Ten Thousand Tragedies

Wu Hao gave a final resentful look at the insides of the building, including a reception area where a butler was bustling around, trying to get together his master's tea set, and watched Ou Ziye trundle back into the supposed conference room. It wasn't much and it was drafty, but at least it was dry.

Then he gave another look outside. The rain pounded against the doors, the wind had picked up now and blew against the walls, with an occasional whistle of wind keening through the building.

You were a deathsworn, he reminded himself. You've faced much worse than this. You've laid in a latrine for an ambush. Get yourself together.

He'd come back to escape having to do that again, he corrected himself. Life had gotten in the way, though.

With a final sigh he grabbed an umbrella that had been left by the door, cracked it open as wide as it would go. Then he pushed open the door, trudging outside into the rain and the wind. The rain soaked into his clothing almost immediately, and he felt the muted impacts on his umbrella, again and again, even as the wind repeatedly pulled it aside like a child's prank to let the rain blast him.

Nonetheless he felt something. There was a connection here that he couldn't quite identify, that he couldn't quite point to.

He had work to do. Normally he wouldn't have bothered, but Wang Hangsheng held Wu Hao's life in his hands. That, and the sooner this was done the sooner he could get inside.

There was one road that bisected the camp, with the building that he'd just left at its center. Wu Hao didn't know which had come first between the road or the camp, and he didn't much care. The road was made of dirt, which had by now been turned into nothing but sucking mud. Some grass grew at the sides of the road but only thin patches here and there, slick with rain also.

Signs labelled with colors and without any text pointed at several places in the camp, though without knowing what the colors meant Wu Hao could only guess what they were actually navigating to. It'd have been better if they'd just had written text on them, but probably the miners that they were meant to guide couldn't read.

Not a lot of people were out and about, for some reason. Wu Hao looked at the few who were - men in dirty clothes, with hands stained with soot and with tools carried over their shoulders, who moved with the tired purpose of a shift that was nearly over. They clumped together into loose, angry-mute groups. Per group, one of the men was invariably slightly less pale, less tired, and these were the men who Wu Hao figured might have been the group supervisors.

Once, one of these groups of men had seen him and a sort of whisper had rippled through them like a wave. The supervisor detached himself from the group and looked at Wu Hao, clearly feeling something. Without the ability to read the man's qi, though, Wu Hao couldn't put a name to it, and neither did he care.

"Who're you, kid?"

Wu Hao was getting tired of that question. He didn't even bother answering, instead trying to dodge around.

The supervisor was tall enough that he could hunch down and still look down at Wu Hao, so inevitably he got into the way and then Wu Hao was stuck with the supervisor's head just far enough that Wu Hao's umbrella blocked out a bit of the rain.

"You lost or something?" he asked.

"No," Wu Hao said blandly. "I'm on a mission."

The supervisor chuffed with a laugh.

"Right. Who sent you? An older brother, maybe? Your mom, off to find your dad? Anyone we know, maybe? This isn't the time or place for a kid your age to wander. Maybe -"

"I'm looking for a martial artist," Wu Hao said, interrupting the supervisor before he got any other ideas that he felt he had to share. "Tell me if you've seen any."

The supervisor scratched the back of his head.

"What would a martial artist be doing here?" he asked. "Aren't they all travelling the world, slaying evil and frolicking around with beauties?"

No, Wu Hao wanted to say. He was a martial artist and while he'd slain evil of a sort last night, he hadn't found much beauties yet and had found even less opportunity to frolic around with anyone. Not that he had much of an interest in that, at this point. He was 12.

One man behind him snickered. Wu Hao frowned, the movement causing a drop of rain to slide past his right eye.

"Right," he said. "Thanks."

"You sure you want to be out here?" the supervisor asked, tone oddly gentle. "Whatever you're doing, I'm pretty sure it can wait."

Wu Hao snorted. Good luck explaining that to Wang Hangsheng.

"It's fine," he said, and stepped away. "Bye."

He walked away with hurried steps, wondering if maybe the supervisor was going to stop him. Demand what he was doing here, maybe. This man was the equivalent of a Brother. Didn't that mean he had a duty to report interlopers? Wu Hao shook his head and butted it accidentally against the umbrella, droplets of rainwater sliding from the spinning canvas around him.

Then he sniffed, trying to see if he could detect any qi. It wasn't really a conscious decision to sense. It was like seeing. You could close your eyes but that wouldn't mean you didn't see anything unless you blinded yourself. That said, Wu Hao sometimes imagined that putting a physical gesture before he tried to sense qi helped him spot something that he otherwise might not have, and so he kept up the pretense just to fool himself.

But he didn't really spot anything. There were no swathes of color pulsing in the side of his vision, no smells that had the distinct too-realness that hinted at qi. All he saw was mud and tired men and camp tents, and all he smelled was rain and mud and trudging misery.

Behind him he heard a muttered conversation start up, the supervisor explaining that Wu Hao was about the same age as his own son, and for a moment the supervisor stood up straighter, prouder, reminiscing about his wife and his child, before an apparent twinge in his back made him slump again.

Wu Hao sank down in the mud and felt a stab of jealousy. The rain, he decided, was making him broody, and wallowing in that wouldn't serve him at all. He shoved those thoughts aside, but it took him some effort.

It was taking him more and more effort lately, but that was a thought he couldn't dwell on, either.

Instead, he tried to think things through. So.

He could check later if any of the guards here were martial artists, but then again he'd have felt something inside the building itself, if there was a powerful martial artist there. In a place like the Jin clan branch compound, every room and every building had been so filled up with traces of qi that the sheer emptiness of the camp made it seem all the more cavernous.

But why would they demean themselves by doing manual labor like this? It didn't make much sense. The same went for the miners.

Wu Hao was growing increasingly certain that if there had been a martial artist at all, he'd be an outsider to the camp, not someone who stayed here regularly. If the miners didn't know about his coming and going, that probably meant he had to sneak in. Under the cover of night, probably.

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And that was something Wu Hao had more experience with. His aimless trudge on the road turned into a slightly more animated walk, despite the sucking mud, as he began to think that idea through.

How would he enter the camp, if he wanted to sneak in?

The layout was fairly simple. He could sneak in through the tents, if he minded the sound of his steps and made sure to step lightly. He'd ran through the deathsworn camp before and people there had been much more alert than miners here would be, probably.

He made his way to the edge of the camp, walking between the tents. Most were soaked and wet and foul, but he could pick his way between them while avoiding most of the mess.

Really, the problem with the camp wasn't that it was hard to sneak in. In fact, the problem was that it was too easy. Going in through the tents, following the road, evading guard patrols and sneaking in, all that would be extremely easy. This martial artist wouldn't even need anything fancy.

That set his mind buzzing with thoughts and theories, but all of those led nowhere productive. A tour around the camp itself had told him nothing productive, either.

Well, he thought bitterly. What the hell was Wang Hangsheng even expecting of him, really? He could sense qi, but that didn't mean he could somehow sense something that wasn't there.

And he was beginning to suspect that there was just nothing here. Ideally he'd just go in and tell Wang Hangsheng that, but he imagined that he'd just be shoved outside again and told to look again. It was what 726 would've had him do, when he was still a deathsworn.

Shoving his hands into his pockets and feeling droplets of rain slip down his fingers as he did, Wu Hao decided that despite all of that, a few moments of being in a dry place would still be appreciated. He'd go check out the mines, probably find nothing there, and then return to Wang Hangsheng.

Hopefully Wang Hangsheng had wasted his time just as badly. If there actually something here and Wu Hao had just missed it, neither of them would be happy with that.

With another sigh, he spun his umbrella again, turning to the mines themselves. His shoes, made to allow light movement, kept getting stuck in the mud and he didn't dare to pull as hard as he could because then he'd just tear them apart. Even so, the general wetness had long since sunk into his socks and his boots.

Even if he stepped into a dry road, his shoes would still squelch, not that there were any dry roads around.

Wu Hao decided he hated the camp.

Some time later, as he stood in front of the mine with a hand above his eyes to ward off the rain, Wu Hao had to admit that he'd underestimated the size of it. It was a lot more impressive than he'd thought.

Immense struts supported a large cavernous entrance. The inside was lit by lanterns that jutted like teeth in the maw of some enormous beast, and struts had been placed to prop open the jaws of the mountain so men could go inside into its gullet, where Wu Hao presumed the real work was being done.

It wasn't made for large men, though. Wu Hao wasn't tall - in his last life he'd been of below-average size at best, which he told himself was the product of being badly and barely fed. Even then, with a small jump even he could reach the roof of the tunnel, without using any qi. The entire thing seemed to have been carved out from an existing system of caves and then made wider. Dull, grey-veined stone stood out against the sides of the cave, and mud had been tracked across the cave floor. Occasional sounds echoed from deeper within, shouts of frustration or of cajoling men back into work, twisted by the distance into something unrecognizable.

But it was dry, at least. Wu Hao walked in, feeling a sudden relief at the lack of rain pattering against his skin.

More importantly, there were two guards, sat at a table. A jug of wine had been placed nearby but had since fallen on its side, only not spilling by dint of its obvious emptiness. The guards had taken out a pack of cards and were discussing something in low voices when one of them caught sight of Wu Hao. Neither of them were martial artists.

"Oi," the man who'd just seen Wu Hao told his companion. "It's some brat. You want to -"

"I'm here on an errand," Wu Hao said loudly, trying to shortcircuit the entire mess of why he looked so young and if he was looking for anyone and all that. "Wang Hangsheng sent me with the approval of the mine boss."

The guards looked at each other, eyebrows sinking into skeptical expressions.

"Who the hell is Wang Hangsheng?" one of the guards muttered, Wu Hao only understanding him by dint of his enhanced hearing.

The other man scratched at his nose. "No clue. Normally we're s'posed to go check with the boss, aren't we?"

"You want to?" the first guard said, head jerking as if motioning to the outside. Wind blew through as if to illustrate his point further.

The other guard snorted. "No. Pull one of the miners and send them."

"Good plan." The first guard stood up, looked at Wu Hao, and spoke. "One moment. We'll get someone to, er -"

"Confirm your identity," the other guard supplied.

"Yeah."

Wu Hao stood there impatiently as the first guard wandered off, wondering if this wasn't just yet another waste of his time, and waited until the guard had called someone from the inside of the mine to return back upwards to accompany him. Once again there were two.

"How long is this going to take?" he asked.

"Maybe half an hour," the new guard said, having been filled in on the situation. He studied Wu Hao. "So who are you?"

"A martial artist," Wu Hao grumbled.

"Huh," the guard said. "You don't say."

What was that supposed to mean? If the guard wanted a demonstration, then Wu Hao'd be glad to work out some of his frustrations by pulling out his saber and cutting that table in half, but he shelved the idea. That wasn't a pragmatic sort of thought.

Didn't stop him from eyeing the table and his fingers from itching, but still, he restrained himself.

Then his nose caught the scent of something totally different from the mud and rain and wood and cloth and misery. It was something more exotic, something that smelled oddly pure in the same way that qi did to him. Not a real scent, but something his mind presented to him as something like it. It floated above the stone, a minor leak that echoed from the walls of the mines as if let go reluctantly.

Fuck, Wu Hao thought, turning tired eyes at the mine entrance. Wang Hangsheng had had a point in sending him out, and so had Lady Jin.

There was something going on after all. He hated it when people he disliked were right.