At that point, there was no choice but to help her uncle, but I at least wanted to know if he was a good man.
"Of course I can!" Yanyin said with obvious excitement. "But first, I would like to say thank you to all of you for helping me. All of you have very big hearts, and for that, I would like to bow down." She bowed as deeply as she could, touching her forehead to the floor. We felt awkward watching a child bow down for us, but she clearly wanted to do it, so we allowed her.
She straightened up and began. "I was born in Cloudfall Town but raised here in Greenleaf Crossing by my uncle. He's the sweetest, funniest person I know. He loves me very, very much, and I love him very, very much too, despite not being related by blood. When I was a baby, Uncle Zhenhao used to take on bodyguard jobs for money. So my parents gave me to him before they passed away."
"What do you mean?" Liangyu asked. "You mean they planned on dying?"
Qinyue shot him a sharp look and whispered, "Liangyu!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like-"
"It's okay," Yanyin assured him. "Even I don't know exactly what happened. Uncle Zhenhao said he'd tell me the whole story once I'm old enough. Anyway, that's about how much I know about Uncle, but I can tell you that he's a very good man. He's only ever killed bad people and I know it."
"Mhm," I nodded. "How did he end up in prison?"
Longwei chuckled. "I've been waiting for this. Go ahead, Yanyin. Tell him why."
"They don't tell me the entire reason," Yanyin continued, "but from what I know, it's because Uncle Zhenhao... is a lightning cultivator."
"HA!" Longwei exclaimed as each and every one of us froze in shock. That's because lightning cultivators are supposed to be extinct!
Curious reader, allow me to fill you in on some interesting lore right now.
Long ago, quite a few centuries in fact, in a far-away nation, there existed a sect called the Radiant Sun Sect in a village called Windgate. This particular sect was exceptionally righteous, never hesitating to help those in need, even if it meant opposing those in power, whether that power came from plain physical prowess or the arrogance of high-ranking officials. In their eyes, anyone and everyone was equally deserving of either help from their hands or having their bones broken by the same.
Now, this kind of confidence from a single sect would mean one of two things. First, they were an incredibly powerful group of cultivators. Or second, one or many members of the group had connections with the Government of Cultivators. In this case, it was a combination of both.
The Radiant Sun's leader, Lin Wuchen, was the son of a prominent leader in the GC. As he grew up, he witnessed that even the government wasn't safe from the smoke of corruption, and he chose to leave his father's protection to form his own sect with friends who were nothing less than rock-solid themselves.
Occasionally, they would fall into "political" troubles due to their noble recklessness, but thankfully they'd be saved by Wuchen's father pulling strings behind the scenes. Though it thoroughly frustrated the father, Wuchen's heroic actions continued for years.
Until, of course, one single action triggered a domino effect of political reactions, which eventually led to an all-out war between two nations! Nobody really knows what exactly this action was. Some blame the father, saying he tried to control his son but failed miserably. Others blame the son himself, claiming that the so-called incorruptible hero wasn't what he claimed to be.
I personally believe neither version. History is written by the victors, after all. But that isn't the crux of the matter at hand. You see, the Darkening Sun War, as they called it, involved the participation of The White Lightning Guild, a cultivators' association that included a huge number of the already-rare lightning cultivators in Shouyuan.
During the war, the opposing nation employed a technique of qi manipulation that completely destroyed the very essence of lightning energy in the bodies of the participants. As time went on, naturally, the number of people capable of wielding or even born with lightning qi reduced drastically, and eventually they all died out. Under normal conditions, such an extinction should take millions of years. But lightning users have a lifespan of as little as thirty-five years and most of them were already too weak to procreate.
You're right to think that since only a majority of the users had participated in the war, the minority must still be out there somewhere. Guess what? Apparently, the technique used during the war didn't just affect the participants but also affected lightning cultivators worldwide. That's right. Whoever it was, that cultivator was capable of manipulating qi on a cellular level as well as on a global scale. I'm sweating just thinking about the power our fathers and forefathers possessed.
The extinction of lightning cultivators had been fully confirmed about two centuries ago.
And so the question remains. Why did the authorities of Linhai choose to imprison Zhenhao if he was a lightning cultivator, when they should actually be protecting him?
"I don't think that's a valid reason," Qinyue said. "What does being able to cultivate lightning have to do with imprisoning the man?"
"They told me that lightning cultivators are extremely violent," Yanyin answered, her voice heavy with sadness. "And they said they'll be helping Uncle Zhenhao get better. And I believed them too, for a long while... until today. I really miss him more than ever now."
We sat in silence for a while, trying to process this revelation. I kept formulating theories about what might've happened. Zhenhao being a bodyguard for hire didn't help narrow things down either. The possible reasons were vast, ranging from personal vendetta to outright political conspiracy.
Either way, our next move was clear. We needed to gather information about the prison.