Chapter 164: A Roadside Death, IV

Life fell into a routine for the next four days. As they stopped to sleep on the fourth night, though, an immense shape dove down out of the darkness, like a shadow come to life, on wings so large they seemed as they could blot out the sky. Wu Hao's knives were in his hand the moment he spotted it and he almost hurled one, when he realized that his master hadn't moved a single muscle to attack.

Instead, he smiled grimly.

"Come then, Goumang," the master said, and extended a hand. The shape rushed forward eagerly and Wu Hao wondered if the master would be attacked, but when his eyes adjusted he saw that a large bird sat atop the master's arm, its talons kept from piercing into his flesh only by a thin layer of qi.

The master's other hand pulled at the bird's leg, where a thin roll of paper had been attached by a sequence of strings. He pulled it open with the ease of long practice and swiped a hand through the air, placing the paper into storage and in the same movement pulling some sort of dried meat out of it. Master Shu offered it to the bird.

"What is that?"

"An eagle," master Shu said casually, watching as the bird gobbled down the meat with relish. "It belongs to a friend of mine and carries messages, when it is so inclined."

"And if it's not so inclined?"

"Then," master Shu said, deadly seriously, "it eats children who ask too many questions."

Wu Hao sputtered. "I'm not five, you old bat. I don't believe that sort of stuff."

A flash of a smile crossed the master's face. The bird crowed at him, which was ironic for an eagle. He gently ran his fingers through its tuft of feathers, which was accepted only after making it clear that he'd only get apathy in return.

"I won't keep you," master Shu told the bird, which made another sort of birdlike noise and extended its wings wide, before taking off again into the air. In seconds it had gone from being a brown shape moving quickly into nothing more than a shadow. Moments later even that was gone, as if the entire encounter hadn't happened.

"So what's the message?" Wu Hao asked. "What was so important?"

Master Shu cast a look at Wu Hao to remain quiet. He pulled the piece of paper from his storage again and began to read. It was short enough that it took him only a second at most, and then he cast the paper at the roaring fire that Wu Hao had painstakingly started. He closed his eyes, deep in thought.

Wu Hao's grabbing hands fell short of catching the paper before it caught fire and burned into nothing but ashes.

"I asked," he said, and coughed because some of the ash had floated into his face. "What was in it?"

Master Shu's eyes opened again. This time they weren't the sedate look of a man who was intending to fall back into his reading. This was not master Shu, lazy old man who liked his books and his tea and his slow days in the sun like a sunning cat. This was Shu Renqing, who had participated in the previous Heavenly Demon War and had survived, whatever the cost. It was the look of a man who had made up his mind to get some answers.

"Before I tell you," master Shu said slowly. "I... have an idea. About you. You know techniques that no one I know has ever heard of. Techniques do not grow on the trees, and especially techniques of the Heaven tier. Someone trained you, but I couldn't have said who."

Wu Hao opened his mouth to answer but the master's words charged right through.

"But now - with the message I just received - I believe I know who. Do not interrupt me. Simply let me talk. Then, when I am finished, you will say yes or no, and I will have my answer. Yes?"

There was nothing Wu Hao could do but nod.

"It was the end of the Second Demon War," the master began. The look in his eyes was far off. "The jianghu was devastated. Sects that had once been considered among the best of their age were in ruins. The Emei Sect you are soon to see - it is a mere remnant of its former self. Nowadays it is a matter of pride that so many masters have gathered for the Winter Solstice Tournament, but there are less than twenty of us. Twenty, in our entirety, across the entirety of the jianghu. Before the Second Demon War, there were dozens."

Wu Hao gaped.

"Dozens?" he asked, forgetting that the master had asked him not to speak. "All masters?"

"All masters," master Shu confirmed. "This era is a shallow shadow of what it once was. And the reason that it fell so far - that from a once proud culture we are now reduced to a mere twenty masters. It used to be said that every mountain housed a master, every weapon was being used, and resources lurked around every corner, ready to be found. It's a matter of pride that you've reached the third-grade by the age of fourteen, but that would have been expected of anyone who was anyone, back then. We have lost so much."

"How?"

"The Demon Cult caused us to rot from within," Master Shu said.

He took a deep breath, then continued.

"I cannot say when the first signs began. Perhaps mere moments after the first Demon War had ended. Perhaps only years later. But the signs were there, and it was in the best interests of everyone who was growing rich off the peace that had been struck to ignore them when instead they ought to have acted. More than that - some had conducted careful studies of the Demon Cult, and they had come to realize that there were parts of their martial arts that could be adapted. To make oneself stronger, at the cost of everything and everyone else. That was how the first Heavenly Demon had grown to such immense heights."

"They practiced Demonic Arts?" Wu Hao asked.

"Not in the open," master Shu said. "That, after all, was the second great problem of the Second War. My war. They had tried open war, you see, and were crushed. Hence, they attempted a different tactic. Why fight pitched battles under the sun, when instead they could be fought in the shadows? Whereas before the Heavenly Demon Cult had grown openly, the second Cult grew from within the Martial Arts Alliance. They tempted with whispered promises of power. They seduced the old and manipulated the young, killed those who they knew they could not convert.

"And so, when the war erupted, of the masters I mentioned, perhaps a third were in the grip of the cult. There were innumerable others. It was a small miracle, entirely of the Sword Sovereign's making, that we knew there was a war going on at all. Finally, we met again, on the field of battle. This was not the crushing, simple victory of good against evil that the first war had been.

"Siblings fought against siblings," master Shu said, voice quiet, almost hypnotic as he stared into the burning fire. "Disciple fought against master. Old comrades betrayed each other. It was a hell - a hell of our own making.

"I survived only through dumb luck. The Sword Sovereign might have seen something in me, for all that I was merely a second-grade nobody and he was one of the greatest first-grade martial artists to ever live, and he took me under his wing. Perhaps he believed in my potential even when I did not. I was there, by his side, when he made his final preparations to cut down the Second Heavenly Demon. When he returned to us, I was among the first to greet him."

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"What was he like?" Wu Hao asked. The Sword Sovereign had always been one of his heroes, at any time when he could recall having had heroes at all.

"He was glorious," master Shu said simply. "Everything a man ought to have been."

Master Shu looked as though he might spend hours more reminiscing, but then he shook his head lightly.

"Another time," he said, and gathered himself to continue the story.

"After the War was over, we decided to make sure that the Demon Cult was dead and buried. We killed everyone who we could prove had ever practiced Demonic Arts, sparing neither the old nor the women nor the children. It was a cruel, horrible slaughter, but we believed it necessary. Some took their own lives afterwards, ashamed of what they had wrought. I believe that the massacre was one of the reasons for the decline of the martial world - it became a heart demon, preventing those who ought to have become masters from achieving enlightenment."

"A heart demon?" Wu Hao asked.

"A guilt that haunted them," the master explained. "Something that blocked them from advancing. At your rank they're very rare, but there is nothing that first-grades fear more than potential heart demons. They're called heart demons because they whisper in your ear, sowing doubt, confusion, and worse yet."

Wu Hao swallowed. He had a nagging feeling that he might have had several of these heart demons, if that was the case.

"So what did you do?"

"Some of us decided to rebuild," master Shu said, shifting in his seat. "The Hua Sect today survives because of the Volcanic Sovereign, quite frankly. I don't like the man, to be entirely honest, but even so I have to respect the sheer effort that he's put in. The reason that the Plum Blossom Sword Art survives at all is thanks to him; lower ranking sword arts had to be recreated from ancient manuals. I built the array masters guild from the ground up myself. Others, since gone, did the same for their own sects or groups. The Sword Sovereign rebuilt his family in his own image, though the injuries he sustained wound up proving fatal only a few years after he dealt the final blow to the Heavenly Demon."

He sighed. "But there were others who had nothing to rebuild. These banded together into small groups - groups that banded together based on shared styles or beliefs that they all lived by, but sometimes just because of a shared grief. Several of these groups wound up shutting themselves off from the world, declaring that all martial arts being involved with the world was nothing but a calamity for man and beast alike."

"That's bullshit," Wu Hao said. "That's just running away."

"I don't disagree," master Shu said. "I considered it for a while myself, to be entirely honest, but... I was still needed. The world still had need of me. What else could I do except live on?"

That was such a bleak statement that even Wu Hao found it hard to imagine. Even at his lowest, his revivals had given him a way out - a way through. The master didn't allow himself to linger on it, though.

"Life improved, little by little, but for those shut away it perhaps never did. Still, there were women and children with them. Disciples, companions. I always imagined that, while most would have died off, there would have been several of these little enclaves that might have survived to the present day...."

Master Shu waved his hand.

"I decided to ask," he said. "An old friend in the Beggar Sect kept track of all these groups, fractious as they tended to be. Another of the Sword Sovereign's companions. It was from him that I received this message, and it confirms my suspicions."

His fists unclenched. "Several of them disbanded. Others are still intact. A few, however, are unaccounted for - hidden so far away from the world that even I do not know where they went or what became of them. These groups would have a varied set of skills, gathered together as they were out of assorted martial artists. They would have a necessity to keep quiet, lest someone attempt to drag them back in the world. Perhaps some would have children among each other, to keep their legacies going."

"Wait," Wu Hao said, his mind racing to keep up. "You think -"

"You are one of those children of the enclaves," Master Shu declared. "It explains everything. Your absurd level of skill, your habit of using different weapons. Your reticence in talking about your past. I don't know why you have come back to the world, but it implies nothing good."

Master Shu folded his hands and fixed Wu Hao with a piercing look. "So, am I correct?"

"I don't remember my parents," Wu Hao said, slowly. He didn't have to fake not wanting to speak - it felt wrong to lie to master Shu - but he supposed that he had to. If he played his cards right... "I don't remember much, from before a few years ago. I don't really recall much, but..."

Wu Hao took a deep breath, steadying himself for the real lie he was about to tell. In the firelight, master Shu's face looked almost to have been carved from granite, but he gave a small encouraging nod.

"You know something," he stated. "Tell me."

"I remember screaming," Wu Hao said. "I remember the dead and the dying, cut apart by demonic arts. I remember... I remember fire, and I remember frost, and most of all, I remember... blood."

Master Shu's intake of breath was all that Wu Hao had needed to hear.

"And there's something else," Wu Hao said. He looked down. "One phrase that I've never been able to forget. Ever."

"Tell me."

"Ten years."

He could only whisper the words. He wasn't used to talking this much and it took little effort to make his voice sound hoarse. It was the first time that he'd ever told anyone. It wasn't as much as a relief as he'd hoped it would be. "That's what I heard. Ten years, and then..."

The look in master Shu's eyes was like nothing Wu Hao had ever seen. There was a deep, dark despair there. There was hope so mighty it might have pulled the dead back from the netherworld. There was pain, and there was relief, both at the same time.

"Who said this?" master Shu asked, quietly.

"I don't remember," Wu Hao said, equally quietly. "I wish I could. But that's all I have. Ten years, five years ago."

A long silence stretched across the campfire, a silence so oppressive that even the crackling of the fire seemed somehow muted.

"In five years, then," master Shu said. "It will have been ninety-seven years since the last war, you know. To think I would have to face another war in my lifetime. Longevity, Wu Hao, is a curse and a blessing both."

He stared up into the night sky. Wu Hao stared along, but could see absolutely nothing except the sight of the stars overhead and the relentless cover of darkness.

"I believe you," master Shu finally said. He sighed. "I believe you, Wu Hao. I only pray everyone else does."