He'd had slightly more luck this ti. The scent had been a lot more recent and he actually knew most of the route, which ant he didn't have to waste ti guessing where he'd be heading next.
As a result, therefore, he was able to catch sight of the man that he thought he'd been chasing.
He was a man of maybe twenty, twenty-sothing years of age. His hair was colored a light blue, and while he wasn't handso there was nothing to make him seem ugly, either. He wore a martial artists' robe, and across his back a spear much finer than Wu Hao's was hung.
It was a beautiful spear, too. Wu Hao didn't know if it'd been bought from the Heaven-Piercing Spear Pavillion, but wherever it'd been bought from had made sure that elegance almost burst from the design of the spear itself. It was long and blue, though a blue so dark it was nearly black. The spear-head at its tip was decorated with curling, cutting edges that reminded Wu Hao vaguely of a cloud.
Wu Hao tracked him all the way to the sa house that the trail had ended last ti, though he still had no idea who, or where, it was. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that, as much as he was chasing soone, he was being chased in turn.
The man wasn't stopped by the guards, who nodded respectfully. They didn't receive any sort of greeting back and, monts after the man had passed, they returned their eyes to staring in front of them.
Wu Hao had chosen that mont to move, though, and skittered out of the bushes backwards so that they wouldn't see him move. He'd thought that he'd been quiet and subtle, but then there was a loud rustling as he had to shove one of the shrubs' branches out of the way so that it wouldn't hit him in the face.
There was a short flare of qi as one of the guards stirred, looking over to the bushes where Wu Hao had been hiding with an odd look on his face. The qi blazed upwards, whirling around the man's eyes, and ford into a short burst of shadows that leaked out of the man's eyes and turned the white of his eyes black.
Staring around with those nothing-but-black eyes, his grip on his spear tightened, but he appeared to have seen nothing. He let out a breath and let the qi flood away from his eyes, which looked sowhat strained: when the white returned, there were traces of the underlying blood vessels clearly visible, though rapidly fading.
No words were spoken but the other guard's brow furrowed, and he stepped forward with his spear held out to make sure he was ready to use it. He activated the sa technique as his colleague had used, wings of shadow unfolding from the sides of his eyes.
Realizing that there was little else he could achieve here now, Wu Hao retreated further from his position. This ti there weren't any accidents like the previous one - Wu Hao managed to extract himself quietly, tiptoed away, and then sent himself up to the nearest roof with a blast of qi. The guard rushed forward but found only Wu Hao's tracks.
From there he went a short distance, keeping his eyes on the streets below to see if there was anyone who might be worth talking to.
There, he thought to himself, and dropped down next to a beggar. The man was filthier than most beggars, with gri caked on his cheeks, but there was also a sizeable paunch on his belly which was visible through his thin clothing.
"Hey," Wu Hao said.
"What?" the beggar asked, twisting his finger in his ear. "Speak up."
"Whose house is that?" Wu Hao asked, his voice growing slightly louder. He pointed.
"That?" the beggar asked. "Can't rightly say, can I, sir? I'm just a poor beggar."
Wu Hao muttered sothing unkind to himself, then took out one of his coins and flipped it to the beggar.
"Thankee kindly," he said, placing it into his bowl.
"Now speak."
"Calm down," the beggar said, blinking slowly. "Now, sir. Have so patience for an old beggar. Give a minute."
Wu Hao stuffed his money pouch into his shirt again and folded his arms over his chest.
"A minute," he said, "is all you'll get. Clear?"
The beggar shrugged, spat on a nearby brick that looked like it'd long suffered similar treatnt, and then his eyes focused again on the house.
"That's the mansion of the Mu clan," he said. "Least, it used to be. The Mu lost their patriarch in the last Demon War and they've been steadily crumbling ever since. Much like the place itself."
Wu Hao nodded slowly. The next obvious question would be to ask if they were prominent, while the equally obvious answer would be that they weren't or else he'd have heard of them. He might not have known that much about what, for example, the Peng Clan was like, but he knew their na, at least.
He'd never heard of this Mu clan, though. That said enough.
"Who was their patriarch?" he asked.
"How am I supposed to know?" the beggar grumbled. He shifted slightly against the wall. "I'm not here to be a tour guide, kid."
Fine. It'd just been idle curiosity, anyway.
"Who are their guards?" Wu Hao asked.
The beggar looked both ways, then beckoned Wu Hao closer. Wu Hao did, wrinkling his nose at the old man's sll which was like a defensive barrier all its own.
"You want to know?" he asked, his voice little more than a conspiratorial whisper.
"I do," Wu Hao said, crossing his arms.
"Then pay ."
Wu Hao stared at the beggar for another mont, considered the coin he'd already given the beggar and the little that he'd gotten out of him that was useful, and shook his head.
He maybe could have used the fact that Master Ma had approved of him, but would that an anything to this random man?
"It's reliable info," the beggar insisted. "You won't regret it."
"No," Wu Hao said. "Never mind."
He chanced a look back at the mansion. A few more of the guards had started pouring outwards from the mansion's doors, clad in black and with their spears in hand. They looked serious, and they looked like they'd be crawling around for a while yet.
Nothing more to do here, then. Wu Hao gathered his qi, took a running start, and was bounding off over the rooftops in monts. He didn't slow down until he reached the Crane's Nest, where he ate a quick dinner and rushed up to his room.
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Wu Hao breathed in deeply, fighting off the vague fog of being tired. Master Ma's presence lingered on, like the scent of smoke after a fire could hang in the clothes.
Raising himself off the floor, he opened the bag of things that he'd bought earlier.
At first, he'd tried to buy paper talismans, the way that his knowledge of arrays told him it was supposed to be done. With deft brushstrokes he could paint the techniques he required on the specifically prepared paper, which had been soaked in qi-desaturated water while it was still pulp.
That paper had a variety of interesting properties, including being oddly resistant to qi. Therefore, a special ink was required, which was made of materials that had the opposite property, ground to a fine ss that could be used for painting. This ant that the arrays weren't just of a higher quality, but also that they were reusable unlike the arrays Wu Hao had made.
Wu Hao knew of several talismans that he'd seen a lot of, on sale throughout nearby alleys. Talismans that summoned the wind, talismans that sent vines crawling from the ground to keep an opponent locked down and allowed you to run or to finish a confrontation, talismans that gave light without fla. He'd studied each in turn, and he was fairly certain that he could reproduce them, giving the materials.
The thing was, unfortunately, that he didn't have those materials, because they were expensive and he'd spent most of his money on his spear. It sat up against the side of the bed, where he could grab it quickly if he was under attack.
So. Without the things he needed, Wu Hao was forced once more to improvise. Instead of expensive inks and brushes and the entire set of gentleman's treasures, he'd simply bought a few pieces of chalk, which he'd poured qi into until it felt on the verge of exploding.
Then he'd cleared the tapestry that covered the room to the side, rolling it up and placing it atop his bed for safe keeping, before he'd started painting the floor with his chalk.
He hadn't had the entire sche worked out when he began, so he just started with the arrays near the door to make sure that his idea would hold up.
It was a simple enough array that'd make a banging sort of noise. The trigger, too, was simple: if anyone stepped on it, then it would activate. These parts, together, would make it function as a really basic warning system.
Wu Hao nodded to himself, inspecting the lines. They were good, clean, and straight enough. He'd had to press down on the chalk while drawing so that it didn't jump up with every small height difference between planks.
That said, he didn't have an idea of how loud the bang would sound. He placed the chalk off to the side, stepped over to the side of the door, and went for the first test of his skills as an array master by pulling it open.
The door ca easily, squeaking slightly as it ran over the ground, and in the process it pulled the chalk outline with it, disrupting the array. A sort of sad little whimper resounded through the room, but not much further.
Damnit. Wu Hao shut the door again, glaring at the chalk in his hand like it'd betrayed him, and set to trying a new plan.
Not the floor, then. How had the library of the Jin done it? There'd been a fine thread of qi stretched across the back of the door. If he could replicate that...
Wu Hao nodded to himself, stepped forward, and began to draw his chalk across the walls around the door, squatting down to make the line curve downwards and eting the remnants of his first attempt. This ti, when he pulled the door, there was an odd sort of bang, like the door had been loudly shut.
Normally the bang was supposed to be loud enough to wake the dead - a bang so loud it might be heard from a significant distance. In that aspect, it'd significantly underperford, and Wu Hao blad it on the lacking materials, his unfamiliarity with the array, and his own skills that weren't quite up to par with his theoretical knowledge.
It'd do, though. Wu Hao closed the door again before soone bothered him, then got started on the rest of the room.
The window he closed, and while he regretted the lack of the breeze brushing in, feeling a bit hot was less important than survival. He painted another line, leading towards another noisemaking array. He pushed a little more qi into it, forcing his hand steady as he dragged the chalk across until he'd finished the array.
He didn't try to open the window for a test, though. He didn't have enough chalk to experint more than the bare minimum. Anything else would be cutting into his safety.
Wu Hao set to painting the rest of the room into arrays. His chalk skimd over the floor, painting it with thin and thick lines that swirled and spiralled outwards, leading to boxes that he filled to the brim with qi-charged chalk. These were reservoirs of power that every array tapped, so of them ant to cause bright flashes of light when they were stepped on.
At so point he had to start avoiding his own arrays, since he hadn't figured out yet what the order of lines had been. He jumped over a few lines and had to make use of several principles of the Dragon Gate Ascending Movent Art in order to prevent himself from disturbing the chalk. If any of these went off now, he'd be blind for a while.
Long after the sun had set he'd finally finished. The last of his designs he'd finished in the dark. It didn't matter to him if it was dark or not, anyway - he could see the faint traces of his own qi sticking to the arrays on the floor and the walls, giving off a faint light even in the dark.
He did nearly smack his shin into the side of the bed but that was immaterial.
Casting a final glance at his window, which was still closed to prevent intrusion, Wu Hao sat with his legs crossed on top of his bed. Around the bed lines connected and interconnected and crossed like an abstract spider's web.
And then, with nothing else to do, Wu Hao waited for his murderer.
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