It was as if the mansion had come alive. A monstrous whirlpool formed, ripping away all of the qi for miles around. Wu Hao had never been able to pin exact numbers on amounts of qi, he just knew instinctively what was a lot and what was a little. He couldn't have said how much qi was sucked into that whirlpool.
But it was obvious that it was a lot. The amount of qi that had crystallized in a single moment would have been enough to fill his own core to the brim and leave some over. The next moment as much qi tore through the walls, savaging the carefully calibrated arrays there, and poured itself into master Shu.
Then more, even more, and more still. The qi rushed in, in dozens of varieties each tinged with the colors of its origin. The spice of heat, the cool of water, things that Wu Hao couldn't put names to: each of the Five Elements, bowing down before their newfound master.
All of that qi was reduced into a single point before a backdraft escaped, forming a thick cocoon of swirling qi around the master. Wu Hao lifted a hand over his eyes reflexively before he was blown back by the hurricane winds, landing on unsteady feet on the floor even as planks were ripped out of the room and began swirling around the cocoon.
Master after master appeared, each arriving so quickly and so closely together that Wu Hao felt it was impossible to say which of them had come first. The floor might have been unsteady under their feet but they stood as steady as if it were solid ground.
In a black robe with white streaks incorporated was a severe-looking man with a black beard, huge as a bear, with two swords hanging in separate sheathes over his shoulders, one of them huge and the other slimmer - Deng Xuan, the Dual Sword Sovereign of the Wudang Sect. His qi felt impossibly huge and deep, like nothing else Wu Hao had ever felt. Standing next to him was the Hua Sect's Flower Sovereign, named Xia Lusheng, who was leaning her entire body on top of her cane, diminished by the loss of her arm but still a formidable presence. Her qi felt like a forest that was larger than the mind could imagine.
Next to them both stood a woman who was clad in a sheer dress that travelled up to her hips, where a wide slit kept her figure together only with strings drawn extremely tightly, so much so that they seemed to leave thin grooves in the flesh of her thighs. Her qi spoke of nothing more than a smoke-filled courtesan's boudoir, and Wu Hao knew instinctively that she would be the Madam of the Peng Sect, the Smoke Sovereign, Peng Qixi. She was at least sixty but looked thirty at the utmost.
Saber Sovereign Jin Murong, the Reckless Saber Sovereign, his qi like a sea of steel. Mountain Sea Sovereign Su Yi of the Qingcheng Sect. Tang Shibai, patriarch of the Tang Clan, also known as the Sublime Poison Sovereign. Ke Taiqi of the Diancang, the Glorious Sun Sovereign, and his brother, Ke Jiaming the Moonlight Sovereign, together named the Twin Skies of the Diancang. Others, too, such as the two monks from the Shaolin. The fat sleeping master hadn't appeared but there was a sense of his presence lurking nearby somehow, as clear as day.
As each of their qi signatures made themselves known to Wu Hao's senses, the sheer weight of so many people's power struck at him as if like a hammer, every new person's presence bowling him over again and again. He gasped for air, sunk to one knee, and felt the ache in his head intensify with each passing moment, until there was nothing left behind his eyes except that deep throbbing pain. He might have let out some other sound - he couldn't think, couldn't even breathe, with that unfathomable weight of qi straining down on him. His vision faded into thick shimmers of qi.
One of the Sovereigns turned a hand to Wu Hao, though never taking his eyes off the cocoon of qi that master Shu was wrapped in. Wu Hao couldn't be sure now, with his senses completely scrambled, but he could see a distant hint of purple and presumed that it had to be Tang Shibai.
"Who is he?" one of the master-grade sovereigns asked, his voice as if from a great distance.
"That is Hao Wu," another said, sounding a little surprised. "I'd thought him a stray, but apparently I thought wrong."
"It wouldn't be the first time, would it, Brother Mengbo?"
A flareup of qi that flooded across Wu Hao's senses and tossed him around like a small fishing boat in a turbulent ocean, about to tip over at any instant.
"Cool your tongue before I rip it out of your mouth, loathsome dog. Why anyone saw fit to ever give you the title of -"
Someone did something that Wu Hao could recognize, and instantly, the pain faded, as did the rest of the sound. Wu Hao had a moment to himself where thought rushed back to him, and he spent that first thought on being grateful that it was over and incredulity that the dignified masters were bickering like children. His throat opened up again from the hands that had clenched it shut, and he took a single breath.
Then he collapsed into a dead faint, vision going to black before he even hit the floor.
He came to with a gasp, but he didn't come to in the same room that he'd been in.
All he saw was an endless vast nothingness, divided into two halves. The half to his left was white, the half to his right was black. Where they met, there was no blending, no shade of grey: either something was black or white, and nothing in between. Nothing stood on the white half, as far as he could see, but neither did anything stand on the black half.
The line continued, deadly straight as a sword's edge, and rolled gently into the sky until it curved up and around over Wu Hao's head. It was as if he was trapped in some sort of circle, standing on that line. There was no suggestion of movement in either half, but nonetheless Wu Hao had the idea that both sides, both halves of stark color, were enormous pools that stretched as far as the eye could see.
And he got the idea that, were he to fall in, he would not find his way back.
In the distance he could see a shape, roughly man-sized. Lost for words and for anything else to do, Wu Hao walked carefully on top of the line to make his way over, not daring to deviate a single step.
Something was wrong, though. Even beyond just the obvious fact of the world that he'd found himself in, there was something deeper. Wu Hao inhaled and smelled nothing, heard nothing as he took a hesitant step forward. Of his senses, only vision seemed to work, as well as his sense of himself.
Wu Hao stopped, his steps faltering. That was it. He couldn't sense qi. There had always been qi, wherever he went. Sometimes it was thicker, sometimes it was so thin that it felt like even breathing the air required him to pull his qi out of his core, but always there had always been at least a trickle.
But there was none now. It felt rather like being utterly blind, even though his vision was working perfectly. In fact, all he could do was simply observe this strange black-and-white world. He continued walking, steps not quite as sure as they had just been.
The master sat at the exact borderline with his legs crossed, observing the line with a deep level of focus. It actually took Wu Hao a moment simply to figure out who the man was, because between being wrapped in the cocoon and this vision, master Shu had seemingly rejuvenated. He was still in the process of rejuvenation, actually.
Even as Wu Hao watched, the man's beard was receding into his face, its scattered streaks of black in a sea of grey turning into pinpricks of grey in a bushy black beard. Age lines that had been etched deep into his face were easing.
He spoke to no one in particular when Wu Hao approached closer.
"Yin and yang," master Shu said. "The Two formed from the One, which is the Way."
Master Shu leaned forward slightly. Both hands reached out at the same, and with an exertion of will that Wu Hao could somehow feel, master Shu made his hands color. The left, infinitely close to touching the white half, assumed a black color, while the master's right hand went white for the black half.
Moving carefully the master drew two lines by placing both hands in front of him, then pulling his hands towards the center, making two lines of equal length that steadily drew together until, finally, they touched.
"The one becomes two, but one can derive the one from the two," the master murmured.
There was a beautiful sense of symmetry to the entire thing, but Wu Hao had no fucking clue what was going on. He simply watched. It didn't quite feel complete, the drawing that had just been made.
"It is incomplete," the master agreed, though Wu Hao was sure he hadn't spoken a word. "It is just a small fraction of the Way. All these years hoping for revelation, and yet how bittersweet this all feels."
"What?" Wu Hao asked.
"Mmm," the master said, and sighed. He leaned back, staring at the sky above them. "Give me a few more moments, please. I'll try to finish this little piece."
And then he waved his hand. It was as if Wu Hao had been caught on some divine angler's hook, who now hauled him backward with immense velocity until the master was little more than a speck.
Wu Hao's eyes flickered open. Someone had gone through the minor effort of collecting him from where he'd laid and propped him against a nearby wall. The storm of qi was still quieted, fortunately, and as his vision swam back into focus he saw the cocoon disperse into fragments of thickly banded environmental qi, which themselves began to scatter outwards. Some caught on the master's cores and were drawn in, consumed in their entirety.
He himself caught one of the fragments and nearly choked on the immense amount of qi contained within. It coursed through his body and did... something. It was hard to say what exactly, but he felt improved in ways he couldn't even name.
From where the cocoon had stood, the grandmaster stepped forth in the same shape that Wu Hao had seen him in the vision. Inkstains still clung to one side of his robe, which fit him better now that his back wasn't bent. In fact, he stood upright, leaving the shredded chair on which he'd sat.
"We welcome you to our ranks, he who has reborn," the Dual Sword Sovereign said, his voice a deep rumble that sounded like the shifting of the earth itself. "It has been some time since we've had the occasion."
"Thank you," Master Shu said. He beamed with pride.
"This is an event worth celebrating," someone else said. Wu Hao craned his head but couldn't see the speaker, not with all the people in the way. "How fortunate that we are already gathered here for the occasion of the Winter Solstice festival."
"Indeed," a reedier sort of voice agreed. This, at least, Wu Hao could see was the Flower Sovereign. "A double celebration, in a sense. A marvelous idea."
"Enough of the formalities," another spoke. It was Jin Murong, who was looking at master Shu intently. "Tell me, Shu Renqing. What name will you assume for your Title? What is your guiding Principle?"
Master Shu smiled slightly. "Absence. As such, I shall be the Absent Sovereign."
The Dual Sword Sovereign's breath caught. "You have realized the Principle of Void?"
"Not quite," master Shu said. "But it is not unrelated."
Several of them nodded as if this meant anything. "Might you demonstrate?"
Nodding, master Shu raised a hand in the air. Using just a small amount of qi, his fingers flashed through the empty space of the room. Thick marks were left in the air, drops of qi forming into lines that expanded themselves into a full-sized array.
"This is my Principle," the newfound Absent Sovereign said. "I came to realize that there is no such thing as nothingness. Always there is something. Hence, why should I fear lacking materials, as I did before?"
"I see," the Dual Sword Sovereign said, though his presumed smile was hidden underneath his beard. "Fascinating. I recall something like this from a lecture by Daoist Master Golden Dust."
The ink had remained in the air, not fading even a little bit at the edges. Everything Wu Hao knew about arrays protested that this was impossible: the fact that no paper had been used, the way that the qi couldn't sustain the ink that was being shown, and just the sheer absurdity of fingerpainting in the air and having it stick. Qi was fluid, so how was this even happening?
"Hence I shall now paint my arrays using my mind as the brush and the sky as my paper. Observe."
Master Shu tapped the array that he'd inscribed in the air with a single finger. A roar of pure environmental qi rushed forward and created a thick plane of grey-tinted glass, disentangling itself from the array but remaining standing. It emanated nothing except a sense of solidity, like a wall that had stood a thousand years.
"Try it," Master Shu offered.
Jin Murong stepped forward. "Allow me."
One moment, he had nothing in his hands. The next the barrier had already developed immense cracks and Jin Murong was leaning on it, inspecting every single crack the way diviners would inspect tea leaves. His saber was wreathed in immense amounts of power, all of it focused on breaking down the barrier.
With another movement far too fast for Wu Hao's eyes to catch, the Reckless Saber Sovereign's saber disappeared again.
"It would withstand a strike from a veteran first grade," Jin Murong said, his voice composed.
Several of the masters nodded. Others didn't seem quite so convinced. They had formed into little groups while Wu Hao had been unconscious, it seemed. Several of the families stood together, while the Ke brothers seemed almost to form a kind of bridge to the other groupings of sects.
Discussions followed, talking about concepts that Wu Hao had never heard before. There were mentions of Principles, of what this might mean for array masters, of how the balance of things could be upset if the new, independent master chose a particular side...
"We will celebrate this," the Dual Sword Sovereign repeated, cutting through the chatter. "But to do so, we will require a significantly large venue, of course. We would not impose on our newest master the burden of attempting to coordinate."
"If you insist," Master Shu said. He looked around the room. "I look forward to getting out of this dreary room, anyway. I shall prepare some presents of my own, of course."
There was a general amusement at this that Wu Hao didn't quite get, but at the moment he was mostly still trying not to be noticed. There was no rational reason for this other than the simple fact that any of these people could kill him before he could so much as blink.
"Allow me to speak for the others and say that we are looking forward to this event," Brother Mengbo of the Shaolin said, his polite tone at odds with his massive arms, folded over each other, criss-crossed with all sorts of deep scarring. "In the meantime, however, we shall let the young man here go."
The diminutive woman next to him nodded. "Brother Mengbo speaks the truth. We do not wish to compromise his chances at the tournament, after all."
Master Shu paused, his eyes focusing on Wu Hao. Something swirled in his eyes, a deeper recognition. His pupils had split into two, Wu Hao realized, each with the left half white and the other half black.
"Yes," the master said slowly. Wu Hao had no sense for qi left, not with the repeated strikes it'd taken that left his head pounding, but he swore he could see the gears turning in master Shu's head. There was a sinking feeling in his gut as master Shu spoke again.
"I can't compromise my one and only direct disciple's chances at a victory, can I?"