Chapter 183: Death & Sunset, III

Wu Hao breathed in softly, trying not to inhale the snow that he was laying on. He could feel the lightness array that he'd applied earlier, sticking to his robe. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but felt almost like there was something behind him, pulling him up slightly no matter his position by applying gentle force. He would've experimented with it, but now wasn't the time.

He had a mission, after all.

The guard shifted slightly again, yawning to himself. The branches of deep pine that made up his core shifted with the movement, forming into new configurations that spoke of boredom, of tiredness, but also a distinct preparedness. Even after yawning, his eyes remained alert, scanning the treeline.

At least this guard didn't appear to be a sensor. Wu Hao would've been pretty much fucked, in that case. Occasionally he was very glad that sensors were so rare.

In any case, it was clear enough that he wouldn't be getting past the guard. There were only the faintest possible traces of another man's qi having stood recently where the guard now stood, more or less, leaving only behind the scent of swirling clouds. A recent shift change in watches, Wu Hao imagined, so that would make things more difficult also.

He focused on his original goal: the building. Trying to imprint what he could of it into his memory, he etched the arrays' contours into his mind. Working like the old fable of three blind men and the elephant, he memorized a part of it each time. It worked, too, but whenever his mind strayed or he tried to connect the parts into a bigger whole, his mind took an impact.

But while he was struggling, he was also making progress. No matter the headaches that pulsed whenever he tried to visualize how the parts connected, or the way that his eyesight sometimes went a little hazy - he had a mission. Pain wasn't going to stop him now.

Three pieces in of an estimated nine, he felt a sudden warmth flush to his face. Not breaking the all-encompassing quiet, he probed with his senses at what that had been. His eyes saw nothing: the warmth was a spot just slightly too low to see, below his nose - and then he had an idea, suddenly.

His hands flew up to his lips. A thin droplet of blood rolled its way down his stunned fingers.

He nearly broke the silence by cursing loudly. It was a nosebleed. He'd strained himself too much.

Clenching his fist tightly around his nose, he tried not to breathe in any of his blood while also making sure it didn't fall into the snow. Red would stand out, under a bush or not. Carefully he dipped his head down.

Wu Hao didn't see any drops of blood in the snow, but there were thin holes in the whiteness which allowed some of the dark ground to peek through. His heart sank. Had those been there before, or had he made those somehow? Had the warm blood caused those thin gaps by sliding through the melting snow? All of his senses - with the exception of smell - focused, but he couldn't detect anything.

Once again, he nearly cursed. Instead, he kept a long silence, the only sounds in his ears his own, thin breathing and the slow whisper of the biting breeze through the bald trees.

When he was sure that he'd not missed anything, he released the hold on his nose and tried to assess the damage. He hadn't lost that much blood, and the bleeding had stopped quickly enough. But his hand was sticky with the blood that had coated his palm, and that might leave marks of its own.

Stay calm, he told himself. But his mind called up the images of that fire Father had used once, bobbing gently through the air as it sought out the killer of one of the honor guard. Had that been through karma, or had it just been tracking him by some blood that he'd left on himself or on his victim?

It had to have been the blood, he decided. Now that he knew more about martial arts, he knew that things like "karma" or "fate" or higher concepts were the dominion of Sovereigns, and probably only if they specialized in such things. Father had not been a Sovereign. In fact, he'd been a first-grade martial artist and nothing more.

Wu Hao stared down at the ground. Could he be sure that he hadn't left any blood?

No. He couldn't.

He stared at the man's qi again. The emotions that the other man felt were mainly boredom and some suspicion. Wu Hao wondered if he even knew what he was guarding, and why this man had been chosen as the guard in the first place. His qi was cloud-like, flighty, quick to move, bits of it collecting near his lungs before cycling out again...

And then suddenly he had it. It would be a gamble, but he didn't see any other ways to make sure.

He placed his hand on the ground, leaving only a thin imprint of his fingers on the snow. Unfortunate, but not something he could help.

Blood contained faint traces of vital qi, he thought. That must have been how Father's technique had been able to track him at all. He felt for that faint resonance, trying to figure out if the absence he felt was proof that there was no blood or that it was proof that he was being an idiot by trying to do something impossible.

Then he felt it.

The faintest possible resonance. He almost missed it at first, taking it for another stab that his headache was giving him, but then his eyes saw a small dot on the ground that looked vaguely red. It was beginning to freeze slowly.

Wu Hao really had bled onto the ground. His suspicions had been correct, and he'd checked just in time.

Prodding one finger into the blood, he pulled the clod of earth into his storage space, removing all the evidence he'd been here. He swept the ground again, but found nothing. They might still notice that someone had spied on the shack, but there would be nothing to link him to it.

Wu Hao pulled himself back, risking a final glance at the shack that he'd spent almost an hour sitting outside. Master Shu would go to find him soon, so he had to return, but he didn't want to go back without at least having something to show for his trouble. A third of the array wasn't much, but it'd have to suffice.

Making sure that he didn't make the slightest sound, he retreated from the small hill. Then he moved towards the range of trees, keeping the guard's qi in his senses. The man didn't react at all except for one tense moment where he moved and his qi shifted and Wu Hao's gut suddenly told him that he'd been spotted and he'd fucked it up, before the man yawned and settled back into his earlier posture.

Wu Hao didn't breathe a sigh of relief, considering, but he was definitely going to, later.

The way over to the guest house was exactly as quiet, exactly as serene. With the headaches still not gone, though, Wu Hao felt curiously dislocated from the world. It was as he was walking through a painting, him the only thing in sight that was actually real and alive, as if he could reach out and touch everything in sight and smudge that ink if he applied just a little force.

He almost thought that it was some sort of revelation, but no matter how much he tried to make something happen just by touching at the air, it didn't. He lowered his bloody palm again, feeling like a moron for tricking himself.

Then the house was in sight, and he stumbled inside gratefully, unlocking the door with a fumbling touch at the arrays Master Shu had replaced the locks with.

"Report," Master Shu said, turning in his chair. His eyes widened slightly when he saw Wu Hao and his red palm. "What happened to you?"

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"Nosebleed," Wu Hao muttered. "Worst possible time for it."

Master Shu stood up from his chair. A single step sent him standing in front of Wu Hao, resting his hand on Wu Hao's forehead. Wu Hao nearly flinched away, thinking that perhaps it'd be another whack to the head for his stupidity or bad timing, but the old man didn't hit him.

Instead he frowned, both at Wu Hao's reaction - he might even have shown a hint of guilt for the previous hits - and at what holding his hand to Wu Hao's forehead told him.

"Your concentration's been vastly overdrawn," Master Shu said, and pulled his hand back. "You have a headache, yes?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you simply stop?" Master Shu demanded. "Idiot boy. Pain is a body's warning sign for a reason. Of all the apprentices I could have had..."

"I had to have something to show you," Wu Hao insisted.

Master Shu sighed.

"I explicitly commanded you to return without trying anything stupid," he said.

"Do you want it or not?" Wu Hao asked, flushing.

"Show me," Master Shu said. "Let's see what you've nearly fried your brain for."

Wu Hao pulled out a piece of paper and set to scribbling with the first brush he found. His lines weren't very sure, even the partial pictures already beginning to fade from his mind's eye, but he reproduced it as best as he could, making sure to take his time instead of rushing it. He hoped it was good enough.

Judging by Master Shu's intake of breath, it must have been.

"These are the arrays that were on the shack?" he asked, his eyes trained on the paper. "Even incomplete, these are even more sophisticated than I'd thought. Look at these channels - immensely elegant work, especially considering the surface on which they must have been painted. It incorporates the structure itself in ways that I haven't seen in years."

"Don't tell me you can't figure out what it does," Wu Hao said. "Other than give me a headache."

"It didn't give you a headache," Master Shu said. "Trying to memorize it is what gave you a headache, boy."

"Pedant."

Master Shu sighed but didn't actually correct Wu Hao, so he must have agreed with that description. "This is a rare class of array that uses the mental properties of qi, brat. You will not have seen them yet because they are only taught when your master has decided that you have the correct kind of character to be able to handle them."

"Why?"

"Because they act upon the mind, and with them you can destroy your own mind as easily as you destroy those of others. As you've noticed, this one is meant to make that shack utterly invisible. If you glance at it, you won't notice that there's anything wrong with it, if you notice it at all. That said, these are vastly more sophisticated than even those I've seen before."

The headache pulsed again, echoing deep behind his eyes, and Wu Hao grimaced.

Master Shu noticed, though, and after a moment's thought he spoke again.

"I have another task for you," Master Shu said. His tone was grave.

"What is it now?" Wu Hao asked, exasperated.

"Sleep," Master Shu said. He turned back to his work, his brush flashing across the page. "You'll be of no use to anyone, if you don't sleep. As a second-grade martial artist, you can do without sleep if you must - but you, at the moment, don't actually need to."

Wu Hao cocked his head.

"Why did you have to phrase that as a task?" he asked.

The old man gave Wu Hao a glance.

"Shut up," he said, without any heat. "Go to bed, boy. Leave the work in my hands."

And, as Wu Hao decided to comply and retreated to the room of the guest house where he was to sleep, he thought he might have heard a whispered compliment drifting over from the master's room.

"Good job, kid."

Wu Hao decided he must have imagined it. Instead he trotted off to his own room. It was large enough, he supposed - and more importantly, it was better than sleeping under the open sky again. If he'd wanted to do that, he'd have just remained out in the wilderness.

As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was asleep.

Seconds later - or what felt like it, at least - he was torn from his sleep by the touch of a swirl of black qi. Blinking himself awake at first, he stared at it, before it prodded him again. He snapped out of the half-wakefulness, realized there were no windows to gauge how late it was, and rose quietly from the bedroll and pulled on his clothes.

The old man had better have a good reason for this, he thought.

Unfortunately, he did. He was staring out the walls of the guest house, his face set into a grimace.

"Boy," he said. "We're surrounded."

Wu Hao stared at Master Shu, who pointed out.

"Look," Master Shu said gravely. "There. One third-grade martial artist, nine second-grade martial artists. Four first-grade martial artists. Ke Jiaming is there, too, and that's the worst news of all."

"What are they here for?" Wu Hao asked. He tried to project his senses out, but he was still groggy and the headache from last night hadn't faded. In fact, it'd only gotten worse. He held a hand to his head, the skin of his forehead feeling like a furnace. "An escort like yesterday?"

Master Shu frowned.

"I don't know," he said. He extended a hand towards the door, and fat globs of ink spread everywhere, constructing themselves into whirling, impossibly difficult arrays. It was like the Hall of Masterworks back at the manor was being reproduced by a single man, all at the flick of a finger.

Master Shu exhaled, lowering his finger.

"That will give me an edge, should we need it," he said. To Wu Hao's consternation, he found that the old man sounded almost worried.

"Do you think that'll be necessary?"

"I hope it will not be," Master Shu said. "If all else fails, you know the signals."

Wu Hao nodded. He moved over to the window, looking out carefully, and saw that more than a few of the martial artists that Master Shu had mentioned were making their way out of the small, wooded area that surrounded their guest house.

All of them were armed. Most with swords, a few with spears. There were only a few at the front of the house, but as Wu Hao dashed to the back he could see there that several others were making their way over to the back door, as well.

And, in the distance, he could see Ke Jiaming's severe face. His white robes melded with the snowscape that surrounded him, making him look as if he was part of the landscape around him.

He returned to the front door, pulling his saber from the spatial storage, and prepared himself. It would have helped if he had known better what to prepare for. Would they have to escape?

Ke Boyi, the oldest son of Glorious Sun Sovereign Ke Taiqi, led the group of people heading for the front door, and he stopped in front of it when Lu Bowin, standing next to him, gave a quiet word of warning.

Damnit. They'd realized that there would be arrays on the house, presumably.

Nodding shortly, Ke Boyi stood back slightly from the house. He shifted his posture, putting the sword on his hip within easy reach. Qi bubbled up from his core and the snow around his feet gave out thin hisses as it was melted by the sudden heat.

"Wu Hao," Ke Boyi said loudly. "I know you can hear me. Come out without any weapons and with your hands in the air. We are placing you under arrest for the murder of Lady Du Linglong, honored guest of the Diancang Sect."