hui Gai inquires, as calmly as if they were talking about the weather.

"He won't spill his guts on who told him to do it. And anyway, we can't let him go, because the dirty weasel will only try again." Zago contemplates spinning him around like a baton. Maybe that'll make him talk.

"No," Hui Gai says, grinning with all of his pointy teeth. He licks his red lips and speaks his mind. "We could always take him to the Dark Angel." He likes that name for his friend. "Or the Yiling Laozu. You must have heard of him, this far south."

"The Yiling Laozu is dead! And anyway, how do you know someone else told me to do it? I could be acting on my own."

"But you would need brains for that," Hui Gai protests.

Zago snorts and tries to stop herself from laughing. This is a serious matter after all.

The man splutters with indignation as they try to figure out what they should do now.

"The thing is, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the person behind this has left a significant paper trail. I'm sure this guy's local, so all we have to do is find his home and take a look." Hui Gai sees the guy visibly panicking, and feels quite smug about his reasoning.

"Hey, that means we don't need him," Zago says, pretending to drop him.

The man lets out a blood curdling scream, and so she catches him again, still dangling him out into the dangerous waters. "What? Changed your mind?"

"You don't know where I live!" He tries. "You'll never find it without me!"

"Damned if you do, and damned if you don't, huh?" Hui Gai snickers at his own joke.

"Nice one," Zago says, waving her bait around as if she was fishing. "But he's got a point."

"Nah, I don't think so. I'll be right back." Hui Gai points at the man. "Don't piss her off while I'm gone, yeah?" He beams at Zago and disappears, leaving Zago contemplating the most satisfactory way to dispose of this creep.

"I'm wondering why," she muses out loud. "You obviously know that it would be a great loss of life if you flooded the villages around the dam. But I don't understand why you would do it. If you live nearby as you say, your home would also be destroyed. So what do you have to gain?"

The man snorts as if she's missing out on the most obvious factor, but he doesn't say anything.

Hui Gai arrives back seconds later, with a bunch of papers in his hand.

"I got what we needed. Let's take him to PengYou. He'll know how to dispose of trash."

Zago nods and suddenly, all three are back in Cloud Recesses, just outside the Jingshi.

"Keep him here, let me see if they're awake." Hui Gai tells Zago.

But that gives their prisoner an idea, and as he opens his mouth to scream out loud and wake up the inhabitants of Cloud Recesses, Hui Gai sees him just in time, and steals his voice. Then he thinks about his friend and decides that, no thank you, he would not want to see anything compromising, and so he gently wakes Wei Ying up through their mental connection.

A minute later, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan open the door, and Hui Gai knows straight away that Lan Zhan is unhappy at being woken like this.

"What's going on?" Wei Ying asks, still sleepy.

Lan Zhan is not fairing any better.

These past few days, their sleeping pattern has been messed with so much that they feel the difference between being rested and not, even if they're immortals, and with caring for Wei Ying, Lan Zhan is upset about the interruption to their rest.

"Sorry, PengYou. The matter was quite urgent, as you can see. Zago found this guy trying to blow up the dam again. Apparently, the locals had patched it up until it could be fixed properly, but this guy was actively sabotaging it. This is the proof." Hui Gai hands over the papers he'd found.

"How did you get these?" Wei Ying yawns, and then becomes more alert as soon as he starts reading.

"Easy. I woke up the town Head and asked. Dali is quite small, and I aimed for the nicest looking house. You'd be surprised at how much people will talk given the right incentives," he chuckles at some memory that Wei Ying has no wish to explore.

"Except this rat," Zago says distastefully, giving him a shake.

"These instructions...they're signed by Ciao Huji. But he could say that someone stole his signing block. So we should make him talk in front of the Emperor," Wei Ying says, watching the prisoner go pale.

"Well, PengYou has spoken," Hui Gai says, slinging an arm around the man's shoulders with a frightening smile. "We're gonna be best buddies while we wait!"

The prisoner takes one look at him and his eyes roll around in his head as he passes out.