Xiao Li

Xiao Si

• Chinese name: Xiao Si (小厮)
• Sex: male
• Allegiance: The Order
• Rank: Nether Envoy of The Order
• Speciality: stealth, poisoning
• First appearance: the Phantom Blade series

Character profile

The youngest Nether Envoy in The Order, codename Black Wound. The way he moves, and everything he can do with a blade, came out of one family that was wiped out — the Bastion of Mó — and the weapon he carries, Black Wound, is one of the three treasures that family kept. Soul is a descendant of the Bastion: the second son of its lord Mo Tian, and the full younger brother of Mo Jian.

Early life

In infancy, when the Bastion of Mó was destroyed, he and his elder brother Mo Jian were carried out alive. The brothers were separated soon after and raised by different people: Soul was given to a couple, the foster father a blacksmith and the foster mother an ordinary village woman. From those years he keeps one fragment — a tall man carrying him, running, fire behind them — and it stayed with him as a nightmare long after.

He grew up in the care of an unmarried woman in Nancheng, and in that era an unmarried woman raising a child paid for it in gossip from every neighbour. His foster mother fell ill and died when he was twelve. To pay for her burial, Soul sold himself into an underground fighting house in Nancheng and threw bare-knuckle fights for money. There he met Zuo Shang, who had been sold in the same way, and the two became the closest of friends. They broke out together and took to drifting the Wulin, doing work nobody says out loud.

Years in The Order

After his foster mother died, Soul drifted with Zuo Shang. On the road the two of them came close to uncovering the most terrible secret in the Wulin, and Soul nearly lost the thing he could least afford to lose: the Black Heart.

In a quarrel with Qingfeng the Clear-Wind Swordsman, an old name from south of the river, Zuo Shang killed the man by accident, and the orthodox side came after them both. By then they had worked out that their skills could buy them something far bigger than drudgery. Then “by chance” a middle-aged man found them and showed them the most meaningful work under heaven. From that day The Order — the most secretive and the strongest power in the Wulin — took them in, trained them into fighters whose names made people flinch, and sent them out to win battle after battle as it grew.

Over the following years Soul went out as a Living Envoy of The Order and came back from most of it. Hard use turned him into a first-rate swordsman, and he did not disappoint the man who had taken him in — his adoptive father, Mu Tianmiao.

There was a helplessness running under all of it, because someone else was steering. Two things had dogged him since childhood. One was the dream: fire outside, a figure with his back turned slowly turning, the face never clear. The other was the killing intent that rose in him without warning, blurring his mind and sometimes taking it — and the fear that one day it would take his reason for good and leave behind a mistake nobody could undo.

In The Order’s thirtieth year, after strong showings at Sword Pavilion, Moon Bastion and elsewhere, Soul was handed a heavier assignment: go south into the Wulin and find out what Mirage really was.

Soul and Zuo Shang fought well in the Battle of Mirage and exposed the hand behind it. The Nether Lord took notice, and raised Soul into The Order’s core.

Somewhere in those same years the friendship drifted. Soul never stopped believing Zuo Shang was the friend of his life and never once doubted what was between them. He still remembered the oath the two boys had sworn, to build something of their own in this Wulin.

The Order’s internal war

In The Order’s thirtieth year Soul takes the lead again. This time Zuo Shang, who had always fought beside him, goes off after the Council of Eleven into the deep desert at the very start, and Soul — the one who knows Mirage best — goes in alone as The Order’s spearhead against it, through a run of fights people still retell.

In the fortieth year his closest friend and the woman he loved used him. He killed The Order’s leader with his own hand, by mistake, and the whole The Order came after him; by the end of the duel with Zuo Shang he was badly broken.

To survive the hunt, Soul accepted the Poisoned-Heart art from Ghost Hand, a physician nobody could read. It put his skill back fast and left him sixty-six days. He spent them on the one road out: settle every debt and every attachment, and do not come back. Meanwhile The Order tore at itself, and the whole Wulin shifted with it.

Personality

He says little and keeps to himself, and going by the outside that is about all you get from this young swordsman. It is not the whole picture. Soul runs cold on the surface and warm underneath, and loyalty is the thing he takes most seriously. Most of the time he is steady — but he is young, and there is a rash, unthinking streak in him too.

Appearance

Lean and tall, long thin limbs, a gaze that carries. He wears plain black cloth, which is what lets him disappear into the dark when he moves, and over it a red cloak that is anything but plain.

Base abilities

Sha-Chi: the root of every technique. Some techniques also get stronger when Sha-Chi is raised, and the Keening Draught or another drug can push a single release past its normal limit.
Killing intent: of one source with Sha-Chi and another name for it — ordinary Sha-Chi is a resource, while killing intent is that resource pushed to its extreme form, ten times the effect of ordinary Sha-Chi.

Sword arts

Killing Stroke: the blade art that made Black Wound a name families feared. It lands killing blows on several opponents at once and leaves them weakened; boosted, it can break a group of first-rate fighters in one move.
Rain of Cuts: dozens of light, fast strikes thrown straight ahead. It wins on volume.
Falling Cleave: dropping out of the air with the force and speed to split a target open.
Whirling Launch: swordwork like a storm, used to throw enemies up into the air.
Blink Strike: the move Black Wound is known for, faster than anything around it. First-rate fighters by the dozen went down to this one, and it kills in a way the receiving end would not have imagined.
Phantom Kill: his other signature. Sha-Chi builds an illusion, the enemy is drawn into attacking it, and the force of that attack comes back on him. The harder he swings, the harder it returns. It has one hole — it cannot counter anything complicated.
Hidden Strike: he hides his own body, then hits from behind, where nobody is looking.
Shadow Strike: the surprise cut that lives inside Ghost Step. Same principle as Hidden Strike.
Nether Blow: his slowest technique and one of his hardest-hitting, a blow that lands as though something in the underworld had blessed it.

Ultimate techniques

Zero · Skullbreak: a blade-aura attack that gets into anything and breaks anything, stronger than every other technique he has apart from Annihilation.
Annihilation: his strongest, and there is nobody in the Wulin who can stand up to a single blow of it. Soul cannot fully control what it does either, and one use drains so much Sha-Chi that he keeps it in reserve.
Return to Zero: “It is the highest secret art of our the Bastion of Mó. Break through this one form and the body generates endless Sha-Chi — past all speed, all strength, all space.” — the lord of the Bastion of Mó
The final art of the Bastion of Mó, as its lord described it.

Relationships

• Mo Tian — father
• Mo Jian — brother
• Zuo Shang — closest friend
• Mu Tianmiao — adoptive father and leader
• Mu Xiaokui — childhood playmate, the girl he grew up beside
• Tong Mei — someone he has feelings for
• Jian Xuan — friend
• Xuan Yu — the woman he loves

Appearances

• Rainblood: Town of Death — age 28
• Rainblood II: Ye City — age 28
• Rainblood Prequel: Mirage — age 18
• Phantom Blade — age 18
• Phantom Blade II — age 19
• Phantom Blade III — age 26
• Phantom Blade Zero

Quotes

“If you have no heart, what good is seeing the whole board?” “There is no one left in the Wulin who can dodge this!” “I cannot hold this Sha-Chi back!” “My road is mine to decide.” “Is that really all you have?”

Character profile

One of The Order’s Nether Envoys — odd in manner, and never where you expect him to be. Xiao Si is the most mysterious of them: almost nothing about where he came from is known, and his record for killing is at the top of The Order’s list.

Joining The Order

His origins are unclear. It is said he worked the Wulin as a lone killer until The Order’s the Nether Lord, Mu Tianmiao, took an interest in him and brought him in. After that he became one of the best Nether Envoys, taking on the contracts nobody else could close.

Years in The Order

Inside The Order he worked alongside Soul, Zuo Shang, An Chan, Inanis and the rest. He keeps to himself and rarely deals with other Envoys, and yet is unreasonably reliable once a job starts. Where he stood during The Order’s internal war is another open question.

Personality

Strange, quiet, and impossible to read. He works fast and leaves nothing hanging. Cold as the surface is, there are things he will not do and lines he will not cross.

Ability profile

The Order’s best assassin. Stealth and poison are both fluent, his fighting style shifts and never repeats, and he finishes most targets without them knowing anyone was there. His qinggong is among the best in The Order.

Relationships

• Mu Tianmiao — superior, The Order’s the Nether Lord
• Soul — fellow Nether Envoy
• Zuo Shang — fellow Nether Envoy
• An Chan — fellow Nether Envoy
• Inanis — fellow Nether Envoy

Appearances

• Phantom Blade
• Phantom Blade II
• Phantom Blade III