Chapter 161: A Roadside Death, I

Wu Hao had thought that the festivities to celebrate his own win had ran long. The conversations at the Immortal's Repose had been twice as long as they'd had to be, and after a while it just got annoying to have to take yet another hollow compliment. Even worse if it was sincere, because he felt some obligation to at least show a little bit of sincerity in return, and that had become harder and harder to summon up as the evening had gone on.

He'd have preferred to simply be with fewer people, though he'd have still taken the food. Some people around him had flourished under the attention, to the point where they'd swam through conversations with rapier wit and unfaltering manners. An Xifan of the Kongtong had been one of them.

This had been more or less his impression of merely the Gathering of the Young Heroes. The festivities to celebrate the accession of a new Sovereign, on the other hand, lasted far longer, were far more elaborate, and there were a hell of a lot more people.

Wu Hao had not swam like a fish, displayed excellent manners, and even in his own mind he'd barely been able to raise much of a cogent point, let alone quote poetry or wise sages or other martial artists' compiled wisdom. Wu Hao had nearly drowned.

Once again Wu Hao was very, very grateful for the Wudang Sect's offer to host and take care of most of the necessities. It was still more than a little obvious that the entire thing had been thrown together over two days. Restaurants had been almost picked clean as each of the sects tried to find ways of providing food to every guest, at what seemed like ruinous expense to Wu Hao.

As the main - and only - disciple of master Shu Renqing, Wu Hao was forced to sit there and smile at every single old fogey, every old bat who tried to congratulate him on his win, even those that he knew categorically couldn't have been there praising him for his fortitude and his comprehension of the martial arts.

To make a very long story short, Wu Hao was a lot gladder to set out on the road trip with the man who was to be his master than he'd expected.

When the morning finally came after several days of partying and all the politeness feeling like a noose around Wu Hao's neck, he dragged himself out of bed at the requested hour and stood there, blearily, in the mid-morning dew as coachmen prepared a carriage for travel.

He wasn't quite awake, so when the master appeared and appeared to be carrying nothing more than the clothes on his back, Wu Hao didn't even blink twice. He shied away from the horses - the beasts were fine and everything, looking both powerful and elegant, but at the same time their mouths looked like they could munch on his head like an apple. All the better that they, too, shied away from him as he neared the carriage, looking oddly spooked.

Master Shu slapped him across the shoulder as a greeting.

"Restrain your qi," he said. "It's leaking out. That's why the horses are afraid of you."

Wu Hao rubbed the back of his head. Purely experimentally he pulled his qi back into his core, instead of letting it seep out to his skin and the surrounding air. Immediately, the cold stung just a little more and the world felt just a little bit less sharp in his senses, but the horses shook their head and didn't go back to staring blindly in front of them.

"They're not stupid," master Shu said dryly. "They'll need a bit of time. Come on."

He walked towards the carriage, which was made of handsome balsamwood. Bands of steel reinforced it in critical places, but these same bands of steel had also been etched into by precise tools to carry arrays. Other arays had been stencilled into the sides of the windows or carved into the inner wood of the wheels. There were others that he couldn't even see from where he was standing but which he felt, permanently active through the master's qi already having connected to it earlier.

A few he could decipher without too much effort. An array to take away some air resistance when travelling at speed, an array to keep the cold and the rain out better, an array to keep the wood from staining and adding self-repair functionality... Others, on the wheels and scattered around the carriage, he didn't understand, and the one that was wrapped around the belly of the carriage and reached all the way around the sides was completely incomprehensible.

"What's this do?" he asked. Wang Bin would've explained, Wu Hao thought, then found himself scowling at himself. The last few days he'd been so busy that he hadn't thought about his "teacher" much at all, but clearly that time was at an end now. Every thought of the man's name brought forth a spike of irritation.

"Come inside," master Shu said, already ascending the few steps. "You'll see."

Wu Hao followed up the steps. When master Shu opened the door, he looked around expectantly, and then his expression was altogether fairly positive, Wu Hao thought.

"It'll do," master Shu said.

When the old man finally walked aside, Wu Hao caught his first sight of the inside of the carriage. It was broader than the outside, in ways that made no sense at all. It was like another half of the space of the carriage had been added somehow. Long, smooth benches sat at both sides of the carriage, forming into the shape of a valley.

Pillows and the like were scattered artfully around the room. Cushions had been laid out to rest on if sitting became tiresome and laying down was preferred. As soon as the door pulled itself softly closed behind him, there was no trace of the cold outside. The room was heated to a uniform summer day, which honestly was a little warmer than Wu Hao preferred it.

He picked out one section of bench and sat on it. The fact that he'd gotten a spatial ring meant that he didn't need to worry about storage space - his weapons, his clothes, and the like all fit within his storage ring anyway. Master Shu had sent people around to go buy other things for him as well, like extra robes, a sleeping bag, and other necessities for life on the road.

"Sit down," master Shu said. "No reason to dilly-dally on our trip. Unless you're still convinced you want to stay here?"

"No," Wu Hao said, though not without some frustration. "I'll come with you. Otherwise I'd have to wait a year or more for my Jade Orchid, wouldn't I?"

"Yes," master Shu said honestly. "Yes, I'd imagine so, at the very least. Why, if your master felt any desire to, perhaps you might not see it for two entire years. Luckily I'm not nearly so petty. What a farce your challenge with Hua Lixin might have been otherwise, hmm?"

Wu Hao glared at the old man, who stared back, unimpressed. It was clear that he'd get nothing more out of him than that.

"Why are we taking a carriage, anyway?" Wu Hao grumbled. "You could send us onto our destination in a much shorter time if you used your movement technique."

"Strictly speaking, what I do is not a movement technique," master Shu said.

Wu Hao squinted. "You use a technique and then you move. What do you mean, not a movement technique?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Wrong," master Shu said smugly. "Listen, brat. I don't actually move at all."

"Then how do you get where you're going?"

"The world moves," master Shu said. "I simply step out of touch with the world and step back in. Despite using the word step - yes, I saw that look in your eyes, brat - there is no actual movement on my end. The world moves itself for me."

Wu Hao considered this. It seemed like a wildly arrogant thing to claim that the world - the entire world - would move itself for you.

"I don't believe you," he said. "Besides, even if you don't move, the world does, so it's still a movement technique."

Master Shu smacked him on the top of the head. He'd tried to dodge but master Shu's hand hit the back of Wu Hao's head with pin-point accuracy.

"Ow!"

It didn't actually hurt, but Wu Hao had figured that if he exaggerated how much it hurt then there'd be less smacking. So far it hadn't worked at all.

"Who of us two is the Sovereign here?" master Shu said, folding his arms over each other again. "Who has mastered a Principle so deeply that the world itself recognized my understanding? Which of us two can do things genuinely considered impossible? Which of us two is the richer, stronger, smarter, and more experienced?"

Wu Hao said nothing, conceding the point. Or some of them, at least.

"For now," Wu Hao muttered.

Master Shu snorted. "It'll take you a hundred years to match up to me, brat. Frankly if you manage to survive that long until then I'll be a better master than anyone's ever given me credit for, and that's a fact."

Wu Hao didn't have a hundred years. In a few years the next Heavenly Demon War would start. He would try his absolute best to prevent it from happening, but if that didn't work out then he'd have to fight for his life yet again. He was lost in those thoughts for a while, though the realization that he'd done very little to actually prevent the rise of the Heavenly Demon Cult did sting.

All he'd done so far was trying to get stronger. He had been back in the past for a year, give or take a few months, and so far he'd barely even thought about how to prevent the future from coming to pass.

He'd have to work on that, he thought.

But, in the meantime, he was still trapped in this carriage with this old codger. Master Shu had pulled a small book out of his spatial storage tool, which he was reading from with a relaxed look on his face. A small pot of tea - recently flash-heated into steaming with the help of an array that had been painted on thin air - was wafting a delicious scent into the air. The window had been closed but its glass was transparent, and outside Wu Hao could see the countryside rolling gently by.

They'd passed by the distant string of farms and minor villages that surrounded Chongqing. Instead, now the mountains that he'd always seen surrounding the valley were beginning to give way to smaller, gentler hills. Trees stood proudly on these hilltops, the forest around them prominent and looking almost impenetrable to humans. Occasionally a bird darted around a nearby tree, though the sight of the carriage always scared them off.

"That doesn't answer my other question," Wu Hao said.

Master Shu peered over the pages of his book, exasperated. His expression relaxed as he sipped his tea, though. "What question?"

"How come you're not using your not-a-movement technique to make us arrive where we need to go?"

"What would be the point of that?" master Shu asked. "Look at me, boy. I've got tea, I've got snacks, I've got a book to read. I have dozens more stacked in my spatial storage tool. Why on Earth would I try to make this time any shorter? It's practically the first time I've had to myself in quite literally years. Are you so eager for more recognition that you want us to arrive at the Emei Sect immediately?"

Wu Hao flushed. "No," he said quickly. "No, I don't want - shut up."

Master Shu snorted. "Excellent counter argument," he said. He took another sip of his tea. "Really, the only way this could be more perfect if there was one less fly buzzing in my ear."

"And what am I supposed to do?" Wu Hao asked. "While you're sitting there, enjoying your quiet moment and all, what am I supposed to do? I can't exactly train in here. And you said that you'd give me a foundation stronger than anyone else's."

"True," master Shu said. "I did say that, didn't I?"

He made a show of considering this for a moment more, then shrugged.

"Here," he said. "Catch this, boy."

Master Shu stretched out a hand. In that single movement he had pulled another book from the spatial storage tool, which now thunked into the side of Wu Hao's head.

"Ow!"

He took the book carefully in one hand, catching as it fell down, rubbing at his forehead with the other where the corner of the book's heavy binding had butted into him. He felt the edges of the book, ignoring the master's put-upon rolling of the eyes, and turned it around so he could look at its cover.

"On the Basics," he read. "What's this?"

"It's a manual," master Shu said. "That much should be obvious. You haven't read it, I realize."

"On the basics of what?"

"Qi," master Shu said calmly. "After that, it goes into the foundations of techniques. How they work, why they work. When they work."

"But I know that already," Wu Hao said. "Did you just give me something I already know?"

"No," master Shu said. "Already questioning my teachings, brat? Tsk."

"Again," Wu Hao said. "I know qi."

"You know it," master Shu responded. Wu Hao thought that the old goat had finally conceded the point, but then he continued: "You just don't actually understand it, though."

"Of course I understand qi," Wu Hao snapped. "I can sense it, taste it, see it. I understand qi better than every other martial artist who isn't a sensor."

"Alright," master Shu said. "Then what is qi?"

Wu Hao's brows scrunched together, but he refused to fall at this first hurdle. "Energy?"

"Why can we use qi?"

"Because..." Wu Hao said, then trailed off.

The master pressed his point further. "How is it that gathering qi can use all sorts of different images to bring itself under human control?"

"I know that," Wu Hao said, springing back. "It's because what matters isn't the image, it's the effort of will to bring the qi together into your core."

"Why does the effort of will matter?" master Shu asked. "Why can we not simply breath in the pure qi of the environment, as the ancients were said to do?"

Again, Wu Hao was stuck.

"Another question, then," master Shu said. "Qi carries emotions. Why?"

Wu Hao thought about this carefully.

"Is it because the emotions tinge the will that causes the qi to move?" he guessed.

"Are you telling me or asking me?"

"Both," Wu Hao mumbled, receiving another flick to the forehead for that.

This, Wu Hao reflected, was going to be a very long trip.