Azi trains her poison palm with venomous insects

A'Zi trains her poison palm with venomous insects by making both animals and You TanZhi part of a calculated martial experiment. The process begins with a wooden tripod and a centipede attracted by spices; it ends with A'Zi taking the blood drawn from You TanZhi into her palms and departing without attending to his worsening condition. Her apparent success rests on another person's suffering, while the episode's final reversal places a Sanskrit manual within his reach.

The lure and preparation

A'Zi brings a yellow wooden tripod and a small bag of colored spices to a secluded valley. She tells You TanZhi that strange insects may appear and instructs him to remain silent, then mixes pinches of the spices in the tripod and lights a fire beneath it. The two wait apart beneath a tree. The tripod's contents and the purpose of the spices remain unexplained to You TanZhi, who follows her instructions and accompanies her back to the palace.

The next morning, A'Zi summons him to the main hall and shows him a large centipede in a clay urn. She has prepared a rooster, cuts off its beak and claws, and puts it into the urn. The centipede feeds on the rooster until the bird dies; as the insect swells, blood appears at its forehead. A'Zi watches the result with satisfaction and says that the martial art can be completed. The scene makes clear that the centipede is not merely a creature she has captured: it is being conditioned as an instrument for her practice.

You TanZhi as the instrument

A'Zi keeps the centipede for seven days, feeding it a rooster each day. On the eighth day she tells You TanZhi that she needs his assistance to practice a martial art and asks whether he will risk himself for her. He has already seen the centipede kill a rooster, so he understands the danger. When he hesitates, A'Zi challenges his professed willingness to obey and risk his life. He submits, driven by his attachment to her, and puts his hand into the urn as she directs.

The centipede bites his middle finger and sucks his blood. A'Zi orders him not to move, and he endures the bite while the poison's discoloration spreads from his finger up his hand and arm. His attention is fixed on A'Zi's gaze and approval; he does not pull away. The scene therefore joins the practical mechanics of her training to their unequal relationship: his devotion makes him available for a danger he recognizes, while she determines the terms and watches the experiment.

Poison absorbed and the cost left behind

When the centipede has finished feeding, A'Zi has You TanZhi move it carefully into the wooden tripod. Black blood begins to drip through a hole. She catches the drops in her palm and channels her energy, absorbing them into her body. The centipede dies, and A'Zi examines her still-white, unmarked palms. She concludes that the formula she secretly learned from her master is correct.

Her response to You TanZhi is strikingly different: she leaves the hall without even looking at him, as though he has become as expendable as the dead insect. The poison has spread as far as his armpit, leaving his arm numb and itchy. His suffering is the immediate consequence of the training, while A'Zi's flawless palms supply the measure by which she judges its success. The passage presents her martial advancement not as a self-contained feat but as a process in which another person's body bears the risk and cost.

An accidental opening

As the poison's effects intensify, You TanZhi cries out and knocks against the wall. An oilcloth wrapping falls from his clothing and loosens, revealing a yellow Sanskrit manual he had picked up earlier. He is too distressed to retrieve it, but the book falls open. Tears and saliva soak the page, and a drawing of a monk appears among its writing: the figure is shown in an unusual posture, with his head between his outspread legs and his hands holding his feet.

The accidental appearance of the diagram links A'Zi's experiment to a new development in You TanZhi's story. She has used him to test a poisonous technique and left him in its aftermath; the manual, exposed by that aftermath, offers a separate martial possibility. The episode thus closes on a contrast between deliberate exploitation and unintended discovery, without yet resolving what the diagram will make possible.