Chương 133: A Death in Winter, IV

Wu Hao wriggled his way out of the tunnel. He wasn't used to doing this while it was day out, but he knew Wang Bin's schedule by benefit of having lived it already. He'd be in his room right now, working on some of his own projects, and he wouldn't leave for a few hours more. He wouldn't come check up on Wu Hao. That left Bai Yiju as the only one who might have cared what Wu Hao was up to, but Bai Yiju had been given a cartload of work since he'd mastered what Wang Bin called "the basics".

The cover was shoved back into place and he picked up his spear, though it'd been a pain in the ass to carry along with him and shove through the tunnel. He still had his knives on him, but those were just in case. He'd use a spear during this tournament, he'd decided. It wasn't because he was most effective that way, but because he wouldn't actually lose that much if he wasn't allowed to use the spear again out of fear of being recognized. Obviously, Wu Hao wasn't an idiot.

He knew that the chances were that someone in the Jin was still looking for him. That was why he'd gotten a fake name and a masking necklace. He'd thought up the fake name ages ago but he'd never bothered to use it before, and he'd wound up going back two more days just to get the masking necklace to work right. It was one of a series of products sold across less reputable shops, all meant to hide who you were.

The necklace had been inscribed with a bunch of arrays, all of which stuck to the face and projected someone else's face on top of yours. It wouldn't change the color of hair, but the eyes would be shifted to look different, the ears would be in a slightly different place and take on another shape, and a bunch of other, smaller changes. It'd been one of the first things Wu Hao had ever bought with his own money, outside of weapons and food.

He'd experimented with it, torn it apart across several resets trying to figure out how it worked, and he'd finally just wound up creating his own. That necklace was the one he wore now, and though it wouldn't work for anyone else it worked more than fine for him. The point was, even on the off chance that the Jin were still looking, they wouldn't find him. He had a backup necklace, too, stashed behind his breast pocket, just in case this one should wind up destroyed during the fights.

Still felt odd to wear someone else's face, though.

"Thanks," someone muttered in front of him. The fat man behind Wu Hao pushed into his personal space, trying to make him notice the queue had moved and a space was open. He got a scowl for his trouble. Wu Hao walked up to the desk, where the clerk was hiding a yawn behind his hand.

"Next!" the man said, before he'd even noticed Wu Hao was already there.

"Oh. Right. What's your name?"

"Hao Wu."

"How's that written?"

"Hao like sky, Wu like bright white." The clerk nodded, grabbing a sheet of paper and the frazzled quill next to it, before dipping it into the ink. He squinted at Wu Hao before he actually got to writing, though.

"I'm required to ask," he drawled.

"Is that your real name?" Wu Hao cocked his head. He wondered if the necklace allowed his expression to come through clearly.

"Would I tell you if it wasn't?"

"You'd be surprised," the clerk said, eyeing him again. He put the brush down, letting it soak into the inkwell.

"Some of the contestants... Well, anyway. Here's the standard explanation." He stuck three fingers up from his right hand and raised his other, tapping each of the fingers as he spoke.

"First off, the entrance fee," the clerk said. He spoke by rote, as if he'd said this hundreds of times already and just wanted it over with.

"Win, lose, either way, you're not getting it back. No complaining about unfairness, either. If you wind up winning, you get awarded a prize, which is equal in value to what it costs to enter the restricted tournament."

"So I either get the treasure or I use it to pay for a ticket into the tournament," Wu Hao said. The clerk nodded.

"Same rules for the restricted tournament. No complaining, no guarantee you're getting your money's worth. I'm also required to tell you that you can get a far greater prize if you participate in the restricted tournament, obviously."

"But?" Wu Hao asked, catching on to the man's odd pause.

"It's a fool's bet," the clerk explained, scratching at the back of his head and frowning down at the paper.

"You know how often the open tournament winners hae gotten past the first round in the last ten years?" Wu Hao shrugged.

"Not often."

"Two times," the clerk said. He yawned again, then blinked at Wu Hao.

"And for the final round, that's only ever happened once, and that was the Sword Sovereign participating."

"There's a chance, then," Wu Hao said blandly. And as long as something was, in theory, possible, then it was basically inevitable he'd succeed, right? The clerk snorted.

"Right. You're the next Sword Sovereign, then." Wu Hao very well might be, if he put his mind to it. That was very much an arrogant sort of thought, though, so he didn't say that out loud.

"What are the other things?" Wu Hao asked. The clerk muttered something to himself but then lowered one finger, leaving two up.

"Second," he explained.

"No killing. You will forfeit any prize money."

"Noted," Wu Hao said, giving a sour look at his spear. There went most of the utility of the One Shot Spear Art.

"Otherwise, we're not responsible for whatever goes on in there. That means whatever you do in there, all the consequences are on you. We won't protect you if a sect comes after you for crippling their promising student. We'll put in some effort to keep people from interfering while the fight's going on, but if your opponent manages to cheat and you get your ass kicked as a consequence, that's on you for not spotting it." Seemed reasonable.

"You can always forfeit," the clerk said.

"Just get out of the arena. Don't kill yourself chasing a victory that you're never gonna get. It's some money, it's not enough to fix a crippled limb. Do you understand?" As if he'd try to fix being a cripple. That would be a reset.

"Alright. Third?"

"Third, the matches are separated by grade," the clerk said.

"We're gonna scan you, make sure you're not a second-grade in disguise. Or worse." He huffed with a quick laugh at this, but Wu Hao didn't quite see what was so funny. If all went well - and it would, eventually - then he'd be a second-grade martial artist at the age of thirteen. That wasn't unimpressive, even if it didn't feel like enough.

"Whatever," he said.

"You're late, so you're part of the second group. When it starts, you're in until you either win or lose. No fighting before that, either. You leave the arena for whatever reason, you're out. Once there's just one person left standing, we've got our winner. If you think you won a fight, but you can't stand up, then you're not the winner. If you're only standing because you're leaning on your spear, then you're the winner. That's the shape you'll be sent to the main tournament.

We don't have the kind of money it takes to keep healers for everyone who winds up with broken limbs." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Wu Hao nodded. That seemed fine. He eyed the people massing up on stage. It was a crowd of mostly men, though a few boys and a few women stood there. There was a pungent mix of qi that swirled everywhere, dozens of scents bobbing and weaving as their nervousness grew every time a newcomer joined into the throng.

He'd be a part of that soon. He couldn't wait. All the pitfighters he'd brawled with hadn't been proper martial artists, and while not everyone in that crowd up there was a martial artist either, there were enough of them that it might actually be more interesting than he'd thought. Lot easier to hide in then he'd imagined, too. Not unimportant.

"Fourth," the clerk said. Wu Hao gave him an annoyed glance.

"More rules will be explained to you if you get to the main tournament. That's all."

"Not if," Wu Hao said.

"When." The clerk sighed.

"Sure. Whatever. Entrance fee, then, please." Wu Hao passed him the pouch of money, and with a quick scrawl the clerk wrote his name on a dotted line.

"Have fun," the clerk said.

"Don't die. It's starting in half an hour or something like it. Head over to the arena and don't wander off. Whoever's outside when it starts will remain outside." Already ambling away, Wu Hao gave the man a short glance before shrugging.

"Next!" Half an hour, he thought. Good to see his timing hadn't been off too badly. It'd have sucked coming all this way just to have to listen to all of that again, or to have to escape again. A single great big wooden stand had been put up around the square. It wasn't the same square as the one the workers would be working on in a few days - this was the square at the intersection of Green Luan Avenue and a nameless street, not one of the central squares in the entire Mt. Song Valley.

Still, Wu Hao's eyes spotted warming arrays that had been carved into the wood below the seats, keeping them warm. A small crowd had already gathered on the stands or simply nearby, warming their hands or chattering away to each other about this or that relative who was participating. A few had gone to nearby restaurants and bought a few bottles of wine, which were being gleefully swung and drunk from.

One particularly loudmouthed group was yelling things at a few of the men in the arena, who were equally loudly yelling back. Inside the arena or not, all the men had the particular faces that belonged to guards of some estate or another. They had an emblem on the backs of their shirts, but not one Wu Hao recognized, and they were all mobbing around the tallest of the group, who stuck out like a lone pinetree among a group of shrubs.

They were friends, Wu Hao decided, though some of the things they yelled made him doubt they'd remain that way if the wine kept flowing. Wu Hao stepped up the stairs. A few of them looked over to see him ascend the steps, which might have been too grandiose a word. One of the loudmouths who'd been yelling at his friends chuckled, elbowing the guy next to him, and then the both of them, grinning like morons, hustled their way over.

"Oi, kid," the one who'd noticed him first said.

"Think you're in the wrong place." Wu Hao gave the man a quick glance. That same, simple, fur coat to keep warm, the stupid grin on his face, the short hair with a few bits sticking out that he figured meant the man wore a helmet fairly often. A guard, then. He could've responded, but he didn't. He studied everyone else on the platform, getting a particular feel for their qi. He licked his lips.

A coarse hand reached out for him, but without even needing to think about it he'd already taken a step to the side and his spear had whirled around, then reached out, its tip coming to rest against the guy's throat.

"Wait a couple of minutes," Wu Hao said.

"I'll deal with you first." The guy swallowed, but then he pushed the spear aside. Wu Hao moved with it, letting the spear swirl with him. He could have smashed this idiot's face in, but there had been that thing about not fighting before the match had started...

"You better not fucking run," the guy threatened, nursing the thin scratch on his throat. He retreated, keeping his angry eyes fixed on Wu Hao, and he spoke in low tones to the rest of his group, and at one point Wu Hao saw the tall man lean in and give a short couple of words, which got him nods of various eagerness. Hmm. They didn't seem to be more than halfway to third-grade, by his estimation. That tall one was a full third-grade martial artist, and he wielded no weapons that Wu Hao could see.

He might be an interesting fight, Wu Hao supposed. There were others too, though. There was a woman in a figure-hugging sky-blue dress on the stage who was all but hanging off another fighter, a man older than her whose qi spoke of confidence and experience and, of course - "interest" in the lady. That was an emotion he'd have been happy not learning to recognize, frankly. There was a man of around eighteen, who was clutching his sword like a lifeline, his white robes dirty with travel grime.

Another young man arrived sitting in a meditative pose, rolling Buddhist beads between his fingers. There were a few scattered duos of third-grade martial artists, varying in skill and in power. It wasn't much of a wait before the stage was full. There was just enough space between people that Wu Hao could still swing his spear, but he wouldn't be able to swing it very far or commit fully to a thrust. Annoying, but he supposed it added to the challenge.

A bell rang, and a group of men made their way over to the front of the stage, splitting as they went so that one man was standing on each side of the square, except for the one nearest to the stands. That man had two harried-looking assistants with him, carrying various items. He cleared his throat, waited for silence, and then gathered some qi when he didn't get any.

"Silence!" he roared, the words ripping out of him like a lion's roar, boosted by the qi he had used to make himself loud enough to be heard halfway across the city. Silence came. All sorts of gazes turned towards the official as he stared back at them.

"You know the rules," he said, at a far more human volume.

"The scan starts now. Junior Officer Shi, if you would." One of the assistants nodded quickly, pushed his qi into the thing he was holding, and fiddled with a few buttons. A wave of qi rippled through the square, hitting each of the contestants in turn, before an answering pulse of qi from the man standing at the opposite side came in response from the device he too was holding.

"All fine," the assistant mumbled. The official nodded, rubbed his hands pompously, and then clapped.

"Then we begin in five!" he shouted, voice once more enhanced.

"Four!" Wu Hao felt eyes attempt to pierce through him. He turned, watched the guy who'd just tried to bully him, and held his gaze.

"Three! Two!" The spear rose in Wu Hao's hand, tapping against his throat softly. He smiled. All he got in return was a snarl.

"One!" the official shouted, raising a hand up high. Then he swung it down with all his might, looking almost as if he might totter over from the effort.

"Begin!" And then all hell broke loose.