Chapter 32 — Kidnapped (1)

The car journey itself was just under an hour.

Throughout the route, Lin Che sat slumped against the door with his eyes closed and his breathing in the rhythm of sleep. He counted the turns: left out of the clan gate put them heading west onto a long while of straight driving, which he could only assume was a motorway or main road of sorts. A couple rights in succession then curbed them north, before driving down something bumpy — were they off road now?

There was a final left as the car reduced its speed before stopping completely.

Lin Che had a general idea of where he was, assuming he could overlay the timings and speed with his mental image of the map of the city. He wasn’t too sure of exactly how long it took them, as he was counting using his heart rate, which had considerably increased in rate upon realising he was being kidnapped.

The driver’s door opened and closed. Footsteps made their way around the vehicle, and the back door on his side opened.

Lin Che let his weight go with it, doing nothing to arrest the fall, and was caught by hands which felt solid with a light thread of Qi wisping through them. He went completely floppy — head lolling and arms hanging, further selling the image of the dead-weight of an unconscious person as he was carried into the compound.

Through his eyelids, he could sense the darkness change into a harsh white upon entering.

He was set down in a chair and his wrists were secured behind him.

Someone splashed water on his face, and Lin Che immediately started gasping for breath as he opened his eyes.

“Wakey, wakey,” said the man across from him.

Lin Che quickly took stock of his surroundings.

It was a warehouse with crates along one wall and the smell of some industrial cleaning product clung to the air. There were four others in the building: a woman looking to be in her forties who seemed to carry substantial cultivation, a younger man perhaps in his early thirties positioned to his right with somewhat hesitant breathing, the man seated across from Lin Che holding a now-empty bucket between his massive forearms, and, of course, the driver who remained by the door.

Lin Che looked at the man across the table.

“Where—where am I?” he asked, his breath haggard.

The man across the table was called Jiang Pei, though Lin Che didn’t know this yet and wouldn’t learn it tonight. He had the face of someone who had been in this line of business for far too long and was just going through the motions of work — the same kind of face he’d had at the office. Except this, of course, was not office work.

His Qi signature was that of a practitioner at least two levels above Lin Che’s current stage, which put him roughly on-par with Shen Yue, who could neutralise him in an instant. That is to say, he was far too strong to run away from.

“You are Lin Che,” he said. “Married to Shen Yue and currently working at Hu Baolin’s pharmacy. Recently completed the Liuhe Breathing Method and the Hollow Bell Purification Art, and possess a technique similar to Swallow Returns to the Nest. Cultivation stage: post-first breakthrough.” He paused. “All of this without formal introduction to any sect or family that could have legally provided these techniques.”

“My wife—” said Lin Che.

“Is not authorised to distribute sect cultivation methods to unsanctioned individuals, regardless of martial status.” Jiang Pei’s voice did not change. “The techniques you’re using are the property of the Shen family archive. The question is how you accessed them.”

Lin Che said nothing.

“We’ll come back to that,” said Jiang Pei. “First—”

He nodded to the driver, who moved a veil covering the opening of one of the warehouse boxes, revealing a figure kept inside.

Lin Che looked at the mannequin.

It looked the same as the one that had killed him before, with the approximate proportions of a human figure crossbred with a zombie and puppet. It stood stiff, inactive, until the elder lady in the back of the room clicked her fingers and it whirred back to life.

Qi pulsed from the mannequin, much fainter than it had been when he’d been attacked in the streets with Shen Yue, which meant that it had been weakened somehow.

“We need to see you control it,” said Jiang Pei.

“I can’t control it,” he replied.

“Demonstrate.”

“I’m telling you; I don’t have that ability. I’ve never had that ability and I don’t know how it works.”

Jiang Pei looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded once, again to the woman in the back.

She extended two fingers.

The mannequin moved towards Lin Che.

***

It was significantly slower than before — in another context, this might have been almost manageable.

Unfortunately for Lin Che, he was bound to a chair and had no way of fighting back.

The first impact took him across the shoulder and rocked the chair sideways. The binding held him in it, and since he couldn’t move his arms, the only thing between him and what the mannequin was doing to him was the Hollow Bell and the structural improvements brought to him by the body refinement he’d experienced recently.

He took the hits and breathed through them, keeping the Hollow Bell running. This wasn’t helping with the immediate physical reality, but was at least keeping his internal environment stable.

Lin Che tried not to make sounds that would give the satisfaction of knowing how hard the hits were landing.

The young man to the right looked away briefly after the third impact.

The mannequin tore at his arm and Lin Che felt an intense pain as ball was torn out of socket and his glenohumeral ligaments were ripped. His shoulder immediately froze up in stiffness, before he lost all sensation to the left arm.

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The woman clicked her fingers and the mannequin stopped.

The room was quiet for a moment, save for Lin Che’s breathing, which still remained controlled despite his injuries.

“You’re not controlling it,” said Jiang Pei.

“I told you—” said Lin Che.

“You’re letting it hit you to create that impression.”

“I’m tied to a chair.”

“His Qi hasn’t made any attempt to interface with the construct. The weakening of it is consistent with storage degradation, not suppression from the practitioner,” said the young man to his right, after doing some analysis he felt obliged to report.

His name was Chen Wei and he was twenty-six years old. This was the fourth such operation he had been a part of, but this was the first one where he’d had serious reservations before it started.

Jiang Pei looked at him.

Chen Wei kept on going. “The mannequin construct has a specific Qi interaction profile when it’s being controlled externally. There’s a resonance pattern that I’m not reading; instead I see standard storage decay.” He paused. “He may not be the construct handler.”

The room was very quiet.

“He still has the techniques,” said Jiang Pei.

“Yes, he has sect techniques without authorisation, but that’s a separate charge from construct handling. They could be unrelated.”

Jiang Pei was still looking at Lin Che.

“How did you access the cultivation methods?” he said to Lin Che, leaning in closer until their noses nearly touched. “And don’t lie — we can detect those.”