After Old Qin had left, Wu Hao spent a few moments more, thinking. Then, feeling a yawn threaten to crack his jaw, he glanced back at his bed, before flinching back.

  Father wouldn't have allowed him more sleep. In fact, he'd be glad to have gotten a bed at all, under Father's commands.

  Fuck Father, Wu Hao decided, and he laid back on top of the bed. It was still warm and soft, but it didn't feel as warm as it had at night, and the softness of it felt wrong, somehow. He supposed he simply wasn't used to this sort of thing, and he turned around a few times to find a position that was sufficiently uncomfortable.

  But sleep was slow in returning, and somehow he was hungry again even though he'd just eaten last night, and then nature began to call as well. Annoyed with himself for conceding to the needs of being human, he stood up again, grabbed all his stuff, and went looking for whatever lay beyond his own room.

  A toilet was surprisingly hard to find. None of the doors were marked with anything, the ones that were had names on them and were locked besides, and there didn't seem to be much of anyone around to answer his questions.

  Finally he found a toilet almost by coincidence, a floor down from where his chamber had been, and it took him a flustered few moments to grapple with his saber to step inside and close the door. As he stepped out, he was greeted with the stiff face of a man in a grey uniform, whose eyes were perpetually downcast at the floor. He looked up as he saw Wu Hao, though, and his brow furrowed.

  No qi, though. Wu Hao decided the man was a servant. The lack of a saber was another clue, and probably the best one he'd get.

  "Pardon," he said as Wu Hao froze at the surprise of seeing a living human being. "Might I ask who you are?"

  "Wu Hao."

  "So it is the young master's guest," the servant said, eyes doing some quick shifting. "Apologies, sir. May I ask what sir is doing in the servant's quarters at nine o'clock?"

  "I slept here," Wu Hao said. Then, just to make sure there were no misunderstandings, he added: "In the rooms that were pointed out to me on Lady Jin's instructions."

  "Of course, sir," the servant replied, in an even sort of tone. "But..."

  "What?" Wu Hao asked.

  "Was sir not expected at the sparring session an hour ago?" the servant asked, his polite wording masking the clear undertone: Wu Hao was not where he ought to have been.

  "Was I?" Wu Hao said. "No one told me."

  The servant frowned. "A regrettable oversight, sir."

  Wu Hao blinked. "Why?"

  "Lady Jin has made it known that she despises slackers," the servant said. When Wu Hao didn't seem to get it, he added: "Being thought of as avoiding sparring might be seen as laziness, sir."

  Oh.

  "I'd best get going immediately, wouldn't I?" Wu Hao asked.

  "That might be wise, sir."

  "Lead the way," Wu Hao said. The servant simply cocked his head.

  "As sir wishes," the servant said. "Although..."

  "What?" Wu Hao asked.

  "What is that smell, sir?" the servant asked. "If you don't mind me asking?"

  "Medicinal paste," Wu Hao said.

  "I... see," the servant replied. It was clear he was thinking something, but he had no qi, so Wu Hao couldn't read his emotions, and nothing in his tone gave away anything else, either.

  In the end, the servant simply stepped back from the door, inclining his head just a smidge. "If sir would follow me?"

  Again that dizzying array of corridors, gardens, stone paths - Wu Hao was feeling more and more certain that he'd never learn his way around the place. It was simply too big to live in. Why were there multiple kitchens set up? Wasn't it a little ridiculous that there were multiple parts of the compound with stables, and men to crew each of the stables and attend to the horses?

  Wu Hao didn't get it, and the thought slid away quickly, anyway. He still hadn't had breakfast, either, but he ignored the pang of hunger, though it was harder than usual. This body was a pain in the ass.

  The servant led him to the same pathway that would lead him to the sparring arena, and there he left Wu Hao to take the final steps on his own, hurrying away to some next task himself with a muttered apology.

  The students were gathered in the stone square, in a rectangular sort of formation. Each was holding their sabers in some sort of movement, and in Wu Hao's eyes he saw the vague shimmer of qi cover the entire group, pooling together in the middle as they moved. As the instructor in front made a sharp movement with his hand, they all moved at more or less the same time with a shout, and the qi that'd pooled in the middle shifted, barrelling forward into the air, cutting from up to down.

  Wu Hao's eyes traced the qi's path, wondering what he was seeing. A distant memory of years in the future surfaced: Shizhen, the man of the Jin clan, who he'd met near the battlefield of the Third Heavenly Demon War, asking if perhaps he knew a formation.

  This must have been what he meant, then. To Wu Hao's eyes, how it worked was fairly obvious - by gathering all their qi together and acting in concert, the qi that they all gathered was directed along the same purpose. Together, they could use attacks on the level of someone halfway into the first-grade, and that was despite them all being only third-grade martial artists, at most.

  But then he supposed that this came at a price, too. If he squinted he could see faint knots build up in the qi cloud that hung over the group, where it concentrated above two people.

  One was Shan Kong. The other was Yi Wei. There was a faintly darker concentration above Jin Qilong's head than everyone else, but not all that much more than average.

  Wu Hao wondered what that meant. Was it simply qi, or was the concentration a sign of something else?

  Another shout broke his concentration, and he shuffled forwards, studying the formation.

  Yu Xiong, still the teacher in charge today, gave him an impassive glance, and then ignored Wu Hao until the exercise was over, which Yu Xiong announced with a shout. Several of the people in the formation sagged down from relief.

  "Well, well," Yi Wei murmured when he'd decided to just walk up to her. "Look who finally deigned to join us."

  "How come you're late?" Jin Qilong asked, his brows creasing with worry. Neither he nor Yi Wei seemed all that tired, though Wu Hao chalked that up to qi improving their physical bodies.

  "No one told me I had to be here," Wu Hao said.

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  "None of the servants mentioned it last night?" Jin Qilong asked, his frown growing. "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. Why?"

  Jin Qilong looked over to Yi Wei, who scoffed something, and a sharp whispered discussion broke out. Wu Hao didn't really understand and neither did he care: he decided to simply focus on getting the movements right, trying to force what he'd just seen into memory.

  The saber left his sheathe and he tried to copy the movement, remembering Yi Wei's pose as he lifted his saber high, took a whirling step forward, and slashed out at nothing.

  His memory suggested another step, a whirling slash, and he tried it, only to stumble slightly as he did. It didn't quite feel natural. It was like he was in a trance, though, and he managed to right himself before he fell, and instead he used the momentum to step into the next movement, a thrusting slice meant to open a man's belly, feeling the air stir around the edge of his saber.

  That was all that he'd seen, though, and he breathed heavily as he came back to himself. The faint vestiges of the others' qi fell away from him, and he hadn't even been aware that he'd touched that. Or that that was even possible.

  "What was that?" Yi Wei demanded.

  "What I just saw," Wu Hao said, then shook his head. "It's lacking, though."

  "Was that your first time?" she asked.

  "Yeah," Wu Hao said. "Why?"

  Her mouth opened, tried to find something to say to him, and then finally her qi carried a sort of emotion that he found hard to interpret: some respect, some spite. Grudging respect, maybe? Another new emotion, he figured. He could've done without the grudge, though.

  "You might actually have some talent," she admitted, and then felt the need to add: "Besides that one slip!"

  "Right?" Jin Qilong said, smiling as if it was his own talent that was being praised. "Have you ever seen the Dragon Killing Saber Formation before, Wu Hao?"

  "Is that what it's called?" Wu Hao asked. "No, not that I recall. I just moved according to what I remembered, and what felt vaguely right."

  Jin Qilong's smile grew wider, especially when he turned to Yi Wei.

  "See?"

  She stomped off, muttering unkind things under her breath that Wu Hao couldn't hear but that Jin Qilong could.

  "What's her deal?" Wu Hao asked, the moment she'd left.

  "Her father is the vice-commander -" Jin Qilong began, and Wu Hao rolled his eyes.

  "Of the Red Saber Battalion, which your mother commands," he interrupted. "I know. I don't know anything else about her."

  "Right," Jin Qilong said, a little thrown. "Well, anyway. The problem with Yi Wei is that she thinks I'm a weakling."

  "Thinks?" Wu Hao muttered.

  Jin Qilong winced.

  "She's not wrong," he admitted, which was a problem in and of itself, and sighed. "But, well. Our positions are both hereditary. So I'll become the next commander and she'll become the next vice-commander, probably. At the same time, she doesn't like me at all. She'll do what I ask and nothing more. Yi Wei is talented, too, so the fact that she can actually beat me in a fight just makes it worse."

  "Huh," Wu Hao said.

  "If I was more like Shan Kong..." Jin Qilong said, thinking out loud, but then shook his head. "I'm not, though."

  "No," Wu Hao said bluntly. "You're not."

  Jin Qilong gave a self-deprecating little smile. "I suppose. I've thought about that before, you know."

  "About what?"

  "If our positions were swapped," Jin Qilong said. "Me and him. If he was the heir, he'd be thriving under the pressure, and if I wasn't the heir I'd just..."

  Wu Hao shook his head.

  "If your positions were swapped I wouldn't be here," he pointed out.

  "Right," Jin Qilong said, his mouth curling up into a cautious smile. "Right, well. You're not wrong. You'd probably have beaten me yesterday, too."

  "Yeah," Wu Hao said. "Probably. So what's next? I don't want to arrive later again."

  "Cultivation," Jin Qilong said, and turned as if to point. The others were already walking away, following Yu Xiong's lead as he led them further away from the main compound.

  "Where are they going?" Wu Hao asked.

  "The Resonant Caves," Jin Qilong explained. He had a knack for that sort of thing, Wu Hao noted. "Come on, let's go. I'll explain on the way."

  The Resonant Caves turned out to be literally that: caves, hewn out of the side of a mountain. Wu Hao wouldn't have been surprised to learn that someone had literally hewn them, either, instead of being naturally occurring. It was divided into two clearly separate levels, one where the cave mouths were set not far from the ground, but the ones on the second level could only be reached by a significant climb.

  Wu Hao stared up at the wall of rock in front of him. For the second level, doors had been set up in front of each of the cave entrances, made of thick steel that seemed so heavy they made the entire cave look air-tight.

  Yi Wei had already gone ahead and stomped into one of the lower level caves, while Shan Kong had picked another.

  No one except Jin Qilong seemed interested in explaining, so Wu Hao turned to him again.

  "That cave there," Jin Qilong said, pointing at one specific entrance. "That's the one I usually use, but you can have it for today."

  "Are you sure?" Wu Hao asked.

  "Go ahead," Jin Qilong said, and gave a self-deprecating smile. "I've got better opportunities lined up at home, anyway. I'm the son of the clan head, remember?"

  Wu Hao nodded. He'd only really asked to be polite, anyway. Without further debating the point he walked into the cave, finding its entrance a lot higher than it looked from the outside, and after only a minute or so he reached a dead end where a mat and a lamp had been set up that illuminated the darkness of the cave just enough to read by.

  Natural qi was swirling, and it took Wu Hao a bit to realize where it was coming from: it seeped through the walls, attracted there by something he didn't quite understand. A cultivation aid of some kind, but he couldn't worry about what it was right now.

  Right, he thought.

  Wu Hao took out the Heaven and Earth Wheel Art, sat down on the mat, and pushed himself into a meditative position as the book told him to. Slowly he breathed in, then breathed out again, attempting to discard all miscellaneous thoughts.

  It was time to see how much his "improved talent" from his string of suicides actually counted for.