Ten Thousand Tragedies

Wu Hao knew that they'd begun to get nearer to the mining camp the moment the first droplets of rain began their drumbeat against the roof of the carriage. He'd had the dim hope that maybe the rain wouldn't have happened in this version of today, but it had, and now he was going to have to deal with the fact that he'd get soaking wet again.

Ou Ziye grumbled something under his breath at the first signs of bad weather, which faded into the general pitter-patter of the rain, and then the relative silence resumed until they'd actually arrived.

He could feel the camp, at that point. The carriage slowed and in the distance, he could feel a few vague, indistinct qi signatures. The guards, though he still hadn't actually met most of them face to face.

Didn't matter, though. They weren't important to his plan.

"What do you sense?" Wang Hangsheng demanded.

"Two at the edge of third-grade," Wu Hao said. Then he sniffed loudly, making a spectacle of having his nose crinkle and his eyes move over. "And I think..."

Wang Hangsheng's expression, which had relaxed a fraction when Wu Hao had mentioned the guards, clammed up again.

"What?" he asked.

"I can't be sure," Wu Hao said. "I'll need to check."

"Tell me," Wang Hangsheng ordered. His qi bubbled to outside his skin and his hand twitched, moving slightly over to where Wang Hangsheng kept his saber. "If you're thinking of escaping -"

Ou Ziye, who'd been sitting and watching the conversation, nearly fell from the bench in his sudden surprise. His bushy eyebrows veered upwards.

"Hold on," he said. "What's this about escaping?"

"I'm not escaping," Wu Hao emphasized, ignoring the old man. "I know better than that."

Wang Hangsheng stared down Wu Hao, who stared back in return until his eyes itched, and their stalemate was broken only because someone knocked on the door.

"Excuse me," a male voice said. "I'm Lu Shibao, the mine overseer. These are several of our mine workers and my guards. Prefect Shi informed us that we might expect a visit from you soon. You're earlier than I thought you'd be."

"Wang Hangsheng," the guard spoke. "Division leader of the Red Saber Battallion of the Jin Clan. Here to inspect the mines."

"Yes," the mine overseer said, rubbing his hands. "Er, well, let's head inside, shall we?"

Wang Hangsheng gave an unimpressed look, then folded his arms and nodded. The overseer smiled, a gesture that wasn't repaid in kind, and then stepped aside so Wang Hangsheng could walk out.

But before that, he turned to Wu Hao.

"Fine," Wang Hangsheng growled. "Then go. Don't get any stupid ideas in your head, because whatever miseries you think you've seen won't be able to match a tenth of what I'd inflict on you for lying to me."

"Yeah," Wu Hao said woodenly. "Sure."

Wang Hangsheng had time for another glare before he strode to the door, pulling it open with more force than was necessary. Ou Ziye gave a small smile that he hid too late for any of them not to notice. Wu Hao imagined the old man had to be on Wang Hangsheng's shitlist after that.

As Wang Hangsheng barked orders to the men outside, Wu Hao took a cloak from his travelling bag, wrapped it around himself, and then hoisted the rest of it up to his back. The claw poked into his shoulders, but he hid the reflexive wince.

He couldn't help pulling the cloak tighter around himself the moment he walked into the drizzling rain, though. He watched Wang Hangsheng walk confidently over to the main building, and watched the smith hobble after them with occasional huffing and squelching.

Then he took the path that would lead him straight to the mines.

This time there were no concerned mine supervisors, no men who took an interest in Wu Hao for whatever reason. The few that Wu Hao did encounter hurried along without giving him a second look. Otherwise nothing was different. The tents still leaned against the wind, he still felt the mud sucking at his shoes with every step. He swore he could smell a latrine in the distance, a byproduct of his enhanced senses that he could've happily done without.

Worst of all, there was something about the way the rain pattered. It felt like he was on the edge of grasping something important, but he didn't have the slightest idea what that actually was.

Even with the cloak he was absolutely soaked through after a while. Couldn't there be some sort of qi art that kept his clothes clean and dry?

He laughed at himself for the thought alone. Father would've killed him without a second glance, if he'd uttered something like it.

It didn't make the stomping through the mud and the driving rain and the chilling wind and the general stench and misery of the camp any better. It just made him realize that he'd had worse, and he'd survived that too.

Well, sort of. He was still here, and that counted.

Wu Hao arrived at the cave system that functioned as the entrance to the mines. He stared up at the roof of its mouth. Rain gathered speed on its way down the mountain walls, forming a curtain of dripping water that he shouldered his way through.

The dryness itched at him for a moment, from the utter wetness of the outside, before he shook off his cloak. When he looked up again he was met with two frowning faces - the guards that guarded the tunnel that led from the cave to the mine proper, and the rooms inside.

"Who're you?" one of them asked, the same one that'd spotted Wu Hao earlier. Not the clever one who'd grabbed the bell, but the other one.

Wu Hao inhaled, exhaled, placed his bag down next to him, adn then stared down the guards.

"Wu Hao," he said. "Ward of the Jin Clan. Future member of the Red Saber Battalion."

He wasn't sure that was a real title, or that he had right to it, but what the hell did he care?

They looked at each other, looked back. Wu Hao hadn't really bothered to distinguish between them before, but now he noticed a shock of red hair beneath the taller one's helmet.

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"You two," he said. "What are your names?"

"I'm Ye Er," the one without the red hair said. He had a wide face, with cheeks that hadn't seemed able to slough off their baby fat. "That's Old Gu. What d'you wanna know for, kid?"

Wu Hao nodded, and then with a smooth motion he drew his saber from its sheathe. It was almost comical, in a way, the way that their eyes fixated on it, realized that he hadn't just been carrying around a big empty sheathe, the way their eyes licked at the edges of his bandit's saber. It wasn't at all sharp, but Wu Hao figured that he could see the men cut their confidence to ribbons on it almost by accident.

"Tell me," Wu Hao demanded. He tried to imitate Wang Hangsheng, aiming for his imperiousness. "Did you know that there's a martial artist in there?"

Another look, back and forth, and back to Wu Hao. Old Gu swallowed.

"No," he said. "A martial artist? I don't know anything. Er... sir?"

Ye Er gave his partner a perplexed look.

"What d'you mean, no? Weren't you telling me about the rumours that -"

Old Gu went pale, slapped a hand over Ye Er's mouth, and his frightened eyes locked onto Wu Hao. He didn't have qi, but Wu Hao could feel him try to gather himself, imagined the thoughts running through his mind.

"I don't care," Wu Hao said bluntly. "Rumours or not. Tell me."

Ye Er punched away Old Gu's hand, set his jaw. "Right. Well, it's just a rumour, as I said. Everyone's heard it, but it's the sort of thing that everyone's heard from someone else, right? You know how it is. It's like how everyone says that Ren Batian can't have kids because he once -"

"Get on with it," Wu Hao snapped.

Ye Er's mouth snapped shut and his jaw worked before he spoke again.

"People have been seen running through the camp at night," he said. "Not running like you or I would, though. They leave mounds of stone in their wake. There's a crew of men that's been tasked to clear them up, but no one wants to actually say who these men are. Bet they get paid for it, so -"

"How many people?" Wu Hao interrupted.

"The crew?" Ye Er asked, scratching beneath his helmet. "Five men, thereabouts?"

Wu Hao's eyes twitched.

"How many martial artists?" he asked.

"Oh," Ye Er said. He shrugged. "Don't know. Never seen any, myself. I could ask around?"

"No," Wu Hao said. It was harder to imitate Wang Hangsheng when this was the man he was trying to intimidate. It was like he didn't even register that that was what was going on. "Ye Er, was it?"

"That's me," the cheerful response came.

"You're going to go to the main building," Wu Hao commanded. "Find a man named Wang Hangsheng. Tell him that I've found the one we're looking for."

"Right," Ye Er said. "Only, er - I'm not supposed to leave?"

"Go," Wu Hao snapped, and Ye Er gave another reluctant glance before he came alive again and started slogging his way out into the rain. "And quickly, man!"

Ye Er gave a muttered rebuke to this and then began to pretend to jog. Despite himself Wu Hao began to feel an odd urge to smile.

He turned back, ready to get started on his plan, but then his eyes narrowed.

Old Gu was still standing there. No, that wasn't quite accurate: he'd moved back, as if blocking the entrance to the mine from Wu Hao.

"Move," Wu Hao said. "Or you will be moved."

He cringed inside as he said it, but Old Gu did hesitate, at least for a few beats before his mind reasserted himself.

"It's my job," he said mulishly. "Boss told me to not let anyone who isn't a miner in. You're not a miner, kid."

He took a breath. "You're probably not even a real martial artist, aren't you? You've got the fancy robes but you don't have the refinement. You look like any other gutter rat, same as I was. You stole them from somewhere, didn't you?"

"Yeah?" Wu Hao asked.

"Yeah," Old Gu said, and then he gained a cast to his jaw that meant that he'd decided this was what he was going to do and he wasn't to be dissuaded.

Wu Hao pushed qi to his feet, exploding forwards. His feet skimmed across the ground, but he overshot - he landed a step or two behind Old Gu, instead of in front of him.

Then he smashed the side of his saber into Old Gu's leg, sending him collapsing down to the ground like a sack of apples. It wasn't very kind but it wasn't a weather for kindness.

"I am a martial artist," Wu Hao said into the silence. Old Gu groaned in a low voice, clutching at his leg. Wu Hao might have said more, but he wasn't here to posture over some random guard.

He placed his saber over his shoulder, walking the rest of the steps over to the table where the guards had sat. He reached out, taking up the golden bell. When this bell had been rung in his last life, it'd summoned a bunch of guards. It hadn't mattered then, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his time until everything kicked off beating up random guards, either.

He waited several minutes, allowing the guard he'd kicked down to rise clumsily to his feet. He glared at Wu Hao but, when Wu Hao's eyes met his, the guard twisted his neck in a haste to pretend to have been doing anything else.

Far away, in the distance, he felt a sudden rearing of qi as Wang Hangsheng reacted to something. The messenger that Wu Hao had sent, probably. There was a momentary flare that pinged off Wu Hao's senses despite the dampening of the qi, and then it went quiet again. Wu Hao felt a momentary shiver run up his spine. Wang Hangsheng had to be coming, he figured.

In response, Wu Hao sent pulses of his own qi into the earth, prodding deeper, trying to cause the man hiding down below to notice him. To notice that he himself had been noticed.

Moments later, a deep, bone-shaking rumble began to bubble up from the earth below. The ground trembled as if in fear and Wu Hao swayed, senses pushing themselves to the limit to try and grasp something around him. He was curious to see which of the two might reach him first.

Wu Hao grinned. The game was on.