Chapter 2: Grim Discoveries and Grim Vengeance

 They're in the dragonboat race now!

Noon, the city goes silent and the shops close as the people gather on the riverbank, pushing and shouting into the crowd until they get a good view of the racing boats. The Flower Liches, all five of them, are gathered together on a copper-plated stand under silk canopies at the starting and ending point of the race; their thrones, which they reach with bamboo ladders, are some 30' off the ground. A gaunt veiled woman clad in a white bloodstained gauze dress, and surrounded by purple faerie fires stands with a a gorgeous, naked, gold-skinned androgynous athlete and 135 zombies in front of the canopy. From afar, the Flower Liches look like old ladies wrapped in silk and brocade upon which blood-soaked garlands of flowers have been heaped. When they move, a chill suffuses the air, and all the shadows of the city and its people grow taller.

The undead in front of them look, well, like undead, ghosts and ghouls joining a zombie parade. The whole riverbank smells of salty rotten fishes, of umami, of the rotting dead, of sour decaying flowers in full blossom, of the bitter sweat of lovers, and of the sweet corruption of water-gorged fruits. There are bleachers everywhere in the narrow streets, and people cheering the racers with tiny flags and crackers. Most of the people have put their most elegant clothes on so that it's all somewhat glamorous in spite of the all-pervading grotesque. (Flower Liches of the Dragonboat Festival, page 19.)

Pin Lung is surprised with a full crew of boatmen and Shesha and Terry the Terrible coming with him, yet Pin Lung is thankful for them. 

Now they have a chance, a fighting chance.

Tu Wang Ping has seven (7) hit points now from resting and asking Terry to heal her in the caravansary. 

Their crew includes two boatmen, Terry the Terrible, Shesha, Tu Wang Ping, and Pin Lung.

The two-headed Japhet, the fourth Flower Lich, then comes forward to touch all competitors' foreheads.

This is odd, at the best: for people like Tu Wang Ping, all that happens is the greenish-white sickly fingers of Japhet touch her forehead. 

Yet it is the worse for spell-casters and holy-(wo)men like Terry the Terrible, who is quivering in fear uncontrollable in front of the two-headed Flower Lich. When the touch of the lich hits his forehead, Terry immediately falls downs, gagging, nostrils flaring, and eyes bulging and dilating. 

His partner, the axolotl/naga/human cross-breed, Shesha, moves close to him after Shesha is touched as well.

Shesha asks, in his voice which sounds like wrenching, dying machine, "What is happening?"

Terry the Terrible replies, "Aghhah! I'm - - - ughaaah! - - - vomiting rainbow jelly!"

The rest of the crew still stand in their formal positions, yet study Terry the Terrible. He is not vomiting anything by their estimation.

Tu Wang Ping looks around and sees the other teams are experiencing the same thing.

"My magic!" exclaims Terry the Terrible, mortified and dis-spirited. "He took away my magic!"

Meanwhile, as Terry howls this, the gorgeous, naked golden-skinned, and androgynous athlete (The Chancellor) steps forward and slowly points a weird looking stick at each of the teams and their boats.

It appears that the athlete goes to various other teams and their boats to take certain objects away from them yet does not go to Tu Wang Ping's team.

The strange androgynous athlete then places all these object into a ebony box adorned with small rubies. The box sits at the feet of the flower liches.

Hyacinth, the fat, richly tattered Flower Lich, casts a spell while holding a tiny replica of the box.

Reality then enfolds on itself, retreating a hole and the box is thrown into wherever this hole in reality goes. Reality warbles back together after that.

The race is off!

Tu Wang Ping's team composition:

Tu Wang Ping - Sweeper

Pin Lung - Drummer

The two boatmen and Terry the Terrible and Shesha are the paddlers. 

The other teams:

They number in four.

Team one - city militia

Team two - beggars

Team three - city militia 

Team four - mongrelmen

Okay basically I did a very rough mini-game of the dragonboat race and there were heavy rains then a typhoon and all the other teams either capsized and drowned or where attacked by water weirds, tiger-headed carp, or fish-faced hill giants. 

Tu Wang Ping's team essentially becomes winner by default and each member gains 100 GPs.

Tu Wang Ping's Team is utterly amazed that they survived that race after witnessing the horrific deaths of their fellow competitors.  They take their 100 gold pennies in stunned silence. 

The next day, Tu Wang Ping considers what she has to do. She has to figure out what is going on with Lil'ling and the House of the Sound of White Jasmine, the phenomenon which brought her into this mess, investigate the Tunshang Barony for Pin Lung, and figure out how to survive this bloody dragonboat death-race!

She speaks with Terry the Terrible, asking about the magic he reportedly told about. After learning about the sadhu's holy man powers, she requests that he heal her again, which he does. Terry the Terrible performs his healing rites upon her, giving her 4 hit points back. It isn't much, yet it is something.

Tu Wang Ping then enlists Terry the Terrible and Shesha to come with her to the Tunshang Barony, in the effort of getting out of Pin Lung's blackmail, thus getting out of the dragonboat death-race. 

They set out quickly in the early morning to the Barony. They walk up to the Barony which has seen better days. 

Three buildings of lacquered wood, like a hamlet, stand at the edge of the city amid ruins of other structures, all burnt and crumbled. The lingering traces of past mayhem mar the surroundings: the earth itself scorched and cracked all around as though by fire from Heaven. All around their walls, jagged stones and black mud has been piled in heaps. There's smoke rising in the air from the first building, which rises above a stone fence, and movement here and there about the eucalyptus grove encircling it — playful white foxes and crimson squirrels. Sometimes, the jagged stones block the way, reducing the path leading to the buildings to an uneasy 2 foot wide trail (Flower Liches of the Dragonboat Festival, page 83).

The first come to the servants' building where they soon find two knavish looking gentlemen and two maids wearing raggedy outfits.

Tu Wang Ping asks to speak with the Baron of Tunshang.

The knavish men and raggedy maids can tell that Tu Wang Ping looks important as well as rather mean and tough-looking with her beat up body and the two strange fellows she is with. They say that she needs to set up an appointment yet they will tell him that she is here. 

Tu Wang Ping says that she is there to speak about the temple of the Horse God and Pin Lung.

A knave goes to tell the mandarin while a maid shows them to the second building where they wait in an empty reception room.

The deserted, empty quality of the second building really hammers in how the better day are behind the Tunshang Barony.

The maid brings the three mango teas that tastes of clear-headness. Electricity arcs across the three's minds and awakens their synapses which is very good for Tu Wang Ping since she is psychic. 

However, when the Baron, Kawanok, is getting out of bed and the message comes to him that some shady people are here to discuss Pin Lung and the Horse God's temple, the Baron is uncertain about what to do and dawdles. 

This makes Tu Wang Ping and her two hired hands wait a long while, only adding to the Baron's suspiciousness. 

Finally, after waiting for an un-seemingly long amount of time, Tu Wang Ping gets fed up and says, "Wait here!" to Terry the Terrible and Shesha and walks out to the third building to figure out things herself.

She successfully sneaks passed the four weird pale barbarians with spiral blood-red tattoos and dented weapons who are in the guard room. 

Tu Wang Ping enters the administrative office, where two mandarins with thin beards and mustaches are working. These mandarins wear orange robes, weird glasses whose prismatic lenses are shaped like pyramids and conical gold hats.

These mandarins are surprised by Tu Wang Ping entering out of the blue and cry, "Who are you?"

Tu Wang Ping replies, worried and ready for things to get violent, "A concerned someone for Pin Lung and I have some questions for the Baron."

At this moment, she uses her ESP on the mandarins who immediately think, "What? The man whose daughter is in the deep well in the hills above this place 3 miles away."

Tu Wang Ping's eyes bulge at the discovery of this information. She says, "I apologize, you have already answered those questions. Sorry to bother you, I will be leaving you." and she leaves the office.  

This makes the two mandarins look at one another in confusion, wondering, "What was that?" and they curse the Baron's plans on taking over the Horse God's temple which has made all this rigmarole and cloak and dagger strangeness happen.

(The bad guys lose because of dawdling and bureaucratic red-tape indifference, apparently.)

Tu Wang Ping successfully sneaks back to the second building to tell Terry the Terrible and Shesha that they need to get to the hills and find a certain dry well.

They go up to the hills and discover the deep, dry well. Tu Wang Ping calls into the deep well and hears the voice of Pin Lung's daughter, calling up for help from the well.

Instantly, Tu Wang Ping tries to the woman by climbing down the well using her silk rope, but the rope only goes half-way. She then asks Terry the Terrible to go back to the city to get more rope. 

He does so and soon, Tu Wang Ping, with the conjoined rope, finds a battered, terribly abused young woman at the bottom of the well.

Tu Wang Ping then carries this young woman upon her back up to safety.

The woman cries tears of joy at recuse and soon Terry the Terrible, Shesha, and Tu Wang Ping reunite Pin Lung and his daughter back together.

Once suitably safe, the daughter tells how she was kidnapped by a foreign man in grey clothes who took her to the well and raped her.

Upon hearing her confession, Tu Wang Ping's eyes stare shocked in horror, Terry the Terrible starts balling reminded of his own rape experiences, Shesha gains a hardened fatalistic warrior's face, and, while Pin Lung listens with a calm face, his hands bleeds with his finger nails cutting into them.

After hearing this, they know what to do. All religious sentiment and ethics of the Horse God are faded out of Pin Lung. Blood debt must be paid.

So soon these five prepare grim vengeance.

On the Black Day of the dragonboat race festival, the party, all in black, find and corner Jae Ming, the person trying to take control of the Horse God's temple from Pin Lung.

The arrogant bald man demands to know what this is about to Pin Lung, yet falls silent when Pin Lung's daughter steps forward into his vision.

Pin Lung cries, "My daughter was raped by your henchman. Your fate will be worse, it will be as long and painful, yet unlike my daughter, you will not survive this. There is one question before you die, where is that henchman?"

Terrified, and in the calm dread of inevitability Jae Ming shutters, "We poisoned him." 

Pin Lung's daughter shouts, "Then you took him from me, took the torturous death I wanted to see done to him." She then orders, "Kill him!"

Jae Ming's hit points=8. 

Shesha heavies his ax upon Jae Ming who croaks when his blood blasts out of his body. 

Jae Ming's remaining hit points=6.

Tu Wang Ping stabs into him with her short sword. (Jae Ming's hit points=3.)

Jae Ming squeals and starts to run away, getting out of the way of a swipe from Terry the Terrible's sword.

Then Pin Lung summons two black-coloured half-translucent sea horses with tiny red horns from the obsidian steed figurine. 

One of the half-translucent sea horses attempts to head butt Jae Ming, unsuccessfully, while the other sea horse also unsuccessfully tries to bite Jae Ming.

Jae Ming casts sanctuary on himself and attempts to flee. 

However, the spell does not work on Tu Wang Ping and she punches him in the face (He is down to 2).

Terry the Terrible is also unaffected by the spell and punches him as well.

Jae Ming then falls unconscious and the three and flying sea horses make long work out of him til he dies all the while Pin Lung and his daughter watch.

The next day, Pin Lung writes and sends a letter to Kwanok, the Tunshang Baron, writing, "I have decided to quit the dragonboat race, my daughter is back. My condolences on Jae Ming who has recently died by a random mugging."

The intimidation letter works and Kwanok backs off from trying to own the temple of the Horse God.

End of Chapter II.