Mei walked over to Wan with a warm smile. She looked like a celestial maiden compared to the rest of us thugs.
"What's this?" Wan blinked rapidly, leaning away. "Another technique at torture? Good constable, bad constable? I won't talk, you know. I shouldn't."
"I know," Mei replied gently. "Yet, your pride says otherwise."
"Huh?"
She turned and pointed towards the paintings on the wall. "After some careful observation, I realized that those paintings aren't just mere decorations. They, in fact, tell a story. Each frame is a snippet of what I suspect has really happened in this region."
It seemed to be true, since Wan began darting his eyes around nervously, looking at his own art.
"The first one," Mei continued, walking toward the canvas, "shows what looks like a tiny asteroid falling on our planet and creating a sizable crater. The second one shows a time years later, I'm guessing, where a group of people have found this crater. Later on, government officials took custody of the area, you can see the banners here, and began some kind of construction. And the last one…"
She paused at the final painting.
"It depicts a completed building which looks awfully similar to the Vortex Bastille. And in front of it stands a short man looking at his creation proudly. Though we can only see him from the back, I'd say the stature... the posture... it does seem to be you."
"I- I don't-" Wan stammered.
"From what I've known so far," Mei kept going, turning back to face him, "and what I've been able to piece together, I think that in the case of you getting caught from whatever you're hiding from, or worst case, being killed... you wanted the world to know of your creation. You wanted to leave a legacy. As straightforward or subtle it may seem, depending on who's observing the paintings."
She leaned in closer. "So yeah, you may have a strong moral integrity, but I believe your pride as an architect is stronger. I certainly wouldn't want to blackmail you or call you any less of a man for doing this, but I need you to know that you'll be much more content and prideful in knowing that you've helped us save an innocent man. And if not for pride, do it for the child who's suffering the punishment even though she isn't surrounded by a prison."
Mei pointed towards Yanyin. The girl was playfully plucking leaves from the tree roots Liangyu had summoned at the entrance, humming a tune, oblivious to the gravity of the conversation.
Wan looked at Yanyin. His expression softened. The conflict in his eyes played out clearly, and he seemed to reconsider helping us as his shoulders dropped.
I knew something was up with those paintings! I just got distracted. Regardless, that was impressive. Seriously. All she did was put her basic observational skills to use. I was kind of jealous for not doing that from the get-go.
Longwei clapped in applause. "That was impressive, Mei. Seriously. All you did was put your basic observational skills to use. Are you jealous of not doing that from the get-go, Ziyang?"
"Fuck you," I replied eloquently.
Wan let out a long sigh. "The asteroid wasn't just a normal piece of rock," he began, his voice low.
We pricked up our ears, leaning in. We grabbed chairs and sat down properly. Storytime.
"It's about the size of this room and crashed here a few centuries ago," Wan explained. "The area was uninhabited for quite a while until about fifty years ago, people migrated here. Not just regular people, but hardened cultivators too. At first, the crater and the asteroid were seen mostly as something to admire. A showpiece from the heavens."
He paused. "But you see, this asteroid had a unique set of properties to it. Gradually, as days went by, the people around it began to feel weak. Lethargic. Cultivators especially found their reserves draining. They soon found out that the rock was capable of absorbing qi. Like a sponge."
"Interesting," Liangyu muttered.
"Soon enough, the government got involved," Wan continued. "They put a perimeter around it and temporarily evacuated the place until they could find a solution. They tried moving it, but since they obviously couldn't use any qi near it, they had to use plain physical strength. Something which had no successful results. Not even a hundred men could get it to budge. That's when they devised a plan to convert it into a prison. The ultimate containment facility. And they contacted me. I'm just a wanderer who goes around towns and loves building things. I'm quite good at it too."
He puffed his chest out slightly. "It took me about twenty years to build a well-crafted prison around it. I consider it to be one of my greatest creations, since I've had to face a lot of obstacles during the process and successfully solved each one of them. The structure is rock solid. Impregnable, they said."
"Mm-hm, so what's the loophole we can exploit then?" I asked, trying to keep him focused.
"During the construction," he continued, "we found out that the amount of qi the asteroid can hold has a limit. It's not infinite. And so, at regular intervals, it naturally purges itself. It would release the excess qi in a burst. When prisoners were eventually put in, we obviously couldn't let them know of it. So, I had to find a way to hit two birds with one stone by hiding the fact and building a structurally sound prison at the same time."
Wan leaned forward with engineering excitement. "That's when the idea of the underground spiral architecture came to be. We dug around the asteroid and pushed the facility further into the ground, wrapping the prison around it like a coil. Now, a spiral prison around a qi-devouring core must have pressure relief. The dragon-shaped mouth on the surface isn't just some aesthetic decision to look scary. It actually hides vent arteries disguised as decorative dragon scales that bleed off excess qi, prevent seismic collapse, and stabilizes the pressure. These vents are obviously sealed to prisoners but accessible from outside. It's the perfect solution."
"Smart," I remarked, genuinely impressed.
"Now comes the answer to your question," Wan exhaled. "At the right time of release, you can flood refined qi downward along the path of the vents. If you time it perfectly, you will create a temporary qi blockage, jamming the mechanism and halting the asteroid's absorption process completely. However, that would mean…"
"Every prisoner would regain strength on the inside and release themselves free," I finished the sentence.
"Yes."
Silence fell over the table.
Quite the complication we were put up against. Because it would mean that we could either barge in and save one person the hard way, or we exploit the loophole and 'save' everyone, releasing god knows how many criminals onto the streets.
The former is an extremely difficult task since we'd all be facing a high number of competent prison guards while we were drained of our qi. The latter is, well, a bad idea.
"Can we dig at a distance and enter the cell chamber? You got any blueprints?" I asked Wan.
He nodded sideways. "It was built in a way that any such disturbance would collapse the whole structure."
"Hmm… Alright then, how many guards are we talking about?" I asked Wan, trying to assess if we could somehow manage the direct approach. "If the asteroid drains qi, they can't have cultivators stationed too close. Is it a rotating shift?"
"I'm not entirely sure if there have been any staffing changes since my time there, but during construction, the plan was for one guard at the main entrance."
All of us exchanged confused looks. Just one? That seemed absurdly insufficient.
"You mean the one we met this morning?" Liangyu wondered.
"You've met him?" Wan asked. "He's a Staff Venerable."
"Senior Brother Lai!" Yanyin chirped up, excited to join the conversation. "He gave me five coins to buy a new straw hat! Though I probably lost them on my way too, because I couldn't find them anywhere after reaching home. He's nice. Please don't hurt him much, but I'd love to see him fight. He always looks really strong!"
I sat back, pondering this. I did wonder for a while why the government would decide on just a single guard. But then again, given how well the prison was built, and the fact that any cultivator approaching it would be weakened, it was probably good old overconfidence. Or Lai was just that much of a monster.
The paths were clear now. I just had to decide on which one to choose.
"What's the interval schedule for the qi release?" I asked Wan.
"Every twenty-four hours or so, depending on how many prisoners it's holding and the density of their cultivation," Wan replied. "It happens for about ten minutes. I think I still might have a record of it. I'll take a look at it and calculate when the next interval is. So if you could release me now…"
He wiggled in the roots.
I signaled Liangyu and Jian. With a wave of their hands, the roots retreated into the floorboards.
Wan stood up, rubbing his wrists and stretching out his arms. "Whew! I thought I was good as dead! You people are intense."
As he disappeared into a back room to search for his records, I turned toward the gang for their input. "What do you guys think? Should we just take on the guard and force our way in? It seems like the obvious choice, but I'm thinking if we should time it to arrive just slightly earlier than the qi release, just to give ourselves a backup option in case things go sideways."
Everyone nodded in agreement, the logic was sound enough.
"Tomorrow morning!" Wan announced as he emerged from the back room, waving some yellowed papers covered in calculations and diagrams. "Approximately three hours after sunrise."
"Perfect," I remarked as I got up, cracking my neck. "Let's crash at Yanyin's place for the night."
Liangyu and Jian cleared the remaining tree roots from the entrance, opening the shop up to the fresh air again.
Wan stood by the counter, looking relieved that we were finally leaving. "So, will I be seeing you all again or…?"
"Hopefully not," I replied.
We were just about to leave when Liangyu stopped abruptly. "Hold on, I almost forgot," he said, turning back towards Wan. "I just got one last question. Why exactly are you in hiding?"
Wan let out a deep, weary breath, his eyes looking anywhere but at us. The pause stretched uncomfortably long as we stared at him curiously for the answer. "I… slept with the construction supervisor's wife."
"Damn."
"And her mom."
"DAMN!"