Foreword

This work is the sole property of u/bilgebum and was originally posted on his subreddit r/nonsenselocker at this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nonsenselocker/comments/foj3jw/the_search_for_master_shang_chapter_1_tsfms_c01/

Chapter 1

The aching in Zenmao's feet from being marched half a day had escalated into burning pain, yet it was nothing compared to the agonizing taste of the gag in his mouth. Soaked with his sweat and the light rain common around summer's end, it flooded his throat with a sourness that he feared would never fade. His gums were numb from the strain of gripping it, but he kept the pressure on. His captors had given his compatriot Anpi an egg-sized bruise over his left eye when he'd spat his out.

So they were compatriots now? he thought to himself with a tinge of bemusement. He'd chanced upon Anpi in Wet Lotus Village, surrounded by six wild-eyed bandits in the middle of a dusty street. Anpi didn't know him then, but they'd come from the same Dojo. That tentative recognition had led, foolishly, to Zenmao calling the man's name—landing himself in the same net without the faintest idea why.

Anpi shot him a look of disgust at that very moment, as if to blame him for their troubles, though the need for gags had been strictly due to Anpi's ranting. Slight of build, with a perpetual stoop, the young man didn't resemble a soldier from the Dojo in the slightest. Whatever Anpi lacked in stature, he made up for in bluster, but the bandits certainly hadn't been impressed by his threats when they'd bound his hands. They formed a loose ring around their prisoners, keeping an easy pace, passing crude jokes between them.

Where were they going? Zenmao wondered again. Having never been this far from the Old City, he had only a rudimentary knowledge of the region. He knew they were in the northwest part of the Azalea Plains, named for the blooms that would carpet miles of grassland late in spring. Several villages lay scattered in these parts, each inhabited by a few farming families that produced food for themselves and bandits in equal, unwilling measures.

Trees grew thick in a forest on their left, while a river gushed along its perimeter, bolstered no doubt by the summer rain. Mosquitoes now buzzed around them in a cloud, a cloud he couldn't disperse with restrained hands. So he snapped his head at them, earning him a knowing smile from a bandit with a topknot.

Anpi stopped in his tracks, causing Zenmao to glance over. The other man was staring straight ahead, eyes wide.

"Like what you see, bigmouth?" the bandit with the topknot said, grinning.

Zenmao followed the look toward the edge of the forest, where one ancient oak stood slightly apart from the rest. From its sturdy boughs hung several bodies, strung up by their necks, their naked skin caked with grime.

"I hear it's real painful whe you go up," the bandit continued. "Blood fillin' your head. Pounding, like a million hammers, like it's gonna burst any second, but it doesn't. Blacking out is a blessing, but it don't come fast enough. You struggle and you fight ... but the rope is thick and the branch is strong. One fellow kicked and kicked until he dislocated both knees." He chuckled at Anpi's expression. "Ain't know if it's real though. Always been me doing the hangin'."

When hands began shoving his back, Zenmao dug his feet into the ground. The bandit grunted and elbowed him in the neck, but he merely grunted and hunched over. He wasn't going to walk tamely into a bandit's hideout to be killed! He was a warrior of the Dojo, on an important mission to redeem himself! Though, maybe flogging might not have been such a bad choice ...

Despite his best efforts, Zenmao was but one man against three bandits. Anpi had given up, allowing himself to be tugged along. They passed under the tree, attracting the warning caws of ravens picking at putrid flesh. Zenmao was grateful for the gag then.

So distracted was he by the tree that he didn't notice the town before them, until a drowsy looking bandit on guard duty said, "Welcome to Four Beggars."

Like most towns or villages in the plains, this one had no walls—a mostly ceremonial deterrent to bandits anyway. Unlike the others, it was big. Buildings of grey and brown brick were packed wall-to-wall, leaving narrow, straight, dirt roads in between to function as streets. Almost all of them were single-story, structures, cut from the same squarish mold, though there were also a few pineapple-shaped pagodas and multi-leveled inns with open balconies. While they appeared symmetrically lifeless at a glance, their sloping roofs were anything but. Most had stone tiles in yellow or green, with more than a few in bolder shades of red, black, or even white. A large, two-storied building even had carvings of storks adorning the upturned corners of its topmost roof. A teahouse, perhaps.

These buildings looked like permanent dwellings. But the people presented another picture entirely.

They jammed the streets in as diverse a crowd as Zenmao had ever seen. Men and women dressed in colorful silk robes and dresses, likely from Fiveport or even the Old City, jostled with throngs of drab, cotton-wearing folk, whose dirty faces and harassed expressions outed them as locals at work. Squads of laughing children in tattered but brightly colored tunics darted through the crowd like koi. Here and there, Zenmao spotted even desert nomads, clad in wool or fur almost as shaggy as their curly hair, their skin a half-tone darker than the golden complexion of Plainsfolk. What could they possibly be doing here? No sooner had he wondered that than a scuffle commenced between a City man and two nomads. Nomads had no friends on the Plains.

The fight didn't last as two bandits moved in, slate swords drawn. Had the bandits taken over a town? Or built one of their own? Zenmao spotted more as they walked; some greeted his captors. If they were responsible for the bodies on the tree, that meant that they dictated the law here. Yet they left most people alone, seemingly limiting their attention to troublemakers or some unfortunate folks carrying bags of what appeared to be mud.

"In here," Topknot said suddenly, diverting the party through a circular hole in a wall.

"Not the dungeons?" one of the other bandits asked.

"Gotta check in with Tienxing first." Topknot shot them a look. "Somethin' 'bout these two don't sit right."

The gate led to a small, weed-choked courtyard and a ramshackle house. Three bandits were sitting on the doorstep, passing a long, thin pipe between them. Standing behind them, in the shadowy entrance of the house, was a burly man with a shock of black hair. His hooded eyes met Zenmao's, and his lips split in a grin, causing the mole just above his lips to bulge. He uncrossed his arms and pushed past the other three, who were in the midst of getting up.

"Who've you got there, Happu?" he said.

"Bigmouths," Topknot replied. Anpi tried to argue through his gag, but Zenmao quietly studied the bandit, noting his relaxed air. A leader, maybe?

"Sorry we didn't catch you a little bird to tussle with, Tienxing," said another bandit. Laughter rang through the courtyard.

Tienxing scoffed. "Then why'd you bring them here? Dungeons or the tree, you know how we operate. Don't waste my time."

Happu's cheer faded. "I'm sorry, Your Greatness. You looked so busy standing there, I should've known better."

Tienxing smiled toothily. Zenmao noticed that a chunk of his nose was missing. "Yes, you should. I can practically smell trouble on these two. Kill them, imprison them, do as you wish. Or as the Masters wish. Maybe they can be used for the Offering, if Qirong wants them. Her ... lot ... have been demanding for more and more these days."

Immediately, an image of bandits carving his organs from his twitching torso and arraying them on blood-soaked altar came into Zenmao's mind. The muscles in his arms bunched as he strained against the ropes around his wrists, ignoring the heat as they scraped against his skin. Did it feel looser than earlier? Fortunately, he had a diversion in a squealing Anpi. Tienxing sounded amused when he said, "Take that out. Let's hear what he has to say."

The second Happu snatched the rag away, words spilled from Anpi's mouth in a torrent, "This is all a misunderstanding! I was—I was a tourist, and I'd heard—"

"He'd been asking for Master Shang," Happu interjected. Zenmao blinked; why would Anpi be looking for the same person that he was?

"Who? There is no Master Shang here in Four Beggars." Tienxing took a step closer to Anpi, so that he was looming over the other man. Their noses were almost touching. "You should be careful about the Masters you seek around these parts, my wayward friend."

"Release me! You bandits don't know who I am. You'll regret it when—" Anpi said.

Zenmao growled. Now every gaze was turned his way. Tienxing smiled. "He speaks? Here I was thinking we found ourselves a strong, silent one."

Happu removed Zenmao's gag, though a lingering taste and sensation of dirty cloth clung to his lips. He drew a deep breath, flexed his arms to snap his weakened bindings, and drove one fist into Happu's face before the bandit even knew what was happening. The courtyard erupted into yells, yet by the time he'd set his feet apart in a fighting stance, Zenmao found himself facing nine swords, with Tienxing's hovering so close to his forehead he was almost cross-eyed looking at it.

"If you so much as blink, you'll be eating granite," Tienxing warned. "Told you they were trouble, Happu."

Blood streaming down his face, Happu fumbled to draw his sword with one hand while holding his nose with the other. "'e brok me noth. I'll gill 'im!"

"Move aside and keep that sword where it is, you fool," Tienxing said. He leered at Zenmao. "And you ... you can fight, it seems, unlike your noisy friend. What's your name?"

"Untie me and I'll give you a fight!" Anpi said.

Zenmao looked Tienxing in the eye and said, "I'm Zenmao. Your fellows captured me together with Anpi over there even though I don't know him or what they wanted with him."

"You knew his name!" one of the bandits said.

"We come from the same c—town," Zenmao said, catching himself at the last second.

Tienxing said, "So you were traveling with him."

"No, it was a coincidence—"

"I find that hard to believe. Anyone disagrees?" Tienxing looked around; every bandit was shaking his head. "Thought so. Well, you have one more chance to tell me who you really are, and where you come from, before I cut you from chin to balls."

What Tienxing didn't know was that the truth would damn him—and Anpi—anyway. For they were both students of the Heavenly Blades Dojo, trained in the ways of the sword, sworn to bring justice across the plains—which, as things were, usually involved fighting bandits. Though he'd never actually fought a bandit in his life, Zenmao knew Tienxing would skewer him before he finished uttering the Dojo's name. Perhaps patience and silence would serve him better in this moment.

Anpi, however, didn't know that about him, and hadn't thought about the consequences of admission either, for he said, "I'm Anpi, and you'll soon be quaking in your offal-filled shoes when you hear that I'm from the—"

"Quiet, Anpi!" Zenmao was surprised at his own vehemence.

Tienxing's mouth opened in an invisible "ah". His sword rose into the air, and Zenmao steeled himself for the blow. There wasn't even time for regrets.

Then a melodic male voice said, "So this is where you've been hiding, you brute."

The newcomer had bright, intelligent eyes in a pale, angular face where the only spots of color were the pink of his cheeks. He wore his hair in a braid that fell past his waist, topped off with a conical cloth cap. Unlike the usual tunic and shirts worn by men, he wore a fitting silver robe that more closely resembled a woman's dress, which covered his body all the way to his ankles, though slit open on either side to reveal a pair of white trousers underneath. He was fanning himself with a paper folding fan, its leaves depicting peacocks strutting by a pond.

Tienxing looked as if he'd swallowed a lime. "Bazelong. How can I help you?"

Bazelong didn't even glance at Zenmao or Anpi. "It's Master Bazelong to you, bandit. I told you I want Nimchawe and his coterie out of the Wanderer's Heron. How is my sponsee supposed to train with an opponent sleeping in the same inn?"

Tienxing said, "As I've told you, the matter of accommodation for contestants is outside my control. Take it up with the inn's owner!"

"You think I haven't done that? Why do you think I've spent half a day looking for you, if my problems could be solved by talking to that shuffling sycophant? I told you when we registered that I wanted the Amethyst Hall—"

"It was full before you even arrived, you halfwit!"

Bazelong closed the fan with a snap and began jabbing Tienxing in the chest with it. Zenmao, expecting the worst, couldn't help but feel impressed that the bandit stayed his sword hand, though his nostrils were flaring and his face gained a shade of puce. Bazelong dropped his voice to a whisper and said, "Call me halfwit one more time. I dare you. Disrespect a sponsor. Let's see what the Masters think about that, shall we?"

Tienxing shook his head a fraction of an inch. "No."

"Good. Now send some of your men to the Amethyst Hall and find me and my sponsee a room."

"It's—"

"Full, yes, I heard you the first time," Bazelong said. "So you'll just have to be a lot more persuasive or forceful." He turned, looking at everyone in the courtyard. His gaze swept past Zenmao without pause; Zenmao wondered if the man thought he was also one of the bandits. "What are you still waiting for?" Bazelong demanded, causing more than a few bandits to start. "It's evening already; do you want my sponsee to sleep in the communal field?"

"Hao, Ranyou, Satewa, go with him," Tienxing said. The bandits who'd been smoking earlier looked hesitantly from their leader to Bazelong. "Do what he says. Throw someone out if you have to. Just get him a room so he stops bothering me."

Bazelong flashed him a final look of scorn and turned to go, but Anpi said, "Wait! What are you sponsoring? What's happening in this town?"

"Shut up," Tienxing said. Bazelong, however, paused in his step to study Anpi.

"You don't look like a bandit, or one of these pitiable townsfolk. Why are you even here in Four Beggars if not for the Trial of the Heavens?" He fluttered his fan. "Could you be ... Offerings? Make sure you put on a good show; the one back in spring was dreadful. Now, I really must go or my sponsee will think I've been murdered by one of the other contestants. Come along, bandits."

Tienxing made a fist at the departing man's back, pinky curled beneath his thumb—if "halfwit" was already unacceptable to him, Zenmao wondered what Bazelong would do if he knew Tienxing had just insinuated that he possessed a mutilated cock. Then the bandit drew a deep breath, turning to Zenmao. "Where were we?"

"I'll join the Trial!" Anpi said. "Whatever it is, just put my name on the list!"

"Me too," Zenmao echoed instinctively.

A sardonic smile formed on Tienxing's face. "Too bad there's only one opening left."

"Pick me!" Anpi cried. "Your bandits caught me first!"

Zenmao snorted quietly, but didn't say anything as he watched the bandits. Seven remaining, though Happu kept to the side, eyeing him with pure loathing. Could he surprise Tienxing, grab his sword? Cut Anpi free, perhaps fight their way out? He wasn't sure of the other man's prowess, but twentieth-year students at the Dojo should be able to handle up to three opponents without too much difficulty. All he needed was a moment's distraction.

"Why don't we do this?" Tienxing went around Anpi and slashed his binds with one stroke. An opportunity! Zenmao thought. "We'll form a little ring here, my boys and I, while you two try to kill each other. Have ourselves a mini-Trial, why don't we? The winner gets to join the tournament."

The bandits spread out, forming a loose circle, their blades pointed inward. As Anpi whirled to face him, jaw hanging, Zenmao felt his heart drop. He couldn't kill another member of the Dojo; it was against the oaths he'd taken. But if Anpi came at him, he'd defend himself, oaths be damned. His mission was bigger than one fellow student's life.

Anpi, however, stood his ground. "Then what's Bazelong's role? He sponsors a fighter?"

Tienxing nodded. "Before you get your hopes up, it's not mandatory for a fighter to have one."

"I'll sponsor him," Anpi said, pointing at Zenmao.

"Then pay us five hundred chien," Tienxing said.

"You'll find that in the money your friends took," Anpi said. The bandits laughed. "What's so funny? The money's there, it's true!"

"That money's ours now," Tienxing said.

Happu was the only one who seemed unamused. "Gill 'em already."

Even if the bandits hadn't stripped him of every coin he had, Zenmao hadn't carried enough to make that sum. At this point, he was beginning to find the constant delaying of their execution irritating. Perhaps it was time to charge the ring and see just how well his training would hold up under such disadvantageous conditions.

"I've got more." Anpi bent down and removed his left shoe. Inside was a small sack that jingled when he picked it out. How had he walked so much with that under his foot? Zenmao wondered.

"Hey, you've found more of our money," one of the bandits said, drawing a roar of approval from companions.

Tienxing held his palm out. "Hand it over."

"Only if you put us in the tournament," Anpi said.

"You're in no spot to haggle!" Happu said.

"You're in," Tienxing said. "Zenmao here'll fight, then?"

Anpi nodded enthusiastically as he gave Tienxing the sack. The bandit bounced it once, but didn't open it to count its contents. The other bandits began crowding closer, until Tienxing growled at them. "Rules. They've been accepted as contestants, and will be treated as such. This goes to you especially, Happu: leave them in peace, or the Mistress will hear about you."

There was some grumbling as the bandits made way for the duo. Zenmao remained where he was, and so did Anpi, who said, "What about our things? Our supplies, our clothes?"

Tienxing smiled humorlessly. "Those are our things now, haven't you been paying attention? You'd best leave, or the fee'll be a thousand and you might lose your other shoe."

"Let's go, Anpi," Zenmao said, tension lingering in every inch of his being as he walked past the bandits. Anpi followed closely, and the two didn't release their breaths until they were out of the courtyard.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1