Wu Hao waited at the end of Steel Alley, wondering to himself why he was still there. He had his knives, so that was his weapons sorted for now.
If he had to give any reason, it was because the sun beating down on the alley made it feel oddly miserable to move - to think, even. It stood directly above the alley, making the shadows flee from its light, and the people mostly did likewise. Whereas earlier in the day, n had walked around with bared heads, now sunhats ca out, wide and floppy, and everyone seed to prefer to keep to the shade.
But so had Wu Hao, to be fair. He sat at a small outdoors cafe under a wide parasol, drinking so sort of sweet juice. He wasn't exactly sure what it was but it tasted good and he hadn't really bothered to think further than that. It was good to sit in the shade, and while at so point they'd tell him to leave they hadn't yet.
He caught a few fragnts of conversation, though. A few mutterings about the usual - who had done what or, in one case, whispered comnts about who had done who. Nas and places slipped through the net of Wu Hao's interest, leaving nothing behind. More interesting were occasional rumours about deaths that had occurred nearby, but those didn't tell him much.
Mostly his attention went to the constant stream of martial artists who made their way to and through the alley, though. They were a fascinating bunch, quite literally in all shapes and sizes. Short and stocky n mingled with tall and willowy n, each with a weapon at their sides - after returning from the alley, if they didn't have one before that. There was a riot of colours as all sorts of uniforms were mixed into the crowd: he thought he saw so of the orange of the Diancang sowhere, although he also saw the cool sky blue of the Wudang and the emblems of the Tang and the Zhuge.
It wasn't just n, either. Most martial artists Wu Hao had known had been n. There were his fellow deathsworn, there were most of the guards and other mbers of the Jin clan. There were still more n than won here, but there was a sizeable contigent of won here also - both ladies with lined faces and their asured experience clear in their qi, and there were girls that seed to stop at every store to ooh and ah over spears.
Wu Hao left them to it, but as he watched another man ca nearer and opened his mouth.
"Ladies," he said, giving them a smile. "May I -"
"We do not desire your presence," one of the girls said, not even looking up from the spear she was currently cradling.
"Excuse ?" the man said, his smile vanishing like snow in front of the sun. "You don't -"
"We are of the Ei," the girl said, shifting her clear grey eyes across him. She didn't seem impressed, but Wu Hao was. Her qi spoke of sothing clear and cold. It reminded him of a distant mountaintop, for whatever reason. She, like him, was in the third grade, but at the higher end of it, he judged. There was a sense of concentration to her qi.
And she did have the Ei Sect emblem, two winding rivers surrounding the characters for Mount Ei.
The other one was a little more ssy-haired. Her uniform wasn't quite so rigid, sohow giving an impression of a sort of shabbiness. And she was staring directly at Wu Hao, ignoring the man who'd just approached her. Her qi was... turbulent.
Wu Hao blinked. People had made so space for the little scene, although none of them seed all that bothered or surprised. A few stopped nearby, watching to see if anything further might happen.
The man's lips closed into a tight-lipped snarl.
"It's a dying sect anyway," he snarled. "And I can see why it's going extinct. Hmph!"
And, with a swish of his sleeve he was gone. Wu Hao sighed. It'd have been interesting to see that fight. The girls left as well, the first girl pulling the other along. Quite literally, even.
Wu Hao's attention shifted away again as a man approached his table.
"Excuse , sir," a waiter said. "Can I get you sothing to drink, perhaps?"
"Another of these," Wu Hao said, pointing to his glass.
"Of course," the waiter said. He scowled for just a mont but then his servicing smile was back again. "Yes, sir."
As he left, Wu Hao sniffed. That subtle sense of wrongness was there again, and it'd been bugging him all morning. It was a scent that he had difficulty placing, because while he knew enough to identify it as sothing that slled dangerous and like a source of misery, he couldn't put a na to it. There was a salty reek to it, though - not the sea, more a vague sensation of sliminess. It was hard to explain how sothing could sll gooey but it did.
He prodded at the inside of his mouth with his tongue, sipped at the new juice that the waiter had brought him, trying to think. What was that scent, and why was it standing out so badly?
Another forr deathsworn? No, this wasn't their scents. It wasn't anyone he recognized from back then, either. It felt unfamiliar, but all the sa he thought he recognized sothing underlying.
Whatever it was, he thought, it'd be a welco diversion from this glaring heat and the feeling that he wasn't doing what he needed to be doing. The conversations here were vaguely interesting, but if he spent a little more ti watching people spend more money than he'd ever had on weapons he wanted but couldn't buy, he'd go mad.
It was about ti he left. He paid for his drinks, watched as his table was filled seconds after he'd vacated it, and then centered himself a little to grasp proper hold of his qi.
Wu Hao pushed qi through his feet, cycled it into a tight little loop, and pushed himself off. His sight blurred and he rose on wings of wind whipping at his clothes for just a few instants before his feet managed to touch down on a nearby rooftop.
A few people rushed past, barely visible - no more than thin blurs that were distant one mont, a mass of qi that had arrived just nearby the next, and then left traces of their qi sared across the rooftops as they hurtled past. Even with his qi sense they touched upon the rooftop so briefly that he barely managed to get any signature from their traces before they were gone again, misting up into the afternoon air.
Trying not to think about the heat, running forward with another blur so that his feet weren't scorched black by the hot rooftop tile below his feet, Wu Hao ca to a stop in the middle of occasional blurs speeding past and tried to feel out that sense of wrongness. His nose rose in the air just a little, but every ti that he thought he had sothing to hold on to, soone else ran past and caused him to lose it again.
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Growling under his breath, Wu Hao pushed himself again into a blur, barely avoiding collision with another presence that slled of fragrant roses, mumbled a quick apology that probably wasn't even registered, and then set to chasing the vague information he had.
But that was across the rooftop, and it was fading the entire ti that he was standing there. Already it was faint, a tickling at the edge of his shrouded senses. Snarling, trying to keep an eye out for the whirlwind of people flashing past, he tried to chase it.
"Get out of the way!" a voice bood.
Wu Hao nearly fell from the rooftops, pushed out of the path of another travelling blur with a heavy palm that sent him stumbling in the middle of a movent. That forced him to change his planned jump into an awkward tumble that sent him flipping through the air, landing on his own feet more by accident than on purpose.
A nearby beggar chuckled. A few others cast curious glances and a few martial artists who'd seen his near-crash seed annoyed that he'd been up there at all. They were mostly just third-grade martial artists, though, so Wu Hao ignored them.
Instead he tried to catch his breath, hands reaching out for the handle of one of his knives. If that man ca after him again...
But no. Like all the others he hadn't even bothered to turn around.
Wu Hao's fists clenched. He'd get faster - faster like those people were. Then he'd be the one pushing them off rooftops.
It probably wouldn't matter at that point, but Wu Hao's burgeoning pride would feel more satisfied that way.
Taking a deep breath and trying not to cough at the dust still swirling that his tumble had kicked up, Wu Hao turned and started checking if he could find another trace of that scent.
To his surprise, it felt slightly closer on the ground than it had on the roofs. Wu Hao lowered himself just a little more, sniffed again, and was sure.
This thing's winding path led it across the ground. A custor of Steel Alley, perhaps? But then why had its scent lingered there for so long?
Following his nose, he continued below, trying to trace the scent.
His search ended when he stared at the entrance to a guarded compound, where n in armor with large spears stood nacingly, so stock-still they might have been puppets. Their eyes did move, though, and Wu Hao knew that they moved because their eyes had swerved towards him unhesitantingly the mont he'd tried to step closer.
"Who lives here?" he asked one of the guards, who refused to answer. Wu Hao grunted, tried again with the other guard, but t the sa wall of silence. There was no emblem on the building - in fact it was utterly unmarked, and so were the guards.
But they were both second-grade martial artists, and on the better-trained end, too, he thought. Maybe he could manage to struggle his way in, and maybe that thought had showed on his face, because the spears were suddenly raised and thudded loudly into the ground.
"Leave," one of the guards said, a rasp in his voice. "Or face the consequences."
"Who's in there?" Wu Hao asked again, but the other guard's spear ca up and was cocked back into the prelude to a killing thrust.
"Leave," the other one said again.
Scowling, Wu Hao took a few steps back. Fuck it, he thought: he'd just been slightly curious. Imitating the expert from earlier, he swished his sleeve, the effect being ruined a little by the shortness of his shirt, then turned and left.
He could've returned to Steel Alley, but instead he spent a little bit of ti just wandering before returning to the Crane's Nest.
Dinner was good. Whatever else could be said about Fu Wang - and Wu Hao could think of a few choice words - he or his wife were good cooks. There'd been several dishes, and though the ones they'd served to Wu Hao had been on the smaller, less full end, it was still a decent al made with care and expertise.
They'd even given him duck. Duck!
Wu Hao decided right then and there that he loved civilization. Yes, things were expensive and there were too many people here and findig a place to sleep had been a bit of a trial and all, but on the whole he was coming to actually like so parts of the Mt. Song Valley. If he could get so more hints on how to get stronger, then he might actually fall in love with the place.
On that note, he walked upstairs, and though Fu Wang seed to want to say sothing he didn't. Wu Hao sat himself down in a comfortable position, opened himself up to the world, and imagined a wheel spinning its way across the world. Qi entered his core, drawn there over the course of his ditation, and he sent it coursing through his ridians.
The sprint across the rooftops had taken a little, but the main reason he was doing this was that every book he'd read had made it clear that consistently cultivating qi was the simplest way of all to gather more strength. He'd spent his ti before sleeping in the woods doing the sa, but now that he was getting better rest, he was getting more out of the limited qi at his disposal.
Not just limited - it felt like the qi was being drawn dozens of ways.
When his core was full again and he'd cycled through the Heaven-Earth Wheel Art a few tis, Wu Hao opened his eyes again.
Little by little, he was getting stronger. There weren't giant leaps like he'd experienced with the White Tiger's core, but slow and steady won the race, or however those sayings went.
Wu Hao yawned, scowled at himself for yawning, and then tried to fight off the feeling of his eyes closing on their own again. Traitors, he grumbled, before he decided that it might not be so bad to try and sleep, anyway.
When he woke up the next morning, he woke up in that lumpy bed, the too-warm blanket draped over him. The window was half-open, letting in just a hint of a fresh breeze. It was a beautiful morning, with the sun beaming down happily. His clothes were draped over a nearby chair where he'd shrugged them off.
But when he opened his eyes, he found a blue box staring down at him, hovering very clearly in front of his eyes as if begging to be acknowledged. Despite the warm morning, Wu Hao felt a chill run up his spine.
You have been killed by a Sky-tier Spear Art for the first ti. Obtained Sky-tier Spear Art fragnt I as a reward.
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