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. The youxia lived in Jade Spring Village, were defenders of their local community, and personally undertook missions in their interests that subverted the authority of the Qin government.

In 215 BCE, while their master was away on a long journey, the three youxia infiltrated Yangzhou Palace to recover a treasure that their informant Nie Jing had lied was stolen from a poor farmer. As Nie Jing planned, the heist went awry and gave the Department of Immortality a pretext to suddenly attack Jade Spring as punishment for the crime. Despite repelling the Qin soldiers, Chu Huan and his sworn sibling were ambushed by their commander Yang Duanhe as they fled the village, and the former gave his life protecting his sibling.

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 hands in ways that were were sometimes illegal.

Yangzhou Palace heist

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.

Avenger of the enslaved

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.

Chu Huan scouted out their lair within the day. They were hiding in a system of caves in the nearby hills by the Great Wall Junction, and he learned from their chatter that their leader was away. Though eager to recover the goods and eliminate the bandits, he waited for his sworn sibling to rejoin him so that they could strike them together. To stealthily eliminate as many bandits as quickly as possible, they split up and sneaked into the cave through separate rear entryways, eventually converging back at a central cavern where the storeroom was located. As they were unlocking the room with a key they had recovered from a slain bandit, the gang's leader returned with four thugs and his cargo in tow—cargo that turned out to be captured people the bandits intended to sell into slavery. The sight triggered Chu Huan's childhood trauma, and he leapt furiously at the bandit leader with his sword drawn before his sibling could even urge caution. Despite his rashness, the two prevailed against the last bandits and successfully freed the abducted villagers. As the two took their rest outside the cave, Chu Huan made his sibling promise that they would not disclose their confrontation with the slave trade to Yu Ying so that she could be spared a potentially triggering subject.

Sacrifice in the massacre of Jade Spring

Back at the main hall of Jade Spring, the three friends relaxed together. Chu Huan stole a pot of their Wei Yu's favourite wine, hoping to entice his sworn sibling into drinking it, for they were to come-of-age the following day. Unwilling to invite a later scolding by their master, his sibling rebuffed him, but Chu Huan had expected this and had brought his own wine anyways. The three then drank together to his sibling's upcoming twentieth birthday, unaware that that next day would bring disaster instead.

The following morning, Qin soldiers from the Department of Immortality unleashed a sudden attack on the village, swiftly rounding up all villagers they could catch to interrogate the location of the treasure the youxia had taken from Yangzhou Palace. All who either resisted or could not give an answer were summarily executed. Without a militia, the youxia and the resident martial arts master Ji Wei were Jade Spring's only form of defence. Chu Huan slipped out of his house through the backdoor and hurried to meet Yu Ying at her home. They managed to gather children and other residents inside and barricaded it against the troops. While Yu Ying stayed to protect them, Chu Huan rushed to the main hall where the treasure was being kept. There, he stood his ground alone against the enemy until his sworn sibling arrived to assist him after clearing out the rest of the village. They felled five soldiers together, including a great axeman.

In spite of their victory, they quickly discovered that the treasure had already been stolen and recognized that the danger had not passed. They made their way through the secret passageway beneath the main hall to rendezvous with Yu Ying and the other survivors at her safehouse, but their route was already known to the Qin commander, Yang Duanhe, who was waiting in ambush outside with numerous guards. As the two youxia exited the passageway through a waterfall, Duanhe leapt down at Chu Huan's sibling from above with his sword. Acting on instinct, Chu Huan pushed his sibling aside to intercept the blade with his body and perished on the spot. His sacrifice gave his sibling the narrow opening they needed to escape with their life and later avenge his death by killing Duanhe at the Battle of Tulu Pass.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Jade