Chapter 168: Death at the Summits, III

The rooms they had given lay on one of the outlying mountain sides. There were several bridges leading over there, all which didn't have the same ramshackle appearance as those which had led to and from the training grounds. It was a fairly large peak but most of the buildings looked a little weathered.

"The guest rooms," Master Shu muttered. "They'll do."

He pulled a large iron key from his storage and strode forward to one particular building. It was on the smaller end of the buildings on the peak, but some effort had clearly been put into polishing it up for habitation. The weeds had been cleared, the walls washed clean.

Master Shu pushed the key into the lock and opened it up, then looked around.

"This'll do," he declared. "Come in, boy."

Wu Hao did, looking around. The building only had a few rooms, from what he could see - mainly a large central room, but also two bedrooms that had been laid out, an outhouse nearby and a small kitchen. The rooms were fancy, but in a way that just made them look slightly more faded in a way that cleaning couldn't get rid of. Lived-in, he supposed that it might be called euphemistically.

"Right," master Shu said, and took a breath. He flicked his hand and all the doors and windows in the building slammed shut. Ink crawled out of the master's sleeves and splashed everywhere, forming itself into sigils and arrays too complicated for Wu Hao to even begin deciphering before they lit up. Immediately, no light was left to stream into the house, no sound from the outside could get in, and even the cold from the winter outside fled before that onslaught of arrays, which were branded onto every single surface.

Wu Hao regarded the entire thing with some surprise, especially once the master flicked his sleeve and a single lamp illuminated everything around him again, its wick lit by ink scrawled around the base of the lamp. The flickering light made the room seem almost cavernous.

"Why do all that?"

"Do you want someone to interfere?" master Shu asked, raising an eyebrow. "I've sealed the room from all outside observers. No one can get in. No one can get out. You'd need to be a Sovereign to break through the defenses which I just laid down. Even then, it should take them long enough for us to finish."

Nodding, Wu Hao caught a stray thought.

"Wait," he said. "Why would someone want to get out?"

The master snorted. "Don't be such a worrywart, boy. It'll hurt, but you'll come out stronger in the end. Isn't that what you've been begging for?"

"It is."

Hell, he thought to himself. How bad could the pain even be, really? He'd died in such gruesome ways that he wasn't afraid of pain anymore.

"Good," master Shu said. "Now take your clothes off."

Wu Hao twisted around, eyes going wide. He stared at the old man, who stared back at him, imperturbable. Wu Hao took steps back, finding himself pressed against the walls of the hut.

"Why?" he asked, his tone guarded. He was wiser now than he had been, still stuck with Father - he had heard, more than once in Chongqing, that there were men who sought out younger boys they considered pretty. Wu Hao himself had never been approached, but then he had never even considered himself handsome or pretty, in so far as he thought of his own face at all.

"Because you'll be going through a bodily reconstruction," master Shu said. "At which point, the things which used to be part of your body but which aren't anymore have to go somewhere. The accumulated filth of your clogged veins, the left-over baby fat despite those sunken cheeks of yours, the impure blood, the food remnants. Do you want them on your good clothes?"

Master Shu tapped the ground. "It's not a stench that goes away easily, boy," he said, his face as if it was carved from stone, lit by the lamp below to give it an extra gloomy mold.

"Fine," Wu Hao mumbled. "But if you try anything, old man, I'm killing you and then myself whatever it takes."

For once, Master Shu seemed genuinely stricken.

"You think I would -" he began, before his eyes narrowed and he switched tracks. "Has anyone ever -"

"No," Wu Hao said quickly. "Not to me."

"But to others?" Master Shu pressed.

"I never saw it," Wu Hao muttered.

A silence hung over them for a moment.

Feeling suddenly very cold in a way that had nothing to do with the winter outside, Wu Hao began to pull his robe off with stiff fingers, still trying to look the master in the eye. The old man was finally looking away, busying himself by grinding down the ink again.

Laying the robes down, Wu Hao kept his underthings on. "Now what?"

"Sit down. Turn your back to me."

Doing so, Wu Hao waited.

He expected some sort of touch - a finger, perhaps, trailing around his spine? What he got wasn't the warm touch of skin on skin, though, but instead the tingling, hairy feeling of a brush heavy with ink, painting things around his shoulders.

"Are you painting me like an array?" he asked, twisting his head back to try and look.

"Everything is an array, your body included. I'm simply modifying it to better suit your purposes. Now sit still."

"Can't you use the sky as your easel, or whatever it was?" Wu Hao muttered. He forced himself to stop fidgeting. The brushstrokes continued unabated, though. "Why is the ink necessary?"

"This is an array that's meant to alter that which it's painted onto," master Shu responded, at a normal volume. In the darkness it somehow didn't feel appropriate for Wu Hao to do anything else other than whisper, but apparently he felt different. "And besides, this gives me access to a few additional tricks."

"Tricks?"

"Yes, brat. I was about to explain, if you hadn't thoughtlessly interrupted me yet again. The ink with which you are being painted is an admixture of high-quality ink, treated for maximum effectiveness, into which I've mixed my own blood, rare herbs, crushed cores from qi-using beasts, treasures the names of which I bet you wouldn't even be able to read, and more."

"What's the point of all of that?" Wu Hao demanded. "Can't I just take the Jade Orchid and just become a second-grade martial artist?"

Even with his back turned to the old man, it was like he could hear the man draw up an eyebrow in annoyance. "If you want to waste it, then yes. I am allowing you to make the absolute most of its gifts, which will allow you to not only become a second-grade martial artist but become the best possible second-grade martial artist you could become. In the process, I will correct the flaws you gained from your haphazard consumption of that White Tiger Core."

"What flaws?"

"You have a tendency to seek danger at every turn," master Shu said. His brush circled around one of the bits in Wu Hao's spine, dipping slightly lower and then repeating the movement, in parallel, on the opposite side. "I'd bet it's an inborn tendency, but all the same time I've grown convinced that the aspects of the tiger whose core you consumed have influenced you into doing more of the same. My modifications will purge the negative influence of the tiger - its pride, its innate longing for solitude, its tendency to furious anger - and leave all the upsides. Its flexibility, its confidence."

Wu Hao opened his mouth to say something. He didn't really seek out danger that much, did he? It was only because of circumstances beyond his control that he was forced to go out of his way. Otherwise, he would simply have...

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Memories of the multiple attempts to kill Mu Jun came drifting by. The entire escape from the Jin clan, too, had been foolhardier than he really wanted to be. Had he always been like that?

Maybe, he grudgingly admitted, the old man had a point. Still, that didn't mean he liked it, though.

"So you're messing around in my mind?"

Master Shu sighed. "No. I am un-messing your mind, brat. Turn around. I've completed my work on your back."

Wu Hao shuffled around on hands and feet until he sat, eye to eye, with his master. Extending a hand, the brush occasionally dipping into a small inkwell that the master had set onto the floor, the work continued in momentary silence before Wu Hao broke it again.

"How did the conversation go, anyway?" Wu Hao asked. "With the sect elders."

The master's brush quieted for a moment. He left it there, hanging in the air, and a droplet of that bizarre ink nearly splashed onto the ground before the master regained his composure with a muttered curse.

"It's the Emei Sect," master Shu said. "You know of their reputation?"

He dipped his brush into the ink again, then placed it against Wu Hao's collarbone, where it swirled its way down in a long line, touching down at a point in the middle of his ribs.

"I do," Wu Hao said. "I think it was that they were overeager?"

"A neat way of putting it," Master Shu noted. His brush repeated the same motion on the other side of Wu Hao's body. "They shared my worries and even told me several more worrying things. They see the signs as well as I do, but their attempts to try and fix these problems have been somehow... blunted. They have brought things up with the Martial Arts Alliance but never given the appropriate responses. There are signs of broader support, but actual help only rarely materializes."

"What signs?" Wu Hao grunted. The brush was dipping lower, around his belly, where with a series of impossibly fast strokes a full array was taking shape. "What problems?"

"The foremost sign is that the geniuses have returned," Master Shu declared. "You, that Hua Lixin fellow, Du Linglong in the future. Zhu Tian counts, I suppose. Even outside of the contestants of the Winter Solstice tournament, I've heard rumors swirling around of many others. A monk with a natural Diamond Indestructible Body. The Wudang Sect has a genius of the second-grade that has been in solitary confinement for months now."

"You mean seclusion?"

"No," the master muttered. His brush left a forceful dot on a spot just above Wu Hao's navel. "I do not."

"What does it matter if there's geniuses?" Wu Hao asked. He didn't know what else to make of that statement so he ignored it.

"To be a genius, you must overcome challenges no one else can overcome," master Shu explained. His brush remained in constant, steady motion. "But having overcome one challenge, the next soon presents itself. It is Fate, in a sense. Those with a great destiny must equally have troubled lives, because how else will they reach greatness? Heaven never provides danger without a way to profit, but neither does it provide profit without danger. They are two sides of the same coin."

Wu Hao frowned. "I don't believe that's true."

"Then don't," master Shu said. With another, definite stab of ink to leave a deep, dark dot on Wu Hao's skin, just around where his dantian was, he pulled back the brush and inspected his work. "There. Done. Try channeling your qi."

"What's supposed to happen if I do?"

"Why did I get stuck with a disciple asking so many questions?" the master asked himself, raising his head to the ceiling in despair.

"Why did I get stuck with a master who can't just explain from the first time?" Wu Hao responded.

"Because you must have done something terrible in your last life," master Shu said, and slapped the top of Wu Hao's head.

"Ow!"

"Now channel your qi, brat," master Shu said, remorseless.

"Fine."

Wu Hao pulled qi from his core. Instead of flooding his meridians and the tiger's roar filling his ears, instead he could only feel the qi, smoothly running through his meridians, exactly as directed.

"Huh," Wu Hao said.

"It works, then," the master said with satisfaction. He didn't get up. "Now comes the hard part. Retract all your qi into your core. Leave nothing in the rest of your body."

"Even vital qi?"

"Yes," Master Shu said. He tried to make this sound as though it was obvious, but he must caught the glint of doubt in Wu Hao's eyes because he sighed and added: "It's for the body reforging. Part of the function of the array is to keep you alive even through the vital qi deprivation until the transformation into a higher order of qi is complete, and at that point you're allowed to let it all go. It'll reshape you from the ground up."

"Wait," Wu Hao said, suddenly worried. "I won't faint, will I?"

"Faint?" Master Shu asked, giving a small chuckle. "No. You'll wish you were able to, however. Worry about that instead."

The master wouldn't understand, anyway, that the reason it worried Wu Hao was because of his blessing.

Fine. Wu Hao took a deep breath and decided that despite all his qi, even the master might not have time to interfere if it all went wrong and he killed himself. And, otherwise, he'd seen a fair few gaps in the arrays outside meant to catch disciples that he could slip through and kill himself that way, if he needed to reset.

"Alright," he said. "Here goes."

With another exhale and then a deep breath, he pulled all of the qi from his body and packed it all into his dantian. The process went smoothly due to the arrays, though he thought that perhaps he could hear a distant tiger's whimper before that too was gone. Then he began pulling harder and harder, forcing all of the vital qi he had into his core as well.

His sight went almost immediately black from dizziness. He couldn't hear anything, not even his own breathing even if it hadn't stopped already. His sense of his own body was taken away, before he could even begin to feel that his limbs had begun to shut down and his organs had begun to fail.

There was only the deep light of the core inside of him, which was stuffed to absolute bursting with qi. Everything he had was pushed into that small space, the tiger stripes on it flickering occasionally, leaving the core to flicker between light and dark, faster and faster.

Then, suddenly, he felt a piercing pain. Qi flooded into his system from somewhere, a qi that promised the vast nourishing qi of wood, the solid foundations of stone, the glittering light of fire, and a great deal of other impressions that flashed by too quick to properly note. It came pouring into the core, just that little more than it could hold. A mere drop of its essence had overfilled his core, and then more and more and more came rushing in.

His core cracked. Wu Hao might have felt an immense panic if emotion hadn't felt impossibly distant. He simply stared down at the ruin of everything he'd worked for as his core began to twist in on itself and turn, deeper and deeper. There was no sound, but the sounds of roaring flame and leaves shuffling in the breeze came from somewhere anyway.

When they faded, the old core was gone. In its place was something new, something beautiful. And then, suddenly, Wu Hao was more than he ever had been before.