Chapeter 6 The Towers

 There were many section eight apartments in the Castle Towers. They sprung up across the city skyline like Bamboo shoots and were connected by enclosed footbridges. An elderly person could spend their entire life without ever going outside if they so chose, because within these towers were shops and grocery stroes and all the necesities of life. But most people did go outside. But to do so was a danger. Wild demon creatures may devour you. Dragons, Nians, Centipedes, the rats that were under the city and half the size of a man. It's not that these creatures were evil, but they did ocassionally eat people. It was safer to travel out doors with Nian Armor. The creatures would think you were one of their own and leave you alone. Those skilled in the Nian Dance and with the right armor could even do battle with the creatures and use the armor to fly, to travel...and to attack other humans in war or raids. So you see it was confusing and chaotic outside. but at the same time, for most people it was worth the risk and it was suspected that people were really the ones to blame but no one could prove it.

Ch 5: Guan Yu v. Choi Yang

 When Mommy and Enkidu returned home, Baba told the story of te big rat eating the small mouse. 

Mommy: You just watched?

Baba: What do you want me to do? The problem solved itself.

Later that nigh while Enkidu was sleeping he suddenly had to go to the bathroom. When he got up he was stopped. It was the rat Centipede, Choi Yang. He was huge now, a true monster. 

Enkidu: I am a human you can't eat me, I'm not a mouse.

CY: My original goal was to eat you from the inside, but you through me away into the flower pot. 

Enkidu gasped. It was the bamboo shoot centipede. He ran, evading the Centipede and bumped into the altar. The Plum Blossom girl appeared and handed Enkidua a sword. It was a sword on a stick with a green dragon chsing the moon. He chopped the centipede into many pieces but it kept coming back together and reforming, until finally Enkidu grabbed the rat by the ears and chopped it head off. Looking at the bamboo chute strings , Enkidu kicked them and stepped on them and pulled it away from the centipedes body. Then he quickly put the head into a plastic bag with and put it on the altar to the Plum Blossom girl. He then left the Green dragon sword by the altar as well and went to the bathroom washed his hands and then went back to bed. 

Ch- 4 Rat v. Mouse

 One night the centipede rat became strong enough to crawl out of the flower pot. Cheung bo Jai, Baba, was watching The Condor Heroes on VHS when the Centipede Rat crawled out onto the floor. At first he came out in Centipede form and came across a mouse looking for food to bring back from the kitchen to his mouse hole. 

Choi Yang: Stop right there, where are you going to get food.

Mouse: I only have a few grains of rice, to bring back to my family that's it. There is some in the kitchen but thi is all I can carry. 

Choin Yang: I can get that later, but right now I will eat you first so that we don't compete over food resources. 

Choi Yang stabbed the mouse with his centipede pincers and began eating him. Cheung Bo Jai paused the VHS video because he had copies of them and could always watch later, but this show was live and could only be seen once. Choin Yang swallowed the mouse whole and there was not even any blood spilled on the floor. The Centipede Rat found a rat hole and out of site began eating all the rats and mice living in the walls, indeed the family of the rat that was the soul of the Bamboo Centipede. Though that was his past soul and his appearance and so he was allowed into the rat Clan, those rats not realizing that he was nowa different creature altogether and not there to bring them food, but to kill them and eat them for food. 

Cheung bo Jai, Baba, passed out and began dreaming after watching the Rat kill the mouse and only awoke when the door lock clicked and Mommy and Enkidu returned home from work at the Sea To Sea Market. 

Chapter 3: Bamboo shoot centipede

 The Centipeded twisted and turned and grew. One day, a rat that was poisoned climbed into the flower pot where the Bamboo shoot centipede was slowly taking root. When the Rat crawled in and died it's soul saw the Centipede. 

Rat: "Who are you?"

Centipede:" My name is Choi Yang. I am the Bamboo shoot centipede. I was hiding in the Nappa cabbage when Cheung Bo Jai cooked me. I was going to travel into his son Enkidu's stomach and take over his body. I had many plans.. but now I am stuck in the flower pot.

Rat: I never had that many plans. I was just living day to day and wanted to survive. my family and clan has ecked out a life of sorts by avoiding the poisons and pest control people by travelling through the walls. But I ate the wrong thing and now I am dying or perhaps dead... if I can see and talk to you. 

Centipede: I can take over your body and we can live again together, sharing the same body. For I am alive but I have no soul. You are dead but you still have one. I had one long ago... but anyway, to agree or will you die and I have to wait for the next creature to come here to die. 

Rat: Of course I want to live!

Choi Yang shot out his bamboo pincers and slowly transferred DNA to the Rats still warm body and through magic and microbes began to overtake and inhabit the rat and grow into a centipede Bamboo ratlike form. A monster indeed, though still fairly small. 

Enkidu was playing with his toy cars over by the flower pot when he looked up and saw the dead rat and saw some sort of movement under it's skin.

"Eww...Mommy I think there is a dead rat in the flower pot."

"Oh honey that is probably just a shadow or something. Nothing to worry about."

Chapter 2: The Centipede in the Choi

 Mommy sat one the couch with little Enkidu while Baba sat opposite her. Between then was a well word coffee table which served as the dinner table most nights. Interestingly, there was a very sturdy very expensive restaurant caliber table which they had taken home when a friend's restaurant had closed down, but at the moment the coffee table was in front of the couch, which was in front of the TV playing worn, pirated, copied, recopied, and recopied over VHS tapes of a television series from the Hong Kong. Baba was watching intently as he ate the rice and the dishes he had cooked hastily but skillfully as cooking was his trade and had been his trade when he worked on a ship to arrive here in the first place, whenever that was, before Enkidu was born. But Enkidu didn't have a concept of a time before he was born really. The television show which was a period piece was a time before he was born, and Baba on a ship was a time before his time and Mommy travelling the world was a time before his time and might as well all have been the same thing. Whether it was gritty Kowloon or a silk dressed Kung Fu couple in the snow. on  a set filmed indoors, all of that might as well have been equally as real. 

Enkidu picked up pieces of the salty fish and the vegetables into his little bowl when he found a strange centipede looking creature that crawled from under the leaf. 

"Baba what's this?" 

"Oh.....Baba forgot to wash the vegetables."

"Eww is it alive?"

"No honey it's cooked you can eat it." Mommy said.

"No No don't eat it."

"Is it poisonous?" Mommy continued

"Only little bit."

"So we can eat the vegetables still?"

"Hmm" Baba grunted which meant yes, as he plucked up the creature with his fingers and tossed it into a house plant."

"What was that Baba?"

Baba waved his hand in the air and said, "chung"

"I thought Chung meant worm?" Mommy said

"I thought Chung was our last name!" Enkidu giggled with laughter.

The creature stirred because it was not really a normal insect, but a bamboo spirit insect. Which means that it could not die in quite the same way a normal insect died. It had magical powers. And connecting with the soil of the house plant it burrowed it's way in slowly and began to slowly gain life back and plan its escape. 

Chapter One: The Plum Blossom Spirit

The soft golden light shined through the high rise apartment onto the black tile floor where the little boy sat, gazing into the dust that floated into the air, like planets or rocks in space. His father walked briskly past, a force pushing through and forcing the dust particles to fly off into different directions and drawing the you child's gaze. His father reached into the cylindrical tube containing Joss Stick Incense and a picture of  the Lotus Maiden on a flower to grab three herngs. As his father turned the herngs upside down and used his thumb to click the flame of the lighter on, the small boy pushed himself upright, paused a moment to gain balanced and slowly walked over to his father calling out notes and sounds sounds with tones of melodious sentences whose meanings could only be guessed at.

"Hold on, Enkidu" his father called the boys name softly, "just a moment." And his father fanned the flame until it went out and the herng was lit by the orange smolder at the top only. He put the herng sticks to his forehead and bowed three times before putting the sticks in a Tsing Tao Bottle, with other spent sticks, before the picture of a young woman. He picked up Enkidu so that his angle of the altar was more clear.  

Enkidu reached for and grabbed one of the two flowers that flanked the portrait and picked it up babbling even more excitedly. 

"Hey Enkidu," Baba laughed, "Why did you take the plum blossom girl's flowers? heheh... but this isn't really the plum blossom girl. It's just a picture. And we are only lighting the incense as a memory to help think of her." Enkidu laughed and put the flowers, which were made of plastic, to his mouth. Baba took them back gently and replaced them onto the altar. "We all light incense to the Plum Blossom girl in the Plum Blossom Village. That's where you live, that's the name of these Concrete towers, great Castles reaching into the sky to house our people. Because they exist because of that little girl's sacrifice. She was killed, when the great Dragons were building their towers, and when she died her body exploded into a flaring light with such heat and energy that the Dragons shook with fear. The light took the form of a great bird, and eagle, a phoenix, a simorg, a crane, depending on which angle you saw it from and the people, enraged, rose up and clamored together donning their Lion helmets and humbaba suits and Kei Lun claws to do battle with the Dragons. But the Dragons said they would build this plum blossom village if they were allowed to build their Dragon Way through the buildings where the Plum Blossom girl's family had lived. And the light did not dissipate but hovered and stayed and flew about. And now you can see it from time to time watching over our village. And so we honor her with incense and flowers in each and every apartment home of all the towers you see."

Baba, placed Enkidu on the floor and at that moment Enkidu's mother came home. She went over to Enkidu and picked him up in her arms which smelled of the car exhaust and had the outside cold air energy about her jacket. Enkidu found it uncomfortbale and squirmed. 

"Bo Jai...Enkidu doesn't like me.. he doesn't even recognize me."

Baba laughed saying, "You come from outside" 

He stirred in the kitchen as Enkidu's mother played with her son on the couch, and soo Bo Jai brought out dishes of Bak Choi, Hahm Yu, Steamed fish with ginger and scallions and three bowls of rice. 

Gathering and a call out to Tpny the Hawk

From place to place and wave to wave, shore to shore the old man braved, the wind the rain and constant strain, enough to where down on the brain. It was a winding road after he stole Macau gold, and Jade from trade past the Qinghai's threshold. All his men her brothers and yi hei was strong, but whatever could did indeed go wrong. Some got caught in the sea and some by police, and other bot to badly simply stayed where they pleaded. But this is the story of the man's journey home, coming back to the block to claim his throne. To return in shock to see. Ire than the throne gone. But the block itself but this is his song. He had spent many a year beside the snake queens throne who wanted him to help to build a new home. Perhaps it was there that he should have stayed, but fate did not wish for it to he that way. The spirits of heaven urged him  to return, except for the Dragon of the sea whom he spurned.