When Wu Hao returned to his place, it was to find the tournament over for the day.
His part in it, at least. The third-grade fights had all come and had, in their own ways, gone. Of the sixteen fighters that had started the day, eight had now been knocked out of the running and eight were left to start fighting on the next day.
After all, the tournament was - like the festival - spread across multiple days. There would be four rounds in total, which left three more oponents for Wu Hao to fight.
He wondered which of them it would be. The ones that were left, at this stage, were himself - obviously - and then there were the 7 other entrants. Unless he'd missed something, that left the fighters he could face as the fighters from the Zhongnan Sect, the Diancang Sect, the Wudang Sect, the Kunlun Sect, the Kongtong Sect, the Tang Clan, and the Hua Sect.
Su Biao was supposed to have made it onto this stage, but she hadn't. Wu Hao didn't feel sorry for her, but he did feel something that wasn't just warm satisfaction.
Of that list, he was hoping to face the girl from the Tang Clan. Or Du Linglong of the Diancang Sect. He had plans for facing both of them, after all. It would've been mixed feelings to be able to face someone from the Jin, but that wasn't possible anymore.
The others he knew very little about, other than what he was able to guess from their appearances and occasionally from the fights that he'd seen them in.
The rumored "monster" that the Mount Hua Sect had unearthed was a mystery to him, for instance. He'd missed the boy's fight entirely by accident. He knew a little about the Hua Sect's sword techniques, though: they involved plums somehow. It was said that the best swordsmen could make plum blossoms appear when they swung their swords, as a measure of pure skill.
How that helped with offense, Wu Hao had no clue, but he supposed it would be rather pretty.
Tai Buzhou was making some sort of speech now, trying to form a sort of philosophical, prosaical bridge between the fights of the third-grade martial artists and the following event, which would be the preliminary matches of the second-grade martial artists.
Instead of listening to Tai Buzhou's latest interminable speech, he stood up and went to get himself something to eat. His departure was noticed, of course. The dragon-scale boy from the Kunlun Sect's eyes narrowed again at him, and Wu Hao had the distinct feeling the other boy was making up reasons to dislike him.
Another opponent he probably wouldn't mind. The list was only growing.
He grabbed lunch, such as it was, from a nearby food stand. The food wasn't great. It was a hassle to eat, requiring two hands unless he wanted to spill it all over his only good set of robes. It was vastly overpriced, especially considering the lacking flavor. Wu Hao made a mental note not to take from that stand again.
In the end he let it grow cold next to him as he sat in the stands, no one even attempting to make their way so as to sit next to him. He preferred it that way, but he heard the whispers every time someone so much as glanced at him, and he could read the sheer discomfort that having him be so near and yet so silent brought to the people around him.
Whereas others had moves explained to them by people clearly in the know, veterans of multiple tournaments - there was no one to speak to. Wu Hao simply sat in a dome of silence that felt somehow sullen, even to himself.
He had to repeat to himself: he preferred it this way.
The matches were fascinating enough that they left little enough space for introspection, though. The public winners for the second-grade and the first-grade martial artists were not solo entrants like him but were heirs of sects just a few hairs below being part of the Martial Arts Alliance. More like Ao Ying in that sense, although they had brought along entire crowds of supporters whereas the two of them had been alone.
Even in the supposed unaffiliated world, it appeared there were the rich and the poor, he supposed.
None of them were part of the Red Dawn Sect, at least. There were no deathsworn being publicly paraded around. There was that.
The second-grade martial artists' matches were steps up from their own. Instead of the Sky-grade techniques that Wu Hao himself mostly used, they dared to use Heaven-tier techniques if they could. They had remained unseen during the third-grade's matches, although Wu Hao himself was at least capable of executing one.
He had nothing more than a guess to go on, but something in him had grown steadily more convinced that others possessed techniques of the same grade as well.
Still, there were plenty of interesting things to pick up from the second-grade martial artists' matches. The public winners went first; the public winners were eliminated first, too, by someone from the Kongtong Sect wielding heavy gauntlets wrapped in chains and by someone from the Zhuge dual-wielding crossbows. Someone from the Emei Sect fought against a black-haired lady from the Peng Clan, who was dressed so provocatively that the tips of Wu Hao's ears felt like they were burning.
Wu Hao observed it all, cataloguing it away in his memory. How they held their weapons, the way their qi twisted, the interactions between their arts and how well it all played into each other. He really needed something like it, without surrendering his own advantages of being able to use any weapon. The question, then, was - how?
Before he had an answer to that question, though, Tai Buzhou stepped up on stage and announced that the second-grade matches were over, now. It was time for the first-grade martial artists. This, according to several people around him, was what they'd really come to see.
Wu Hao had thought it grandiose, but the people fighting now were beyond him the way he was beyond an ant. They disdained the use of anything except Heaven-grade techniques. Qi spilled over the arena in quantities that exceeded Wu Hao's ability to produce over several days, and it was all used in an instant.
Fire roared as a fighter from the Hua Sect left enormous plum blossoms drifting through the air with every move, each of them burning hot enough to turn even the stone they touched down on to melting cherry-red. A fighter from Kunlun unleashed a punch that summoned the image of a dragon hovering behind him, even as his opponent's sword reached him with such speed that it looked like he struck three times at the same instant only to clang against the scales manifesting across the Kunlun fighter's body.
The senior sister from the Emei was there, too. Wu Hao had last seen sister Wuling months ago when he had lead the assault on that clan compound full of the undead, but she hadn't changed one bit. Her smile was gentle, her face beautiful.
But her movements were incredibly deft and purposeful. Snowflakes came twirling down out of a clear sky as she touched the tip of her sword to the throat of the fighter from the Kongtong Sect, without ever having given him so much as a single moment to actually put his massive fists to use.
And then it ended. There had been eight matches, all of which he'd seen. He'd sat there, enthralled, allowing himself to be swayed by the emotions in the qi. He was a little hungry, but it'd been easy enough to ignore.
Maybe, he mused, this was what the others felt all the time.
That good mood still didn't mean that he'd stay for Tai Buzhou's speech, though. He walked out of the stands as the announcer made his way up to the stone arena, ignored the nasty looks directed at his back from the officials, and vanished into a blur of whistling speed, stopping only to grab another bite of food at a nearby stand.
Maybe, he mused, he should have waited a little while longer. Tai Buzhou's voice boomed out in the distance. He decided it didn't really matter.
It was already close to evening, anyway. Dark fell rapidly in the winter months, and the cold had gained an extra bite now that he'd grown used to the comfortable heating of the stands. He had his warm cloak, but that couldn't keep out all the cold.
When he returned to the Array Masters' Headquarters, the lights were out. A footman stood stiffly by the entrance, wrapped up in warm furs but also keeping his hands against a piece of paper, on which a heating array had been inscribed and fed with just enough qi to last almost a day.
Wu Hao landed, feet crunching into the snow that hadn't been cleared away next to the path.
Mutely he stared up at the footman. He'd seen the man before, mostly on the occasions that guests visited the quarters of the masters or came to pay their respects to the grandmaster, holed up in that little room of his. The footman was someone's nephew, or maybe an uncle or something. Wu Hao didn't really care.
"Good evening," the footman said. He eyed Wu Hao. "Enjoy your time at the festival?"
"Yeah," Wu Hao said. "Can I go in?"
"One moment."
The footman let go of the warming talisman reluctantly, shivering a little in the cold. With his hands now free he drew another talisman from a pocket and placed it against the gate. A pulse of qi threaded its way through the stone the moment that the talisman touched the gate and raced into the mansion.
A few seconds later, an answering pulse raced back and made its way through the gates, the qi having a distinct mint-like touch to it.
Wang Bin, then.
The gates creaked open.
Wu Hao stepped inside, followed moments later by the footman. Behind Wu Hao, the footman closed the gate again, drawing another talisman from his pocket and placing it very carefully against the middle point of the fence. Qi sparked, fizzled, and something went click. The arrays hovering up into the air of the mansion rippled with a faint sense of acknowledgement.
He went to his room, where he stashed the spear carefully up on its stand and looked at it again. In the dim light of his room the illumination array gave him another chance to look at the arrays he'd carved into the spear's shaft, and he spotted several things he could've done better.
Wu Hao would leave it as it was, though. First he'd see what the next match would bring. He sat down at his desk and wrote down some idle thoughts about what the next matches might have been, before eventually the quieting dark lulled him to bed.
The next morning he stood up bright, though not particularly early. He went through the usual rituals - washing up, the toilet, checking he had all of his knives and nothing had been stolen - before he set out again towards the matches.
He still hadn't really spoken with anyone ever since the meeting with Ao Ying. With a bit of luck he'd keep it that way.
But if he'd expected that there would be less people today, if anything, the streets seemed even more choked with people. He heard rumors as he went, catching whispers that were mostly about the first-grade fighters. To hear them tell it every woman was a beautiful phoenix, elegant enough that flowers would wilt in their presence from shame at not being up to standard. Similarly, every man was a dragon among men, fierce and proud, whereas others were two dragon's worth.
Occasionally, though, they talked about the second-grades, and he even heard a few discussing the third-grade matches. His name - well, his assumed name - was mentioned, here and there.
At best they talked about him with some puzzlement, as if wondering where he'd come from. Others simply expressed a distaste.
Wu Hao told himself not to care about it all as he landed in the arena.
Around him, seven others stood. There was Mo Ritian of the Zhongnan, there was that ass from the Kunlun Sect, there was Du Linglong, there was Ye Yue of the Wudang, and behind a boy who was very tall for his age and about as wide, there presumably also stood the so-called monster of the Hua Sect.
And Hao Wu, of course.
After a very long speech, finally it was time to fight again. Wu Hao had figured, distantly, that it was probably best he didn't let his boredom show, which was the only reason he wasn't tapping his spear's butt against the stone, or fidgeting with his robes or something.
He wanted to get on with it.
Finally - finally! - Tai Buzhou actually spoke the only words Wu Hao wanted to hear from him.
"First," the man's honeyed voice came, "the winner of the public matches. Hao Wu, please - take your pick."
Tai Buzhou thrust the bag at him like it was an attack. His wrist shook, qi ran through the bag and there was a sort of smudge of qi as the contents of the bag were swapped. There was more than a hint of self-satisfaction in his qi and in his oily smile.
Well. Time to see what they had planned for him.
His hand snaked into the bag. He didn't bother feeling around, but just grabbed the first stone he could and pulled his hand back, inspecting the stone.
A yin-yang emblem had been carved into it: the Taiji.
It was the Wudang, then.
That was a problem.
The Wudang had a reputation for several things. They were said to be scrupulously fair in whichever contracts they engaged in, but also slow to act. They were said to be ponderous, wise scholar-sages. Of all the different orthodox sects they were said to be the most learned, to the point where it was sometimes called a sect that taught its students more literature than it taught martial arts.
They were also specialized in defense. They had offensive techniques as well, obviously, but the bulk of their techniques were in warding off attacks instead of attacking themselves, and when they attacked it was through a system of counters most of the time.
That reputation was well-earned, too. Wu Hao had seen the disciples of all three grades fight against opponents. They'd blocked every single blow, even those that they could have dodged. Each match had seen the Wudang Sect disciples win without taking a single step that they hadn't intended to make.
It was a different defense than the Shaolin, though. The Shaolin relied entirely on the strength of their bodies and their belief to make themselves impenetrable. During the first-grade contest yesterday Wu Hao had seen a bald monk smile serenely even while he was being hammered into the ground by a relentless onslaught of blows, looking for all the world as if he could've simply blocked his opponent's sword with his teeth alone.
The Wudang simply read everything that came at them and stopped it cold. It was a defense based not on bodily strength but on sheer skill and knowledge. Fighting them wasn't like trying to smash down a brick wall, it was like trying to block the path of a river. But that didn't mean it was impossible. And the harder the strike, the bigger his chances of actually doing that.
The arena's cool stone didn't quite feel as solid as it had yesterday. They wouldn't have time to swap out the flooring, though. Wu Hao grimaced as he made his way up the steps.
Ye Yue landed in the arena in a swirl of black and white robes, his movement technique on display.
As if in deliberate synchrony, they all moved. Tai Buzhou raised his hand to start. Ye Yue raised his face to look Wu Hao in the eyes and made to speak. Wu Hao raised his spear.