Polluted Jianghu: 新年少鹏

The moon is bright in your dream and you have reason for your fear. It's nighttime in this fantasy hamlet, absolutely quiet save for the cracking and slurping of some monster in the villa. Perhaps the villa itself is the reason for your fear. When you walked in you saw that the barley was dry straw and the river was mud so why was this house so vital and full of life? Why is it that in this season of starvation, something was eating people, slurping the fat from their bones and cracking it open for marrow?

You enter the villa. Dead leaves crunch under your feet. The floorboards, the walls, they're all immaculate.

The monster is here, behind the family shrine. You pause. Why is your mouth watering like you've just caught a whiff of uncle's famous spitroast cumin lamb? A trickle drips to the floor as you stare up at the nameless, faceless, generic god. Could be Guan Yu. Could be Yue Fei. Could be anyone and anything, so you step close to the offerings.

Chunks of meat and gristle never looked so inviting.

You thrust the spear in your hands through the heart of the god-statue, smashing the statue and the wooden wall behind it and scattering burning incense sticks, wafting their sandalwood scent over the room. You see the monster now, an aged tree, bent and twisted of an old man slowly rising to a stately height. His eyes are that of a leopard's, glinting fiercely in the gloom, and his teeth are iron needles dripping with blood, having an arm (pearly white) clamped between them.

A fine miscreant, it scoffs, flecks of blood spraying over a fine set of silk robes. The kind that comes cheap on Taobao for reenactors and fetishists. To barge on this august personage's meal, which whore birthed you?

Aaaalright you're killing this prick.

You do so. It bats away the first thrust with a gnarled claw, and in two moves it has you under his shoe. Something squelches under your cheek. You have eyes, and if the next words out of its mouth are what you think it is, by god you will dance in its entrails, but cannot see Mount Tai! A frustrated, high pitch whine burns out of your throat. Miscreant villain, altar-wrecker. Whyfore have you come to disturb this harmonious society?

"Y'fucking eat people," you mumble out from under his shoe.

People exchange their sons to eat, when they grow old, children offer flesh to heal their elders. Since time immemorial man has eaten man and now you protest history?

"Y'words're pointless sophistry'n shit. Get yer foot off me and let's have round two."

He does. You stand, dust off and take its measure. It wipes off the blood from its lips, regarding you through leopard eyes. "What's this harmonious society business?" you ask. It's watching you too intently. You can't fake him out at this point.

It is when fathers father, mother mother, and son son, it responds. Something rolls against your foot. It is a small skull, bits of meat still attached. Your stomach churns.

"And the cannibalism?"

As their lord, it's only-

"That's not in the Analects."

You don't know that. Have you read the Analects? No. You were too busy travelling the Jianghu and picking dumbass fights.

You fold your arms and glare at the leopard eyed reenactor. "Fuck you, man. You're a figment of my imagination. Same thing with the motherfucker before you. If I haven't read it you haven't. Out with it."

Heaven is unkind, the monster mopes. Then it composed itself and flicked its long sleeves for no discernable reason. It is a grift. Wow, okay, you hadn't expected that. Do you see that? While this land is peaceful I am fat and happy. While this land foments I fear for my life. Haven't you done that? Made promises you never bothered to keep. Lied your way to burn down Kirishima. Where is he now? Dead. Because of you. It's a grift all the way down.

"I kinda get it." It's so cynical. Is this what you're like, in the end?

So let us eat.

As it bends down over the gore, you grab it by the head and snap its neck as the hungry sky falls down on the uncanny villa.

When you wake up your mouth is still watering. Your bandages have seemingly migrated from your face to the general regions of your chest and legs. You crane your head to the left. You come face to face with a wall of stitched sofa arm. You crane your head to the right. A bowl of millet gruel stares you in the face. Where…? A rib creaks and something tears when you try to sit up. Breathe in. Breathe out. The pain is temporary. You can stand up, and- no you can't. Immediately your legs give out and you fall back onto the sofa.

Goddamn. No more action movie hero bullshit. You could do with the millet gruel and a cup of something hot. The first is in your grasp and you polish the (very high quality) bowl with your tongue. You stand up again. This time you don't fall. Now all you need to do, is walk the short little distance from the living room with the big HDTV to the cramped kitchen. One foot in front of the other. See? Short gasps escape from your ribcage. Nothing to it. All you need to do is walk.

"Oh, fuck." Moment you walk into the kitchen you collapse, and you pull yourself back up again. Coffee, coffee, where's the grinder? You grab a bunch of beans from a paper bag and spill them on a cutting board. There's the knife, right. You set about chopping the beans into ground, and the sound of metal against wood rises. It's soothing.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

That is a very good question. What the fuck are you doing? "Making coffee," you state, continuing the chop while turning back. You see Yuexia and Flay, who both look like they are witnessing a crime against god and humanity. "What's with the bag? Is this Yuexia's apartment? Why am I here?"

"It's money," Flay walks forward and grabs you by the shoulder with her metal arms, and marches you back into the sofa. "It's all over now, and I have to say we did a pretty good job, only that I didn't get to loot everything. You're here because our cute 'lil hero panicked and called a cab to the only place she knew." You flip her a thumbs up. She flips you one back.

She dumps the fat stacks of yuan on the table. "We're up a couple hundred million." There's a satisfied cant to her smile. "Even split three ways equally we're all filthy fucking rich."

Yuexia's still downcast. "I'm gonna have so much trouble hiding this," she grouses.

"Don't worry about it. Big sis can launder it for you for a fee."

She shrugs. "Also, thanks for getting the book," Yuexia says, brushing her hair behind her. "It was a total dick move leaving me alone in that apartment building. Your spiritual encouragement is noted and appreciated but I would have liked you at my back."

You lift a finger, and then collapse into the soft cushions. "What happened after that? I guess Cho and Han were successful, and Oogami and the slitmouth are dead." Yuexia pumps a fist. "Did she like, beat all five hundred?"

"I fought like, a hundred?" She takes a guess. "After that Flay floated a drone over you and broadcast you killing Oogami. Then everyone just gave up."

"That's about right," Flay nods. Somewhere she's procured a stool. "Cho and Han are running the show now. They're in talks with Kirisaki to rebrand the association. Kirishima isn't dead-" phew- "but he busted up Remora pretty good, and he's recuperating in a separate clinic. He's gonna live, though. Oh, yeah." She snaps a metal finger at you. "If Kirishima sees you again, he says he's gonna kill you."

"Oh, dope."

"That's not dope."

"It's pretty dope. Where's he now?"

"Smoothing over things with the Korean gangs. Seriously, I don't want you moving outside of this apartment. It's Yuexia's by the way. Just a temp thing until shit's sorted out. Anyway, you two enjoy yourselves. I'm gonna dip."

After that, Yuexia tossed you the remote on the TV and you found a rerun of Murder the Fifth on some channel or the other. She disappears to do whatever she does and you content yourself to the adventures of this once-idol prettyboy (in real life) playing the role of a detective, solving an intricate murder of the fifth daughter of a sprawling family. There's recriminations, backstabbing, and in the end your head hurts with all the complex plots. At least it's pretty. The director spent five minutes in a slow, tracking silent shot of nothing but the main character walking through rain.

Absolute kino.

Yuexia comes out and goes to the kitchen and brews the coffee you chopped up. One for you, one for her, joining you at the couch just in time to see the grandmother admit to poisoning her sister for being an utter nuisance when they were children. Now the sister is absolute nuts and lives in an attic. "See?" she asks. "Good, right?"

"I think this is all a bit contrived." The coffee is not good at all. You should have searched a bit more for the grinder instead of making do with a knife. Ick. Dilute shitwater. The two of you continue. Something rises to your mind. "Hey, how'd you make it out?"

"I told you. I cut down a hundred and then everyone gave up after that."

"So you've killed."

She lets her head fall down to her knees at that. "I don't want to think about it."

"Then don't. Hey, did that guy just shoot his own mother? Harsh."

Hate to say this but you're kinda getting invested in this. This tawdry, well acted melodrama hits all your buttons. The son is digging a shallow grave for his own murdered mother and the cold stare on his face as he stares down into the camera placed into the pit is just aces.

"I guess I did kill a couple. I mean, I was using a sword. Swinging that thing through them. There's no way that that's not fatal. And... " her voice shakes. You look at Yuexia, staring at the screen ignoring everything else. "God. How do you deal with it, grand abbot?"

"From inference, a truly earth shattering amount of drugs."

"I'm going to find a better coping method, if it's all the same to you." The hero, having disappeared for most of the episode's runtime, is back in the shot with a folder full of surveillance data. "Hey," Yuexia says. "You look kinda similar." You grunt, neither assenting or denying. What's in there? You're on the edge of your seat. "Hold on a sec-"

Before you know it she's taking a selfie with you. In the spirit of things you throw out a peace sign. "What the fuck?" you ask her.

"It's just to my friends, be cool," she reassures you. "Aaand-" the sound of notifications come up in rapid succession. "There we go," she grins. "Hahaaa. They're so jealous." Did she just use you to flex on her friend group? That's pretty hilarious. You share a laugh with her just as the lead on the TV screen gets ganged up and kicked the shit out of by a group of local thugs. Scene end. Credits, roll.

Yuexia stands up and stretches. "Anyway, I'm going to shower off. Do not move from that sofa. Do not."

You Are Going To Move From That Sofa.
[]- I'm Gonna Drink Myself To Death: You are a simple, hedonistic man, and you have no reason to change your base urges because those base urges are kinda fun.
[1.2] {Wrathful Manifestation} I'm Gonna Pray And Shit. Kinda a dick move you just did. Might as well pray at a temple for a chunk of good karma to fall out of the heavens and brain you.

Your current mode of dress is suitable for hobos and people going undercover as hobos. You hadn't noticed it for so long, caught up with the hurdy gurdy (funny word) of the whole yakuza grift thing. In your possession are the kicks you looted from the Sunflower campus, a bit torn up and stained with bilgewater, but still mostly fine. Your trackpants are stained with blood and ripped at multiple locations as is your jacket, which is draped on a sofa arm at your side. Your sleeveless t-shirt is more of a suggestion than an actual thing.

Solution: liberate clothing from the bourgeois oppressors of the people.

The TV is now in a commercial stage, the cheap ad music masking the sound of you slipping off the sofa and making a beeline towards the closet by the entryway. The rich smell of leather greets you with the opening of the doors. Yuexia's parents have good taste. You spy just some real slick shit in there. Couture, you would go as far to say. The one that catches your eye most is a fur lined black leather bomber, which oozes everything you are not. Namely class.

You close the door behind you. After a moment of thinking you go back and stuff some couch cushions under the blanket you slept in and stuff a money stack into your pocket. By the time the elevator doors close on you you realize that a couple things are missing. One, your hair tie was lost somewhere in between murdering slitmouth and waking up from blissful slumber. So, your hair falls down your shoulders like a greasy, bloodstained waterfall. Two, non fractured ribs. You hadn't noticed it when it was warm but now the chillness is really accentuating it.

Whatever. You breathe in and out, steady as a rock. Pain goes away. Still got it.

Elevator doors open. Post-snowfall J3 air hits you like a hammer and pain returns with some friends. You stagger against the handrail, feeling the ribs poking into your organs. Then your breathing levels out and you forge onwards into the snow.

Scratch one for Yuexia being connected, you guess. It's a gated neighborhood, with the ground levels being a winter wonderland and the apartment blocks rising stately to the sky. You hurry to find an exit, stopping only to execute a sharp salute to a pair of confused retired cadres paying chess in a bakery, before the urge to piss all over this little hothouse of crude accumulation gets to you.

Temples, temples, temples. You find a bus stop and flip open your phone. There's one about ten stops away and a transit. Only, it's been closed, as you discovered when you drop off the bus. "Because of snow damages," you read the sign on the metal barricades, "this temple is closed temporarily? What the shit?" Your voice echoes in the empty streets.

Fuck. You're already out and your phone is buzzing with fifty messages from Yuexia so you calmly power it off, thinking where to go next. For a start, that grill is cooking lamb right in front of the temple. The hot oil drips down your chin as you continue walking and stewing over the abject failure of upholding the dharma by the fake monks of Lingchen Temple. Snow damage? Goddamn, just rope off the bit and continue as normal instead of taking the entire spring break off.

The skewer is empty. You toss it into a trash can and buy some more snacks, which only makes you angrier now that you have something in your stomach. And then, that's gone, so you buy some more, which makes you angrier, so on and so forth.

It's a whole cycle, one that was only broken when your jello legs stagger in front of a junkyard and the entire corpus falls down on a bench. Ah, fuck. Just your luck. Perfect cigarette mood and you left yours at Yuexia's apartment.

The wind lets up a little bit, and the midday sun warms you up a little. Curiously you notice that there's people entering the junkyard, right into the middle building. They come in ones and twos, with hands clasped together and head bowed. Is this an underground temple?

The sun beats down on your neck. "Hell to it," you mumble and join the line. "Hey, excuse me." You tap the shoulder of the suited man in front of you. "Is this a temple?"

Your head rocks back and a fresh blossom of pain blooms in your nose. "The hell-?" Oh. They're yakuza. How many suited mooks go around with full body tattoos lurking under their starched collars? "You guys." A spurt of blood trickles down into your mouth. Hot and salty. "I do anything to ya recently?"

The dumbfuck question gets them even more angry. "You fucking bastard," one of them chokes out. Are they crying? Man, you never thought Oogami had it in him. "You betrayed Kirishima! I'm gonna-"

So you're wrong. You were just about to throw hands when another hand grabs the most eager one. "Calm down. It's all over now, and he was with Cho and Han." Old guy. Looked kinda familiar. "Worked for the new bosses. Can't do shit."

"Sir," the first one says, "you can't possibly expect me to stand in the same fucking line as this traitor. What're they gonna say? We're gonna look like bitches to everyone." This generates a wave of that's rights, that's rights.

"You know that's totally fair," you concede. "But I just want to point out that you ain't Kirisaki anymore. As far as I know you're Cho and Han's kids. What're they rebranding you as? Anyway, we're all together now, so is there really a point? 'Sides, we all know what's gonna happen. You'll throw hands and I'll fold up all of you like metal chairs."

"Fuckin.' I don't give a shit." He's up in your face now. "You can put me in the morgue but if I can scratch you a little then it's all worth it."

"I respect the hell out of that. But now? You want that heat?"

"Listen to the man, Liu," the oldie states. "I hate this little prick too, but we're under the eyes of the bodhistivatta. Give it a week. You'll get the chance."

"You know I'm standing behind you, right? And I am a proven traitorous motherfucker who orchestrated the downfall of the old bosses?"

The old man turns and stares at you in a very specific way. "Bitch," he enunciates, and turns back.

The motherfucker. Only the fact that punching him in the head would prove him right in some way you can't quite articulate stays your hand, and you stew all the way into the once-junk-warehouse turned shrine to Guanyin. The rear wall is dominated by the bodhistivatta, made out of rebar and rusted car mechanisms, bludged, cut, and welded into the the shape of Guanyinpusa, her head scraping to roof. Her face peers down at you, serene and untroubled, from the metal sheet hammered into the suggestion of the above.

And all around her, suspended on wires, are arms. Mechanical. Flesh. Limbs orbit the Iron Guanyin of Compassion, each twisted into a mudra. Some hold flowers, others grip bundles of hell money, and still others hold the thousand things that mankind couldn't go without. And of course, the sandalwood smoke is so overpowering the room, not only smelling fresh and clean, but also tinted through a gray smog.

On reflection some of those arms look awfully-

"What the fuck?" One of the yakuza turns at you. "What-" You hand him a switch knife that was previously on a terminal descent down into his bald plate. Some arm up there had their grip slack for a moment.

"Bad karma," you shrug. "What can you do?"

"Fucking hell." He walks off with the switchknife in his pocket with the rest of his friends. You turn and stretch, staring up at the constellation of arms. You notice that they're going up to place a bouquet of flowers at the feet of the statue. You also notice that you are noticeably light on votive offerings, and that there's a very obviously displayed gift kiosk by the entrance. Furthermore, you also notice a pair of youngish twins arguing with a monk, who's cassock does nothing to hide the fact that he is incredibly ripped.

What do you do after you pray?
[]- Buy an offering for the Iron Guanyin: It's the proper thing to do, isn't it? Even though it's probably just going to be resold by the proprietors and channeled into a slush fund somewhere..
[]- Walk around the junkyard: This is an interesting place. Be a fly on the wall, go find where the bodies are buried.
[1.4] {Harmonious Society} Go complain about the arms: They could kill someone!