Conclusions

"Conclusions" is the twenty-second chapter of The Rise of Kyoshi.
== Overview ==
In hopes of capturing Kyoshi, Jianzhu besieges the town of Hujiang. Though he threatens an Autumn Bloom Society member, he is unable to get any information about Kyoshi's whereabouts.
== Synopsis ==
After Jianzhu receives a message from the shirshu tracker team, he takes two of his guardsmen and eight eel hounds and travels through the Earth Kingdom toward the mountains of Ba Sing Se. On the way there, one mount brakes its leg in a singing groundhog's hole and is put down afterward and another dies from exhaustion. Jianzhu feels the ride is good for his spirit and they reach the meeting location, a small trailhead leading into the foothills of the southern Taihua Mountains, very quickly, with very few witnesses of their journey. The handlers' message explained that the shirshu followed the scent trail to those mountains, but it escaped and ran up the peaks. Jianzhu sees one of the trackers in the middle of many rows of tall red-stone crags. The man keeps waving at them and then keels over after he is killed with two arrows in his back. More arrows are shot at Jianzhu and the guardsmen as he leaps off his mount and creates slabs of earth around him for cover. After a pause in the firing, he launches the slabs in all directions and hears screams from the attackers that get hit. He notices some dead archers and bends thin spikes from all the crags he can see, stabbing the remaining enemies. Jianzhu's eel hound runs off, but two others are kept in place after their reins snagged on the wrist of a dead guardsman. He is impressed to see the other man killed three ambushers with his dao and asks what his name is. The young guardsman says his name is Saiful and Jianzhu congratulates him and proceeds to look at the corpse of one of the attackers. He notices a flower on the man's lapel and finds a dried moon peach blossom from another one farther away. He recalls the mountains are said to be uninhabited, but sees that those men are not dressed for an expedition and slams his palm against the ground, feeling tremors ring through the earth. Jianzhu continues along the trail left by Saiful's opponents and watches the indentations in the dirt and the mud their footprints left on the grass. This path leads him to a clearing with a rock the size of a chair. He moves it away and discovers a wooden trap door covering a hidden passage through the mountains.
With earthbending and his knowledge of stonework, Jianzhu manages to determine where the tunnel leads. They ride their eel hounds up the mountain through obstacles until they reach a crater nestled in the heights where they find Hujiang. Jianzhu barely manages to contain his anger of not knowing about the criminal settlement as they realize it is abandoned and look around it. Saiful points down the street at the dead, foul-smelling shirshu blocking their path with flies buzzing around its head. As Jianzhu acknowledges he will have to tell Professor Shaw a convincing story and pay him a lot of money to keep his anger over the lost animal from casting suspicion, they hear a scraping noise from a house to the right. He dismounts and tells Saiful to patrol the street as he slips inside the building, contouring against the door frame so he would not be outlined by sunlight. Looking at the long tables and low stools, he deduces it is an inn or tavern and is once again annoyed that the daofei had enough peace in the mountains to be able to set up a bar. Jianzhu walks around the counter and sees a muscled and scarred man sitting on a pile of pillows with a leg wrapped in cloth and splinted up to his hip. He describes Kyoshi and Rangi to the man and asks if we saw her. Instead of answering, he aims a spear-hand strike at his throat, but Jianzhu easily redirects it into a nearby shelf, braking his wrist. The man seethes in pain and says his name is Four Shadows Guan and that he will not tell Jianzhu anything, recognizing him as a man of the law. Knowing that once a criminal reveals their professional name that any sort of rational conservation was impossible, Jianzhu wants to take advantage of the man's emotions and manipulate him. He takes a moon peach blossom from a vase and says that in his younger days he tracked down a small group of about a dozen members, the Band of the Scorpion, around the desert. The man snorts in mockery at the small size of that brotherhood and Jianzhu realizes his group has to be much larger. He continues to say two members of the Band of the Scorpion caught foot rot and the others carried them on litters around the desert and that if they had left the sick behind, they would have escaped. He also tells Four Shadows Guan that when he looks at him, abandoned by his sworn brothers, he does not see any honor from his associates. He spits Jianzhu's face in anger and accidentally reveals that he is a member of the Autumn Bloom but stops from giving any further information. Jianzhu grimaces and rolls up his sleeves.
Jianzhu walks out of the tavern, thinking he is getting too old since he never heard about the Autumn Bloom Society before, and that when he was younger, he kept half the continent from falling into lawlessness. He is frustrated Kyoshi escaped from him and is sure that the Autumn Bloom captured her. He stares at the sky and sees a messenger hawk before Saiful comes to him and asks if he found anything. He responds there is only a corpse in the building and looks at Saiful, recalling that he and a few other men answered his call for more fighters after the encounter with Tagaka too quickly. Jianzhu tells the guardsman he did not order him to send a messenger hawk. Saiful says he wants to relay ahead for supplies as his hand drifts toward his sword. Jianzhu thinks the man is a mercenary and that he is no better than a daofei, asking if he is from the Eastern Peninsula and if he sent Hui, whom he falsely introduces as a good friend of his, a message. He states that the swordsman was sent by Hui to infiltrate his house with orders to find out what happened to the Avatar. As the guard takes a step backward, astonished that the sage realized the truth, he draws his dao. Jianzhu acknowledges he is defeated and that Pai Sho masters usually quit a game before losing, knowing the hawk cannot be stopped and that Hui will assemble a case against him to the other sages who will hand Kyoshi to him if she is found. He thinks how on rare occasions, when he loses a Pai Sho game, he forces his opponents to struggle as hard as possible for every piece of his they capture. He then closes in on Saiful, as beating him always required a price in blood.
== Production notes ==
=== Series continuity ===
* While trying to discern the identity of the Autumn Bloom, Jianzhu swears on "Oma's bastard children", a reference to the earthbender of the same name introduced in "The Cave of Two Lovers".
=== Goofs ===
* Jianzhu notes that shirshus only track living scents and would not go after someone who is deceased. However, June claims in "Sozin's Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters" that her shirshu could find Aang even if he was dead.
=== Trivia ===
* Jianzhu's remark "Hidden passage. Through the mountains", bears resemblance in substance and phrasing to two verses from the song "Secret Tunnel", as sang by Chong in "The Cave of Two Lovers".
== References ==
Category:A to Z
Category:Kyoshi novels chapters
Category:Real world
Category:The Rise of Kyoshi chapters