“Best for who?” Ying snapped.
“Best for me, I suppose,” Grandmaster replied. “Cangzhen needed an eagle. Perhaps I should have chosen something else. Something less … aggressive.”
“Then what should you have raised me to be?” Ying asked sarcastically. “A dog to follow you around and jump at your every command? You should have raised me as I was meant to be raised!”
Grandmaster shook his head. “No, that would have been disastrous. Of that I am certain.”
“You will pay for robbing me of my birthright!” Ying said. “And you will pay for changing my name. Others shall pay, too. My vengeance will fall on every person whose life you touched with warmth and compassion, for that is my destiny.”
“That is indeed your destiny,” Grandmaster said. “But you have the power to change it.”
“Never!” Ying shouted. He stopped circling and stood behind Grandmaster. “After my man retrieves the dragon scrolls from your library, I will learn what I was born to learn. And when I close the final scroll, I will take with pride the name my father gave me. The name you tried to bury beneath the feathers of an eagle. Arrogant fool!”
“Do not follow in your father's footsteps,” Grandmaster said. “I urge you to forge your own path. Your father was a sick man. Only a sick man would give his son the name—”
“ARRRGH!” Ying lunged straight at Grandmaster's back. His pointed teeth stopped a hair's breadth from Grandmaster's thin, wrinkled neck. “Don't you dare talk about my father that way!” Ying hissed. “He did nothing wrong, and you know it. It was all your doing. You set the events in motion, and you've been trying to reverse your wrongs ever since. That is why you took me away from the clan and raised me yourself, isn't it?”
“No,” Grandmaster replied, turning to face Ying. “I took you in because I wanted to give you hope.”
“You didn't take me in,” Ying said. “You took me. You did it because you wanted to rewrite my future. Admit it!”
“I did it because I felt sorry for you,” Grandmaster said, folding his bony hands. “And because I feared what you might become if you were exposed to the wrong people.”
“Exposed to the wrong people?” Ying said. “You mean people with passion? People with vision? People like the Emperor?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should never have taken me along to help him last year, you foolish—”
“I know,” Grandmaster said, turning away. “I know. …” He lowered his head.
“Turn around and fight, old man!” Ying said.
Grandmaster shook his head.
Ying snarled and stepped around in front of Grandmaster. Grandmaster closed his eyes and turned away again.
“Face me!” Ying demanded.
Grandmaster raised his head high but said nothing.
Ying took a deep breath, rooting himself to the earth. “Then prepare to meet your ancestors. …”
Ying raised both hands ceremoniously and extended his fingers. Slowly he brought his fingers together and curled them down while stretching his thumbs down and curling them up. He snapped the perfectly formed eagle-claw fists back and drew a lifetime's worth of angry energy from every corner of his body, pushing it up through his shoulders, into his arms. Driven by hate, he slammed his clawlike fists into Grandmaster's back. There was a tremendous CRUNCH, and Grandmaster slumped to the floor.
Ying spat and walked out of the burning practice hall without bothering to give his father's killer a parting glance.
Malao slowed as he approached the tree line across from the Cangzhen compound. He picked a large maple and scurried up the trunk. Peeking through the new leaves at the end of a branch, he saw Ying standing in the smoky moonlight, just inside Cangzhen's main gate. A circle of soldiers surrounded Ying. Even from a distance, Malao could sense Ying's anger and hear bits and pieces of his ranting.
Ying seemed most upset with a man he called Tonglong, who looked to be about thirty years old and had an extraordinarily long, thick ponytail.
Nice haircut, Malao thought, and giggled to himself as he watched Tonglong formally present his straight sword to Ying. Ying unsheathed the sword and swung it dramatically over Tonglong's bowed head. Then he reached down, lifted a large, round object, and threw it at Tonglong.
Tonglong caught the spinning object and placed it on the ground, next to his feet. As Tonglong wiped his hands across his chest, Malao stared at the object. He couldn't figure out what it was. He thought there might be something else on the ground near Ying, but the soldiers were blocking his view. Malao scratched his head and looked back at Tonglong.