"Speak," Uncle Liu demanded, wrenching Wu Hao back into the middle of the tent.

  Wu Hao said nothing, but inside his mind was racing. What could he say that would convince Uncle Liu to let him go?

  Nothing. Except...

  "Father sent me," Wu Hao said, gambling and taking a wild shot into the dark. "He knows."

  It was like he'd hit Uncle Liu with a punch straight to the gut. The man reeled back, considering, eyes wide, even though Wu Hao hadn't the faintest clue what Father was supposed to know.

  Most importantly, his fingers loosened their grip on Wu Hao's wrist, and he snatched his hand free as fast as he could.

  He took a few hurried steps back, keeping his eyes on Uncle Liu and shaking his sleeve to try and get the knife to slide back out. All he succeeded in, though, was accidentally leaving scratches around his arm and drawing Uncle Liu's attention before he could manage to escape.

  "How?" Uncle Liu demanded, recovering from the shock that Wu Hao had given him. He stood there, arms down as he apparently was trying to decide what he'd do.

  Wu Hao shook his head and tried once again to slide the knife free. Its point kept stabbing into some bit of cloth and kept getting stuck, and all the while Uncle Liu seemed to be getting closer and closer to a decision.

  Finally the knife slid free and into Wu Hao's waiting hand. Even with his fingers numb from frustration, he managed to clench them around the knife and slid it forward just a little bit, exposing a few inches of its sharp triangular tip and its slim handle.

  It felt like steel in his hand - cold, solid, reliable. That was good, because those were things Wu Hao didn't feel right now.

  He backed away again. There was only a single step left when Uncle Liu's hand blurred and Wu Hao stumbled. His hands brushed against the fabric of the tent-flap and then he was falling, turning while he did on instinct so that he'd land on his back.

  Even so he went down hard, slamming into a bench that held herbs and other things Wu Hao couldn't put names to. The clatter of glass shaking was followed by the feeling of more impacts against his body as several ingredients fell from their perches and thudded into him.

  Wu Hao had other things to worry about, though. He hadn't been clumsy like that ever since he'd had his first taste of qi and its clarity. This was different. It didn't even really hurt all that much, not in the ways that he'd felt hurts recently. Nothing was broken, he'd barely even bruised. His foot just felt like it'd suddenly become paralyzed out of nowhere. It wasn't that it'd fallen asleep, he'd just outright lost feeling altogether.

  In an attempt to try and get away, Wu Hao tried to grab a little qi and push it through the meridians in his feet, something he was starting to get better at. He'd had practice, after all.

  But the qi didn't get there. He pushed it down and it felt like he was ramming it into a barrier that he couldn't get through, an iron wall that was blocking the flow of his vital qi. To his qi senses it seemed that his leg ended in a perfectly smooth stump just below his knee.

  He glanced at his leg and grimaced. A thin silver needle stuck out of the back of his leg, and he'd bet a lot that it'd been the result of Uncle Liu's throw just now.

  "Don't even think about it," Uncle Liu chided. His glasses caught the light and gleamed eerily in the somewhat dark tent. "Not before I get answers out of you. I don't know what Father was thinking, sending a little chit like you, but he made a mistake."

  Uncle Liu made some sort of movement with his sleeve that set it to billowing, and when Wu Hao could see his hand again he carried three more needles like the one that he'd paralyzed Wu Hao with.

  "Now," Uncle Liu said, taking two of the three needles with his other hand and tilting his head as if considering Wu Hao. He approached, each step measured. "My first question..."

  But Wu Hao hadn't been sitting still for nothing. If his qi couldn't be pushed into his legs to let him walk again, he'd use it for something else instead.

  "Rending Dagger Art," Wu Hao said at the same time, stumbling over the syllables and holding the knife wrong. The move hadn't been made to be used from a sitting position, and it showed in the way that the qi loop struggled to complete. It was only thanks to the fact that Wu Hao was holding a knife that the technique even snapped into place at all.

  Uncle Liu lunged forwards, his hands aiming to slap the knife out of Wu Hao's hand, but Wu Hao had had the advantage of surprise. As Uncle Liu was mid-step and his hand was reaching out, Wu Hao managed to complete the loop of qi.

  "Void Rip!" Wu Hao called, and the qi spewed forward into a thin, scraggly line that swept forwards from the knife and slammed into Uncle Liu.

  But Uncle Liu just slapped the technique aside and barreled through, with the part of the line that touched him only a wire-thin line on his clothes and nothing else. The rest of the technique burst against the tent cloth and left a long line on the fabric, peeling away one of its layers but not all the way through.

  Shit, Wu Hao thought, heart sinking.

  He'd always thought of Uncle Liu as the least combative of all the Uncles, but that only meant so much.

  Fingers extended, Uncle Liu poked Wu Hao with surprising force in a sequence of moves so fast that Wu Hao couldn't even follow them all, each one of the fingertips feeling like a hard punch to the body. A deep ache was left wherever Uncle Liu's fingers touched him, not just the familiar pain of a bruise but something deeper. Qi streamed into his meridians wherever Uncle Liu touched, as well as thin flickers of silver where the needles plunged into him.

  The rest of his qi fled his body before he was able to even begin readying another Void Rip.

  When Uncle Liu had come to a stop, Wu Hao was trapped in his own body. With the needles sticking out of every acupoint, he couldn't move - couldn't twitch his fingers or try to move his toes. All movement had been locked away with a series of needles.

  Uncle Liu breathed in, slowly starting to release the hold on his qi. Its scent had been so similar to the scent of the medicines that he’d been preparing that Wu Hao hadn't even noticed. Then he knelt down onto one knee, so that he was staring directly into Wu Hao's face. One hand hovered, ready to act.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Grimacing, Wu Hao went for an option that tasted like ashes in his mouth. He gathered his breath, opened his mouth to shout for Father...

  Then he felt a thin prick of pain, stinging all the way through the area above his lips and penetrating into his gums. Suddenly, his tongue refused to move.

  No, that wasn't quite true. It was like the meridians in that area had just been pushed forcefully closed, welded shut by qi to the point that he couldn't move any of the muscles that were required for speech. It'd been paralyzed, the same way that Uncle Liu had paralyzed his foot earlier.

  He couldn't breathe.

  Uncle Liu exhaled, apparently uncaring of the fact that he was slowly choking Wu Hao with his needles.

  "You think I'd let you call for attention?" he asked, looming over Wu Hao. "How stupid do you think I am?"

  He held a hand to Wu Hao's cheek and, carefully, pulled out the needle that'd been stuck there a little bit. Wu Hao's tongue became unstuck, a little, and he gasped for a quick breath. The air felt sickly sweet in his throat.

  "You can whisper," Uncle Liu said, leaning back. "Now it's about time you give me answers, and it'd be best if you give them to me soon. Otherwise, you'll learn that my Nine-Point Needle Art can do more than simply paralyze."

  Wu Hao took another shuddering breath, tasting the air. He could still taste the last fringes of Uncle Liu's qi lingering in the air, distinct from the bitter smell of the medicines and the dried herbs only by how many other odors were mixed in. Hints of sweetness, an odd spice... too many to name.

  "How'd he find out?" Uncle Liu demanded.

  After Wu Hao had said nothing for a long moment, though, Uncle Liu's hand plucked a needle from his sleeve and pounded it down into Wu Hao's belly. With merciless precision it struck through his flesh, piercing into another meridian.

  When it struck Wu Hao felt that flash of pain again, but this time it didn't stop. It kept bubbling up from his gut, spreading through his entire body so fast that it'd spread to the crown of his head in mere instants. The only way Wu Hao could describe it was like an entire swarm of worms crawling through each of the meridians he could feel. A scream built up in his mouth that had no way of getting out.

  But just before the pain could carry him into unconsciousness, Uncle Liu grasped the needle and pulled it out. The pain vanished like it had never existed at all, but before Wu Hao could scream Uncle Liu placed the needle to the side of his mouth. It hung there, threatening, and Wu Hao swallowed the scream down again.

  The needle didn't move away, though. It pricked into Wu Hao's cheek with every juddering breath.

  "How did Father find out?" Uncle Liu ordered. His voice sounded oddly brittle, but it wasn't much of a relief to know that he was nervous about being discovered.

  "I don't know," Wu Hao gasped. "Father just told me to tell you. He knows about everything."

  Uncle Liu's eyes narrowed.

  "He knows about the embezzlement?" he pressed.

  Wu Hao took that as the lifeline it was, drooling in his haste to speak.

  "Yes," he slurred. "Father knows."

  Uncle Liu sprang to his feet and began to pace the length of the tent, occasionally running his hands through his hair or pushing at his glasses as he muttered comments under his breath. Wu Hao could only see him occasionally, as he couldn't move his neck or his face and he'd fallen staring up.

  Wu Hao lay there, paralyzed, hoping desperately that he could somehow push the needles out by pure force of will. He felt absolutely nothing, though, and as he kept trying to force his muscles to move or his qi to flow, nothing he did helped, and he couldn't manage more than the panicked little rasps of breath, and even those were growing shorter despite his attempts to breathe as deeply as he could.

  At this point, he'd have exploded his qi filter in a desperate attempt to get away, but Uncle Liu had locked that away, too. He was helpless.

  Finally, Uncle Liu returned. Then, saying nothing else, he slammed two needles into Wu Hao's belly.

  The pain came far faster this time, feeling not like bugs crawling through Wu Hao's skin but instead like a blazing hot poker shoved through his stomach, curling like a living thing running through his spine.

  "It's true," he whimpered. "It's true."

  Uncle Liu lifted a third needle, then stopped.

  "No," he said, mainly to himself. "This one'd kill you, and I'm not done asking questions yet."

  "Please," Wu Hao asked. "Take the needle out. I'm telling the truth, Uncle."

  Something in Wu Hao's tone must have convinced Uncle Liu, because he actually looked contemplative. He didn't remove the needles, though, and the pain was still somehow ramping up, blazing its way up to Wu Hao's head. It was already agony, a pure hell to experience.

  All he wanted was for it to end.

  A tap came at the tent flap, and then 723's voice, gravelly as ever.

  "Apologies, Uncle," he said. "We've found another herb that we thought might be useful."

  Uncle Liu glared down at Wu Hao, who couldn't have sagged back in relief but wanted to, desperately. He'd never felt such a rush of affection for 723 as he did then, which burst through the pain he was still feeling. The idea that he might be saved was so relieving that for a moment he could actually draw a full breath.

  But then Uncle Liu twirled another needle between his fingers, considering.

  "One moment," he finally said. He glanced down at Wu Hao.

  "A shame," he said, and the needle in his hand stopped twirling. Instead, its silver point was aimed straight at Wu Hao's head. "But I've already gotten all I can get, it seems."

  Then Uncle Liu's hands twitched, and all Wu Hao could do was stare at the needle as it plunged straight into his forehead, and then there was nothing.