The mission was supposed to be simple. Sneak into a house while the owner was away and retrieve some documents. Simple enough for fourteen-year-old Ying and his fifteen-year-old best friend, Luk, to handle while a group of warrior monks waited more than a li away.
Ying had memorized the home's floor plan. He knew exactly where to go. Luk was there to kick down locked doors with his mighty back-kick, perfected by a lifetime of deer-style kung fu training.
Simple.
However, Grandmaster's information had been flawed. The house wasn't empty.
Ying had never seen anything like the object the home's owner was holding when Luk kicked down the first door. It was a long metal tube partially wrapped in wood, braced tightly against the man's shoulder. He would never forget the terrific BANG! accompanied by a burst of flame and a huge cloud of smoke. Luk falling to the ground with a large hole in his side.
Grandmaster should have warned them about the qiangs. He should have warned them about a lot of things. But he never did, because this was his way.
Ying still completed the mission, personally handing the documents to the Emperor. The Emperor asked what had happened to Luk, and Ying found he could do little more than shrug. When the Emperor asked what had happened to the homeowner, Ying showed the Emperor the bits of flesh wedged beneath his finger nails and the bloodstains on his robe. No further explanation was needed. The Emperor patted Ying on the back and told him if he ever wanted to leave Cangzhen and make a name for himself, Ying should contact one of his palaces. Ying said he just might.
When Ying returned to Cangzhen, everyone acted as if nothing had happened. Luk was no longer with them in the dining hall or the practice hall or the sleeping quarters, but life continued as usual. Ying could hardly control his rage. The only person he cared about, the only person he trusted, was gone.
No one understood Ying's friendship with Luk, the aggressive eagle and the timid deer. But it made perfect sense to Ying. They were yin and yang. Opposites that balanced one another out. Luk had helped Ying calm down whenever he became angry, while Ying had taught Luk to stand up for himself. Even so, Luk had never actually hurt anybody. Not even a mosquito. Luk should never have been part of the mission in the first place.
Ying complained to the senior monks, but they didn't listen. The more questions he asked, the more they turned their backs to him.
Ying realized that he was nothing more than a tool. Just another weapon in Grandmaster's growing arsenal. The more he thought about it, the more Ying realized that he and the other Cangzhen monks were simply muscle to be flexed at Grandmaster's whim. Grandmaster had been making Ying's life miserable as far back as he could remember, and for what? To make Ying a better person? No. Grandmaster had been doing it to serve his own interests.
Grandmaster had been responsible for sending Luk to his death. Grandmaster had also killed Ying's father in front of him when he was just a toddler and had driven his mother away. Grandmaster had taken Ying to Cangzhen, changed his name, and raised him to be something he wasn't, all in an effort to make Cangzhen stronger.
Ying's rage intensified. Grandmaster had stripped him of his identity. He'd taken away the few people Ying had ever been close to. Grandmaster had ruined Ying's life, leaving him with nothing. Not even a sense of who he was, or who he was supposed to be. Ying would never forget Luk's final words, “Goodbye, Sau-long. I hope you find yourself. I hope you learn to trust another.”
Ying knew he would never trust another soul, but he was determined to find himself, even if it meant looking under the body of every man in China.
Ying went to see the Emperor.
The Emperor sent Ying to the fight clubs, where Ying thrived. Ying had felt invisible at Cangzhen, but in the fight clubs he quickly made a name for himself. Still, it wasn't enough. He wanted to be respected. He wanted to be feared.
In a city called Xuzhou, there was a foreign fighter from a faraway island. The man had deep grooves carved into his cheeks, nose, and forehead, and the grooves were tinted a deep green. He looked menacing, and his looks earned him instant respect. Ying decided he wanted the same thing. He asked the foreigner to carve his face, but the foreigner laughed at him. He told Ying that the facial carving was for true warriors only.
Ying attacked the man on the spot, breaking both the foreigner's hands in quick succession. Needless to say, the man didn't fight again for quite some time. Once his hands healed, he did as Ying asked.
The foreigner told Ying that the lines he would carve would be dictated by Ying's inner spirit, and that no one could predict how it would turn out. After two days of excruciating carving and pigmenting—and a month of healing—the final result surprised the foreigner, but not Ying. Ying had been transformed into the dragon he always knew he was. He took his new identity a step further, sharpening his teeth and forking and elongating his tongue. For the first time, people saw his true self. And they ran. Ying loved it.