Chapter 177: Death & Sunshine, II

Like all the others who they had crossed paths with, Ke Shuang bowed to Master Shu, although it was really more of a nod. Wu Hao decided that it was a sign that Ke Shuang was still every bit into the demonic arts as he had been in the future. Or would have been in the future.

But he wasn't as wild. He hadn't been locked into a cage meant to keep him contained like a wild beast. The insanity that Wu Hao had seen in his eyes in the future was still there but it felt a little more contained.

Wu Hao took a breath and stretched his senses to Ke Shuang, trying to read the other man's qi. It felt like sunlight, but it wasn't... warm sunlight, if that made sense. There was something harsh and grating to it. Heat, not warmth. It was the sunlight of prickling eyes as the sun reflected off the water, of sunstroke and sunburn. All the same, though, it was the light of a sun already past its peak, beginning its inevitable march towards setting.

He dug deeper. He didn't remember that much of Ke Jiaming's qi when they had met years in the future, but he remembered that the other boy's qi had been bright as well. The techniques that Ke Shuang's half-brother had used had been flashy, but no less effective for it. Ke Shuang had something of that in him, but there was something different about it, in a minute way that was hard to describe. An arrogance carved deep into his bones - a burning hate for everything that gave him less than he thought he deserved.

For an instant he thought he tasted ash, but anything except a faintly bitter aftertaste was gone, and Wu Hao's eyes snapped open.

Ke Shuang was sizing him up as well. His lips curled into a smile about as warm as his qi, which was to say not in the slightest. Wu Hao felt the dismissal from the other man's qi clearly - he thought Wu Hao wasn't worth his time. Wu Hao had the distinct impression that he was being judged as not quite measuring up, somehow.

That, at least, was familiar, but he distinctly remembered Ke Shuang in the future as being nearly mad but in a way that made him seem almost apathetic. He wasn't this... outwardly aggressive. In the future he hadn't seemed to care much about anything.

In response to Ke Shuang's dismissal, though, Wu Hao folded his arms over each other. He felt an urge to challenge Ke Shuang to a spar right here, right now. Before he could, though, Master Shu laid a hand on Wu Hao's shoulder. Without speaking a word, his qi suddenly formed a very clear message: don't.

This, at least, was something that they'd decided on during the week they'd spent on travelling here. Master Shu had decided to make good use of the fact that Wu Hao could sense qi by devising a system of qi pulses that would allow him to send messages to Wu Hao without speaking at all.

It wasn't really that elaborate. One spike of qi meant no, two spikes of qi meant either yes or go ahead. Three spikes meant run. They'd mostly drilled the one spike and three spikes, with Master Shu only forming the signal for go-ahead a few times, almost grudgingly.

So Wu Hao shut his mouth. Although Master Shu had better have a good reason, he thought. He was going to interrogate the old man about it later, just to give it another try.

"Good morning," Ke Shuang said. "I hope you have had a good trip, Sovereign."

Master Shu smiled. "It was without any troubles whatsoever. The weather was beautiful, as well."

"My father will be glad to hear of it," Ke Shuang said. "Now, sir, we have prepared lodgings for you. Will you come along, please?"

Without looking back to see if the guests were following, Ke Shuang began to walk off. A few of the martial artists exchanged glances, each and every one clad in the bright orange of the Diancang Sect and bearing swords, men and women alike.

They had a wide variety of qi, though. The book he had read described the Diancang as being naturalists, which meant they had originally derived their martial arts from the powers of nature. The main line, it explained, attempted to become like the sun, while branch lines like these martial artists had to be from instead took on other forms. Flowing clouds of qi, qi that was steady like a pine, and even one man with qi that was beautiful like the wings of a crane.

Two of them were first-grade martial artists, but only one of them immediately followed Ke Shuang and the other waited until several of the others had set into motion.

That was interesting, but Wu Hao had no clue what it meant. Before he could think about it any more, though, Master Shu gave him a little prod.

Wu Hao glanced back. The old man inclined his head silently, not saying anything, and Wu Hao shook his head, equally mutely. Master Shu sighed.

Ke Shuang didn't look over, but one of the martial artists walking around them in a sort of security detail frowned slightly.

"What are the plans of the day?" Master Shu asked.

Not even slowing or turning his head, Ke Shuang spoke. As martial artists, it wasn't like they had to strain to hear it - but still, even Wu Hao felt that it was a deliberate rudeness.

It was brave, in a way, to be this rude to a Sovereign. Wu Hao had done it before but for him it was different: he couldn't die, after all.

"You will receive the tour of the sect," he said. "Afterwards, there will be a banquet with the elders and a demonstration spar of a few of our disciples, should it please you."

"A tour?" Master Shu asked. "Interesting. I'll look forward to it."

"We hope that you do," Ke Shuang said. "I shall start the tour, then."

His posture was upright, but his voice sounded like he was on the edge of sighing at having to bring them along. "The building you see in front of you is the Rising Sun Hall. This is where our future disciples study."

"How are future disciples selected?" Master Shu asked. "Brought in from local families?"

Ke Shuang shrugged. "I suppose they must be. I was never in the Rising Sun Hall myself - all of Father's children are brought up in the Great Sun Hall instead. Even a bastard like myself was afforded that privilege."

"I see," Master Shu said neutrally. He looked over to one of the martial artists nearby, who was acting like he was deaf and staring straight ahead. "And you?"

"Respectfully, Sovereign, you are mostly correct," the man said. He did turn to them, so it wasn't like everyone in the Diancang Sect had bad manners. "However, the Sect also allows in disciples from select merchant families across the world. This stems from -"

"Oh, shut up," Ke Shuang said brusquely. "I can explain that myself, if the Sovereign is interested."

The martial artist said nothing more. Instead, bowing stiffly, he fell back into line with the others.

"You know that the Diancang Sect was originally founded by a merchant with a love for martial arts?" he asked, though Wu Hao hadn't known that. It was a rhetorical question, anyway. "He spent all of his savings on building this compound and then, once it was complete, renounced all his mortal links. He had several children by this time, however, by several wives. Feeling pity for them, perhaps, he allowed them to send their descendants every few years. They have formed several of the branch families, each with their own lesser type of martial arts."

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One of the martial artists' qi spiked with anger at that description, but he kept staring resolutely ahead.

"Does this not cause problems?" Master Shu asked. "The Tang have no such concepts as the branch family."

"Who would dare?" Ke Shuang asked. "The Tang are the Tang, but we of the Diancang have not one but two Sovereigns, both from the main family. It proves our approach is correct."

He stopped walking when they were standing in front of a medium-sized manor. Wu Hao snorted at himself: before this year he would have thought it a colossus of stone and wood, but now all he could think was that he had seen bigger, more beautiful buildings. If there was anything that set it apart, it was that it had more space for courtyards and what looked to be a garden off to the side.

"This," Ke Shuang said, "was the house of the Du family Patriarch, who lived here during his final years with his wife before her passing."

Master Shu nodded, a little somberly. "Indeed."

"You mean the Seven Gods Sword Sovereign?" Wu Hao asked.

"Who else?" Ke Shuang asked, looking at Wu Hao as if he was stupid.

"When did he die?" Wu Hao said.

"Shortly after the Second War," Master Shu said. "I was there, you remember. He defeated the Heavenly Demon, though it came at the cost of his own life. It is by his sacrifice that we enjoy the peace we have now. A greater man the world has rarely known."

Wu Hao frowned. He had faint memories of still hearing that the Seven Gods Sword Sovereign had still been alive in his childhood, though, and had been the head of the Martial Arts Alliance for decades. It didn't matter, but still, something in his chest twinged every time the man's name came up.

"Does anyone still live there?" he asked.

"No," Ke Shuang said. "The Sovereign's granddaughter lives in the Great Sun Hall, with the rest of the family. Anyone else does not have permission to come here."

They moved on, but not before Master Shu gave the building a long, deep look. Wu Hao wondered what he was thinking. It was deeply annoying not to know what the plan was, so that he was left to try and figure out if the building figured into the master's plan somehow.

"There," Ke Shuang said. He pointed to one specific plaza. Most of the plazas that they had seen so far had walls to mark them out, but this one lacked one specific wall. "That is the Violet Dawn Plaza. It's mostly used for cultivating in the mornings."

"I have heard," Master Shu said, "that here, at the Diancang Sect, there is a certain flash of purple as the dawn breaks. This light is said to be helpful to cultivation. Is that true?"

"It's just tradition," Ke Shuang said, scoffing.

Master Shu raised an eyebrow. "You feel that tradition is not worthy of respect?"

"Tradition can be a chain and a lifeline both," Ke Shuang stated. "So the Moonlight Sovereign says. I think it's more often a chain, myself. Perhaps others who are less tightly bound would think differently."

Wu Hao might have agreed if not for it being Ke Shuang who was speaking.

"Tradition is one of the foundations of civil society," Master Shu said.

"Civil society?" Ke Shuang snorted. "That's worth even less."

Master Shu exhaled. "I suppose that you of the Diancang have similarly renounced the mortal world, yes. A command passed down from your ancestor?"

Somehow, Wu Hao didn't think that Ke Shuang's problems with society were anything like what Master Shu had just said.

Ke Shuang proceeded to another plaza, which he called the Flashing Swords Plaza. Wu Hao was getting dizzy with all these plazas and names, but when he heard that this was where duels were fought and spars were performed, his ears perked up.

Finally. The master had demanded that he act natural, which he had decided meant only one thing.

Breaking through Ke Shuang's bored drawl of the history of the plaza and the connected halls nearby, Wu Hao spoke.

"Could we have a spar?" he asked. He wasn't sure yet which weapon he'd use. The spear, maybe? It would feel fantastic to smash Ke Shuang's smug smile into nothingness, but the staff would be just as good for that. Decisions, decisions.

"A spar?" Ke Shuang said dismissively. "I think not. What would be the point in sparring with someone below me? I advise you not to try, Wu Hao. Reality is often cruel."

Even if Wu Hao hadn't known that Ke Shuang was or would be part of the Demon Cult, he would have disliked him on the basis of that tone alone. The bone-deep arrogance that he'd noted earlier was so obvious that Ke Shuang didn't even bother acting respectful to Master Shu, a Sovereign. Wu Hao didn't give two shits about being respected or not, but this wasn't the absence of respect - this was obvious disrespect. A calculated insult.

And so, Wu Hao bristled.

"What do you mean?" he asked, barely restraining himself in time. Master Shu had said not to act, but his self-control had its limits. If Ke Shuang kept this up...

"I mean that you were the winner of the third-grade contest," Ke Shuang said. He was taking a definite enjoyment out of watching Wu Hao get angry, he supposed. "Impressive, I suppose. However, I am a second-grade martial artist. There is a difference between us, one like night and day."

"Yes," Wu Hao ground out. "In that I won and you, as I recall, didn't even make the semifinals."

Ke Shuang's eyes narrowed. His qi, already prickly, surged with anger and burst out of his skin. The edges of his hair turned blonde, caught on the wave of a nonexistent wind. The martial artists around them shifted, trading uncertain looks.

"What did you just say to me, boy?" Ke Shuang demanded. "You thought that you could insult me? Perhaps I may give you that spar after all and teach you that there is a heaven beyond the heavens."

Wu Hao began to pull his staff from the spatial storage. The plan would have to be adjusted, if the master hadn't lied about there being a plan at all. The end cleared the subspace pocket and he felt a weight settle in his hands, the comfortable chill of steel.

But, before he could act, there was a thin blur of black, and suddenly master Shu was standing in front of Ke Shuang.

Moving so quickly that even Wu Hao's eyes barely caught it, he extended a hand as a blur. When it faded back into sight, it was on the other side of Ke Shuang's face, who had spun around but didn't sink to his knees. He stared at the Absent Sovereign, a red handmark already visible across his cheek, and his qi surged with anger and humiliation.

Fuck it, Wu Hao thought, and pulled his staff all the way out. Maybe this was part of the old man's plan. Maybe it wasn't.

Either way, if violence was on the table, then he would gladly indulge.