Chapter 173: Death & Bitter Medicine, III

After finding someone who had been informed of their arrival beforehand, and after and being brought to their lodgings at the Zhenniao House, Wu Hao got a short hour to himself to think.

What was he doing here? He had gotten the Jade Orchid. He was now a fully-fledged second-grade martial artist. THere was nothing stopping him from simply leaving, master or no master. Wu Hao could strike out on his own.

He would be missing out on instruction from a Sovereign, but that instruction had been limited, anyway. He would be missing out on an easy trip and good, free food, but was that a reason not to get the freedom he wanted? He wouldn't be shackled to Master Shu anymore, wouldn't have to go where the old man decided to wander next.

But, when he thought about actually leaving, he remembered that what Master Shu had said, earlier that day.

"You'd have liked him."

Those words had infected him, he decided. They made it so that whenever he thought about leaving - about just splitting ways with the master, one way or another - he felt a distinct stab of guilt.

It was irrational. It was stupid. Guilt shouldn't be holding him back from doing what he wanted to do, which was gaining his freedom, the last time that he'd checked. He hadn't even done anything yet.

And yet the guilt remained.

At least until there was a knock at the door. It swung open slowly while Wu Hao belatedly ripped a knife from his spatial storage and got himself ready to die again.

"Sir Sovereign," a respectful voice called out into the hallway where Master Shu had shuffled off to. A young voice, at that - a third-grade martial artist. Wu Hao didn't shove the knife away but he did give it a second glance. "It is lovely to meet you. I am Tang Hui, the second child of the Tang Patriarch and the younger sibling of Tang Yue."

Wu Hao peered around the corner.

Sibling? Wu Hao wondered. He wanted to ask if Tang Hui was the younger sister or the younger brother - he found it impossible to tell - but some vague sense of social nicety stopped him. Whatever the answer was, he'd have put his foot in his mouth. At least he recognized the name Tang Yue from somewhere.

"Well met," Master Shu said.

"I am here to bring you to tonight's banquet," Tang Hui said. "Will you follow me, please?"

"Of course," Master Shu said. He stood up. "Lead the way. Come along, disciple."

Evening had fallen over the Tang Clan grounds, and considering it was winter that wasn't so far from night having fallen. Large lanterns hung from every corner like it was a festival. The light played with the white snow that lay over the grounds, though it wasn't laid very thick.

"Did you have a good travel over here?" Tang Hui asked. Whether it was a movement technique or not Wu Hao couldn't have said, but Tang Hui seemed almost to be skipping. "Not waylaid by bandits?"

"Fortunately, no," Master Shu said.

Tang Hui nodded seriously. "That's good to hear."

Similar smalltalk ensued while they walked over to one of the largest halls Wu Hao had ever seen. It wasn't as huge as the Hall of Healing but it was still enormous, a construction of lacquered wood and reinforcing stone. This was a mansion, pure and simple. Courtyards were attached to every side, each with a small garden - it was the Tang, after all. Wu Hao figured that trying to steal some of their herbs would end badly.

They were led past guards, in escalating grades: the outermost were third-grades, the innermost were first-grades. Their weapons were varied, but the weapons he could actually see weren't the weapons Wu Hao figured intruders ought to be worried about.

Tang Hui was humming a melody while skipping along, at least until they arrived in front of a particular room. The doors had been drawn open, revealing a large room that could have seated hundreds. Judging by the steady stream of people coming in and the small number of people actually leaving, that promise of seating hundreds was to be tested tonight.

"The Absent Sovereign," Tang Hui announced in a clear voice.

The man at the head of the banquet who could only be the Sublime Poison Sovereign rose to his feet.

"Welcome!" he said, and though he didn't speak loudly the words had a power to them. Something of the warmth of the room that had no visible sources enveloped them, as if literally pulling them into the atmosphere.

The Patriarch of the Tang Clan was a well-dressed, well put-together man. His purple hair was cut to make him seem a little younger, with a few fringes of his hair slipping out over his forehead whereas the rest of it was trimmed back. In fact, he had to have been at least fifty years old but looked thirty at the utmost, without any of the signs of excessive care being taken of his appearance to make him seem younger. He didn't look like a man who could kill everyone in the banquet room with the wave of his hand. His qi was kept under tight rein, not even a speck of it allowed to leak out.

It was a different kind of tight rein than Wu Hao had seen before, though. Usually when he saw good control of qi, it was like a pressure keeping it all tightly contained, as if too much water had been put into a bucket and someone was forcing the lid down. The Sublime Poison Sovereign's qi was constantly shifting, moving around with every movement he made. Bits and pieces were splitting off, revolving, moving under pressures that were invisible to Wu Hao.

No matter what was going on with his qi, the patriarch grinned at his guests. Master Shu strode forward and bowed slightly, receiving a small bow in return. Then, as if part of some rehearsed show, Master Shu grasped the Sublime Poison Sovereign's hand in a more intimate greeting, like that between brothers.

"Good to see you again," Master Shu said, at a volume that was just audible to everyone around them but made his words seem intimate. "It's been a while, old friend."

Tang Shibai laughed. "Never mind all that! Let's forget all that came before and celebrate that we're once more standing on the same stage, the way old friends should. Come on, sit down!"

The Sublime Poison Sovereign, Wu Hao decided, was friendly and all, so much so that it confused him. Where was the imperiousness, the ruthlessness, the demanding respect? This just wasn't how old men with even a speck of power acted, in his experience. Especially considering his nickname.

Weren't poisoners meant to be devious and evil? Looking at this smiling middle-aged man it was hard to imagine.

Next to the Sublime Poison Sovereign sat another contestant of the Winter Solstice Tournament. Now that he saw her face, he could put the name Tang Yue to her. He'd never fought her, but he'd hoped that he would. She had seemed easier to beat, in Wu Hao's estimation, because he could become immune to poisons with enough tries. Probably.

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At the tournament, though, she'd been clad in martial robes. Her long dark purple hair had been tied back into a ponytail so that it wouldn't get in the way. She'd worn hidden weapons everywhere hidden weapons could be worn - on the hips, on her legs, on the under arm. Presumably there were a few more hidden elsewhere too. She had looked fierce, even though he'd been sceptical at the idea of wearing hidden weapons openly.

Now she looked different. No more robes meant to be easy to move around in, and no more hair tied back: instead she was dressed to impress, with her hair pinned into a complicated shape with a few thin rods of steel keeping it together. Her robes were a little too wide, exposing a graceful neck that made Wu Hao think of a swan. There were thin arrays engraved into the silk of the robe. It'd be a mistake to think that she'd be any less lethal in these clothes, he realized, even if she was meant to look like a noble's do-nothing daughter.

Still, though, he kind of preferred the way she looked during the Winter Solstice Tournament.

He gave that thought some space while he worked his way through an endless series of people greeting him, each of them informing him that he was the disciple of the Absent Sovereign and that they were happy to meet him at last. As someone was bowing to him and he was waiting his turn impatiently to bow again, he wondered: was it bad that he preferred women who clearly knew how to fight?

That wasn't weird, right? For some reason he thought he smelled something, but the scent fled before he could figure out what it was.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, young hero Wu," another man said, his bow perfectly polite. Wu Hao bowed back even though he'd heard nothing of what the man had said.

"Likewise."

Wu Hao turned again, wondering if there was anyone else left he had yet to greet - but he'd mostly worked his way through, it seemed. Relieved, he sat down where he'd been directed to, earlier - next to Master Shu, who was still working his way through his own queue of guests who wanted to discuss everything under the sun with him.

There was a whisper of movement around Wu Hao that set his senses on edge, but it was just a servant putting down a set of plates with such speed that martial arts had to be involved.

"Feel free to eat if you're hungry," Tang Hui said. "I know it's a banquet, but it really started when you and your master walked in. You don't need to wait on us."

Wu Hao glanced at Tang Hui again, trying to gauge if this was one of those "offer you're not supposed to accept" kind of things. He decided that, everything else aside, he was hungry, and if it really was rude then they shouldn't have offered.

He studied the dishes on offer. He'd heard a lot about Sichuan cuisine. Most of it, he decided, probably wasn't true, but he didn't recognize any of the dishes.

That said, he picked up a dish of some sort of slice of ... something. He'd never before fretted about what he put into his mouth, so why start now? Wu Hao smelled it - very fragrant, in ways he couldn't quite put a word to - then he bit down and chewed.

Then he nearly spat fire. A few of the people around him laughed, though Tang Hui passed him a glass of milk that had been prepared beforehand.

Wu Hao gulped it down gratefully, wiping his mouth afterwards with a grimace.

"Did you poison that?" he asked, to more laughter.

Tang Hui smiled. "Young hero Wu isn't familiar with Sichuan cuisine, I see. Let me be your tour guide, in that case! Let's see. Take these, for instance, they're called 'ants climbing a tree'..."

The evening rolled on.

Master Shu was being toasted by everyone who could conceivably toast him. Cups were sunk repeatedly, dedicated to almost everything that the drinkers could imagine: to the accession of a new Sovereign, to the fact that the Sovereign had such a talented disciple, to there having been one hundred years of peace.

That last one had turned Master Shu's expression even more pensive, but he chugged the cup down without thinking about it any further, as he did all the others. No matter how much wine or alcohol he drank, though, there was no indication he was getting even slightly drunk.

"It's a little like homecoming for the Sovereign, don't you think?" Tang Hui asked.

"What do you mean?" Wu Hao asked.

"He hasn't told you?" Tang Hui asked. "Your master was once an independent martial artist. He grew up not far from here, a farmer's son."

"Huh," Wu Hao said. "No, he's not told me anything."

Tang Hui chewed their bottom lip.

"Perhaps it's better if I don't, either. If your master hasn't told you then I'm sure he's got his reasons."

Wu Hao was about to open his mouth to say that the old man probably had just forgotten in the light of everything else they had yet to talk about, but then he was interrupted.

The Sublime Poison Sovereign clapped his hands. A pulse of bitter medicinal power spread gently through the room, a sense of general healthiness spreading along with it. Wu Hao's own small little aches and the lingering faint pain of eating too much food that was far spicier than anything else he'd usually eat was swept away.

Those little qualms weren't gone, though. Instead they were absorbed back into the qi as it spread, before the same pulse came receding like the tide and reached back into the Sovereign's waiting hands. With a small flicker of movement his hands moved faster than the eye could track, and when they went still again the diseased qi had gone.

"I think it is time," he said. "What say you, Renqing?"

Master Shu rose to his feet smoothly. He bore no trace of having become drunk himself - it was as if the wine didn't affect him at all.

"I agree," he said. "Let's go, then. You have a place picked out?"

"I do," Tang Shibai said. "Follow me, please."

For once, the Sovereigns didn't move in blurs of qi, or even so fast that even the blur was impossible to catch. Instead they made their way, side by side, down the hall, heading somewhere in particular.

Everyone else in the room rose to their feet - at least the ones who could, and of those not all of them were especially steady, either. It was as if a signal had been given. There was a sudden sense of qi being purged, clouds of it emerging from the drunkards' bodies as they forced themselves back into sobriety.

"What's happening?" Wu Hao asked, standing up himself. Tang Hui looked at him with an odd expression.

"It's the Sovereign's challenge," Tang Hui said, with a hushed voice. "They're going to have a friendly spar."

Wu Hao's eyes widened. Without saying another word he began to make his way through the crowd, with Tang Hui following him closely.

This he had to see.