BOOK 9. Zhao Yunlan is a private investigator who will accept almost any case as long as it pays, and when he finds a client's lost cat, they ask him to look into their friend's memory loss but he refuses. Shen Wei is an architect and after he mee...
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Yunlan opened his eyes and sighed at the thought of being here in chains, why did it have to be chains, very melodramatic, back to the days of dungeons and torture chambers. This psycho really had the same insights as the writer Poe, this was his style, all that was missing were the rats, or did he speak too soon.
Yunlan had been stripped to the waist and suspended in chains which were manacled to his wrists with no way of slipping them off. There were a few good points about this scenario. Number one, they were using Yunlan's whip against him, which meant that he could control it, not them. Number two, they'd left his boots on which concealed two small daggers and if found, they wouldn't have been able to touch them. Number three, they didn't know about Yunlan's fire capabilities and after that he ran out of good points apart from realigning his spine by the way he was chained.
He had to get out of here somehow. If he used his flames to melt the steel, the fire wouldn't hurt him but the hot steel would. Plus there was always someone sitting in the same cell watching. Yunlan looked around, yes this was definitely a cell, old stone walls, wooden floors, iron bars, and the watcher had the key to the cell door, possibly the one for his manacles as well. Apep had been hung on a hook inside on the wall, although it wouldn't have mattered if it was outside, he still would have been able to get through the bars.
Where was this place? It wasn't an illusion, it was real, but it must look like a castle or a very old building from the outside. Yunlan hadn't seen it when he'd arrived, and he smiled to himself, he hadn't seen anything when he arrived. They'd been watching for him outside his office and grabbed him from behind with a chloroform soaked rag over his face, so he was asleep for a long time. When he did surface he was here and as an intro, they'd held a hot branding iron to his chest to wake him up properly, followed not long after by the five lashes on his back using his own whip. It took a lot of convincing before Apep had agreed, and allowed them to use him, but Yunlan knew that they were signing their own death warrant. He wouldn't be able to stop the snake later and at present he didn't even want to try, he only wished that he would would be around long enough to witness Apep's ingenuity.
Yunlan had no illusions, he knew that he was the bait in the trap and that he would only be useful for a limited amount of time. Ouyang Zhan was really after Black Robe and now he was sure that the psycho was convinced, that it was Shen Wei. Why else would he have snatched him, Yunlan was the person he was looking for. That was when full realisation hit him, he wasn't getting out of this cell alive and the previous torture was to bring Black Robe. The only way he could save Wei and the spirit was to make life difficult for anyone near him, and he allowed himself time to grieve and come to terms with the situation.
His cell companion watched as Yunlan cried over the losses he would have, of not being able to spend the rest of his time with Wei, the only one he would ever love in this life. Then he laughed at some of the memories he held of Wei being embarrassed by his outlandish behaviour, followed by a feeling of deep warmth as he thought of the soft gentle touch of Wei's hand on the side of his face before he kissed him, and gave in to Yunlan's needs, and again his tears flowed but they were followed by deep anger this time. What right did anyone have to deny him his life?
