Chương 116: An Unexpected Death, II

Wu Hao wouldn't be boasting when he said that there wasn't much that he feared. Death? He'd had death for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was nothing that could embarass him because he had no one to embarass and shame had been beaten out of him. Despite all that, he was coming to dread a simple question.

"What's your budget?" That same question had led to doors being all but slammed into his face at several stores now, when he'd gone looking for something he could use as a weapon. Daggers were a lot more expensive than kitchen knives, it turned out. He could maybe buy one, if he spent most of his money, but the faces the merchants made when he stated a number made it clear that it wouldn't be something they considered good.

It was a bitter pill to swallow considering he'd figured that he'd live like a king from now on, but that was how it was. Wu Hao had decided that he wouldn't take it to heart, which wasn't the same as not actually taking it to heart. A few stores later, he was deciding if it was more insulting to be rejected outright from buying anything at a store or being given the absolute shittiest product they had available. He sighed.

All this was a waste of time so long as he didn't understand how and why he'd been killed, anyway. Still hoping that maybe some sort of relevation would hit him while he was finding his weapon, he arrived at yet another store, which simply referred to itself as the Heaven-Piercing Pavillion. Wu Hao had to admit that it did stand taller than the buildings next to it, but to say that it pierced the heavens would be a vast overstatement. There weren't many customers in the store right now, anyway.

Steel Alley apparently wasn't that busy before midday: something to keep in mind, he thought. The rooftops were as busy as always, though. He'd even seen - or felt, really - a master-level cultivator fly through the air for a second or so before they'd been gone again. Who it was or where they'd gone, Wu Hao wouldn't have been able to say, but there had been an entourage of other martial artists around them. The bell rinkled as Wu Hao entered the store.

The main merchant - a strong-looking, military man with short-cropped hair - was busy cleaning a spear, sliding a cloth carefully down the edge of its tip. He watched Wu Hao for a bit, before returning to his work. Reverently, Wu Hao lifted the most expensive spear that he'd been able to reach from the rack. It was called the Great Mist Spear, with a small poem underneath the description that made Wu Hao's head spin even trying to decipher it. Wu Hao weighed the spear carefully.

For all the understanding that his latest death had given him, he hadn't learned all that much about spears. There didn't seem to be space around nearby where he could do a few practice thrusts, either. He understood how the technique worked, of course, but... The spear was heavy in his hand. Compared to the knives he'd been used to, it was both heavier and unwieldier by far. He'd expected that its weight would be distributed at the tip, and it both was and wasn't.

It was comparatively heavy, sure, and the butt had some counterweight to make sure that the spear wasn't totally out of balance. It was still longer than he'd expected, though - it easily stretched across both arms, and there were no easy grips around the spear's shaft to get grips on. All that said it did feel good to get a hold of a proper weapon, not just something that he'd cobbled together from kitchen material or that he'd been given from a dead man's loot.

Maybe a few experimental jerks wouldn't be so bad, he decided. He looked around, trying to see if there was anyone around who he might accidentally stab, but all he saw was the store manager, heavy arms folded over each other, not even pretending like he hadn't just been studying Wu Hao intently. Wu Hao didn't offer up a smile, and the man jerked his chin up at the side of the room, where a sign hung like in many stores that proclaimed that practice was for the training grounds.

He'd seen it worded in other ways as well: no using the weapons inside the store, whatever you broke you bought, etc. Right. Wu Hao sighed and placed the expensive spear back onto the rack and stalked over to a few racks below that, where the cheap spears had been thrown into something of a huddle. There was no name plaque for these, and there definitely wasn't a poem for them, either. The only decoration they had were the patterns rust had etched into some of them. He picked one up.

The previous spear had felt supple, like he could exert whatever force he could try on it and it'd simply bend, snapping back into shape immediately no matter what. These ones just felt like they might snap in half, weren't quite as long, and the balance was just bad. No elegant counterweight or anything like it here - just cheap things, churned out by apprentices to polish their skills and make some money, at a guess.

A few exploratory flicks of his wrists gave him a better idea how to grip it, though, and he'd have tried a thrust if he'd had the space. And if the store manager wasn't keeping a wary eye on Wu Hao, and if he'd thought that that same gaze would lessen once he put down the expensive weapon and picked up something cheap, the man didn't oblige. A waft of crisp, clear qi suddenly entered the store, accompanied by another. Wu Hao looked up, because that was a scent that he'd recognized from his last life.

It was the girls from the Emei Sect - both moderately tall, and to his annoyance the one with the mountain qi was taller than him. He'd grow, he comforted himself, and he knew that for a fact. But after a quick look he returned his attention to the spear he was weighing. Would this do? It'd be stupid as hell if he fought his killer with a spear that'd snap after a single blow, and unlike his knives these were far too expensive to be a single-use item.

Then again, if he was just learning the spear, did he need to start out with something expensive? Mulling over the question carefully he nearly jumped out of his skin when a girl's face appeared directly in front of his, popping up like a demented mole out of the ground.

"Hi," she said, and smiled.

"Can we talk?"

"What?" Wu Hao asked, but it appeared that she hadn't bothered to listen for an answer. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Her hand waved in front of his eyes without ever touching him, as if trying to muss up his hair from a distance. Wu Hao might have smiled if not for the fact that her eyes were still pinned onto his. Now that he was looking properly, he got the sense that her eyes were huge and golden.

Her pupils, too, had odd, rectangular shapes within them that swam in Wu Hao's vision. He found it difficult to tear himself away.

"Hmm," she said, and tilted her head.

"Ah. Huh."

"What does that mean?" Wu Hao asked. He didn't inch back, though she seemed entirely too close for comfort.

"Mmm," the girl hummed. Her head tilted the other direction.

"Wow." Wu Hao looked over to the other girl, hoping that she had anything to say, but she just stood there, arms crossed, frowning.

"Sun Hanzi," she said, a warning in her voice.

"We've got other things to do. I went in because I thought you wanted to look at these for inspiration. Come on." All she got in response was a loopy sort of smile, though, before Hanzi turned back to Wu Hao.

"Your karma's the most bizarre I've ever seen," she said, startling him even though she hadn't spoken loudly. Her voice was oddly dreamlike, like her mind was elsewhere. A thousand miles away, at the very least, but probably more. Again, Wu Hao found himself meeting her eyes, while her mouth twitched into what might have been a smile.

"What does that mean?" he asked, a little frustration spilling over into his voice.

"You've got all these threads," she said, waving as if to illustrate her point.

"Everyone's got them, obviously... Well, some more than others. Obviously. But yours are tangled. There's several that split into different threads, but they don't really seem to grown smaller in the splitting. Several loop around on each other. There's bundles that are sectioned off, leading up into the air and then nowhere... Actually, there's quite a lot of those. They seem heavy, too."

"What?" Wu Hao asked, but then what she was saying actually hit home. A chill ran down his spine and his eyes went wide. Was she referring to his resurrections? She was describing it in terms that he wasn't familiar with, but things like looping on themselves or splitting - wasn't that a reference to his return from the future? What else could this "karma" be that she was referring to. Unable to decide if he should run or step closer and demand more information, Wu Hao stood stock still.

His eyes were locked into hers.

"It's fascinating," she said, and tapped her lip.

"What happened to you?" She blinked twice, before she reached out as if to touch one of these invisible threads.

"Does it hurt? I imagine it does. Knotted karma is very difficult to resolve." Before Wu Hao had figured out how to answer those questions - and if he even wanted to - the girl's fellow disciple had pulled her by the shoulder, hauling her back from Wu Hao.

"That's enough, Hanzi," she scolded the girl who'd been staring into Wu Hao's eyes.

"You're frightening him."

"Frighten, Huifei?" she said, another dreamy note in her voice.

"No, I don't think so." Huifei rolled her eyes, turned to Wu Hao, and said, "Apologies. We'll let you be."

"Hold on," Wu Hao said, finding his voice.

"What does she mean by my karma?" Huifei shook her head.

"That's a question I can't answer. Excuse us, please." Giving a short nod, she pulled Hanzi along with her, the other girl finally taking her odd eyes away from Wu Hao.

"Bye!" she said, and waved.

"We'll meet again. Keep your karma interesting, okay?" Wu Hao stared as they left. The entire thing had been so odd that he'd forgotten that he'd been holding onto the rusted spear, which after a bit he dumped back into the waste bin. In the end he settled for something more in the middle.

At least that was what he told himself: it was maybe two steps up from the waste bin, a spear called the Bird-Worm Spear, which claimed in a restrained description that it would pierce its target like the bird's beak would pierce a worm clean through. That purchase wiped out most of his remaining money, but he found himself pretty content with his purchase nonetheless. It was a fine weapon, the first he'd owned that was really fit for a martial artist, and it felt good to hold it.

Even if he wasn't all that much of a fan of the name. He walked at the entrance by a man who'd been loitering nearby, stood in the street and watching the passersby with a critical look, only for the man to turn as Wu Hao left.

"Kid," the man said, repeating it louder when Wu Hao didn't look over.

"Kid!"

"What?" Wu Hao asked, more irritation in his voice. The man scowled, and it was then that Wu Hao recognized him as the one who'd confronted the girls in yesterday's tomorrow. Last life. Whatever.

"You know who they were?" the man said.

"The girls who you just talked to."

"From the Emei Sect," Wu Hao said bluntly, and the man nodded slowly.

"Right," he said.

"Right. I just thought... Well, doesn't matter now." He mumbled something to himself, then straightened.

"Don't get involved," he warned.

"There's a reason they're on the decline." Wu Hao frowned.

"Which is?" Again, the stranger hesitated, before he just waved his sleeve and left in a gust of wind which whipped at Wu Hao's clothes. There was something annoying about the whole thing, and Wu Hao could probably have still grabbed the man and chased him down until he'd given away the reason that he'd tried to warn Wu Hao, but in the end he didn't bother. After all, he hadn't come here to meet the girls from the Emei Sect. He might in the future, actually, but that was for the case where he died again.

Wu Hao took a deep breath. Slinging the spear behind him, he sniffed the air, receiving a withering look from a nearby madam who muttered that a stray dog had learned to walk on two legs. He ignored her and her haughty look, though, because he'd caught just a whiff of that same acrid scent. This time he wasn't going to let it go. He pushed qi to his feet, reminded himself that the scent was heaviest near the ground, and let it go to instead make his way through the crowd on foot.

Soon, he was wishing that he'd taken the rooftops again.