Wang Hangsheng vanished into a blur the mont he'd notified Wu Hao of the destination, but instead of heading out, Wu Hao waited for Jin Qilong to catch up to him first.
"That was -" the other boy said, but Wu Hao cut him off.
"That wasn't enough," Wu Hao said.
Jin Qilong opened his mouth, but in the end he didn't disagree. Together they walked over the path that'd take them to the gardens, their steps slowing when they reached the lane of trees. Prefect Shi's carriage already stood there. Wu Hao was aware that Shi Huyin was coming up behind them as well, though her qi was stormy with anger. He tried not to make his smile too obvious.
It was gone soon enough, anyway, sunk into the sa mire that was the endless conversation Prefect Shi held with Lady Jin. Wu Hao's attempts to follow it had long since gone - he just let the words wash over him.
He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be out there, in the world, doing things, not listening to an old man blather on about the gardens or whatever the hell it was now.
His eyes closed of their own accord as he tried in his boredom to feel out the enlightennt that he'd only caught the eddies of. That word triggered sothing in him, a vague sense of being connected, but why?
There ca a harrumph - Wu Hao opened his eyes again, and sound ca flooding back.
"What's the matter with him?" Prefect Shi's wife asked, eyes on him. He t her eyes.
"Nothing," Wu Hao said evenly. "It's nothing."
"I'm not sure," Lady Jin said, but her qi registered a small satisfaction as she ca to her own conclusions again about what she'd said and what she thought Wu Hao must have felt. Puzzlent, too, at how heavily he'd reacted, but not enough to actually inquire if he was alright. "He's a friend of my son's. He asked to be here."
"It's magnanimous of you to allow that," Prefect Shi's wife said. "I'm not sure I personally might have. Our daughter listens in, of course, but her patience and her diligence seem woefully rare among today's youth. Your son excluded, of course."
Shi Huyin tried to smile, but it was wan. Her mother didn't seem to pick up on it, though.
"Well," Prefect Shi said, and set his tea down. "I don't an to be rude, in fact I think it's encouraging for the young to take an interest in adult topics, but I must insist that if he cannot keep decorum that perhaps he waits a few more years before attempting to listen in?"
"Of course," Lady Jin said.
"Pardon, sir," Wu Hao said, speaking for the first ti. "But I was hoping to ask -"
"Ask?" Prefect Shi asked. "My boy, I don't think you quite understand. You may be a friend of Lady Jin's son, but that does not give you speaking privileges. Has no one taught you that, at least?"
"No," Wu Hao said bluntly. "I'm an orphan. Sir."
"Oh," Prefect Shi said. He blinked. "That's very unfortunate?"
"It is," Wu Hao said, "what it is. Sir."
"Wu Hao is not the topic of this discussion," Lady Jin said, a little more sharply now. "He will keep his manners. Until he does not, in which case he will be sent away. We will be discussing this later, and I will hand out an appropriate punishnt for speaking out of turn. In the anti, we should return to this discussion, shouldn't we?"
Prefect Shi, still lost for words, nodded. "Of course. Now, as I was saying -"
The conversation went on from there, though there were still occasional looks thrown Wu Hao's way that weren't all that amicable. Lady Jin pretended he simply wasn't there, and that suited him fine; anyone else really didn't worry him.
Instead, he focused on more important things, like the sense of revelation that had escaped him earlier. What was it? Why had the wind felt so different from his earlier attacks? What had there been different that -
Of course. A groan bubbled from his lips about how stupid he was.
"Wu Hao," Lady Jin said, breaking through his reverie. "I must ask you to leave, if you're going to continue to be disruptive like this."
Wu Hao barely cared, instead absorbed in what he'd just realized.
"Yes, Lady Jin," he said quickly. "I'll go."
He walked away, not waiting for her say-so, and stepped into the gardens, where he drew his saber and sat down in the grass.
The storm. He'd taken it for rain and mud and wind and that'd been as far as his mind had taken it, but there had been more to it than that.
The Storm-Cutting Saber Art worked especially well during a storm. It devoured rain and wind and grew on it, sohow. The art had grown stronger because it had been put to the exact use that it'd been ant for.
His saber had cut the storm and given him its power, its speed, its strength. That was why he'd been able to perform beyond that.
He stared at the saber in his hands. Wu Hao had suspected that the techniques that he'd gotten were related to the ways he'd died, beyond just the obvious link that he got a saber art for being killed by a saber.
And that was still what he thought. It'd been confird, as far as he cared, by the fact that he'd received the Storm-Cutting Saber Art for being killed by the Whirlwind Saber Art. He had all five pieces of it now, collected during various suicide charges.
What he'd thought was that he received the Storm-Cutting Saber Art to cut his way free, out of the compound. That was what he'd intended to do, at one ti, before his plans had evolved.
Then, inexorably, he'd found himself in a storm anyway.
How far did that "needing" go, really? It'd been too obvious of a link, as far as the nas went. It was so blunt that it was almost comical or passive-aggressive, like being taken firmly by the hand and being shown the path that he had to take.
Only it was suddenly utterly unclear how far that path extended past this mont. He'd thought that maybe that foresight asured in a day, but did it extend further into his future?
Was he depriving himself of valuable techniques that he might need later in the future, if he was dying to things that he might have survived because of his own flaws? If he received one art like the Storm-Cutting Saber Art, he wouldn't ever receive anything of that level for a saber technique again. Would he be missing knowledge that he might have received for free, just by dying earlier than he could have?
No, he thought, shaking his head. He couldn't think like that. Wu Hao needed to resolve the problems he could, just so that he could actually live until the day where that other knowledge might have been relevant, and yet...
Stolen story; please report.
Trapped in his thoughts, he couldn't help himself from spiraling deeper into fragile philosophies, wondering at his own situation in ways he hadn't allowed himself until now. There'd simply been no ti, it had felt like, or at least he'd made efforts not to have the ti to wonder.
Now, with a plan in place, he had ti to think, and that might have been the worst possible thing possible.
Did whatever brought him back know the future? Was he even alive right now, or was this another mory that he was experiencing from a chain of Wu Haos back in the past, extending infinitely forward and moving every ti he made a decision? Were his deaths preordained, or did he have control over where and how he died?
How long he sat there, thoughts churning, he didn't know. Everything was a lot - everything felt huge - like a ship barreling down a river with its helmsman capable of nothing more than twitching it off course against the rocks that poked up above the water.
What brought him back was Wang Hangsheng's hand on his shoulder. It wasn't a kind, fatherly hand. It was a rough hand that jerked him back, jolting him out of his thoughts and shaking him like a bag of vegetables.
Behind Wang Hangsheng, the carriage that had carried Prefect Shi rolled slowly into the distance.
"Boy," Wang Hangsheng growled. "Lady Jin wishes to see you."
Wu Hao glanced up at him. His mouth opened, wondering, and in that instant Wu Hao couldn't really summon up the hate he usually felt for this man who was his warden, could only really bring himself to try and bring voice to the questions that he had no way of answering.
"Now," Wang Hangsheng added when Wu Hao didn't move, and then his hand twitched towards his saber. "Unless you're keen on disobeying a direct order."
The hatred ca rushing back, almost comforting in its simplicity. Wu Hao exhaled, letting the questions die.
For now, at least. He had a feeling that like him they'd co back, resurrected from the dead, and stronger than they had been before.
"Fuck off," he said, and the words felt good even as he ignored Wang Hangsheng's venomous look. "I'm going."
Lady Jin didn't seem too furious, though. Her eyes rested on him, and he t them with a fraction of the degree of anger that he had. Mostly he felt tired and alone and like he was grasping at nothing.
"My son tells you're a sensor," she said. Next to her, Jin Qilong nodded with a proud sort of smile. Lady Jin had known, but she didn't let that fact stop her. "That can be useful. It might already have been. What did you see?"
"There was a sense of stone to his qi," Wu Hao said, a little more dully than he'd been planning on. He forced a little more energy into his voice. "Prefect Shi's, I an. I think it's the Stone Soul Sect."
Lady Jin's eyes flicked up, away from him. "The Stone Soul Sect?"
"A clan of claw users," Jin Qilong popped in. "Lead by the Lan family, forrly of Liaoning. Their current head is Lan Yao."
"How do you know them?" Lady Jin asked, ignoring her son.
"I t one of them on a delivery," Wu Hao said. "His family na was Lan. I don't rember his first na. He took a package from us a year or two ago."
All lies, obviously, but if Lady Jin noticed then she didn't make a comnt about it, and Wu Hao presud he was in the clear.
"Who was he?" she asked again.
"I don't know," Wu Hao responded. "I only rembered his last na because the young master ntioned it."
"Hm," she said. "The Stone Soul Sect, is it? It might explain their plan, perhaps. With the assistance of a man who can shape stone as if they're shaping clay for a pot, a great deal becos possible in a mine that might otherwise not be."
"Then - then maybe," Jin Qilong said, "The mines are actually exhausted of most precious tals? If they've taken everything of higher value and all that's left is common iron, or maybe not even that... It'd just be useless land, in that case. With the help of the Stone Soul Sect they can harvest everything and leave the stone untouched. Maybe they can even leave several surface level veins but exhaust everything else. That way we're tied up with costs and it just looks like bad luck."
Lady Jin's lips moved, quirking into a rare, honest smile as she regarded her son in silence.
"No?" Jin Qilong asked, clearly having to restrain himself from fidgeting. "I'm sorry, I -"
"Yes," Lady Jin said. "That would make sense, wouldn't it?"
Jin Qilong bead with so much surprised pride that Wu Hao nearly had to avert his eyes.
"What if they're arming soone else?" Wu Hao asked, raising Jin Qilong's own theory from last ti.
"Possible," she allowed. "But more convoluted."
Jin Qilong nodded, a little too smugly in Wu Hao's mind, considering it was his own theory from a past life being refuted.
"You'll verify this tomorrow," Lady Jin told him. "Wang Hangsheng will be your warden and your guard. You will be allowed to get away with today's rudeness because it was useful to . Don't think you'll have the sa chance again. Should you prove foolhardy, however, Wang Hangsheng has my permission to inflict whatever punishnt he feels he must."
"I understand, Lady Jin," Wu Hao said, and bowed. "I will follow your orders to the letter."
"Yes," she said simply. He could tell that his obedience had surprised her, but who cared? He had gotten what he wanted: to go back to the mines. He had found a theory that she considered likely enough, and if pressed in the future that was what he was going to go with. "You will. Now go."
Wu Hao went. His mind was still sothing of a ss, left an aching ss by the lack of a conclusion he felt he needed to reach and haunted by the conclusions he had but didn't want.
One thing was sure, though. Wu Hao's plans hadn't changed, not in terms of his actual goals. He still needed to survive the battle between the two second-grades, and then he still needed to be able to kill whichever of the two of them had won so he could escape.
He still was going to make his claw, just to be able to stab Wang Hangsheng with it afterwards. And maybe that wouldn't be a foolproof plan, but it'd hopefully at least be satisfying.
Inevitably, Wu Hao's thoughts turned once more to the realization he'd just had. The Storm-Cutting Saber Art was fundantally related to storms, and that had felt like the edge of an important idea, one that he needed to drag back to him.
Because it was the best hint he'd gotten yet on how to make Heaven-tier techniques work.
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