Chương 136: Death in the Arena, III

A week had passed, and during that entire time Wang Bin hadn't brought up the topic again. He hadn't even hinted at it. Wu Hao also hadn't brought it up again, to be fair. What had to be said had been said. What else was there to discuss? But Wu Hao also hadn't spent any time or any effort into trying to find out more information on his opponents in the tournament.

He could have - the Beggars' Union probably would've sold him the information on the cheap, even if he hadn't simply been able to get it from the local rumor mill. It wouldn't even have needed to cost him anything, since he could've bought the information and then reset, keeping his money without losing anything in return. He told himself that there was nothing to be afraid of, though, and finding out more somehow felt like a concession to his opponents.

Whatever they threw at him, he'd conquer it and that would be that. And if sometimes he woke up with his chest feeling heavy at the thought of how many days he had left, that was anticipation. It had to be. Unfortunately, whereas he'd hoped that maybe it'd be easy to get to the tournament, he was nearly late for a reason that might have been obvious: the roads were utterly choked with people.

It was as if every single person in the entire province had decided that they had to be there, and that they had all decided to leave that morning. The weather had thawed slightly, but everyone was still packed up warmly. Stalls had been set up nearby so that you could buy food - skewers of glazed fruit called tanghulu, mooncakes, honey cookies, dragon's beard candy - and he wondered how early the shopkeepers had gotten up to ensure they'd had a spot. Presumably they hadn't slept at all.

With a burst of qi, he launched himself up high, but if the streets below had been filled with enough traffic to make movement impossible, the rooftops weren't much better. During the rest of the year the rooftops served as a highway of sorts through the town, allowing martial artists to get where they needed to be far easier than simply by walking, but now there was utter congestion as well.

Shapes blurred past like the shadows a wind-blown fire projected onto a wall, and Wu Hao had to wait for a bit just to find an opening to join in. When he could - when the possibility that he would smash into something or someone seemed low enough - he risked more glances at the crowds below, which only seemed to swell the closer he got.

There were men struggling with their donkeys and their carts, trying to get them to move forward into the crush of the crowd, and there were women carrying two children on their shoulders just to make sure they didn't get crushed. But at least he got closer. If it would usually have cost him a few minutes to make his way over, it now had taken him a quarter of an hour at the very least. The stage itself took his breath away all over again. It was simply too huge.

Enormous wooden stages ran across the length and the breath of Five Square, each already filling up with people. The previous stage had had one arena, which Wu Hao had already thought was large, but the arena that he saw was twice as large at least. He presumed that it was because a ring-out was to be avoided. It probably didn't make for good drama, after all.

More than the stage and the thousands of people already having found a place to sit - an enormous collection of families, sects, groups of workers, random people just shoved together - Wu Hao's attention was drawn to the single part of the square that hadn't been taken up by the stands for the crowds. That, after all, was a space reserved for the great sects and the clans.

The stands had been made just to squeeze as many people into a single space as was humanly possible, whereas each of the important participants received an area their own, decorated with a large banner that hung from the rafters. They had been given parasols, tables, neatly ordered lines had been drawn so as to let their servants approach without needing to disturb other groups, and he could only assume that the order of the groups had been the topic of very furious debate.

Even in the final battle against the Demon Cult, Wu Hao hadn't seen so many master-grade martial artists. There were at least fifteen of them - each with enough qi and presence that he could have found them from across the city, if he so desired. Every single sect had brought at least one master. The Shaolin Sect had brought two, as if to show off. After he'd finished gaping at the sheer size of the crowd, he was left in awe at the sight of the sects and their masters.

He didn't know their names, but he could sense their qi and could make a decent guess at their monikers, using the little he knew. The first one he noticed was the abbess of the Emei Sect, who was tending to a small plant with a smile on her wizened face. The plant itself was clearly not natural, first of all. Its leaves were brilliant shades of blue, its stem a deep, rich golden color.

Qi was visible in every pore, in every stem that ran through its leaves and into its body, while the soil that it had been planted in was probably worth more than entire compounds' worth of buildings and land. It wasn't the Jade Orchid, which Wu Hao knew because it looked more like a bonsai tree.

The abbess's movements were slow and delicate, almost like she really was the fragile, bent-backed old woman she seemed to be, but there wasn't even a bit of hesitation whenever she moved, her eyes didn't squint like those of the other old women Wu Hao had seen, and when her hand was revealed as her robe shifted, both the muscles and the scars everywhere were clearly visible. The other hand was simply missing. And her qi - Wu Hao hadn't ever seen anything like it.

If the first master he had ever seen had been a blizzard and the second had a tremendous, crushing weight to him, there was nothing about the master's qi that spoke to anything so.... offensive, for a lack of a better term. There was no threat in it. Her qi took the form of an enormous tree, its dark bark upright, its crown reaching high into the heavens until it seemed like a pillar on which clouds could rest for a while.

The leaves that erupted from its every branch were a deep crimson red, each sparkling in the sunlight like a precious gemstone reflecting the light of invisible fire. This, he supposed, was the Flower Sovereign. A veteran of the previous war, which had cost her one of her hands, but which she'd gone into as a first-grade martial artist and left as one of the surviving master-grade martial artists.

She was also the one who had created the prize for this tournament, which made her the reason that Wu Hao was here in the first place. Wu Hao pulled his attention away from the Flower Sovereign before his focus was noticed. There were more than enough other masters to look at, anyway. The Shaolin had brought along an absolute bear of a man.

Wu Hao had gotten the impression somewhere that the Shaolin were practicing Buddhist monks, but clearly he had been wrong, because a man that size couldn't have been fed on only vegetarian fare. His arms were broad enough that Wu Hao had seen pillars that paled in comparison, his back ramrod straight as his legs were folded across each other. He sat in the cold with bare arms, as if the cold didn't affect him at all.

Next to him sat a slip of a woman, bald as a newborn baby, equally unaffected by the world around her. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Next to the head of the Diancang Sect sat Ke Jiaming, the man who had caused Wu Hao to realize that every road that he could walk with the Red Dawn Sect was a dead end. Whereas he was surrounded by a sea of golden hair and shining swords, he himself kept a spear by his side.

He'd frozen an entire forest without even using a technique. He was also working with the Heavenly Demon Cult, Wu Hao reminded himself. That was important to remember. Wu Hao's eyes flickered past several others - the Tang Clan had been given a significant room of their own, their dark purple hair making them stand out, and the man at its head regarded the crowd with faint amusement. He was drinking from a flask, though what was in it was impossible to say.

The Qingcheng's master seemed fairly easy-going, as far as sects went. He was talking with several third-grades, after all, and they laughed at whatever he'd just told them. Others, too, but he didn't get a proper look at them. And then there were the Jin. Separated from the Tang by the Qingcheng, the Wudang, and the Shaolin, the Jin delegation was neither the smallest in terms of numbers, nor were they the largest.

The man at its head sat properly, two women at his side, one slightly older and another slightly younger, so similar that Wu Hao assumed they were sisters. The master's hair was black, his eyes were golden, and for the first time Wu Hao laid eyes on Jin Qilong's father. This was Jin Murong, then. His qi was pure, liquid golden steel. If a blacksmith could have worked with a qi like that, then he would have been able to forge a sword that could cut through mountains, it was that pure.

There wasn't a trace of a single imperfection in it as it churned, constantly in motion, but not a single drop spread outside of the tight grip Jin Murong had on his core. Most of his attention seemed to be on a young man sitting nearby, though, at the side of the older of the sisters. There was a conversation taking place there, though it all happened via qi transmissions. He was the mirror of his father in most ways except for a slightly rounder face and a slightly smaller nose.

He knew this boy by name as well - Jin Youshu, Jin Qilong's older half-brother. He was a second-grade martial artist, at about nineteen. Just from Wu Hao's senses, he figured that Jin Youshu was maybe halfway to becoming a first-grade martial artist, not quite matching what Wu Hao had heard about his father's pace at shooting up the ranks. Although, to be honest, if Jin Qilong was going to have to beat his brother, he'd better have put the work in while Wu Hao had been elsewhere.

That did remind him, though, and he looked around a lot more carefully. He recognized none of the other faces there, and through the absolute haze of qi it was hard to make out, but he didn't think he saw the qi of Jin Qilong anywhere. Or his mother. He supposed that was good. He was risking it, as he was. His bracelet would allow him to change his face, but the less that he had to test it out the better. At least until he managed to win the tournament.

And if he wanted to do that, it was best that he get to his spot and not stand around gawping like the yokel he hadn't been for a few months now. There was one area where tickets could be bought, and he attracted the attention of one harried-looking junior official, who hurried over. Before the man could say anything to him, Wu Hao raised the scroll in his hands.

"I'm here to participate," he said, and the man deflated. Heads turned, whispers started, and Wu Hao squared his shoulders.

"Right," the junior official said. He wrung his hands, head snapping from side to side.

"Right. Well, um. Come with me. Sir. Please?" Wu Hao followed the man, barely having to elbow anyone aside anymore as he went. The crowd opened for him as if he'd used a technique to repel them, which in a sense he might have done. He was led to a small area, at the opposite end to the sects, which had been fenced off slightly and which had guards standing to the side. Compared to the first-grade guards which stood, fully kitted out, at the part for the sects, these were only third-grades.

A few people were already there, none of which he recognized. There were eight of them already, though, so it appeared that he'd been the last one. And, judging by the fact there were five of them, these were the other winners of the public matches.

"You're late," one of them said, a tall, dark man with a beard that hugged his neck as he talked. An axe was hefted over his shoulder.

"You trying to make a power play by making us wait, kid?" He was a first-grade, so Wu Hao swallowed his retort and simply shook his head. The junior official hurried further along, though he'd shaken like a leaf the moment the first-grade had spoken. There wasn't much said afterwards, either. Maybe five minutes later, just as Wu Hao figured it might be interesting to inspect the masters again, there was a change that ran through the contestants who stood closest, which rippled further.

An official in pristine black robes, carefully divested of any color or sign that might give away his affiliation, had risen to his feet and walked with steady steps, first approaching the panel of sects and clans, to which he bowed down deeply. In all aspects, this man was proper. His beard had been shaved to exactly the right length to suggest wisdom, his posture was as upright as a sword. He wore no weapon, but considering he was a first-grade martial artist, he probably wouldn't need one to kill.

He waited until the hubbub had started to die down a little, after his presence had been noted.

"Sirs," he spoke softly, but his voice - rich, sonorous, just the right level of deep to sound cultured and wise - cut through the chatter of the crowd. A technique had been woven into it, though, buttressing the sound as it travelled through the crowd, adapting it to sound as if he was standing right next to you.

"We are ready to begin." A few conversations broke off, some more slowly than others, until he held the attention of the section of the crowd that was considered important. Only then did he make a half-turn to the rest of the crowd.

"Honored guests," he said, the sound booming through the air. Several people, caught unaware, nearly jumped out of their seats; there was a scream that was quickly strangled when half the crowd turned to look and laugh. The announcer's voice hovered at just below the edge of being too loud. He bowed again, though notably less deep this time. Maybe Wu Hao was overthinking it, but he felt the way the man's qi had prickled at his ears.

That surprise had not been an accident: he spoke so loudly, had his voice resonate as such, because he wanted to awe people.

"I am Tai Buzhou, delegate from the Martial Arts Alliance; I am your host for the festivities. Welcome, all - to the Winter Solstice Festival!"