Chapter 165: A Roadside Death, V

Not a word had been exchanged afterwards and he'd gone to bed wondering if he could really keep up the lie. He wondered if the sudden silence meant the master believed him, if it meant that the master didn't believe him anymore, and whether it mattered to him at the moment.

Still, he had other things on his mind. That morning he had to escape a trap that would have buried him in snow up to his shoulders and left it almost impossible to climb out. It was rather half-hearted, though - on other days the trap would've encased him entirely up to the top of his head and then some.

When he brushed the last bit of snow out of his cloak and had managed to wrest the hot bun out of the master's hands, the master spoke.

"I'll mention it to the Emei Sect elders," Master Shu said quietly. "Don't mention it to anyone else, but I'll raise the idea. Just to be sure."

He took a ragged breath. The cold didn't really touch him but for a moment it almost seemed like it did. He sat there and he ate his food. Several days on the road had largely taken away his surprise at finding that whatever master Shu served him tasted good and was deliciously warm, but that didn't mean the food wasn't still fantastic.

Master Shu shook his head when Wu Hao was finished.

"It doesn't matter, I suppose," he said, and sighed. He rose to his feet. Wu Hao half expected another lesson on using the staff, but the master chuckled. "Eager for another beating, are you?"

"Eager to repay you for all those beatings," Wu Hao muttered.

The master laughed harder. "You'll have to wait a long time yet, boy. We'll have to forego the usual sparring today, but when we're back on the road soon we'll resume it."

Wu Hao groaned inwardly, snapping back into reality as the old man chuckled to himself and walked off back to the carriage.

"Right," he muttered, squaring his shoulders. He had only a few more pages of On the Basics to go, so if he really concentrated then he'd have read the entire thing.

It had been an odd read. There were more than a few passages that he hadn't thought made sense, until the author set out why he thought of qi as being this way or another, and then it all just clicked. Wu Hao had learned about how the qi-gathering arrays worked, where the qi he spent for his techniques actually went, and at what times and what settings using specific kinds of qi would be slightly more effective. He learned why some techniques worked the way they did, the principles that allowed him to guide his own qi until it formed into sparks or knife tips or anything he wanted, given the right technique.

It was still ruinously boring, obviously. Still, he muddled through.

Lunch came and went. More noodles, at least. He'd already finished the book in the morning, which left him with little to do as they boarded the carriage again.

"Just a few more miles," the master said. "We'll arrive soon. Keep yourself contained until then, will you? I've got another book that you'll need to read."

He raised a hand and another blank-covered book appeared there, which he handed to Wu Hao.

"On the Great Powers of the Jianghu," he read.

"That one gets updated fairly regularly," master Shu said. "That was my personal edition when I was of your age; it'll need about a hundred corrections, I expect. Some clans have been utterly wiped from the map. If you truly are as sheltered as we think, then..."

His words were simple but his tone momentarily shifted, as if thinking back to something that he didn't want to. The veil didn't slip, though, so Wu Hao knew nothing else.

"Well?" the master asked, after a few beats of silence. "Get started."

Wu Hao got started, but only a couple of pages in, the carriage rolled into a small town.

The inhabitants were farmers, merchants, and all sorts of other villagers. The odd thing was that more of them looked as if they'd had some training. Better physiques, wider shoulders, a more solid set of the face. Most of them didn't have even a little bit of qi, but the proportion of those that did was higher than elsewhere. Their carriage got some looks as it ambled through. Most of the looks were friendly, though, and the others were neutral at worst.

When they stopped, the master stashed his tea set and his books back into his robe. He stepped outside and inhaled deeply.

"Mountain air," he said, with some satisfaction. "Nothing quite like it, is there?"

He was looking carefully at Wu Hao, though why, Wu Hao couldn't have said. Was he suspecting that Wu Hao's enclave had nestled somewhere in the mountains?

Wu Hao ignored the question, climbed out of the carriage after the master and was just glad to be free. Instead he intended to spend a few moments of his newfound freedom just looking around. Before he could, his eye caught on an enormous staircase that stretched from one side of the town, straight up.

And up.

And further up.

"That staircase leads up to the Emei Sect," master Shu said, catching Wu Hao's gaze. "Our destination is up there, boy."

"Right," Wu Hao said, feeling momentarily unsteady. Could human legs survive that trip? "How many steps is that?"

"How should I know?" master Shu chuckled. "Count them and tell me once you've arrived. Until then, brat."

He disappeared into a sigh of black-and-white qi, and Wu Hao was left standing there with the carriage. Someone local was already leading the horses away, and Wu Hao didn't have the time to just stand there and keep gawking.

With no other options left to him, Wu Hao trudged towards the stairs and began to climb. Desperate to distract himself, not even trying to count how many steps there were, Wu Hao looked around while he was walking.

Mount Emei was immense, much more so than Wu Hao had thought. Yes, the mountain stretched into the sky, so much so that the tip was clad in fog. Wu Hao couldn't see through the fog at all despite his enhanced senses, and he wondered if perhaps that was why there were stories that immortals once lived atop these mountains, shrouded from mortal eyes by the ever-present mist.

It could have disquieted him, made him nervous or paranoid, but it didn't.

The mountain peaks of Mount Emei instead radiated a sense of immense calm, of serenity. In the distance flocks of elegant cranes flew, small pink lines that curved to the middle, landing on the mountainside to rest only for a few heartbeats before alighting again. Pines stood resolutely atop small cliffsides that had been carved out of the mountains, almost like guards defending the mountains from any intruders.

Between a few of the mountains, thin bridges were held up with rope - and though Wu Hao called them bridges, they were often little more than a simple collection of rickety planks, bound together so they could be walked on. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to keep the planks from snapping and plunging whoever was walking on themn to their deaths.

Wu Hao supposed that it made a powerful motivator to get good at martial arts, movement techniques most of all.

Much like these godforsaken stairs. He had nothing but a gut feeling to go on, but if forced to guess he'd have said that he'd maybe done two hundred steps and there were two thirds left to go.

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Worse, the faster he tried to go, the harder the climb became. It wasn't just that the going became rougher - it wasn't anything so obvious - but the air became a little more resistant, the cold more gripping, the pressure of the looming steps ahead more heavy.

But he hadn't come all this way to be defeated by architecture, he told himself. He would soldier on through.

Finally - after what felt like hours of climbing, when his thighs were burning and his forehead was beading with sweat - his shambling steps took him over the final step, where the master had sat himself down and was talking to a group of disciples of the Emei Sect, the emblem clear on all their robes.

They looked over when Wu Hao arrived, some of them bowing or making exclamations, while Wu Hao caught his breath.

The woman who stepped out of that small group was easily recognizable. It was Sister Wuling herself, the first-grade martial artist who had helped them with the Mu Jun case. Her glasses perched at the end of her dot nose, and it seemed like extra effort had been put into her elegant braids. He hadn't properly seen her before, in the full light of the morning, but she was still almost bizarrely beautiful.

Altogether it was a disarming impression, combined with a honest smile on her beautiful face. She might have been a merchant's daughter, clad in robes that were probably worth more than all the money Wu Hao had scraped together in his lifetime.

On the other hand, there was a sword that was belted onto her hip, which kind of clashed with that genial impression.

Her qi spoke of flowers. He wished he knew more about flowers to be able to say what kind of flowers, but really it was impossible to say. Floral scents fluttered through the air like a natural perfume. She kept a tight leash on the bulk of it but let the rest flow naturally. According to On the Basics, this was a type of qi that was well-suited to all sorts of martial arts.

"Welcome," Sister Wuling said. "It's been a while, though I don't think we've met in this capacity before."

Wu Hao nodded, and clasped his hands.

"Yes," he said, doing a small bow, attempting to disguise his huffing and his puffing. "Well met, sister Wuling. I wasn't the disciple of Master Shu yet then."

Sister Wuling nodded, pleased to be recognized.

"I'm glad your talent was recognized," she said, which made Wu Hao smile. "You have had a good trip? You weren't waylaid by bandits or anything like it, I hope?"

"No," Wu Hao said. "Unfortunately not."

To Sister Wuling's credit, she took this in stride with a slight smile.

"That reminds me - congratulations, young friend Wu," she said. "I wasn't present for your victory, but my junior sisters were, and they were full of praise for you."

"Hanzi or Huifei?" Wu Hao asked, referring to the two girls he'd had his adventure with back in Chongqing.

She shook her head. "Not quite. They were already back at the sect then. One of the others."

Wu Hao nodded, then realized that left him with little idea of how to continue. He scratched his neck, then offered: "Congratulations on your own victories as well."

With a polite smile, Sister Wuling deflected the compliment easily.

"It's nothing," she said. "I was lucky, is all. I am sure that when young friend Wu has reached my age, you will have reached, if not surpassed, my level."

Wu Hao smiled, though it might have been more of a grimace. He simply didn't have that time, to grow up slowly. To reach his mid-twenties. By then the war would have already happened, and then most of them would be dead. He hadn't recalled ever seeing anyone from the Emei Sect there, but in the general confusion that he'd felt then, he had no ability to put it down to any specific cause.

"You're too generous," master Shu said. "My disciple is promising, yes, but so are you, senior disciple Wuling."

"That is very kind of you to say," Sister Wuling said. She bowed. "Coming from a Sovereign, these are words I treasure dearly."

These were the kinds of compliments that Wu Hao hadn't ever gotten from the master before. It felt almost odd that suddenly he was described as "promising", when during their own sessions the master hadn't expressed more than a vague approval at best when he got something right.

"What next?" Wu Hao asked, curious to know.

"Pardon?"

"Now that you've done the tournament," Wu Hao said. "What next, for your martial arts? Will you be trying to break through into being a master?"

Sister Wuling didn't seem to quite know how to answer that.

"I still have a long road ahead of me before that," she said. "There are a great deal of hurdles yet to cross, and I am far from the only one hoping to reach that realm who, in the end, might fail to reach it. I have been told I stand a better chance than most, but who can say when enlightenment comes? Perhaps only Fate can say."

"You can say that again," Wu Hao muttered, not quite glancing at the master. In return he received another bop on the back of the head. "Ow!"

"What my disciple means to say," master Shu said calmly, withdrawing his hand so quickly Wu Hao barely even managed to catch its blur, "is that we are rather fatigued from the long journey and the trek up the stairs. My young disciple, in particular, does not yet have the physical discipline required to climb the steps as easily as he perhaps should have. It is a failing we intend to correct, but for the moment..."

"I understand," Sister Wuling said. She bowed again. "Might I escort you to the central rooms of our sect, then? The seniors have provided a room for you, and they were hoping that perhaps you might discuss the Dao with them over a few good cups of tea, Sovereign."

Master Shu smiled. "It would be my pleasure. My apprentice, though... He's something of an unruly child, I'm afraid. Is there perhaps something else that he might do? A tour of the gardens, perhaps, or a visit of the training grounds?"

Wu Hao frowned. "Actually, can I just have the Jade Orchid? I'll make myself scarce and absorb it."

Gardens? No thanks. That sounded boring as hell. He'd seen the gardens of the Jin branch house and those had been very boring.

"You understand what I mean," master Shu told Sister Wuling, who tried not to nod in clear sympathy.

"Of course," she said, and thought for a bit.

"I'm not seeking to offend, but I cannot offer you the Jade Orchid as you request. Perhaps you might instead find it more interesting to trade pointers with my disciple-sisters? Huifei and Hanzi are also present, after all."

"Yes," Wu Hao said, relieved beyond all measure. "Yes, absolutely."

"He agrees," master Shu noted, turning to Sister Wuling. "Please, then. Take him off my hands."

Wu Hao glared at the master, who ignored the eyes burning a hole into his elegant robe.

"As we discussed," the master said, in an arrow of qi that reached only Wu Hao's ears. "I'll go talk to the elders, as planned."

Well, when he put it that way...

Thank Heaven for violence, Wu Hao thought. With a smile on his face he went off to go beat people up while the master handled the difficult parts.