Chapter 169: Death at the Summits, IV

Wu Hao floated in his mindscape, inspecting the new core that he'd just built by ripping apart what had come before. He couldn't see, but he could sense, which some part of his unconscious mind translated into sight. What was happening wasn't actually real, but it was happening.

His previous core had been a ball, at least in shape. It hadn't been a visible, physical thing - no core was - but in his mind's eye it had had the properties of being malleable, somehow. If pressed he might have described it as rubber. Spiderweb-thin threads of qi had connected to it from everywhere, leading to his meridians and the rest of his body, branching like capillaries everywhere. Stripes had covered the core, resembling a tiger's stripes, in a mix of sharp white and smooth black.

That was all gone now. It wasn't a ball now, but a rough-cut gemstone. Its innermost part was was still in the middle, but the rest of the core was almost transparent. He could see even without eyes the brilliant shine of the gemstone, each of its facets reflecting Wu Hao's gaze back onto his mental projection. Wu Hao had never seen anything like it, not in other people's systems and not in real life. It was breathtaking.

It shivered and pulsed with power. More qi came rushing in from around him, pulled in reflexively, and it carried with it the spice-like flavor of the Jade Orchid's mix of fire and wood-aligned qi. The gemstone took it all, leaving only a single of its facets to be tinted a slight orange. The others were untouched, transparent.

Reaching out with fingers that were little more than metaphor, Wu Hao triggered the Storm-Cutting Saber Art's transformations and was shocked by how easily and how eagerly the qi responded to his desires. Before he'd even had more than a chance to think about doing so sparks had already manifested, the diamond core spinning slightly on its axis and presenting him with a new facet, which was coloring into a very vague taint of purple.

What the hell?

Wu Hao studied the diamond closer, trying to spot if there were others. Holding his metaphorical breath he tried to pull both fire and lighting at the same time. His new core spun and, though only slowly, there came a thin trickle of two strands of energy, one bearing small sparks and the other having a faint scent of ash.

He stared at them, then whooped with excitement. He could -

The space trembled around him, his mindscape threatening to collapse. He glanced up though there were no directions and found the walls of his soul were trembling. That didn't feel all that important, though. He needed to know everything about this new part of his body.

It was -

Something jerked him out of his stupor of staring in the beauty of what he'd just forged, ripping him out of his meditation instantly. He returned to a body that was not shining and powerful and brilliant, but which was dying without its reserves of qi. His vision was nearly gone, his pulse was thready and weak.

But somehow he knew that his master had smacked the back of his head again. It stood out as a distinct pain, something sharp and burning compared to the creeping, icy pain of his body failing to function.

"Release it," master Shu told him, his voice hard and urgent. "Now!"

Wu Hao let go. Not just of the grip on his qi but the breath that he'd been holding and of the worries that had been plaguing him, the entire time that he'd been travelling with the master.

Qi came flooding from his core, rushing outwards. Flooding, though, was too small of a word: it came bursting out, roaring through his veins like the Yellow River after weeks of rain would sweep the plains, crushing through every dam he could have placed in its path. As it went it coarsed rapidly. Meridians that he'd thought had been more or less clean were swept utterly free of debris, impurities pushing out of his skin.

But it didn't stop at his meridians. It poured into all of his blood stream, capillaries receiving so much qi that he could trace his blood with his senses, even with his eyes closed. His organs took the qi and immediately roared back to life, functioning like never before. He felt a long jolt of qi hit against the stem of his spine and lance into his brain, where it felt like years of being mired in muck were scraped off him. There was no other way to describe it other than seeing the sky after the clouds had cleared.

With that flood, though, came pain. Horrible, nail-biting, teeth-crushing pain. Wu Hao's body had already been on the verge of tearing itself apart; that now accelerated, recreating itself at the same time as he was being reforged. Every pulse of power from his core felt like another hammer blow to his mind. Skin flushed red from blood vessels popping, his mouth ached horribly as his teeth were created anew, his spine felt like it was being ripped out and replaced. Muscles shifted across his body, rebuilding themselves. There were burning sensations in his belly and sides as fat was reused for the building blocks it might provide.

In a way, this wasn't so different from breaking open his filter, back during the days of the Red Dawn Sect. That had been nothing but destruction, though, and this was creation by destroying whatever stood in its way.

Maybe it took only minutes. Maybe it took half an hour. Wu Hao couldn't have said, either way. His entire being was wrapped up in the pain of simply trying to survive.

And then it was over. His core had exhausted itself, for now. It was still glowing softly inside of him, containing an immense capacity for power compared to most of the second-grade martial artists he'd sensed, but the pain was receding.

Wu Hao's eyes cracked open. He was laying face-down on the cold ground, drool having slipped from his mouth. He pushed himself back up into a sitting position and the motion felt so simple, so easy, that he was immediately sure that he could have done a handstand from laying there with no difficulty maintaining his balance.

"It worked," he whispered. He clenched his hands, feeling the power in his fist. His skin was lighter, now, and even the scars that he'd carried for years had faded. "I did it."

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He received another hit to the back of his head and hissed. "Ow!"

"I did it," the master corrected. "You sat there and enjoyed the fruits of my labor."

"You call that enjoying?" Wu Hao muttered.

"Shut up, brat. Here."

With the wave of his wrist, master Shu pulled a handmirror from his spatial storage and handed it to Wu Hao, who took it.

Wu Hao had never thought of himself as handsome. He felt sure no one else ever had, actually. He'd never been cute or adorable, either, and deprivation had ensured that he'd never have been called good-looking. Not ugly, he would've defended himself. At least not most of the time. But not a face to be trusted or loved at first sight.

But, now that he was a second-grade, that had finally changed. Whatever the transformation had done to the rest of his body, he was taller now. His spine felt straighter, somehow, with the distant aches of slouching or performing labor gone. His face was one of the most obvious changes, though - his chin had gained a more defined shape, his eyes sharper, his cheeks a little more sculpted. It was as if the parts of him that weren't quite complete or didn't quite fit together had been smoothed out, made to fit.

He still wasn't handsome, but now he felt like he might at least not stand out in the groups of other martial artists. Finally, they stood at the same starting lines.

Master Shu took the mirror back.

"Enough of that," he said. "There's time enough for you to admire yourself in the mirror later, brat."

"You would know," Wu Hao muttered. "After your transformation you've never shut up about -"

Something flickered in the edges of his suddenly-perfected vision and Wu Hao leaned forward on reflex, finding that he could suddenly stretch forwards far more than he could ever have done before. More important, the fist that had been trying to clout the back of his head hit nothing but dead air.

"Hah!" Wu Hao crowed.

The master grunted and folded his arms over each other as if he hadn't just missed.

"So how long are you going to sit there covered in filth?" he asked.

Wu Hao's eyes tracked down, staring at the black muck that was coating him. With his senses sharper than ever, he could see that it wasn't just muck, it was made up of a mix of various things that all looked disgusting.

"What the hell?" he asked.

"I told you," master Shu said calmly. "Filth. I've asked for a basin of water to be brought. I'll be unsealing the house; after that we'll be setting off."

"Isn't it in the middle of the night?" Wu Hao asked, trying to ignore the sheer stench coming off his body.

Master Shu got to his feet. "How long do you think your little transformation took, exactly? Get a grip, boy. I'll give you one hour."

A wave of master Shu's hand sent a black-and-white ripple of qi racing through the house; wherever it met one of the sealing arrays that the master had created from nothingness to shut the house away, it erased that array entirely, as if it had never existed.

And, suddenly, the world surged back into Wu Hao's senses. Not just the cold of the winter, which he felt more keenly than ever before without any of the hurt that bare skin being exposed to low temperatures would cause, but also the sound of the wind whooping through the distant mountains, a bird's call from what he thought was nearby, the soft light filtering in through the cracks in the windows.

He blinked. The master gripped one of the wooden pillars, muttered a quiet "Congratulations" that Wu Hao probably wasn't expected to have heard, and then left, his steps fading into nothingness.

Back to business, then. As promised a tub of water had been left outside, which perhaps only a very strong man might have lifted by himself if it wasn't full. It was full, so it would weigh even more. Looking around to see that no one was watching, Wu Hao found that no one was.

How much he had changed. In the future he wouldn't even have thought anything of being nude in public, if that was what Father wanted.

Wu Hao picked it up with ease that surprised even himself. The water sloshed loudly, steaming from the array that had been placed on it to keep it warm. He pulled it back into the building, marvelling at the way his muscles felt and worked, and then took a long bath.

When he'd finally been scrubbed clean and the offending material had been scraped off, he pulled his clothes back on. The robes fit him better than they had before, but it took him a couple of minutes to adjust to being taller and having better balance. So many of his little habits were now unnecessary, where once they were necessary to compensate for being born less than perfect.

He stepped out of the building again and took a deep breath. The winter air was glorious, full of a sense of mystery.

Slowly, he made his way back to the main buildings. Just on a whim he pulled his saber out of storage and tore it through the air. Blade wind formed around the saber as he cut forward, but there was less resistance. It felt right, in an indescribable way that it hadn't before.

The master was waiting at the main building, where he stood. Next to him stood Sister Wuling, clad in a different robe than usual. She looked deep in thought, whatever the master was telling him.

"I'm here," Wu Hao said.

Sister Wuling's eyes lit up. She turned to Wu Hao, nodding at him.

"The Sovereign was just telling me about your advancement," she said, and she cupped her hands at him, filled with her usual warmth. "Congratulations, young friend Wu! One step closer to the summits."

"Thank you," Wu Hao said, bowing as well.

As he rose from the bow, though, he looked at Sister Wuling again. Really looked at her, this time. Not to admire her beauty or to study her qi, but looking at her in her entirety. It wasn't more than a single moment before it was gone again, and it was so short that perhaps it might be better called a point, but Wu Hao was absolutely sure of what that little glimmer of light had been.

Because he had just seen one of Sister Wuling's lines.