[h3][b][u]Qinglian Village - Late 1937 - The Road from Shanghai to Nanjing[/u][/b][/h3] [color=slategray] Leather boots rhythmically beat the compressed dirt, a musical accompaniment to destruction. A sign stood before them by the village's entrance. [color=tan][h1]病[/h1][/color] [color=white]<"Sir..? Sir, what do we do?">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"Kano?!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] A translator quickly appeared from among the ranks to confirm the site on the ground. [color=white]<"'Sick'. It could be a ruse. An attempt by the hogs to avoid the slaughter that awaits them.">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"Then we push on. Advance!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] Leather boots once again found their percussive rhythm of doom. A sudden stop after the unit rounds a corner. A corpse. Left on the side of the road. Bloated, greying drawn flesh leaving contorted facial features. [color=white]<"Sir?">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"Contact command.">[/color][color=red]*[/color] The body wasn't alone. Up the path, a line of equally drawn bodies, strewn on the side of the path demonstrably. A second sign for any who were unable read the language of the first. A message was sent. Enquiries for how to handle this new Chinese obstruction. [color=white]<"The call is made! Until we receive our orders... [b]ADVANCE[/b]!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] Leather bootfalls once again beat out their disciplined percussion, as the line of bodies along the path were apparantly not to be the only one. As well as the line of strewn graying drawn corpses along the right of their path, another line up ahead was beginning on the left of the path. Not a living soul had yet been seen or heard from up ahead at Qinglian Village. Here they found only death. And not by their hands. It began to unnerve many, despite the rhythmic footfalls never losing their tempo. There was no complaining to the officer class. But the eerie silence, as the Japanese 13th Division advanced through piled dead on both sides, only gave power to the uncomfortable horror of what they were immersed in. The sound of the flies was audible. And the smell... [color=white]<"Sir! Command...">[/color][color=red]*[/color] Communication was brief and expected. Push on. Show no quarter. Prince Asaka's order to 'Kill all captives' remained in play. However the marching was halted and men were to advance at a more comfortable pace. And then, the two lines of death narrowed. So slowly at first, it took a while for the men to perceive it. Then there was murmuring amongst the more braggadocious of men. Those whose claims sought only to firm their own resolve and counter the chill of the moment. [color=white]<"Our contest continues..?">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"Of course. If only these wily Chinese hadn't killed themselves, I'd already have you beaten to one hundred kills.">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"All by the sword though, right?">[/color][color=red]*[/color] [color=white]<"Of course... I am familiar with the rules of our contest.">[/color][color=red]*[/color] The soldier drew a katana and looked at the reflection of his blade in the sun. [color=white]<"You must know that you have no chance. For afterall, mine is a genuine Muramasa blade. Even now, as I have unsheathed it, it hungers for blood.">[/color][color=red]*[/color] Ahead, it was finally visible. The two lines of dead converged in the path before them. Culminating in a pile that crossed their path entirely. The officer at the head covered his nose and mouth as he received new orders. [color=white]<"Halt!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] His other hand raised to the heavens. [color=white]<"We have new orders from Command! The Imperial Prince has wisely confirmed, it is not above the devilish Chinese to have infected their own people with a biological weapon so as to sow disease into our ranks! We are to return to the main road and continue [b]AROUND[/b] Qinglian Village. This is a direct order! We must keep our strength for Prince Asaka and the Emperor!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] And then a cough was heard from the pile. A small, young, feminine cough. Eyes snapped to the pile, scouring the mound of flesh for any movement to see where life still dwelled. [color=white]<"Sir?!?">[/color][color=red]*[/color] The call, a plead for wanton violence from the soldier who already had his katana drawn. [color=white]<"Stand down you fool! If you fall ill for failure to comply with this direct order, and spread it through the Imperial Army I will have you executed myself! I will not have my men lost because of a single Chinese who didn't realise she was dead yet!">[/color][color=red]*[/color] The grimace of the soldier as he once more sheathed his katana, indeed hungry enough to 'bite at his own blood' as he returned it to his saya. Its bloodlust would have to be satisfied with this meagre taste today. From somewhere within the morass of flesh the girl coughed once more. Stronger now. Being sick herself, she had been entrusted to keep moving the dead out herself, so as to not further the infection. It was difficult work, particularly whilst she was still sick herself. But the only alternative was to risk the healthy. To doom the living. But death did not come for Qing Yuan Liu's great grandmother that day. [color=red]*[/color] Japanese [hr] [CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]Banner[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] F L O W S T A T E[/color] [color=tomato]F L O W S T A T E[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup][/center] [hr] Dive deep. That's what my father had said. We only get maybe a hundred years, on a planet that's had four and a half billion years, in a universe that's seen almost fourteen billion years. Life flows into us and we flow into life. So we might as well dive deep. Of course that's now why I'm making the painstaking drive through peak hour Calder traffic to get to Chinatown from our shop and home out of Hudson. [i]"You don't come thousands of miles to America to surround yourself with a pale, somewhat offensive imitation of aspects of back home. Dive Deep."[/i] Which would be great, but it's where most of my business is. Well, you might doubt he actually said that, but he can actually be pretty profound when he's speaking Wu. Slightly less when he's speaking Mandarin. But you come to a new country speaking broken english, people think you're dumb. Even if you technically speak four languages and have a shop in a foreign country where you can fix damn near everything except your broken english. Probably why he was always on my case to not just learn one trade, but how to get by doing and fixing [b]EVERYTHING[/b]. The one thing tougher than that immigrant work ethic is that 'son of an immigrant, I-didn't-come-over-here-with-fourteen-bucks-in-my-name-walking-both-directions-in-the-snow-for-you-to-slack-off' work ethic. So that's why I'm rushing over to Chinatown now to fix a toilet. Forgive me, in this instance, if I don't 'Dive Deep'. Still... plus-side, this time's not extended family. There's a regular bill of service after this job. Tomorrow I've got a major dry-walling job less than two blocks away from this one. So that means sparring with Calder's peak traffic twice more. In the thick of it both ways. Young couple want to partition off a new room for a nursery. So there'll be the drywall, the paint... Install a new light. 'Almost everything can be repaired. If you know what you're doing and use appropriate care.' Makes sense that he'd say that. The people down my father's line. They have a-- well... They're well equipped when it comes to looking after themselves. And taking appropriate care. My grandmother... she discovered she could localise her body's life force energies to heal maladies, and even prevent them from happening. She studied numerous techniques, philosophical, spiritual and physical in nature... Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism... as she accumulated a wealth of knowledge that would become the basic tools my ancestors have passed down our familial line, a bank of knowledge which has been added to through the generations. Qigong. That pursuit of knowledge saw our very family pursued. My father, for example, developed a technique which allowed the very projection of a portion of life force. Probably sounds kind of Star Wars. But it's true. Redirecting and focusing a small portion of qi, or chi, and sending that power forth in a controlled explosive strike. It exhausts him afterwards of course... I mean, he's ejecting part of his very life force. I've kept my own personal addition to that knowledge bank of qigong quiet, though. What I'm capable of is the very fear, baseless at the time, which saw my family persecuted by the government until we could find a way across the Pacific. To the promises of a freer tomorrow. Understandable... I mean it scares the Hell out of me, I can understand why it would worry other people, let alone a central government who view it as a force they can't singularly control. I'm capable of drawing the chi from others, to add to my own. This isn't hypothetical, I've done it before. And yes, it's just as chilling and permanent as it sounds. All that being said, that's why my father puts very little faith in governments. And invests a lot more time in people. In our community. When a person has faith in you, they'll bend and flow. Empathy can see a person become flexible to try and find a way to support. Governments tend to become rigid and form rules which they force total adherence to, with no consideration of contextual contingency, with the slippery slope of anarchy as a cudgel. Case in point: when the government was pursuing and persecuting my family, it was a neighbour - actually neighbours, quite a few really, who had hidden us until we could flee the country. And now I get to hear my father not shut up about the land of opportunity and freedom, and drive through stifling congestion because he wanted the full immersive American urban experience. Sorry. I ramble a bit when I drive. Blame it on the traffic. [/color]