The ice silkworm feeds on blood, and You Tanzhi freezes before recovering

The ice silkworm episode is a reversal in which You TanZhi survives the very ordeal A'Zi intends to use for her own advancement. As she tries to take the creature’s power, he turns to a posture from the Tendon-Changing Sutra; the resulting cold energy freezes him, and A'Zi believes he has died. Left without a proper burial, he is cast into a brook, where melting ice restores his movement and consciousness. His survival saves his life but changes his allegiance: seeing how readily A'Zi treats him as expendable, he decides not to go back.

The silkworm as a coveted weapon

A'Zi has been training a poison palm and regards the ice silkworm as a prize that could make the technique stronger than her master's. She keeps the creature in an urn and tests it against poisonous snakes and insects. The creatures freeze, while the silkworm feeds on them; after ten days, none of the poisonous animals has resisted it. The trial establishes both the silkworm’s exceptional potency and A'Zi’s method of treating living creatures as materials for martial training.

When A'Zi decides to use the silkworm herself, she orders You TanZhi to put his hand into the urn so it can feed on his blood. He has feared this moment, but his attachment to her persists even as he understands the danger. Rather than openly refusing, he kneels and asks her to remember his name, You TanZhi, instead of calling him Iron Clown. A'Zi agrees to remember him, but praises him as a loyal lackey. The exchange makes his personal appeal subordinate to the role she assigns him: even at the point when he expects to die for her, he seeks recognition through service.

The Sutra posture and the reversal

You TanZhi is unwilling to surrender without trying to survive. He turns himself upside down, places his head between his legs, and reaches into the urn. As the silkworm bites his finger, he concentrates on the arrow-like directions shown beside the monk in the Tendon-Changing Sutra drawing. Cold energy travels from his finger through his arm and chest toward the top of his head, following the route he holds in mind. His response is not a fully mastered technique: he has learned only one method from the Sutra, but that single posture determines what happens next.

A'Zi watches the silkworm’s blood circulate back into You TanZhi’s finger and sees frost form over his iron mask, clothes, and limbs. When the creature falls from his finger, she kills it with a single blow and applies its fluids and blood to her palms, trying to absorb its power. She then sees You TanZhi still frozen in his inverted posture and takes him for dead. Her attention turns to her own practice; she orders an attendant to have the body buried, without directing that any proper burial be made.

Discarded, not dead

The attendant and several Khitan soldiers carry You TanZhi away on a horse cart. Instead of digging a grave, they throw him into a small brook and return to the city. Their carelessness has the opposite of the intended consequence: the water carries him downstream, and after about ten li his body catches among reeds. The water around him freezes into a crystal coffin, while the continuing flow gradually washes away the cold. Because the iron mask conducts heat and cold quickly, the ice around it melts first. Water reaches his head; he coughs, regains consciousness, and climbs out, still carrying ice on his body.

The account explains that the posture helped him neutralize the silkworm’s poison as its feeding drew blood out and returned it to his finger, but it did not make him immune to the creature’s cold. The poison remains in him and freezes his body solid. Had the attendant buried him, he might have stayed frozen for centuries without thawing or dying; in the brook, the moving water eventually brings about his recovery. His survival thus depends on a combination of his limited Sutra practice, the attendant’s failure to bury him, and the conditions of the stream—not on any complete mastery of the poison.

Recognition and departure

Once free, You TanZhi reflects on the contrast between his devotion and A'Zi’s response. He had risked himself to help her train with poisonous creatures, yet she showed no pity when she believed him dead and focused on using the silkworm’s fluids for her palm. The episode does not make him forget his attachment at once; instead, it alters what he expects from returning to her.

He reasons that if A'Zi succeeds in mastering the poison palm, she may kill him with it; if she fails, she may make him continue catching venomous creatures until she can. Either course appears fatal to him. He therefore decides against going back. He also does not dare seek Qiao Feng for revenge, and he wanders through the wilderness, feeding on wild berries, birds, and small animals. His survival becomes a separation: he leaves the immediate orbit of A'Zi’s demands without yet finding a settled destination.