Yu'er's Father

He is the brewer of Pangzhen's back streets and Yu'er's father. His wife was the town's physician; after her death he kept the one piece of jewellery she left him close at hand, calling it the only thing of value the family owned.

When the townsfolk drank from the wells and did not wake, he was among them. Yu'er stole a prescription from the apothecary, heard of a flesh-and-blood flower that could cure him, and went out of the town alone to find it.

Soul came back with the true flower and used it on him. A flower fed on flesh and blood can return a mind drawn out into a puppet to the body it came from. He opened his eyes and asked first of all whether his daughter was still alive.

Then he told what he knew. The sickness had come in ones and twos two years before; seven or eight days ago everyone had it. He did not fall asleep until the third day, and before that faceless men had come to record his condition, saying that whoever did not sleep was one of the chosen, to lend a hand in completing the Heart.

He asked Soul to save the town and avenge his daughter, and pressed his wife's jewellery into Soul's hands, sorry that he had never put it on Yu'er while she could still wear it.

With his daughter gone and his wife gone before her, he said there was nothing left in this world for him to cling to. Then he promised he would live, and live well.