Chương 64: Death by Night, II

Wu Hao woke up in the middle of the night and swore, falling over himself as his legs remembered the sensation of having been told to run. He flailed in mute surprise in confusion and then tottered out of bed, dumped ass over head onto the cool floor. He'd had better moments, in short, even post-resurrection. There was a moment where he could only just focus on breathing, but he gave himself a quick patdown just to make sure he was whole again, and then swore again.

His head pounded, and it wasn't just the spill that he'd received earlier, either. Knowledge had come pouring into his head again, and there was a lot of it this time. With a short jerk of his eyes, he looked at the announcement. Knowledge of Arrays, huh? Sitting crosslegged on the bed, he began to digest what he'd learned. Arrays were, all told, fairly simple. The natural qi of the world flowed in specific patterns, following some sort of system of rules.

While those rules were much too complicated to fit into the first fragment, Wu Hao now knew that this flow of energy could be diverted and trapped into different sorts of reservoirs. These reservoirs then had a mechanism for activation when triggered, the same way that he had triggered the trap that had killed him tomorrow. When triggered, these mechanisms would basically open the floodgate for the reservoirs, which would push the qi outward, following a pre-ordained path.

This path would determine the form that the qi would take as it rushed out of the reservoir, the same way as he used loops and whirls to push his qi through to activate techniques. Apparenty not everyone used the same terminology, but that was fine. Put another way: when he'd broken the lock too roughly, he'd broken open that gate, and as a result an arrow of qi had been loosed from its crossbow and speared him to the floor. There was all sorts of other knowledge mixed in, too.

Materials that were useful because they influenced qi to move in desired ways, ground up into inks that also required some blood to activate. Specific mechanisms that he could use to activate, like activating when someone tried to step into a particular nearby area. How to identify areas that would have the right amounts and types of qi to build a reservoir at.

Not in the skillset: how to evade the arrays, how to break them beyond just enduring the attack, or anything more intricate than simply setting up something that attacked whatever triggered its activation. Wu Hao rubbed his forehead, feeling the ache start to subside a little bit. Four more times, he thought to himself, letting himself back onto the bed again as his legs uncrossed. He had four more times of getting that kind of hammer of sheer knowing smashed into his brain to look forward to. Great.

He honestly couldn't wait. That wasn't sarcastic: there was a part of him that hated to wait, that wanted to go and try to break in again right now. It was still night, and exactly as many people would expect a break-in today as they would expect tomorrow. He almost stood up, but then his eyes fell on something the moonlight had illuminated. It was the Dragon Ascending Gate Art that Old Qin had given him yesterday. Did he really want to redo that conversation? No, he decided. He really didn't.

There were more practical reasons as well, obviously. But he just felt a stinging awkwardness at the thought of having to try and convince Old Qin that he didn't need the Heaven and Earth Wheel Art, much less trying to do so without further invalidating the man's life and his supposed lack of talent. He could stand to wait again. There wasn't a great deal going on, anyway: there was just more group training. Spars were only conducted on Mondays and Fridays, and today was a... Wednesday?

This whole resurrection thing made time so fluid, it wasn't the first time he'd lost track. That left him with two days to find something that would let him face Shan Kong on better terms. Either that would be in the library itself or in one of the ways that he met his end. But two attempts later he hadn't gotten much further. In practice he might have had infinite time to try and get it right, but he still had to remind himself that this was just one of the first possible steps.

If he'd exhausted the rewards here, he'd move on to robbing houses or asking Lady Jin. One way or another, he had to get a lot stronger, if he wanted to kill Father. And if that power wasn't to be found in the Jin clan, then he'd make his escape. He took the same route.

Lacking a clock, his only awareness of time was determined by the patrols, and where he could see the lanterns making their way slowly through the compound: occasionally he saw flashes of warm light paint the sides of a nearby wall, or for a blast of light to creep up overhead as men walked past the occasional window, but they never spotted him. And, while he'd been creeping around, he'd also come close to the exterior wall of the compound.

He'd learned that not only there were still patrols at this late hour, but also that multiple arrays had been hidden in the walls. Wu Hao figured these were more likely meant to deter invaders than anything else, but there was a ward there that detected all attempts to jump over the walls and raised an alarm. If he ever wanted to escape, he'd have to take that into account.

The tree was in the same location, the jump somewhat easier now that he knew he could do it, and then he was scrabbling his way back up to the locked terrace. Wu Hao peered at the lock again. Looking at it more closely, he could see thin traces of qi that fed through it. They ran through the entirety of the padlock, completing a circuit that ran from one part of the wall through the door. It was very thin, though.

The knowledge in his head told him that the lines had to be painted thickly, unless you were a master of the art of arrays, and what master of array arts would spend his time babysitting books in a side branch's library? Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Thin or not, what he'd accidentally done the first time was break that line, and he'd been punished for it.

He reached out with a hand and, trying very hard to use the absolute minimum of vital qi that he could pull away from his lungs, he pulled the lock slightly up, enough to bend the line just the least possible amount, and with his chest heaving for breath he pushed his own qi into the gap that he'd created. The lock clicked and, as he worked at it with his knife, he broke it open. It gave way with a loud crack and he winced, eyes probing the darkness, but if anyone had noticed, there was no sign of it. Jackpot.

If this went on, then he was finally in. He'd failed the second time by breaking the array in the wrong place, the third time by his concentration breaking too quickly. He let the vital qi flood back into his lungs, coughed repeatedly to try and dismiss the dizzying feeling that had come over him while he'd worked, and finally smiled as he moved on inside. The library at night was less dark than Wu Hao had imagined.

Great windows let in the moonlight, allowing him just enough light to navigate by and not smash his shins into every bookcase. Still, if it had felt somewhat cozy during the day, at night it felt like he had just walked into a tomb. It didn't feel right that he was here, that he should intrude on this almost reverential silence. Behind him the door closed with a muted boom, a lot louder than he'd meant it to be. And it closed off his avenue for exit, as well.

He'd been so busy with the thought of simply getting in that the problem of getting back out again had seemed like a minor concern. He could kill himself to escape, but then he'd lose the books. He could still read them, but there were no lights here and he was a lousy reader at the best of times. He spun around again, but the damage had been done, so he finished cringing and pushed forwards cautiously.

There was probably no real need to make his steps quiet, to peer around every corner, but it just felt appropriate. He wished that he'd thought to take a lantern, but shook his head after thinking about it a moment more: that would have made him a lot more obvious to any guards. Instead, he was forced to take a single book from the shelves, carry it over to the nearest window halfway around the library's upper floor, and try to decipher the characters that served as titles by the scattered moonlight.

Wu Hao made the trip at least a dozen times, going back and forth with a book from each shelf to see if he could find out the categories of manuals stored there. The first shelf he found contained the Whirlwind Saber Art, the Sky-tier saber art that had was used by the guards. He'd been at the receiving end a day or two ago; it seemed pretty decent, as he recalled, but he wasn't going to spend time on learning a Sky-tier saber art when he'd already got one just from dying.

He could have all the arts he wanted if he sought someone out that used them. The next shelves held slightly more promise: there was a Ten Cloudskipping Steps manual that looked like a promising movement art of a higher rank than the Dragon Ascending Gate, there was a Swallowtail Butterfly Needle Art that probably contained some mention of how to concoct poisons and apply them to needles, there were financial records of what the clan had earned every period and how.

Treatises on history, biographies of notable clans and master martial artists, and more. Finally, though, the last shelf he inspected showed off several cultivation arts, and he eagerly pulled every book off the shelves and dumped them on the table near the window unceremoniously. There was the Unyielding Will Manual, there was the Divine Ocean Scripture, there was the Great Jewel Sutra, and that was the ones where he could make out all of the characters.

The rest were things like the Red Lantern something-or-other, the Something Crossed Sabers Compendium from a nearby shelf, and a bunch of others. He wasn't even sure those were cultivation manuals. He was deciding which to pick - the Unyielding Will Manual sounded good, he thought - when a faint glimmer of qi caught his eye and he froze. It didn't move, though. It just sat there, only visible to him from this particular angle, only if he turned his head just so.

The only way he'd even managed to see it was by accident, and even then it was proving very difficult to keep his attention on the shining spot of qi. Whenever he tried to look at it directly, his head turned, and it was as if a gentle voice was commanding him to look elsewhere. That was bizarre, too: it didn't seem to be hurting him, it just wanted him to not look with insistent mental nudges to make sure he didn't. Heart hammering in his chest, he crept forward, keeping it in his field of vision.

He might have looked extremely silly, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Had he been spotted? If so, he'd have to hurry up and kill himself now, before the guards burst in. But nothing happened. There was no footfall as men burst into the library with sabers drawn, there was no sudden blooming of qi signatures around him as a guard who'd crept near to him prepared to strike. Wu Hao crept closer, closing his eyes to feel his way forward blindly.

He could still vaguely feel the qi, so he stumbled towards it until the tips of his reaching fingers touched the hardwood of the bookshelf. Feeling his way through, still blind, he thought he could sense a small cage of qi that enclosed something on the shelf. He hesitated before simply biting down on his lip, gritting his teeth, and pushing his hand into the small cage. Nothing exploded, and nothing was torn off of his body. All he felt was simply a small box, and he took it out as quickly as he could.

It had been shoved in rather deeply, as if someone had been afraid that it'd be spotted or taken even despite the array that made it impossible to notice. What was this, then, and why had someone gone to such lengths to hide it?