Chương 98: Death's Perfect Storm, III

He barely made it more than a few steps before Jin Qilong caught up to him. He appeared from a blur of qi, then jogged up to Wu Hao, taking care not to approach too quickly.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah," Wu Hao mumbled.

"Are you sure?" Jin Qilong asked. His concern, at least, seemed genuine.

"Because, well, it looked like you were really lost in thought out there. I was worried." Wu Hao turned his eyes away, staring up at the garden around them. He'd never really bothered looking at it before, despite having been here three times already.

"I need to prepare," he said.

"I was just thinking of how, and what to prepare for." It wasn't really a lie, anyway. Normally that'd have been the end of it, except for once Jin Qilong seemed in a more perceptive mood.

"You're planning something else," he said.

"Tell me." Wu Hao looked at the other boy, and then shook his head. He cast out with his senses, trying to see if he felt anything, and then cast out his senses further to see if he could feel any unnatural calm anywhere, frowning as he concentrated on trying to see if Wang Hangsheng or anyone with a similar technique was listening in. But he felt nothing. If anyone was hiding, they were better at hiding than Wu Hao was at sensing, and in that case there was nothing he could really do, anyway.

"I -" Wu Hao said, before deciding to hell with it. The thought of trusting anyone with knowing what he was about to try was galling, and yet it didn't seem altogether unwelcome. He'd tried being honest with Jin Qilong earlier, and it had panned out well. Surprisingly well, even. It had felt nice.

"I want to leave."

"Leave?" Jin Qilong asked.

"Leave - leave the garden? The compound? Because -""I want to leave the Jin clan," Wu Hao clarified.

"And I want the Jin clan to leave me alone." A silence fell, before Wu Hao felt a spike in qi that was heavy with emotion, and then he turned back to see Jin Qilong clench his fists. But Jin Qilong didn't look angry, as Wu Hao might have expected. He didn't even look particularly sad, or surprised. He was resigned.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure," Wu Hao said.

"Why?" Jin Qilong said. Because every opportunity for advancement here just worked him deeper into Lady Jin's debt. Because he'd have to keep scraping and bowing and submitting and conceding just to get things he knew he could just take for himself. Because he just didn't belong here. Because he might not get an opportunity to destroy Father on his own terms. Because he had to stop the Heavenly Demon Cult or else they'd all die. Because he looked at Wang Hangsheng and saw someone who he might become.

Thousand of reasons.

"Because," Wu Hao said, trying to summarize all of those into a single statement.

"Because... I want to be free. I don't want to be part of a clan, or a sect, or an alliance, or whatever, unless I choose to be." A soft breeze shook the leaves of a nearby tree, scattering its petals around.

"I want to be free," Wu Hao repeated.

"Wandering wherever I feel like. I want to make my own rules, want to make decisions that are entirely my own." He hadn't intended on saying that much, but he couldn't have stopped himself once he'd started. For anyone else it wouldn't have been much of a speech, but Wu Hao wasn't much of a talker.

"Huh," Jiu Qilong said. He considered this in a sort of sullen silence.

"Like the martial artists of old. I hear there's still a few doing that sort of wandering quest sort of rite, but even they only do it for a while. Are you sure?" Wu Hao shook his head.

"I'm not," he admitted.

"But I want to be able to be sure, and the only way I can be sure is if I try." Jin Qilong's brow furrowed, but then he sighed.

"So," Jin Qilong said.

"What do you need?"

"Huh?"

"To leave," Jin Qilong explained.

"I - well, you'd have left if you could've, I think. So what's keeping you here?"

"You'll help?" Wu Hao asked. Whatever feeling it was that was spreading through him, it was warm and heavy and unfamiliar, in good ways. Jin Qilong smiled, though it looked a little brittle.

"I will," he said, and then winced.

"Though hopefully it's something that Mother doesn't need to know I helped you with." Yeah, Wu Hao thought drily. That was probably for the best.

"What's keeping me here," Wu Hao said, "is - well, it's Old Qin, mostly. I don't want to just leave him behind." Jin Qilong winced and nodded.

"He's the servant that was part of your old company?"

"He's not a servant," Wu Hao said absently.

"But yes."

"Does he also want to leave?" Wu Hao thought back to their earlier conversation.

"No," Wu Hao said, and then adjusted: "Maybe. I think he can be convinced, honestly, but I haven't spoken to him in a few days." Jin Qilong thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.

"Does he know martial arts? Any at all?"

"He tried to learn the Heaven-Earth Wheel Art," Wu Hao said.

"And the Dragon-Ascending Gate Art. He was a prefectural soldier for ten years, he said..."

"Right," Jin Qilong said, and his lips twisted as he thought a little further.

"I can't make him a personal steward," he said.

"They'd need to be martial artists of at least the second grade to pass the test, and he doesn't sound like he is..." He shook his head.

"I'll find something for him to do for the blacksmiths down the line. It'll probably make things more difficult for him, but at least Mother shouldn't just be able to send him wherever, if she follows the rules of the clan. It's not much of a protection, but..."

"Right," Wu Hao said, feeling a surge of what he presumed was gratitude.

"That's good."

"What else?" Jin Qilong asked.

"When will you escape?"

"Tomorrow," Wu Hao admitted.

"When we're at the mines. There'll be a fight. I'll kill Wang Hangsheng, or his opponent. It depends on who actually winds up winning. I'll see."

"They're second-grade martial artists, aren't they?" Jin Qilong said, his brow furrowed.

"Can you really -""Yes," Wu Hao interrupted.

"Trust me."

"Heaven help me," Jin Qilong muttered.

"I do. You're the most talented lunatic I've ever seen." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and looked again at Wu Hao.

"And what then?" Wu Hao inclined his head, puzzled.

"What do you mean, what then?"

"Where are you heading?" Jin Qilong asked.

"Why would they take you in? Are you heading for a sect, or another clan? One of those small-town podunk martial arts schools?" A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"I -" Wu Hao said.

"I hadn't thought that far." Jin Qilong looked at him sideways.

"And you were just going to rush off into the wilderness anyway, I bet."

"Yeah," Wu Hao said.

"If I go far enough in one direction, I'd get somewhere eventually."

"You really are a lunatic," Jin Qilong said. There was some fondness to it, though.

"Yeah," Wu Hao said again.

"Probably."

"It's probably for the best if you don't tell me, anyway," Jin Qilong finally said.

"Just... go. I'll take care of the rest."

"Really?" Wu Hao said, baffled.

"Really," Jin Qilong said.

"Trust me. I'll manage somehow." Wu Hao considered the third young master of the Jin clan again, the way that he hadn't for more than a week now. He'd thought that he'd lacked everything that made Lady Jin herself, up to and including her gender. Her dignity, her valor, and her presence, he'd thought them simply not present. But they were there, if Jin Qilong was pestered enough into digging them out. If the boy that Wu Hao had met for the first time had been beaten down, now he had begun to stand up straighter.

He was more confident and had more to be confident about. It was still a fragile confidence, but that wasn't something Wu Hao could fix just by himself. There was still every likelihood it'd shatter, but there even being something that could still shatter was more than he'd thought himself capable of. It was funny, though. He hadn't intended to fix anything. In many ways he was leaving the branch a worse place than he'd found it.

The head librarian was dead, the library had been ransacked to the best of his ability, he'd be killing Wang Hangsheng, and he'd be defaulting on the supposed debts he owed Lady Jin. In several possible futures he might have unchained a civil war in the Hebei branch, having killed Shan Kong and his friends, though he'd always died before those could come to fruition. And yet he supposed he was oddly proud of what he'd done for Jin Qilong, no matter if it'd cost him a few deaths.

Still, there was something that needed to be said. Wu Hao wondered what his own qi might look like, right now. It was a mess too, he was sure. Something bittersweet lingered on his tongue, something that he didn't understand at all.

"Hey," he said.

"I, uh -" Jin Qilong's eyes met Wu Hao's.

"Yeah?" he asked. Wu Hao grimaced.

"Thanks," he managed.

"You're...

""Yeah?" Jin Qilong asked again, and he offered a smile. Try though he might, a lifetime of being raised without praise simply hadn't given Wu Hao the words that he needed. He knew them intellectually, but every time he thought he might say something there was some small, mean part of him that hated him for it, hated him for showing any weakness, even emotional.

"You're Jin Qilong," Wu Hao finally said.

"Don't change." Jin Qilong's eyes went wide. He blinked, speechless.

"Yeah?" he asked, voice quiet. Wu Hao nodded.

"Yeah," he said, and braced himself for the outpouring of emotions that he figured would follow. What he hadn't been prepared for was for Jin Qilong to lunge forward, hugging Wu Hao. Both arms slung around him, their cheeks touched, and Wu Hao jerked his head away. He'd barely stopped himself from impaling Jin Qilong on one of the knives that he'd been keeping tucked inside his belt.

"Get off," Wu Hao said, more uncomfortable than he'd ever been.

"I thought you were attacking me." Jin Qilong laughed hard, the sound loud in Wu Hao's ears. He had an odd laugh, really, halting and hiccuping. Odd that Wu Hao couldn't remember hearing it before. His qi bloomed around him, echoes of that same dark ball of misery and helplessness at first, and then it began to change. In its middle, as if teased out of an unseen loom, threads of golden contentment appeared.

More threads - a resolute steely blue, a hopeful orange, some sort of pink thing that Wu Hao hadn't ever seen before, the ochre of determination, and more. Dozens of emotions colored Jin Qilong's qi until the thing was a riot of colors. The scent of apple hung heavily in the air. Wu Hao hadn't ever seen anything like it. He extended a hand to Jin Qilong, wondering if maybe he should point it out, but the words didn't seem to quite fit, no matter what he tried to say.

In the end he just closed his mouth and endured the hug. For all of a few seconds, at least. This just wasn't - it wasn't who he was.

"Let go," he said.

"Jin Qilong, let go, I said."

"Right," the other boy told him, though he didn't actually let go.

"I've got a knife." Finally the arms unlatched from around Wu Hao's shoulders, Jin Qilong took a step back and wiped at his eyes. Wu Hao had heard of this, though: someone laughing so hard they teared up. He still didn't get what was so funny, though.

"What?" he asked.

"I'm Jin Qilong," the other boy told him.

"You're Wu Hao." He gave a small smile.

"Never change." Wu Hao wouldn't, even if he could have, at this point.

"No," he admitted.

"We'll never change." Jin Qilong held out a hand, in the same gesture that Wu Hao had seen some of the merchants use when they wanted to swear on a deal. Wu Hao took it, their eyes met, and then they shook hands. Jin Qilong sent a strand of qi running through his hands, nodding at Wu Hao. Acting on impulse, Wu Hao sent a spike of qi in response, and they met hesitantly, before entwining. That felt distinctly odd.

"There," Jin Qilong said, smiling again.

"That's a promise on our futures as martial artists. Don't forget it, alright?"

"Same to you," Wu Hao said. They stood like that for a moment more before they released the handshake. It'd felt important, and it still did, in ways that Wu Hao would've been hard pressed to explain. Overhead, the wind blew a leaf loose from the trees and it floated, as if on a river, gently down to the ground, and with that the spell was broken.

"I should go," Jin Qilong said, and turned.

"Mother will be expecting me for dinner. You'lll have to prepare for - well, for everything tomorrow, too."

"Yeah," Wu Hao said.

"I should." Jin Qilong nodded, and he turned away, but then another thought seemed to occur to him.

"No young master anymore?" he said, on the edge of just being audible.

"You said you'd call me that until you respected me."

"I did," Wu Hao said.

"Good luck, Jin Qilong." Jin Qilong smiled with watery eyes, waved, and left.