These slithering tongued gaolers have fooled them all with that slight, unassuming word, endurance! Endure, you condemned, and once you might survive, forgive; find forgiveness in your heart and seek it in those you have misfortuned. Such is dignity, the great virtue that will have your memory outlive these rusted bars. What foolishness, to trust in your bitter enemies, the slavers who feed you so fondly from their foot.

Oh, how noble it was, for those fortunate who claimed they went on to live from then.

— Writings salvaged from a shattered prison wall. The holding was one of the warring ages. It is suspected to have been written by a captured Chong captain.

✧✧ ~~~~~ ⚜ ~~~~~ ✧ ~~~~ φ ~~~~ ✧ ~~~~~ ⚜ ~~~~~ ✧✧

"Hush now, prison, don’t you cry. Your stone grows old and so do I."

The sound of chains clanking against each other resounded. And the grinding of metal through stone seeped into his feet through the grumbling ground.

Qianye’s head, his long hair waterfalling downward in the darkness, hung low and did not rise at the crunch of the footfalls ahead of him. His wrists adjusted slightly, tousling the long chains that held them up and spread diagonally. The movement of the chains went up to the wall, where its sound died away into the stone.

"It’s time. You’re being released today."

He heard the voice of Zhao Lie, the disciplinary enforcer.

"If it isn’t my great friend Zhao Lie," Qianye spoke faintly, though in the quiet area that he had been held in, his voice was as clear as ever. "How have you been this past week since I have seen you? Are they still working you to the bone? Surely not? I thought you would have earned paid leave by now."

The sound of his voice echoes through the second underground floor of the disciplinary hall prisons. Down here, only those who were given extended sentences were chained and left. It was a place for those who did not quite deserve a sentencing into the gorge, regrettably for Qianye.

However, there was some compensation in the fact that down here, there was a similar Qi-deprecating effect as in the gorge.

That, coupled with the time and silence, had certainly been acceptable enough compensation for the inconvenience of being starved.

His kneeling legs shifted a little, though not much more than the chains would allow.

He lifted his head to look at the indifferent enforcer.

"The silent treatment again? Very well."

His eyes, a luminous purple, smiled faintly at the man that did not pay him any attention. Even in this great darkness, all the slightest features of the man’s expression were visible to him. That ever so faint crease to his brows, and his frown.

As well as the irregularities in his essence flow.

’It seems they sent him somewhere dangerous this past week...’

Enforcer Zhao Lie’s arm, rattling with the keys that he held in his hand, rose. Qianye felt the click of metal then, and his arm dropped back down to his side.

The moment that it had, some red blood began to slip down. It dripped onto the group, freeing itself from both the wounds that the tightly bound Qi Shackles had caused, as well as the lingering wounds across his arm from his most recent lashings.

Nevertheless, soon enough, Qianye’s second arm was relieved from its shackle. The two of them, dangling without holding him anymore, swung freely in the air and beat against the stone wall as Zhao Lie walked around him to unchain his legs.

"The disciples stationed in Laupsia have returned," Zhao Lie spoke, finally, in an even voice. "Having served your two-month punitive sentence and taken your thousand lashes, an elder will be guiding you over to the departing Ark."

The sound of the first of the chains that had been attached to his body being freed resounded.

"Hm..." Qianye hummed faintly in acknowledgement. "Might you tell me who the Elder guiding me there is?"

Between the silent breaths that lingered after his question, as Qianye almost internally shook his head thinking that he would not be given a response, the sound of the last of his chains being removed sounded.

Without pause, he groaned himself to his feet. Then sighed into a wide and high stretch, not bothering himself with the stinging pain of the bleeding whip markings streaking across his back. His bones popped loudly, then in his release, he sighed for several long seconds.

"Elder Pei Wushan will be responsible for your guidance towards transport."

Qianye’s sigh was cut short at that, and his expression fell even.

’Wonderful. How utterly wonderful. Must he bear down on my neck so thoroughly? Or is it just old age anxiety? It’s not as if I will escape. Sacrificing one of my hearts just to get rid of his formation is far too costly.’

He didn’t respond as Zhao Lie walked back around towards the front. He only grumbled faintly to himself, then clenched his teeth that little bit and walked out along with the enforcer.

The two of them walked out of his cell, down the path out of the second underground floor. Lining both of the adjacent walls, as he walked with his chest bare and only long pants, all of the other cells were empty.

Over his two months here, anyone who had been in here with him had been gradually sent out, either to Laupsia, where he was being sent, or towards the borders.

The fragments of information that he had been able to piece together—from listening in on the mutterings between enforcers who came to get the imprisoned disciples—told him that there was a lot of agitation across the continent due to what had happened because of him and Melinoë.

’Still...’ Qianye laughed to himself silently. ’It’s a rather novel thing to be treated like such hated cannon fodder by an old man because I damaged his so-called face. For Yan Huai to send me all the way to that delve, he’s just looking for a convenient way to kill me, isn’t he?’

The two of them rose through the second underground layer’s stairs, up into the first. And here, there were imprisoned disciples who had been murmuring amongst themselves. However, the moment the sounds of Zhao Lie’s footsteps returned, they shut themselves up.

Eventually, they left the prisons, and Zhao Lie stopped them.

"Here is your due compensation."