Chapter 181: Death & Sunset, I

Wu Hao stretched lightly. He rolled his wrists, flexed his fingers, cracked his neck.

This would be his first real fight, ever since becoming a second-grade martial artist. He'd sparred with Master Shu in the meantime, obviously, and he felt that he had a good handle on the changes that had reshaped his body from the ground up. Getting to the second grade hadn't changed him into something different, it had just made him more.

Faster. Stronger. More flexible, more clear-thinking, more in control of his every muscle.

He breathed in and mentally flicked through his options. The staff, the saber, the spear, the knife? He had said to Master Shu that Ke Shuang would expect the saber, so the saber was out. He would need the range considering the size of Ke Shuang's spear, which meant that the knife wouldn't be a good fit unless he used the Rending Dagger Art, and he hadn't used that for a while now, too caught up in other things. Maybe soon.

When he breathed out, he'd already pulled the staff from his storage. He could still shift later, anyway. He'd practiced that, now, and it was far easier now that he had a spatial storage instead of having to do it by carrying multiple weapons on his body.

Twirling the staff, Wu Hao stared at Ke Shuang, who was standing at the opposite end of the small courtyard. The smug smirk had dropped, and his posture was tense. To Wu Hao's surprise, Ke Shuang spoke.

"Why are you not using the saber?" he demanded. "I heard that you have a Heaven-grade technique. Don't tell me I was lied to?"

"I do," Wu Hao said. "But I'm being trained in the staff, so I figured this might be a good opportunity."

Ke Shuang gripped his spear tight, drawing back slightly as he anchored his feet.

"Are you fucking with me?" he snarled.

"No," Wu Hao said, although he actually was. "Let me show you just how serious I am."

He lifted a single hand from his staff and beckoned Ke Shuang closer, trying for a smile that was at least as irritating as Ke Shuang's own had just been.

Ke Shuang's mouth twisted into a bitter grin.

"I'm going to enjoy this," he said. Ke Shuang's qi ripped itself free from his core and arrays crafted around his spear flared, igniting with a harsh light. An aura of flame rippled around his body and the tips of his hair turned golden. "Get ready, brat."

"Now, boys," Ke Taiqi said, not unkindly. His next words felt a little misplaced, though, considering that Ke Shuang was already moving. "I hope this is a honourable duel -"

Ke Shuang's spear stabbed out so fast that the flames bursting from its head made it look like a comet. Before Ke Taiqi had finished his sentence, Ke Shuang had already appeared in front of Wu Hao in a single bound.

Face set in concentration, Wu Hao's staff was already moving the moment that he'd noticed the first signs of Ke Shuang's qi clicking into a loop. He felt the staff increase in weight at least threefold as he swung it with all his strength, using the Weasel's Tail.

Spear and staff collided with the loud, reverberating clang of steel. Wu Hao felt the impact ripple through his entire body, fingertips tingling, but Ke Shuang had it worse, being thrown back by the force of Wu Hao's staff blow. While he managed a landing on his feet, he took two steps before he was able to stop himself.

Ke Shuang glared down at his hands, which were still white-knuckling his spear. More qi bubbled up from his core, the fire smoldering at its edges with the faintest hint of ash.

This time it was Wu Hao's chance to attack. He threw himself forward and after a few blurring steps before he had reached Ke Shuang, he kicked himself off the ground and soaring into the air, staff whirling above his head until he had reached the peak of his ascent.

Ke Shuang grit his teeth and stepped aside as quickly as he could with the same flashy movement technique that Ke Jiazhong had used in the future, which left a shimmering spot in Wu Hao's vision.

His landing crushed a deep hole into the ground, a wave of earth ripping itself up like a stone skipping over a pond. Ke Shuang came to a stop at the edge of the hole and stared down, his qi already manifesting into a burning cloak that surrounded him.

Wu Hao took a deep breath and pulled his staff up, whirling it around to shake off the clods of earth still clinging to its end. Dirt and bits of grass flew away.

And then Ke Shuang was on him again. His spear thrust forward, burning with power that smeared into lines in Wu Hao's eyes.

Hunkering down, Wu Hao forced his own qi through the staff. It was far easier than it ever had been - he wondered that he'd ever struggled with it - and he struck out with the Three Sparrows.

His staff struck the spear at an angle, forcing it to careen off to the side where it managed a small cut in his sleeve and nothing else, and then Wu Hao surged forward again, pulsing the qi to manifest an echo of the staff where he'd just struck.

The second 'sparrow' slammed into Ke Shuang's chest, and Wu Hao grinned as he pulled back another time for another thrust. Before he could manage a third sparrow, though, some instinct based on the movements of Ke Shuang's qi forced him to explode into sideways movement, hurling himself off to the side as the spearhead that he'd forced off to the side burst into brilliant light.

He grimaced, feeling a few more small nicks added to the one he already add. Nothing vital, nothing that would even hurt his ability to win, but this was the exact scenario that he'd predicted. Ke Shuang would make these little wounds add up.

With an effort of will and a groan, he circulated his qi just below his skin, concentrating on the wounds. It felt for a moment like magma ran through his veins as the sunlight-aligned qi that Ke Shuang had left behind with his techniques touched against his own qi, but then he ripped all that qi out of Ke Shuang's control and crushed it.

Wu Hao grinned, ignoring the pain that he'd just felt, and looked at Ke Shuang, who looked stunned and enraged.

It proved what he already knew. Pain didn't matter. Results mattered.

With that in mind, Wu Hao pushed qi to his feet and launched himself like an arrow, head-first, touching down just once as he angled his staff just right.

The loop clicked together just as his movement ran out, a precise calculation of timing that felt suddenly instinctual. He was brought to an abrupt, jarring stop below Ke Shuang, having caught him in the middle of trying to ward off Wu Hao with a rolling spear strike.

And, again, Wu Hao's staff had smashed into the same spot where his second sparrow had hit just seconds earlier - perfectly in Ke Shuang's sternum, just below the ribs. Even for higher-grade martial artists who were more than human, that should have hurt. Ke Shuang gaped, his eyes going wide with pain.

Ke Shuang raised himself only an instant later, though, and his spear blazed with light as he carved wildly around him, tearing chunks of the earth apart. Wu Hao threw himself into a blur of qi and reappeared at the other side of the courtyard, holding his staff in his hands. More thin cuts littered his skin, which he purged with only a short hiss of pain.

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Damnit. Of course martial artists were better at fighting through that sort of damage.

"Is that all?" Wu Hao asked. He'd suffered a few nicks and bruises, all of which would be gone by the morning thanks to a second-grade martial artist's enhanced healing.

Ke Shuang grimaced, his face set into a mask of hate, and disappeared into a blur again. Now he too took his distance, until they were about as far apart as they could have been.

"I'll admit," Ke Shuang rasped. "You've done better than I thought you would have."

There was an excited murmuring from the audience. Someone, already deciding that the duel was over, attempted a single clap before someone shushed him.

"But you've underestimated me," Ke Shuang said. He whirled his spear around until he was holding it with both hands, pointing its tip directly at Wu Hao's heart. "You've all underestimated me. That ends."

Wu Hao tensed, sensing the immense buildup of qi. Ke Shuang was done holding anything back.

Forcing all of his qi into a single point, Ke Shuang activated another loop and reared back to ready a throw of his spear, which trembled under the strain.

"Golden Crow Spear Art," he screamed. "Ground Sun!"

All of Ke Shuang's qi poured into his weapon, igniting it from the inside until it was cherry-red, burning the grass around his feet. Flames from everywhere around Ke Shuang's body coiled like live serpents and fused, growing so hot that the air distorted. The moon up above was blanked out by the sun that was growing in that spear, and for a moment the courtyard saw more light than it would even on a cloudless day.

The flames peaked and the spear dipped down slightly. Ke Shuang's muscles strained as he took a step forward and threw the spear with every shred of strength in his body, the motion so intense that it sent him spinning on his axis from the pure power.

At the same time, Wu Hao set his feet, let the staff fall to the ground, and ripped the saber out of his spatial storage. Lines blossomed into his vision, charring at their edges as the fire from the spear's backwash tore through the air.

No more time for games.

He pushed qi through the saber, finding it easier than ever before, and spun the jewel in his chest, pulling qi of every facet that he could. The ice-cold yin, the burning heat of yang sun, the sparks of thunder qi - all of it, he fed into his technique.

The heat burned at his skin. The sheer amount of qi raging through him would have killed him a month or two ago. He felt like he was drowning in a relentless tide of qi. He hoped Du Linglong was watching, because this was a demonstration like no other he could possibly give.

Wu Hao fed all that into the storm, too.

"Sky-Severing Saber Art," he growled. "Cutting Clouds."

The cut ripped through everything in its path, and a power so immense that it manifested like an enormous wind of silver tore a long furrow into the earth as it launched forward like an unstoppable comet.

And when the saber strike met the spear, all sound suddenly cut out. There was a flash of tremendous, bright white not-quite-light as the two collided. Wu Hao felt a sudden chill pull at him and his awareness of himself burst back in the seams, reminding him that he was cold and hungry and all-too-human.

This wasn't a natural cold. It crashed into him like a wave, as much a part of something larger as the storm, and he shivered in the face of it.

Until a tide of black qi came rolling up behind him and wrapped him, clinging to his skin and banishing the chill. Not by heat or by banishing the cold, but by simply being relentless not-cold. Wu Hao craned his head with some difficulty and saw that Master Shu held out his hand with a frown on his face.

"Enough," he said. "I declare this duel over."

With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he pushed at something invisible, and Ke Shuang's form abruptly flickered back into sight, snowflakes clinging to his hair and his breath misting in the air. Dying flickers of light rippled around him - the result of some camouflage technique? He raised his spear and Wu Hao raised his saber in turn, readying himself. The blackness that roiled around him like a comforting cloak reared up.

A burst of ash-like qi burst into being around Ke Shuang, the golden parts of his hair starting to crack and fade and returning to an even darker black, and he held out his hand and made a low sound in the back of his throat. He stood just outside the view of the courtyard and, if Wu Hao could have spared the attention, he'd have seen more than a few of the viewers make puzzled noises and crane their necks to see what he was looking at, or what was happening.

"Enough!" Ke Jiaming stated, his will flaring out again over the courtyard. Another thin wave of ice rolled over the grass and froze it into small patches of dead matter, leaving nothing alive in its path. The smell of ash vanished like snow before the sun. "My nephew has been defeated. This is Wu Hao's victory."

Ke Shuang stopped cold. His eyes stared down at his feet, where a thin frozen puddle of ice had formed whereas before he'd stood on solid ground.

"As Uncle commands," he said, with some difficulty. He glared at Wu Hao, his qi pulsing cherry-red with the heat of a desperate, all-encompassing hate. Faint tinges of pink shame ran through Ke Shuang's core, but all of them were only food for that relentless flame.

But Ke Shuang dropped the spear.

"You win," he said, turned on his heel, and vanished into a shimmering blur of searing light.

There was some confused applause as people realized the duel was over.

"Well done, disciple," Master Shu proclaimed.

"Yes," Ke Jiaming's voice resounded, as he made his way over to Wu Hao slowly. "Many men claim to fight with a beast-like ferocity, but this is the first time that I've seen a second-grade martial artist fight so purely on instinct."

Unsure if that was a compliment, Wu Hao blinked. Then, deciding it probably wasn't, he smiled.

"Thank you," he said. "That's very kind. I'm glad I didn't disappoint, Sovereign."

Ke Jiaming gave him an arch look, then swivelled on his feet. With a single step he stood back at the table where the banquet was currently being served and sat down, causing a sudden silence to fall across the room.

Breaking away from what had been a whispered, urgent conversation with his wife, Ke Taiqi stood up, the plates on the table rattling slightly as his bulk slid past.

"Well," he said, trying to sound unflustered. Why hadn't he reacted at all during the duel itself? "That was a fantastic show, I'll say that much! Thank you to our guest, Wu Hao, and to Ke Shuang, who I believe has gone to freshen himself up and will return shortly. Now."

He clapped his hands with a forced enthusiasm, the sound reverberating as if he was trying to banish the memories of what had just happened.

"Let's eat!" he declared.