Chương 151: Death & Flowers, IV

While Wu Hao digested that particular revelation, another round of congratulations came and went. Fortunately, this also came with several of the masters also offering by-your-leaves along the lines of having to prepare for tomorrow's Gatherings of the Young Heroes or the like. With every master who left there was a little more space for Wu Hao to breathe, a little more time for him to think again. One of the last to leave was the mistress of the Peng Clang, the Smoke Sovereign - Peng Qixi.

She smiled at Wu Hao as she sashayed out of the room, puffed out a wisp of smoke, and waved as she left, pulling out a thin packet of tabacco when she stepped out the door. Then she vanished. That was a moment he'd remember, but others also took notice. None of them spoke to Wu Hao but they did cast him a few looks, not all of them pleased. In fact, the last one to leave was the patriarch of the Qingcheng Sect, Su Yi.

It was clear that his lingering wasn't quite welcome, as master Shu looked a little more moody the more the man kept standing there - some sort of conflict that wasn't clear to Wu Hao, presumably. Su Yi smiled at him.

"Remember our conversation from a few days ago," he said simply.

"Greater expectations than ever before ride on your shoulders, 'Hao Wu'. Don't lose tomorrow's match." Whistling a tune without any real melody, Su Yi stepped out and vanished also as if he'd never been there. Master Shu sighed, sagged back into his chair, and looked at Wu Hao as if seeing him for the first time. He ran a head through his hair and seemed almost surprised to find it without bald spots.

"So," Wu Hao said, not quite sure he'd be allowed to leave.

"I'm your disciple?"

"Well, you're here," Master Shu said.

"You wouldn't be in here without being allowed in. If you're allowed in and stupid enough to try and steal from me, you're not a journeyman. Certainly not at your age. Hence, you're an apprentice of the guild. Which, considering I am the grandmaster heading this guild chapter, makes you my disciple indirectly."

"I don't think that's what that means," Wu Hao protested.

"And I don't want to be anyone's disciple." But the master simply pretended he hadn't heard. He waved his finger. The room sprang back into action. The wooden planks that had been bent out of shape and stuck out of the floor reaching towards to the empty sky above shook, receding back into the floor as if guided by some invisible hand. At the same time, the master's other hand made a sort of complicated wiggle, forcing out more qi.

There was a loud clatter as tiles began to zoom back up, the cracks in the stone mending themselves and arranging themselves neatly into place, much like a general ordering his soldiers into formation. When the room was finished again, it didn't look the way it had before. All the dust had blown everywhere, all the arrays that had been presented to the master were laying across the floor. Master Shu looked over and saw a bootprint staining one particular array, and the look on his face grew slightly stormier.

Still, the house looked like it hadn't just been hit by a god's hammer blow, and that was amazing all on its own. Then he flicked his hand and created a chair by forcing his qi into mindbending shapes, before it lit up. As the light faded, a rough-hewn stone chair stood there, pristine.

"Hrmph," Master Shu said. Under his breath, though, he muttered to himself. His eyes, still split into those two distinct halves, focused on Wu Hao, who had stood by and watched the reconstruction with an open mouth.

"So," he said.

"About the matter of the discipleship. You're claiming you won't accept?"

"Why should I?" Wu Hao argued, before the master simply snorted at him. It'd been a dumb thing to say, but that didn't mean that he didn't mean it.

"Why shouldn't you?" the master responded, raising an eyebrow.

"I made my way all the way to the top of the Winter Solstice Tournament by myself. I'm fighting in the finals tomorrow. I will win."

"Who are you fighting?" Master Shu asked.

"Hua Lixin," Wu Hao said. A short silence hung over the room. The master's eyes fixed themselves on Wu Hao, who refused to elaborate.

"I don't know who that is," Master Shu said.

"One of the Hua Sect, given the mountain's name? A foundling, I'm guessing. Considering he's in the final round, clearly a prodigy of some kind."

"He's the direct student of the Hua Sect Leader," Wu Hao added grudgingly.

"He's supposed to be a monster. I'll still beat him."

"Hrm," Master Shu said.

"How'd you get to face him in the finals? If you're of no sect as you claim -""Trial," Wu Hao said.

"Effort." But master Shu wasn't listening to him anymore. He was staring into the distance for a bit and Wu Hao wondered if he got lost in his own mind again, but then the light returned to the man's eyes.

"This is an opportunity," the master declared, rubbing his hands again.

"Tell me, boy. Do you want me to teach you the beginnings of a Heaven-ranked technique? This is a rare favor even for a disciple, I'll have you know. Even having a glimpse of it should make you undefeated in this tournament. Normally it would require years of study to learn, but I have a way of speeding that up." So this was what the old man thought would make Wu Hao interested in becoming his disciple, then? Master Shu's chest puffed out with obvious pride.

"I've got one already," Wu Hao said bluntly.

"So does Hua Lixin. And Du Linglong. None of the others, though." Master Shu's chest puffed in with obvious surprise.

"Three people with Heaven-ranked techniques," he said to himself, falling back into his chair again. It belched dust all over the floor, though master Shu only waved a hand at it before he went back to talking quietly to no one.

"How long was I out?"

"I don't know," Wu Hao said.

"A long while, though. Several years." The look that came over Master Shu's face was impossible to read, and the swirls that ran through his qi moved so quickly that Wu Hao caught only the thin vestiges of a long-held despair.

"I will need to consider this carefully," Master Shu finally said, pulling at his beard.

"This is rather concerning." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Having spoken to himself - it seemed to be a habit of his - he managed to gather himself again and turned to Wu Hao once more.

"All right," he said, nodding.

"Moving past all of that, I can still show you something that you should understand. Consider it a reason to become my disciple."

"I won't," Wu Hao said stubbornly.

"I -""At least let me speak," Master Shu said. He wasn't that angry, but some annoyance curled its way through the room. With the man's presence filling the room as much as it did, it felt almost like the light had shifted, like the dark was blacker and the white was starker. Wu Hao gave the windows a glance, then focused back on the master.

"Tell me, then," he said, folding his arms over each other.

"What's the manifestation of your Heaven-tier art?"

"What's a manifestation?" Wu Hao asked.

"A manifestation," Master Shu said in a sort of wise voice, "is the aftereffects of alignment. You connect with something greater than yourself to use a Heaven-tier technique, obviously. You'll have been told as much, though probably not in those terms. That changes you. You perceive things you couldn't perceive anymore, you've gained insights. You find it easier to do some things, the thought of doing other things that disagree with the alignment becomes harder to hold on to.

After achieving alignment, you have to build on that single insight. Experience more things, new facets of existence. When all of those facets come together then you'll find yourself capable of using a Dao-grade art." Wu Hao gaped. Was it that simple? Not that it'd be simple even knowing all that to use a Heaven-tier art, but still, that simple statement had just put every question that he'd had about Heaven-tier techniques into a stark perspective. It even included knowledge of Dao-grade arts.

"Come on," master Shu said. His knee bounced. There was an odd sort of energy to him.

"Tell me."

"Lines," Wu Hao muttered.

"Lines," master Shu said, and blinked before a very slow grin spread across his face. His qi spoke of a self-evidence that Wu Hao for the life of him just couldn't see.

"Well, your next step is perfectly obvious then, isn't it?"

"No," Wu Hao said, and this time he clenched his mouth shut so the shaking wouldn't have his teeth clatter together again. Master Shu's eyes narrowed.

"The first ever disciple I have in more than name," master Shu muttered to himself, "and he's an idiot." Wu Hao scowled until the master sighed.

"Think, boy. Lines, yes?"

"Lines."

"What are lines?" Grudgingly, Wu Hao thought about this.

"Two points, connected." Master Shu frowned.

"Yes, but where do we use lines?"

"In writing?" Wu Hao asked.

"I don't -" Realization struck like a hammer.

"Oh," he said, quietly.

"Arrays."

"Yes," Master Shu said, quietly pleased.

"Arrays. Which is why you are here."

"Well, so what?" Wu Hao asked.

"Do I try to draw arrays on my opponent? Do you know how many slashes that'll take? Doesn't seem that useful." Master Shu stared at him and then sighed.

"Boy," he said slowly.

"What is an array?"

"A collection of lines to guide qi where you want it to," Wu Hao recited. That wasn't Wang Bin's definition - he phrased it very much more elegantly - but that was Wu Hao's own definition.

"Not incorrect but not fully true either," master Shu said. Again, that wise-as-a-sage voice came out.

"Arrays are reflections of the world. A line is perhaps a river, a blot perhaps a mountain. As with a mirror, if man was able to reach in and adjust the reflection, the world itself should change along with it. Qi is simply a way of effecting that change, reproducing the large by enhancing the small. Do you understand?"

"That's just a poetic way of saying the same thing," Wu Hao said. Although it was at least a novel description.

"Wrong and wrong again," master Shu said. He rubbed at his temples, then pointed a finger. Ink gathered from his fingertip, spinning itself into a vaguely cohesive whole that swirled into the shape of a saber. It wasn't a great saber - the balance was obviously wrong, the edge not sharp in the slightest - but Wu Hao didn't let it drop when it was deposited in his hands.

"Slash it," he instructed. With the stamp of his foot, a barrier was erected, the equal of the one Jin Murong had tried to crack open earlier in size but not in potency. Wu Hao did as he'd just been told, slashing the barrier. It felt silly, but then again... Master Shu nodded.

"Worse than expected, but that's not important. So: what did you just do?"

"The first technique of the -""Stop," master Shu interrupted.

"Not the technique. Which actions did you just take?"

"I... sent the qi along my arm?" Wu Hao asked, shifting.

"After that, I just moved my arm the way the technique says I'm supposed to."

"That is a line," Master Shu said.

"Similarly, a step is a line between where you stood and where you will stand. All things can be described as lines drawn between the previous state of a thing and the next state of a thing. You think of an array as a mere piece of paper, but that is reductive. A movement art: moving from one place to the next. A saber technique: cutting by moving it from one place to another. That's a simplification to the point of uselessness, but the point stands." Wu Hao's mouth went dry.

He could feel the edge of the thought beginning to form, a realization that he hadn't been able to put together himself even though it had been staring him in the face.

"Lines form arrays," Master Shu stated.

"Hence, every movement you make is an array. It's a mistake to think of an array as merely a collection of lines. It is equally true that a collection of lines is an array. Most are merely nonfunctional or simply lack direction. What you must do is direct it." Wu Hao sucked in a breath. If that was right - if every movement was a part of an array, part of some larger whole that he could use to affect the world at large... Then he'd just gained something a lot more important than some arrays.

He'd gained a clue to how to improve the way he fought, and with that, how he'd beat Hua Lixin.