"Looking quite smug, aren't ya Young Lord."
Zang ignored the foreigner and focused at the task at hand. It was no easy feat, balancing your entire body at the tip of your finger, and his body strained with the effort. Sweat lined his brow and he had to continuously blink it away from his eyes. The Enlightened Finger was not an easy stance to cultivate qi in, but the standard lotus posture took way too long and was better suited at refining qi rather than absorbing it. That said, it had been a surprise for Zang to discover the prison as a source of powerful qi. It would seem over the centuries hundreds and thousands of practitioners and cultivators had been imprisoned beneath these walls and vanished in the prison's grey fog of oblivion. This fate of course, was not for him, the genius sage of Chang'an. No, not for him at all. So he returned his focus to his stance.
The Enlightened Finger was an inverted stance, that allowed you to theoretically assimilate massive quantities of qi, of course rapidly absorbing this filthy and murky prison qi would essentially mean poisoning his body
But Zang Xuang did not care. All he cared for now...
He squeezed his eyes shut and flicked his out-stretched finger, letting his palm touch the floor, with a focussed thrust of qi he shot back up into the air and for a single ephemeral moment, he floated upside down in weightless space, at that moment he blasted open his lower dan'tian point before landing back on his finger. The murky prison qi began flooding in. It was a raging torrential flood of qi, hundreds of years of tortured hopes and lost dreams, thousands of unfulfilled wishes and desires, many lifetimes worth of regrets, he felt them crawling inside him, he felt them all. Even squeezed shut his eyes began clouding over from the poisoned qi, inky blackness slowly seeping in.
But Zang Xuang did not care. All he cared for now...
"Oi oi Young Lord, you sure you wanna do this? I mean I don't really know what kinda weird magic you guys are into here but the whole prison is shaking...oi Young Lord....you haven't forgotten our arrangement, have you? Oi...answer me dammit...."
The rumbling in the walls began to grow louder, and becoming afraid the other inmates began shouting for the guards. Every nook, every cranny of the prison had been seeping with the poisonous qi left over from the dead of years past and now Zang Xuang was drawing every drop of it into his body. This much quantity of qi was in the realm of the legendary heroes, but alas poisoned as it was no one had ever thought of using it, no one until this day. The lower Dan'tian was not ideally suited for this much qi and a part of him was afraid it would crack and splinter from the effort but somehow his Golden Furnace managed to retain it's shape. In the blink of an eye he switched positions and righted himself, sealing off his lower dan'tian point. As soon as he righted himself his body rejected the massive influx of poisonous qi and he felt nauseous and sick, his stomach heaved and moved about as if it had a mind of it's own.
Despite his best efforts he fell down to his knees shook like an autumn leaf in a storm, a cold sweat drenched his body as he desperately worked to keep the qi he had absorbed. A part of his mind realised that if kept going as he was going he would essentially be destroying everything he had trained to achieve in his life and Zang Xuang still did not care.
"All I care for now....is the strength to show them their mistake."
How dare they, all the courtiers, the royal family, the sages, eunuchs, professors, his colleagues, his comrades, how dare they just turn their backs on him like this. For years they had been kissing his ass, sucking up to him, trying to get in his good books and now at the first sign of adversity they turned away from him without even the slightest hint of remorse. To them, to all of them, he would show them the error of their ways.
His eyes snapped open, dilated crimson pupils floating in an inky blackness, and with one final heaving effort he moved all of the poisonous qi up from his lower dan'tian point to middle dan'tian. The walls of his Blood Soul Palace shook with the effort and his entire middle dan'tian nearly crumbled to nothingness, but by some unknown miracle, it barely held on and the violent, poisonous and murky qi began to quickly transform into a virulent, disease-like Shen(spiritual power). The nausea subsided and he took the lotus posture once more. The prison walls were not shaking any more, the prisoners had calmed down as well. Internally his body was a complete mess, his lower dan'tian had sealed itself off from the traumatic effort of moving so much filthy qi, his middle dan'tian or the Blood Soul Palace was transforming into a demonic vessel and his upper dan'tian or the Seed of Earth to Heaven was glowing with unimaginable power as the virulent shen flooded into it.
To be half way dying and half on the way to immortality, felt weird indeed. The doors of his prison cell clanged open. The three guards had returned, and this time there were no casual jibes or barbs. All three guards were deadly serious now. Zang knew well what this seriousness portended, if he took but one misstep or disobeyed their orders even once all three of them would pounce on him with the intent to kill.
Not that it mattered any more.
"Zang Xuang, are you ready to face your punishment."
under the shadow of his long matted hair a cruel smile floated over his thin lips. He rose up softly singing his littany. Almost a prayer to the God of Death.
"Who, if anyone, has the right to punish the dragon? The dragon roams, where he wills, and none but another dragon may bar his way."
"Tch. Still got your airs do you, very well great Sir Dragon, come and see who has come to punish you."
With that the three guards stepped into formation and escorted him out. The foreign prisoner was shouting something at Zang, but Zang no longer cared. He had probably been lying about knowing a way out of the Tang Empire. Besides, it hardly mattered now that Zang Xuang had resolved to die today. He felt a pang of sudden regret at his meeting with the Princess last night, regret at what might have been, but all in all it was better this way. Better that none saw him beyond what he would show them today. Better for everyone.
As the four of them emerged from their prison Zang was stunned by the masses that had turned out to witness his punishment. Throngs of people lined the streets, looking at him with eager expectant eyes, although the people had come here to see their hero and hope for his better future, to Zang Xuang's tainted eyesight all he saw were a horde of eager fools, desperate to see his inevitable fall. He turned his gaze away from the common folk and instead focussed it towards the end of the road he was walking. Through tunnel vision he saw the man who was going to punish him and that was his second shock.
To his great surprise, the man seated at the head of this procession for punishment was not the executioner or the Royal Chief of Staff, rather it was the Emperor himself. Daizong, the pinnacle of cultivation in the Tang Empire, the one person besides Zang Xuang who could truly lay claim to being a dragon in this land, so...that is how it was going to be. Who indeed but the Emperor could punish him so that the common people did not rebel, no one else. He wondered what his punishment would be, probably to cripple his cultivation and then exile from the Empire.
The cruel smile returned to Zang Xuang's lips.
Daizong suddenly stood up and his voice boomed out, bellowing with the authority that only the lord and master of the Tang Empire may possess.
"ZANG XUANG, ARE YOU READY TO RECEIVE YOUR DIVINE PUNISHMENT."
Zang looked up at Daizong with death in his eyes and whispered.
"So, I am....but the question is DaiShiZongfu, are you?"
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