Chu Huan

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Chu Huan (楚桓; died c. 215 BCE) was one of the disciples of the youxia Wei Yu, alongside Yu Ying and their sworn sibling. In 215 BCE, he died protecting his sworn sibling as they fled the massacre of their hometown, Jade Spring.

Biography

Kidnapped by bandits as a child, Chu Huan became the apprentice of Wei Yu after the youxia rescued him from a potential life of slavery. He grew up with his master and his two other disciples in Jade Spring, a village situated due west of Yangzhou City in Shang Commandery. He became sworn siblings with one of these childhood friends while the other, Yu Ying, was a fellow survivor of human trafficking. Their experiences inculcated in them a fierce sense of social justice that played into their role as youxia of their community. They undertook many missions to right perceived wrongs against the common people through their own deeds which were sometimes illegal.

In 215 BCE, while Wei Yu was away on a long journey, the three young youxia were tipped off by their trusted informant Nie Jing of a treasure that had been stolen from a poor farmer by a corrupt official. They were told that the treasure was being kept inside the virtually empty Yangzhou Palace. Keen on retrieving the treasure, the youxia proceeded to Yangzhou, with Chu Huan and his sworn sibling partaking in the actual infiltration and retrieval while Yu Ying would secure their extraction. Chu Huan and his sworn sibling immediately noticed something was amiss by the high security detail on the palace grounds, and their intel further proved faulty when they found Qin Shi Huang himself visiting the palace. Though they retrieved the treasure from the emperor's bedchamber, they could not elude detection when guards came inside. With the alarm sprung, the two youxia narrowly escaped thanks to the timely intervention of Yu Ying.

Earlier, Chu Huan and his sworn sibling had agreed to compete to see who could retrieve the treasure first, with the winner being honoured with titular seniority that night. Since they had both arrived at the bedroom together and the mission had gone awry, Chu Huan recognized that there was no clear winner, prompting a race between them to the nearby beacon tower on the Great Wall that was along the way back home. Ziplining across sections of the wall still under construction and propelling themselves over scaffolding with makeshift lifts, they reached the top of the turret, where they could not help but contrive a third challenge to the bottom of the tower. Chu Huan's sworn sibling leapt right off a beam into a haystack below, emerging unscathed, impressing Chu Huan, and startling Yu Ying—the latter two taking the long way down.

Per Yu Ying's suggestion, the three youxia then continued their journey back to their village separately to minimize undesired attention, but Chu Huan and his sworn sibling then ran into a bandit attack on the outlying farms from Jade Spring. His sibling dispatched all but one of the bandits and freed their hostages just before Chu Huan himself arrived on the scene. Although they had intended to spare the last bandit, Nie Jing suddenly rushed out from behind to execute him, alleging that he still posed a danger to the youxia. Chu Huan's sibling had been disturbed by the flawed intel supplied by Nie Jing for the whole of the mission and immediately began questioning her, but Chu Huan thought less of it and was far more vexed by the bandit raid, particularly as some of them had stolen the villagers' provisions. Without even waiting for their exchange to be over, he rushed off by himself to track down the bandits' camp as soon as he could.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Jade