Chương 110: Sleep Like Death, I

After days of travel, each duller than the next, Wu Hao finally arrived at Chongqing. The first sign that he'd been getting closer was the qi in the environment getting more and more plentiful, every single night. In Green Village there had been some qi - not quite as much as in the mountains where he'd spent his last days as a deathsworn, maybe, but there was a consistent ambient qi that made his cultivation just a little easier. But that feeling kept swelling.

It was as if he was travelling along a stream, finding it growing wider and wider still, going from a small trickle of water to something almost marshy in its presence, and finally that'd grown into a tributary that seemed to be headed directly for the ocean, swelling as it did when smaller streams joined together into a mighty river. The Yangtze river, which had been the namesake of a technique that he'd been killed with once. Looking at it now he could see why you'd name a technique after it. It was massive.

He'd thought about rivers as just roads of water, but the Yangtze seemed almost alive. Boats scuppered from one riverbank to another; he could see that the river had cut through the mountains, leaving massive mountains and hills and slopes. He could see stone forests and caves and valleys everywhere, as well as the roofs shining with the last droplets of last night's rain. That wasn't the only thing that had vastly exceeded his expectations, either, especially now that he stood at the lip of the valley.

He'd known that Chongqing was a city, of course. He just hadn't thought it would be that massive. Cities, to his mind, had been towns, but larger, but it was a completely different thing. As far as the eye stretched he could see houses and streets, palaces and slums, training grounds and schools, garbage dumping grounds and refined teahouses and restaurants and pavillions.

After the days and weeks of travelling from the mines to small town to slightly-less smaller town through the wilderness, the sheer amount of people that lived nearby was so immense that Wu Hao couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of numbers required to express it. In the core of the city, elegant houses were so commonplace that to see anything without three stories would itself be shocking.

Compared to the buildings of the Jin clan compound each was somewhat smaller, but nonetheless Wu Hao could see high fences and walls, with enough space for pleasure gardens and other things Wu Hao could barely even imagine. And it wasn't just palaces, either. One of the largest buildings, comparable in size to two of those palaces, was an immense temple. It was less made of thick walls or ringed with fences: instead it was vastly more open, showing off courtyards and gardens of stone.

Both were dotted with a stream of people constantly moving, interspersed with yellowy dots that could only be monks, their bald heads and the staves they carried. He saw guards, as small as ants, standing so stock still that he could have confused them for statues, wreathed in black armor and carrying spears or sabers or other weapons.

At each of the private houses at least two guards were stood at the forefront of the walls, and Wu Hao would bet a few deaths on there being more guards on the inside of those walls as well, let alone the owners probably being martial artists as well. In the middle of it all, there was a gigantic building that nestled atop the mountain like a pearl inside of a clam.

It was the sort of immense building that seemed to have been carved from the mountainside itself, because it was difficult to believe that it'd been made by human hands. Seven high towers sat atop one of the main grounds, rising to equal heights of four stories each, so precisely equal in fact that it had to be intentional. Flagpoles rose from the tips of the towers and carried a flag each, the symbols so vibrant they were visible even from this distance. The Shaolin Temple. The Wudang Sect. The Tang Clan.

So many others that he could name, and more that he couldn't. It wasn't that there were no ordinary people - in fact there were immense amounts of them, heading in every direction in an indecipherable chaos - but that there were more martial artists together here, all going about their lives, than Wu Hao had even seen at the final battle with the Heavenly Demon. Wu Hao's head nearly spun from the sheer amount of qi.

All were moving and expanding and touching the world around them, the qi of other martial artists that responded in a hundred different ways to the eddies of power that were being emanated - there was just so much qi. His senses blared with pain, and he tried to ignore the sheer sense of vertigo that came from looking at that much qi. Even if he could, though, it felt like he was looking through a world through a shimmering haze.

Or, to put another description on it, through a piece of glass that had been smudged so often and so completely with handprints that it was only barely possible to even see anything anymore. For the first time he wished he hadn't been a sensor. He felt drunk, his head hurt, and it wasn't getting any better. The only hope he had was that this was a simple byproduct of not having had enough sleep and being hungry and thirsty.

He hadn't rationed his rations as carefully upon learning that he'd arrive at Chongqing today, so he had nothing left except the bag of money that he'd stuck into a pocket that Wei Mingku's father had specially sewn into the inside of his shirt, and also the clothes on his back and in his bag. But that had to be true for most martial artists arriving here, Wu Hao reckoned.

They couldn't all arrive here as wealthy travellers who had proved their mettle: some of them had to arrive like he had, with very little possessions to speak of. His eyes snapped away from the city itself when he heard someone passing by give a knowing little chuckle at his expense, and instead he refocused on the nearby. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Walking through the city, the headaches hounded him every time he crossed paths with a group of martial artists, which was far more often than he liked, and he decided that right now wasn't the moment to explore. The lessons on wilderness survival that the last two weeks had drilled into his head made things clear: he needed a place to stay, he needed a source of food, and he needed a weapon. This wasn't the wilderness, but, in all honesty, Wu Hao didn't think it was that different in nature.

The same needs applied, and with no one else likely to provide them for him he'd better get started on finding something himself. At the direction of a barker, who was probably being paid for the privilege of shilling a particular inn, Wu Hao was directed to an entire street filled to the brim with restaurants and inns and lodges. Unfortunately, though, the prices for the inns were as outsized as the rest of the mountain had been.

For the money he had - money he'd rightfully stolen from Yan Biao, mind you, and which was a sizeable sum - he could maybe have slept a single night at the first inn that he found, and barely been able to pay for a dinner beforehand and a breakfast afterwards. The rest wasn't much better. Some were even more expensive, making it clear from the moment they saw how Wu Hao was dressed that he wasn't welcome. Others were less expensive, but not cheap enough that he could actually afford to stay.

He'd also accidentally mistaken another place that looked vaguely inviting for an inn, but it turned out that he'd wandered into a brothel. He'd fled, the tips of his ears burning with shame at the illustrations covering the walls near the entrance. Violence he could deal with, easily. He could kill and lie without blinking an eye. Smut, though, was apparently a weakness he still needed to work on. As soon as he found a way to die from blushing too hard, he'd be back to test his mettle. Some of those images...

He had a sort of grin on his face that he couldn't repress, and that made the entire experience a little more fun, a little less harsh than he might have first thought. But in the end, when dark began to fall and he still hadn't found some place to sleep, he decided to fall back on his backup plan and found himself at the edge of the slums. Those, at least, met expectations. The slums were, in a few words, not quite as nice as the town itself. In fact, they were kind of filthy and dour.

But there were less martial artists here, and so Wu Hao managed to finally take a deep breath that had been catching in his chest earlier and gently let his senses try to recover from the absolute assault that they'd been through. It didn't mean there were no martial artists, though. Following the confused, aching feeling of his senses, he found a man who was sitting, his leg folded carefully under him to give the impression of it having been amputated, begging for money.

Only thin patches of hair remained on his gaunt face, and his eyes were rheumy from age. He looked bad and dirty, but nonetheless his qi spoke of a surging vitality. This man wasn't just a beggar, he was a Beggar and at least a second-grade martial artist.

"Coin for a cripple?" the beggar asked, an impressive croak in his voice that suggested he might cough at any point despite never doing so while Wu Hao had watched him.

"I was told to come visit the Beggar's Union," Wu Hao said. The beggar scratched his head, seemingly mystified.

"And? I'm just a cripple."

"Your leg isn't even really disabled," Wu Hao stated, whispering. He figured he might be able to take the beggar, despite the rank difference, but with his pounding headache he didn't want to risk it.

"It is," the beggar stated, scowling. His rheumy eyes stared accusingly at Wu Hao.

"What kind of game are you playing, brat? Do you think being crippled and poor isn't punishment enough for me, hmmm? Now be kind and hand me some coin, rather than your scorn. You'll get far more for it in return." Wu Hao sighed, the man sighed also, and then he very obviously winked. Oh, Wu Hao thought. Right. He nearly pulled his purse from the inside of his shirt before realizing that maybe that he shouldn't, actually.

What if this man wasn't actually from the Beggar's Union but just a martial artist who was living rough like a beggar? Giving that a second thought he decided that if this man was actually a scammer just trying to grift Wu Hao, then he'd just fight him or find another interesting way to die. Storming the Alliance Headquarters, maybe. Those guards were bound to have an interesting technique, he figured, and they'd hopefully oblige by killing him with it.

Anyway, he stepped over closer, outside the rush of people milling past, and pulled his purse from his shirt.

"Here," Wu Hao said. He plucked the coin from his purse but, before he'd even managed to hand it over, it'd already disappeared from his hand. The beggar's eyes cleared up for just a few moments as he stared directly into Wu Hao's own eyes, saying nothing. But the coin had appeared in his hand, flipping and doing tricks as it danced its way across the back of the beggar's fingers.

Wu Hao shifted from one foot to another, glancing at both ends of the street to see if he got an opportunity to speak without being overheard. The beggar coughed pointedly, as if telling him to get on with it."' Wind whispers through the willows; the dogs shiver,'" Wu Hao said. The beggar grunted affirmatively.

"An older password," he said.

"Who'd you hear it from?"

"Bao," Wu Hao said, and when this just got him a look of incomprehension he sighed and added: "Greasy Bao."

"Ah," the beggar said, and stood up. His leg was still folded underneath him, so he had to walk with crutches that he shoved underneath his arms. This didn't seem to bother him. He threw a glance backwards.

"Come on, kid," he said.

"Follow me. I'll take you to the Beggar's Court."