The mansion didn't exactly present him with a hero's welcome. The lights were barely on, the porter at the entrance was shivering into his robe as he had been the last day that Wu Hao had seen him, and the man's face had grown slightly more sour since then as well. Wu Hao couldn't read his qi, and even if he did he would've only had emotions, but the fact that the man's eyebrows froze into a frown as he approached said it all.
"Young master," the man said. "Back from the contest?"
"Yes?" Wu Hao said. The man hadn't really spoken to him before, so he wondered where this was going.
"Did you see any good fights?" was the next question. "It's the semi-finals, isn't it?"
"It was," Wu Hao said. A sneaking suspicion reared its head, and so he added, perfunctorily: "I won."
The man tried to hide a snort. "Yes, sir."
Perhaps no welcome at all might have been better, Wu Hao thought darkly. It was good that he didn't care about being disrespected, because if this porter had talked like this to that boy from the Kunlun Sect, the snow would have turned red with blood.
Then again - he did have to wonder, did he ignore disrespect due to never receiving any, or did he not receive respect because he ignored disrespect?
Impossible to say. And a question for a later time, anyway.
Feeling no desire to trudge through the snow together with the surly porter, Wu Hao gathered qi to his feet. One instant he was just beyond the gates; the next he had thrown himself into a blurring step that left him touching down a few steps from the main door, leaving the porter to grumble in his wake. None of the snow had been touched.
The door was unlocked so Wu Hao let himself in, shaking off the outer coat that he'd worn over his robes against the wind. Qi or not, cold was cold and the wind could still bite.
Footsteps drew his attention to the top of the stairs.
"Back again?" Wang Bin asked.
"Yes," Wu Hao said. It was the first conversation he'd had with Wang Bin ever since the tournament had started. He felt the urge to blurt out that he'd won, again, but something held him back.
"You don't look injured," Wang Bin said, tilting his head a little bit. "You won?"
"I did."
Wang Bin smiled warmly. "Congratulations."
As far as Wu Hao knew, this was the first time ever that someone had told him congratulations for winning. No matter how often he'd died, he'd never received a compliment of any kind. Wang Bin hadn't even said much, but somehow it caused a blossoming of warmth in his chest that was so hot he nearly wanted to claw it out of him.
"Come on," Wang Bin said, turning. "Let's talk in my study, not out here."
Wu Hao dutifully followed his mentor up the stairs, still a little dazed.
Wang Bin's room was as neat as it'd always been. The furniture was still arranged almost as if by ruler, the placement according to some system Wang Bin had explained to his apprentices once but which Wu Hao had never seen the point of. The brushes were still hanging up from their racks, though the ends were a little darker from having been wetted with ink.
There were stacks of paper on Wang Bin's desk, each one a finished array. Wu Hao looked at the topmost one, which didn't tell him all that much. An array for preservation, he thought. Wang Bin had often made them play games where he presented them with an array and then had them figure out what it did, and Wu hao's guess for this one was preservation of some kind. It bore some marks of Wang Bin's own style: neat, direct lines, elegant swirling brushstrokes, and technical mastery that wasn't so far from that of a real array master.
"I have to admit, though," Wang Bin said, settling into his chair as Wu Hao took the usual spot opposite him. "I'd have thought you'd have been at the Gathering of Young Heroes."
The what? He said as much to Wang Bin, who winced.
"Oh dear," Wang Bin said. For the first time his smile took on something of an apologetic cast, as if he'd misspoken. His qi, too, brushed with the faint hint of shame, though nothing more than the usual I-probably-shouldn't-have-said-that that Wu Hao had seen often enough already, if never before from Wang Bin. "I'd assumed you'd known."
"Just tell me," Wu Hao said.
"The Winter Solstice is a festival before it's a tournament," Wang Bin said. "Really, the tournament is a very visible part of it, but there's so much else going on in the city as well. There's troupes of actors that make their stops in Chongqing every year around this time, just to bring their newest or their best work, you know."
He didn't know. He told himself he didn't care about plays, or actors, shoving those feelings into a very small ball that wriggled its way next to his heart.
"I visited the food stands," Wu Hao said. If his voice was croaking, then that was imagination, surely.
Wang Bin scoffed.
"Food from a stand's not worth the name," Wang Bin said. "Really, most of it's undercooked and slathered in fat to make it taste better. It's overpriced, it's inelegant. The restaurants around the town are all putting their best feet forward. Even creaky old inns are serving their best alcohol. The Immortal Repose has a truly amazing vintage of osmanthus wine that -"
He broke the sentence off before Wu Hao could learn what was so special about this osmanthus wine. He'd had alcohol before, stolen sips here and there, but he hadn't tasted osmanthus before.
Interesting that Wang Bin was apparently a food critic, though. Wu Hao hadn't known that about him before. Then again, he'd never seen the man eat. He drank tea occasionally, Wu Hao remembered, but that was all.
"I'm getting off topic," Wang Bin said, chiding himself with a small smile. "The point is, it's a festival. What are festivals for, Wu Hao?"
Wu Hao's eyebrows bunched together. Wang Bin's tone was the same as he'd ask questions with during lessons, so he felt oddly compelled to answer.
"To... sell a lot more than shops otherwise would?" he asked.
"That," Wang Bin said with a slight upturn of the lips, "is very cynical, my young pupil."
Cynical, maybe, but true.
"The purpose of a festival is to provide relief," Wang Bin said. "From the pressures of the average life. From the poorest farmer to the strongest cultivator or the richest lord, festivals are chances simply to let that go and enjoy the moment."
"By buying stuff," Wu Hao said.
"By being together with others," Wang Bin said, raising an eyebrow. "Building new connections. Celebrating old friendships. Your parents never took you to a festival when you were young?"
"No."
Wang Bin almost winced, before he camouflaged it by moving on to the main point.
"The Gathering of Young Heroes, then," Wang Bin said. "There's a tradition that each of the participants gets together for drinks and food at least once during the tournament itself. It's often a moment where they greet their supporters and the like. They're held every evening."
"Oh," Wu Hao said. It felt as if a hand of emptiness gripped him tightly in its grasp, squeezing out whatever feeling he'd first felt until the only emotion left to him was a tightening of the throat and a sinking feeling in his stomach.
If the compliment earlier had filled him with warmth, that warmth was now ripped away like a warm blanket, replaced by the same biting cold that he'd felt outside.
"It's a big event," Wang Bin said. "It's a large celebration, even though it's spread out. There's brawls each year and all, but there's a saying: if you build a reputation at the Winter Solstice Festival in the Chongqing, you build half of it on the arena stage and the other half at the restaurants afterwards."
Wu Hao said nothing - could say nothing. Words didn't seem to come. Wang Bin took this as a confirmation, though that same awkwardness still was articulated clearly. The man leaned back slightly in his chair.
One question that he hadn't asked - because it was pretty obvious, really - was why he'd never heard of it. Or why no one had bothered to invite him.
He was unknown. Of no real sect, of no real lineage, and if to make it worse he realized that he'd been showing up just in time for the matches to start and just running off the moment that the fighting was done. Compared to a Du Linglong, who was cute and had both a lineage and a sect to back her up, who would care to talk to him?
Who would care to invite him, especially when he might as well have it clear he would've rejected any invitation?
"I'm sorry," Wang Bin said. "For bringing that up."
"It's fine," Wu Hao said.
"Mm."
A silence hung for a little longer, but then Wang Bin clapped.
"There's multiple gatherings, though," Wang Bin said. "One for every night. The time before the final - well, those are merely preludes to the real event, in fact. There's other martial artists that aren't at the gatherings every single night."
Wu Hao didn't scoff but it was a near thing. He recognized that as simple empty words to try and cheer him up.
"The final, though," Wang Bin said. "That's where everyone really goes wild. It's tomorrow. That one would be a pity to miss, I think."
That, at least, caught Wu Hao's attention. So there was another event, then? Good to know. He could...
Well, he didn't know if he actually wanted to go. He did want to get an invitation, though.
More motivation to win.
Wang Bin's smile gained a sort of teasing edge. "By the way, I hear Hao Wu has made it to the semi-finals?"
"Yes," Wu Hao said.
"Well," Wang Bin said, rising from his chair. "That deserves a prize, I should think."
"A prize?"
It had better not be a lesson. Wu Hao still needed to prepare for the next match, in whatever ways he could.
"Yes," Wang Bin said. "Unfortunately, I was wrongheaded enough to think that you would have lost already. It's funny, really - I thought that in the first round, if you'll forgive me being honest. Who did you face again? The name escapes me at the moment. I heard about it third-hand, so I suppose that's inevitable."
"Su Biao," Wu Hao said. "From the Qingcheng."
"I see," Wang Bin said. "Well, forgive me for saying this, but you continue to wildly overshoot every impression I might have had of your talent. You must understand, though - making it into the second round is already unheard of for someone without any particular backing."
"Are you giving me the crown?"
Wang Bin chuckled, but shook his head.
"I'm afraid it's not something quite that special. It's something I had made for a friend, but he was never able to receive it."
The tone of Wang Bin's voice, slightly melancholy, made it clear enough why that might have been. Death, probably, and whoever this man was he hadn't come back afterwards.
Pulling a small box from the shelf, Wang Bin laid it carefully on top of his desk and pulled a small pendant from it. It wasn't really a beautiful thing like a pendant to show off. Instead it was made in the shape of a small star, with arraywork carefully carved into each corner and ridge and over the surface of the metal.
"A protection pendant," Wang Bin said, offering it to Wu Hao. "It'll only block a single attack from a second-grade, but it's better than nothing, isn't it? You'll still be considered to have lost if you have to use it, of course. Might still be useful for after the tournament, though."
Wu Hao took the pendant carefully. "How does it work?"
"That," Wang Bin said cheerfully, "is going to be one of your future lessons."
"Right," Wu Hao said. He hesitated and then, warmth creeping into his cheeks, bowed his head. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Wang Bin said.
They stood there for a moment longer while Wu Hao's fingers traced the shape of the star.
"Would you like to come with me?" Wang Bin offered, catching Wu Hao completely off guard. "To one of my dinners, I mean. I think you might find it instructive."
Wu Hao thought about it for a long while, but the entire idea of the Gathering of Young Heroes had soured him on the idea of going anywhere tonight. He'd rather not. It'd just remind him of where he wasn't.
"No," he said quietly. "No, I'm fine."
Wang Bin nodded. Sympathy bled through his qi, as if he knew exactly what Wu Hao was thinking.
"I'll be there tomorrow," Wang Bin said suddenly. "It's something of a happy coincidence, though - I hadn't known at the time I bought the tickets."
"You'll be in the stands?" Wu Hao asked.
"Along with a few friends," Wang Bin explained. "I haven't been able to go the last couple of days - work has kept me very busy. I'm taking over all of Senior Journeyman Lu's duties as well, after all."
He stared down at his desk, then shook his head. "I should get started again, while I'm at it. I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yes," Wu Hao said, turning to leave. "Tomorrow."
Wang Bin didn't stop him from leaving, but Wu Hao still felt a momentary impulse to linger that he wound up banishing.
The last match, he thought as he laid down in his small cot, was tomorrow.
With it, the tournament would end. There would be no more of the fights that required him to put what he had on the line, no fights where he could well and truly cut loose. It hurt to get slashed, but it felt good to be able to slash. All his time in the mansion had made him forget the sheer, basic pleasure of harsh movement and of his heart thudding in the chest, the relief that made the blood sing after every dodge and block and successful hit.
With it, Wu Hao's period as a third-grade martial artist would end. He would grow to become at least as strong as an Uncle. No one cared much about a third-grade martial artist. Being a second-grade martial artist would mark him as someone to pay attention to.
And if he thought he heard the distant sounds of laughter, of cups being shared, and of the sorts of friendships being made that the stories said he should be making right now, well...
That was his imagination again, surely.