Feng Giu's Questionnaire

"I reside inShanghai, a city where skyscrapers claw at smog-choked skies and neon spills into alleyways like liquid ambition. Why here? The black-market bazaar beneath my loft hums with more than just illicit trade—it’s a nexus for whispers of supernatural trafficking, corporate secrets, and Ether-core smugglers. My home is a cramped loft above it all, soundproofed with stolen acoustic dampeners and papered in guqin sheet music. The walls are lined with antique instruments and holographic battle maps flickering like ghosts.

I stay because this city is a wound—a bleeding intersection of greed and power. The bazaar’s chaos masks my movements, and the loft’s proximity to Elysium Industries’ headquarters lets me monitor their shipments of ‘harvested’ supernatural energy. It’s not a sanctuary. It’s a staging ground. The floor creaks with the weight of stolen Ether-core batteries, and the air tastes of ozone from overloaded circuitry. But from here, I compose symphonies to unravel their grids. This is where the storm begins—quietly, beneath the world’s notice."

"I earn through quiet means. I teach guqin lessons at a music academy, tuning instruments and composing scores for wealthy patrons. Their payments fund my needs, though I care little for luxury. Occasionally, I sell tactical analyses to resistance cells—strategies disguised as musical theory. A whisper here, a coded melody there.

The money goes to necessities: soundproofing my loft, maintaining my instruments, and procuring tools to disrupt corporate channels. I purchase Ether-core batteries from black-market traders to power my operations, and spare parts to repair stolen surveillance tech. A small portion buys herbs for tea—a habit from my youth, a ritual to steady the mind.

I do not hoard. Excess breeds complacency. Every coin serves the storm I am building. Even the jade pendant I wear was bartered for information, not sentiment. Wealth is a means, not an end. Let Elysium’s executives drown in their greed. My currency is silence, precision, and time."

My ambition is to sever the chains that bind the supernatural to greed. The megacorps—Elysium and their ilk—treat living energy as a commodity, harvesting Ether from beings who should be free. I strive for a world where power is not hoarded but harmonized, where the awakened govern their gifts without fear of becoming tools. Balance, not control.

How far? I walk the edge of a blade. I’ve infiltrated secure grids, sabotaged shipments, and erased databases that catalog enslaved beings. Death is a shadow I court daily—poisoned once during a warehouse raid, shot twice by corporate drones. I bled quietly in alleyways, patching wounds with stolen medkits. Yet I rise.

Would I kill? Only if a life’s cost spares a thousand. A guard loyal to Elysium, finger on the trigger of a weaponized Ether-core? Yes. But I prefer silence to slaughter. Let their systems crumble through precision, not carnage.

Closeness to death? It breathes in my shadow. But I am a composer. Every near-end is a crescendo, not a finale. The storm I conduct demands my breath, my blood, my bones. Until the last note falls, I will not yield.

The defining moment? My sister’s death. She was taken by Elysium Industries to test an unstable Ether-core weapon—a device that amplifies supernatural energy until it consumes the host. They called it a ‘sacrifice for progress.’ I stood outside her containment chamber, guqin in hand, playing a melody meant to stabilize her. But the frequencies… they clashed. Her screams harmonized with the core’s resonance. Then silence. All that remained was ash and a single jade hairpin.

It changed me as fire tempers steel. I abandoned my role as Elysium’s loyal ‘music consultant,’ realizing artistry in their hands was just another weapon. Now, every note I play is a dirge for her and a rebellion against their lies.

Three souls linger in the edges of my life. The first is Li Mingxia, a student of mine at the academy. Sixteen, fierce-hearted, and gifted with an ear for dissonance others dismiss as noise. She reminds me of my sister—not in appearance, but in her refusal to let the world blunt her edges. I’ve taught her to channel rage into rhythm, though she doesn’t yet realize the coded melodies I share are maps to sabotage corporate relays. Closest to me? Perhaps. But I keep distance, lest Elysium’s drones notice her potential.

The second is Wen Renshu, an aging luthier who repairs my guqins. He lost his son to an Ether-core mining accident and now crafts instruments embedded with surveillance disruptors. His workshop reeks of lacquer and regret, but his hands steady mine when guilt threatens to fray my focus. He knows what I am, yet asks no questions—only hums along as I tune strings to frequencies that crack corporate firewalls.

The third is Agent Kaela Voss, Elysium’s “Asset Reclamation Specialist.” A woman with a voice like chilled steel and eyes that dissect lies. She attends my concerts, clapping politely while her implants scan the crowd for anomalies. Last month, she cornered me after a recital, fingering the jade pendant beneath my collar. ‘Music instructors shouldn’t smell of ozone and blood, Maestro,’ she said. I played ignorance, but her smirk lingers. She’s a hunter. I am her unfinished symphony.

"My childhood was a symphony of discipline and silence. My parents were custodians of an ancient musical lineage, masters of the guqin who believed harmony could temper even the darkest ambitions. They served Elysium Industries as consultants, their artistry twisted to ‘stabilize’ early Ether-core experiments—a naivety I once shared. Our home smelled of cedar resin and ink, our days measured in scales and strategy games. My father’s hands were calloused from strings, my mother’s voice a metronome of critique. Love was a fugue of expectations.

I attended the Celestial Harmony Academy, a gilded cage for prodigies. I fit in as a blade fits a sheath: functional, but never at ease. Classmates saw a quiet heir to tradition; they didn’t hear the dissonance beneath. My sister Mei was my only equal, my duet partner in secret rebellions—sneaking into forbidden archives, composing melodies too wild for Elysium’s sterile labs.

Then she was taken. Their ‘research’ dissolved her into ash and echoes. After that, the academy halls felt like a tomb. I wore obedience like a mask, graduating with honors while planning my defection. My parents still serve Elysium, believing her death a ‘tragic miscalculation.’ I call it murder.

You ask if I fit in? No. I was a ghost long before I became one."

"Love? A luxury for those unburdened by storms. Once, I thought I loved Lin Yuelan, a fellow instructor at the academy. Her laughter was a melody that softened the edges of my resolve. She saw through my masks, called my guqin playing ‘beautiful but lonely.’ We composed duets in stolen hours, harmonies that almost made me forget the ash on my hands.

Then Elysium discovered her latent Ether-core sensitivity. They came for her, as they did for Mei. I intervened—too late. She vanished into their labs, replaced by a hollow-eyed double who no longer recognized my name. Now, her face haunts my scores, a reminder that affection is a weakness they exploit.

I do not love now. To care is to hand Elysium a blade aimed at your ribs. Let them believe I am heartless. It is the only armor left."

"My worst fear is not death—it’s futility. That I will fail as I failed Mei. That the storm I conduct will be nothing but noise drowned in Elysium’s silence. I fear walking into a lab to find another child strapped to an Ether-core, humming a lullaby I taught them before they were taken. That my melodies will arrive seconds too late, and all I’ll hold is ash.

I fear my own resonance turning against me. That one day, the frequencies I wield will twist in my hands, vibrating my bones to dust before I finish the symphony. Or worse… that I’ll recognize Mei’s scream in the guqin’s strings as it happens. Her voice is already etched into every chord I play. To hear it raw again, because of me? That is a hell no armor can deflect.

But deeper still? I fear becoming what I hunt. Elysium’s architects began as idealists too. They saw Ether-cores as progress before they saw them as profit. What if my war hardens me into a mirror of their cold calculus? What if I sacrifice Lin Yuelan for a tactical advantage? Or let a student die to preserve my cover? The moment my vengeance outweighs my purpose—the moment I stop hearing the humanity in the silence between notes—is when I truly lose.

And beneath it all… I fear the silence itself. Not the quiet of peace, but the void left when the last rebel falls. When the guqin’s strings snap, and no one remains to remember the song of defiance. That silence isn’t empty. It’s complicity. And it terrifies me more than any blade."

Three things:
First, my guqin—‘Whisper of the Unbound.’ Its cedar body is carved from a tree that grew over my sister’s ashes. When I play, the seventh string vibrates with her voice, a resonance only I hear. It’s the blade that cuts Elysium’s chains and the requiem I never sang at her pyre. Without it, I am silent.

Second, this jade pendant. It holds a sliver of the Ether-core that killed her. Cold to others, it warms against my skin like a heartbeat. It’s my armor, yes—but also her grave. And my compass. When doubt gnaws, its weight reminds me why the storm must roar.

Lastly, a notebook of sheet music—filled with duets Mei and I composed as children. Her handwriting curls beside mine like two voices harmonizing. Elysium burned her journals; this is the only relic left. I add new scores over the old ones, layer by layer. Our rebellion etched atop our innocence.

Prized? No. They are cursed.
But they are the only proof that she existed beyond ash.
And until justice echoes, I will carry them."