Ten Thousand Tragedies

The moment they'd left that quiet room that felt like it was empty even though it wasn't, Wu Hao turned to Bai Yiju.

"What's wrong with him?" Wu Hao asked bluntly.

"I don't know what you mean," Bai Yiju tried.

"What's wrong with the grandmaster?"

"There's nothing wrong."

"Don't be asinine," Wu Hao said, staring the other boy down despite being less tall. "Tell me."

Bai Yiju sniffed. "Find out for yourself, if you think there's something wrong. We have things to do. I must tell you what your duties are -"

"I'll go ahead and ask him, then," Wu Hao said. "Maybe give him a little push? He's a first-grade martial artist, after all."

"The grandmaster is deep in enlightenment," Bai Yiju snapped. "Do not disturb him. Do not attempt to move him."

Wu Hao snorted. "How long has he been 'deep in enlightenment'?"

Bai Yiju's jaw worked, before he visibly swallowed his frustrations and turned around.

"Come along," he said. "I'll teach you where the washing rooms are and which stores to source new paper from. You are also expected to grind out the ink, and the waste for any spillage will come out of your salary -"

But Wu Hao stood his ground.

"Tell me," he said, and let his qi rise to his skin. He didn't have a weapon, but he did have the Heavy Fist Art, and for an opponent of Bai Yiju's caliber that would more than suffice.

Glaring at him with hate in his eyes, Bai Yiju was on the verge of speaking - which would have ended badly for him - when a presence swept through the room, a man walking in. He bore similar robes to Grandmaster Shu, though less elaborate and less blinding in the sheer amount of qi thread that had been worked into it.

He was a refined sort of man, with thin glasses perching on his nose and a generally scholarly sense to him. The sort of man who would read through musty books and categorize them neatly, Wu Hao thought, and would do so as a hobby. Whoever he was, he would have made a good fit with Jin Qilong; at the same time their conversation would have been so dry as to be excruciating.

"Ten or so years now," he said calmly. "The master has been in deep meditation ever since that time. We feel his touch through the arrays that run everything in this mansion; hence we know he's alive and still worrying about us, to some degree. He isn't dead or trapped in sleep, if that's what you're wondering."

Wu Hao let his grip on his qi go. This man still didn't exude a presence of strength, not like what he'd sensed from others like the second-grade martial artists that he'd killed by now, and especially not from the first-grade martial artists, who had been able to choke him with the sheer power of their qi alone.

All the same, though, he was supremely confident. The patterns of his robes came to a stop, resting against the arrays etched into every floorboard, and he was ready to receive any attack that Wu Hao could have thrown at him.

"I am Wang Bin," he said. Wu Hao blinked. That name was familiar to him somehow, though he found it difficult to remember how or when or where he'd heard it. "I'm Bai Yiju's teacher, and I will be yours as well, presuming you are the new boy."

"I am. My name is Wu Hao."

Wang Bin nodded. "I see. Good. I have taken a significant sum from the Beggars' Union to allow you to be present here. I hope you will not waste their kindness."

That was blunter than Wu Hao had expected. He didn't mind, though - blunt was good, clear, honest.

He still gave the man's qi a second look just to make sure, but the feeling that he sensed was a comfortable, refined gray tinged with distant green - a sort of mint-like flavor, if he had to put a name to it.

"I will prove myself," Wu Hao said, and he knew that he would.

"Good," Wang Bin said again. "Come with me."

He moved to one of the staircases that dotted the mansion, and instead of going up as Bai Yiju had done, Wang Bin went down further, into a basement that Wu Hao hadn't realized was there. It was locked away with a thick, wooden door, and next to it sat a nameplate that read, simply, "Apprentice's Rooms".

The plural was apt, because behind that door the basement had been divided into several rooms. Each was a third of the size of the rooms above, which made them cramped, and while one of them had been cleaned, the others were full of dust.

He was led to one particular room, which had all the same bare essentials - a desk, writing utensils, and a heavy load of books stocking the shelves. Nearby, under the desk, Wu Hao spotted a small bed roll that seemed like it hadn't seen an occupant for years now.

A very small window, located to the upper right of the room so that it was impossible to look at while sitting at the desk, looked out at the estate's garden. A plant blocked most of it from sight, leaving little more than the distant drab walls in view.

"This is your room," Wang Bin said. He frowned down and then summoned his qi, which bubbled up to his hands in a small wave of mint-scented power. He placed it against an array located at the side of the room, which he activated, and then a fresh breeze came up out of nowhere and began to blow all the dust away.

The breeze ripped slightly at the books and their pages moved in the wind, but it'd been precisely calibrated to give just enough force that none of the books moved until the dust had been cleared away and rolled into a small dustbin, without much in the way of additional movement. Yet another beautiful example of the kinds of uses arrays could be put to.

"Take that out later," Wang Bin said, pointing. "And get a new bedroll. Bai Yiju will bring you some paper later that you can use for practice. You'll be provided with fifty sheets to begin your apprenticeship; anything else will come out of your salary. I will provide you with a few sheets of high-quality paper which you can use for official tests. Don't use them for any other purpose."

That was... generous, Wu Hao thought.

"Now, Yiju can explain the rest of it to you later," he said, and then he shot a glance at Bai Yiju. "Including automated ink grinders that don't waste anything."

"Teacher," Bai Yiju whined, which got him a dismissive sort of glance.

"We are scholars," Wang Bin chided. "Scholars are, above all, meant to be impartial - we pursue true knowledge, untainted by emotion and the like. To realize that you are letting your preconceptions color your work and your words - that is a sign you've yet to learn the true character worthy of a scholar."

Bai Yiju flinched and Wu Hao took a bit of effort to make sure that he didn't smirk. He might not have entirely succeeded: the blank face was becoming more difficult to maintain lately, for whatever reason.

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"Now," Wang Bin said. "I have a dinner that I'm expected at in one hour. It'll take me twenty minutes to get there without hurrying. In the meantime, I'm giving you your first assignment as an apprentice, Wu Hao."

"Right. What is it?"

"You will refer to him as teacher," Bai Yiju interrupted. Why had he gotten angry at that? Wu Hao could see his emotions, sure, but that didn't mean he understood them.

"No," Wu Hao said. "I don't think I will."

"I do not care," Wang Bin interrupted. "Yiju, get back to your room. You've got work enough left to do."

"But -" the other boy whined, and then he was given a look that sent him muttering out of the room.

A short silence fell. Wu Hao didn't shift, but he felt Wang Bin's eyes on him, studying him like an array.

"You want the crown," Wang Bin said, once Bai Yiju was out of earshot.

"Yes," Wu Hao said. He saw no reason to deny it, and besides, this sudden turn was interesting. "Were you told that?"

"No," Wang Bin said. "An educated guess, considering your backers. Besides, I want it too."

He leaned against the desk, waiting to see what Wu Hao made of this. Wu Hao was surprised, but he tried not to show it.

"Have you seen it?" Wang Bin asked.

"I have."

"Then you know that it's based on the work of an unknown master," Wang Bin said. "Which means that its secrets are ripe for the taking. It's quite the hot commodity, really. We won't get a look at it before every other master has had it, trying to puzzle out how it works. What its fundamental principles are."

He gave Wu Hao a look. The look in his eyes seemed somehow confident that the others weren't going to find anything.

"It'll take a few months before we get it," he added. "Unfortunately, that's because of how tight the chains of seniority bind us around here."

Months? Wu Hao grimaced. He'd expected this to be far less long than that.

A thought occurred to him, though.

"Won't the Alliance press if it takes too long?"

Wang Bin laughed, which resounded oddly in the small room.

"They asked it of us as a favor," he said. "If it takes a year or two, we'll maybe have to apologize a bit. Array Masters are precious and Array Masters are overworked constantly. No one has much hope for finding anything at all, let alone in a timeframe shorter than a few months."

Wu Hao stared up at the man and took a deep breath, but he couldn't sense anything about the other man's qi that felt off. There was just that simple, sunny scent of mint. A light grey fog flitted throughout the room where Wang Bin's qi had floated.

"Right," Wang Bin said, and veered upright. "Let's get on with it. What's your level of expertise with arrays?"

"I understand the principles," Wu Hao said.

Wang Bin raised an eyebrow.

"Do you?" he asked lightly. "Because that is a very bold claim. I was told you probably didn't know any arrays at all."

"I know a few," Wu Hao said.

Wang Bin nodded, rummaged around, and cleared enough of a space on the desk that Wu Hao could actually see some of the wood beneath. He placed a blank sheet of paper down, then handed Wu Hao a specifically selected brush and leaned against the bookshelf. It was untreated paper - the cheap kind, too.

"We've got about twenty minutes," he said. "So. Draw me an array, Wu Hao."

"What kind of array?" Wu Hao asked.

Wang Bin shrugged. "Any kind of array."

So Wu Hao did. He rolled the brush around with his fingers until he'd mostly gotten a grip for it. He'd never actually used a proper brush before. The last time he'd written, he'd had to use his fingers as brushes and blood as his ink. It wasn't so difficult, though the lightness of the thing took him a bit to adjust to.

When he was done, he'd painted a simple array that would sent out a rending pulse of qi. Used against a civilian it could rip them apart from head to toe; used against a third-grade martial artist it could inflict decent wounds, though they probably wouldn't be mortal. Against anyone higher than that it'd be useless. It was inspired by the Rending Dagger Art.

Still, for a few minutes' effort, he'd done better than he thought. Especially because his specialty was in breaking arrays, not in creating them.

"This is better than I expected," Wang Bin said softly, studying the array. "It sends out an attack, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Amateurs often come here with a variety of bad habits, you know. They focus on flourishes or complexity above all else, thinking that a more complex array is necessary when a simple array might suffice. Others attempt arrays that they have no ways of managing, or attempt to change what an array does while executing the drawing itself. These are foolish habits, and the longer they've had to sink in, the worse they are to correct."

Wu Hao nodded. He could imagine that.

"But you don't have these habits," Wang Bin said, turning it around. "In fact, you've got a set of entirely new problems that I rarely encounter with beginners. Interesting. Who taught you?"

"I'm self-taught," Wu Hao said, and then added: "I studied a few arrays from sight."

Wang Bin's lips quirked. He turned, plucked a few books from the shelves with simple movements, then placed them gently down on the desk.

"From sight? Yes, I recall. You can see qi. That does explain some things."

"So -" Wu Hao said, before he was interrupted.

"That doesn't mean you still don't have a lot of studying to do," Wang Bin said, pointing at the first of the books. "Read all these. We will meet once a day and discuss what you've learned, so that I may correct your misconceptions sooner rather than later. And so it doesn't get in the way of your chores."

Wu Hao nodded. Fine - there were a few chores. Annoying, admittedly, and he did prefer the days at the Crane's Nest where everything was taken care of for him, but that had been the only period in his life where he hadn't been some sort of lackey. He was no stranger to hard work.

"Which book do I start with?" he asked.

"Any of them," Wang Bin called. He had already turned and strode from the room. "I'll quiz you tomorrow. I'm off to dinner. Ask Bai Yiju if you need anything."

Sighing, Wu Hao sat down at the desk again. He looked at the sheer mass of paper arrayed on the wood, collected in every single form imaginable, so heavy that the wood seemed to be groaning beneath its weight.

This was going to be a long, long apprenticeship. He was beginning to regret it already.