It would've been quickest to kill himself by the qi detonation, but instead he sought out one of the guards. One of the mean ones, a man who sneered at everyone he passed, a man whose qi had been riddled with anxiety and anger and hate at the world.

  Then he'd challenged that man to a duel. The instant that he'd spotted an opportunity he'd thrown himself onto the guard's saber, letting himself get shredded to pieces. He'd seen the man's mouth hang open, then the guard had actually whimpered in surprise.

  Maybe he hadn't meant to kill Wu Hao, but he was dead, anyway, and that counted.

  He awoke again with his hand halfway up to guard his eyes against the sun, having just stepped out of the cultivation cave. He was back.

  He made a mental note to find out when that guard would be on patrol. The man might prove useful.

  Wu Hao wriggled his fingers just to make sure, then clenched them into a fist again. A broken hand couldn't wield any kind of weapon, after all. It would be useless, which made him half useless, and he would never be useless again. Not so long as he could die, anyway.

  But now that he was stepping out of the cave again, he fixed his gaze on the group of others, standing around or sitting on the grass. Jin Qilong looked at him quizzically, but Wu Hao tried to focus his senses deeper, trying to guess which of the caves held Yi Wei or Shan Kong.

  Despite his best efforts, he found nothing. Thin wisps of qi hung around each of the entrances, and the natural qi around the entire area had been worn smooth by the repeated pushing and pulling it'd undergone, so he couldn't tell anything. Whether that was on purpose or not, he didn't know, and it really didn't matter.

  With a shake of his head, he pushed away Jin Qilong's hand.

  "What?" Wu Hao asked. He spoke more angrily than he'd meant to, and Jin Qilong withdrew his hand like he was afraid of getting bitten.

  "Nothing," Jin Qilong said quickly. "You were kind of out of it. Everything alright?"

  Wu Hao rubbed the back of his hand.

  "Fine," he said. "No success, though."

  "Oh," Jin Qilong said. "Yeah, that's normal, I'm afraid. I didn't manage it until my ninth attempt, and that was with several experts funnelling qi into me to help me get used to the feeling, and a Heaven-tier cultivation manual."

  If he'd been expecting praise or grateful acceptance for his attempt to make Wu Hao feel better, then he'd have been disappointed, because Wu Hao only grunted.

  An awkward silence hung as Jin Qilong clearly tried to think of some way to keep the conversation going, but Wu Hao ignored him or gave short answers. It wasn't fair of him and he knew that, but it couldn't be helped. He was brooding over the thought that, even now, Shan Kong was getting stronger. Mastering that technique that he'd used on Wu Hao.

  In the end Jin Qilong gave up. Last time, they'd simply walked and talked of random things, their conversation drifting until Jin Qilong had been called away to go attend to other lessons. Wu Hao had explored the grounds afterwards and found nothing to interest him here except nearly running afoul of another patrol.

  Now they stayed. As Jin Qilong had said, Yi Wei left their little "seclusion" half an hour later than Wu Hao had, and Shan Kong an hour. Wu Hao's eyes burned into him, but he could read nothing in the other boy's qi except a certain confidence and a desire for vengeance. He met Wu Hao's gaze and smiled grimly.

  But all of that had been there too, yesterday. He supposed he knew where the confidence came from, now.

  "Had any success?" Yi Wei asked Wu Hao. "It'd be a waste to take and take from the young master, only to have nothing to show for it."

  Wu Hao scowled.

  "It's not like that," Jin Qilong protested.

  She shrugged and walked off.

  "Young master," Wu Hao said, thinking of something.

  "What is it?" Jin Qilong said. "And -"

  "I'll call you that until it's not true anymore," Wu Hao cut him off. "Where does Yi Wei's confidence come from, anyway?"

  Jin Qilong's lips quirked into a frown, before he massaged his forehead. It was such a cliché old man pose that Wu Hao might have almost laughed, if not for the mood he was in.

  "She's mastered a Sky-tier art," he said, and looked impressed. "The Swooping Peng's Talons Art."

  "Huh," Wu Hao said. "Just a single one?"

  "What do you mean, just a single one?" Jin Qilong sputtered. "I've mastered none. I doubt you've got one, either. The quicker you master one, the more impressive it is, because they're supposed to be easy paths to the second grade. At her age, it's really impressive. It shows she's got remarkable levels of talent."

  "Really?" Wu Hao asked.

  Wu Hao had a few himself and better besides, but he hadn't actually learned them on his own. And he couldn't use them right now, anyway.

  Not until the seed in his chest had grown. He was really, really looking forward to that happening.

  "Is it that hard?" he asked, more out of curiosity than true needing to know. He'd have every art he needed, anyway.

  "Hard?" Jin Qilong asked, and gave a self-depreciating smile. He did that a lot. "I have twice as much resources as her at my disposal, and I can't manage it. That should tell you something."

  "Huh," Wu Hao said.

  The conversation died off again, but this time Jin Qilong just sighed. When a servant came to tell him that his tutor was available now, he looked at Wu Hao once, shook his head slightly, and walked off with a cursory goodbye.

  Wu Hao stared at the caves again, but Yu Xiong had made sure to shepherd them all out beyond the thick steel doors which led to the mountainside where the caves were, so he wouldn't be able to get back in again.

  So be it, then. He got to his feet and walked off, heading to one of the kitchens to grab himself a quick dinner of a bowl of rice, some vegetables, and he even managed to grab himself some chicken meat when a junior chef wasn't looking.

  Munching, he returned to his room, where he sat cross-legged on his bed and tried to while away the hours reading and re-reading the books Old Qin had given him. It was practice in reading, more than he actually learned anything from the books.

  However many lifetimes he lived, Wu Hao was certain he'd never become a scholar, that was for sure.

  When finally night had the decency to fall almost gently on the compound and the last of the sounds of footfalls had faded outside his window, Wu Hao extinguished his lantern and waited until his eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, then slipped out of his room.

  No one was watching his room, but it never hurt to be cautious.

  Wu Hao watched the library from the greatest distance he could, which wasn't all that far. Keeping himself quiet and small, he'd made his way across the stone paths, iluminated by those lanterns the family here seemed to consider as essential, and stopped not too far from the entrance.

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  It was closed, but Wu Hao had seen no lights from the windows, neither moving nor standing still. That was good, and it confirmed what he'd heard from Jin Qilong, that no one lived inside the library permanently. Even Librarian Zhu didn't: he had a small cottage nearby, where he was supposed to sleep during the nights.

  Wu Hao wondered if that was actually true. As someone most of the way to the first-grade, would Librarian Zhu still need sleep? An hour or two, perhaps.

  The point was, the inside of the library was guarded solely by the arrays. There were patrols, but only around the entire compound, and they entered a few buildings on their route. If the arrays were activated, though, the patrolmen would all be awoken and sent to patrol every single building except those were the people of highest status slept.

  Again, Jin Qilong had come in handy: he'd explained that the bulk of the patrolmen here were third-grade martial artists, gathered into squads of five. There was a captain for each squad, who was a second-grade martial artist.

  Above all of the captains stood a Branch Head Captain, who was a first-grade martial artist and, as it turned out, was Shan Kong's father. Through a web of complicated politics that Wu Hao had already forgotten, Shan Guo supported Jin Qilong's elder brother for the position of next clan head of the Jin Clan.

  The point was that they were all martial artists. That made it easy to spot them from a distance, even in the blackest possible night, because none of them seemed able to rein in their qi. Being a sensor, Wu Hao decided, was fantastic, and even better yet was his decision not to tell anyone about it.

  Besides, even if they caught him, the best they could do was to kill Wu Hao, and that didn't scare him.

  Still, he felt his heart begin to beat faster. It was a dark night, with the moon above nothing but a thin sliver of light, with the new moon only days ago. Even the stars were hidden by the clouds, refusing to drift past.

  Wu Hao checked around himself a final time, then began his walk around the library, walking across the grass and stepping his way through the gardens that surrounded the building.

  He wasn't looking for patrols, but looking for an alternate way in. The grand door at the entrance was huge, made of massive steel, and it looked impossible to open without some kind of noise or alarm going off. It would be very noticeable even if nothing happened, anyway.

  Fortunately, roughly three-quarters through his route around the building he found a tree that leant close to the side of the building. With a small jump from one of the thicker branches, he smashed into the side of the building, where with some frantic scrabbling he was able to cling to the protruding bricks and make his way slowly upwards.

  His fingers ached every time he pulled himself up, his muscles hurt with the ridiculous strain he was putting them through, his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest, and if anyone saw him, he would look absolutely ridiculous before he died.

  Sweat-slick fingers nearly slipped and his left leg nearly cramped up before he finally managed to drag his carcass up the first of the roofs, and he lay there for what felt like mere seconds but might have been as much as half an hour before he finally stood up and faced the building again.

  In the distance, a set of lanterns swayed slightly as they paused at the junction that could lead them to the library. Wu Hao held his breath even though he knew they couldn't hear him from this distance. Seconds later, the lanterns proceeded further inwards to the compound, heading away from the library. Wu Hao breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then he forced himself to focus on his mission again.

  He crept up to the balcony and looked at it properly, for the first time. There were no fences here, no railings to keep anyone from falling off, but there was a comfortable-looking chair set up outside and a seat of stone, covered from any rain that might fall by a small roof that extended from the next tier of building up.

  And there was a door there. He'd hoped for a door that stood ajar to let the summer air into the building, but it seemed they'd all been locked properly for the night, or at least that they were firmly closed.

  Damn. He'd been hoping that he'd be lucky enough that he could maybe try circumventing some of the protections with ease, instead of having to die repeatedly to get in.

  Just to be sure, he made a route around the roof, trying to see if there was any easier route of access, but as with below none of the doors had been left open. That left him with the last door he'd found, where the seat had a thin layer of dust on top of it. Wu Hao hoped that was a good sign.

  He couldn't see any qi flowing around the door, though. It might simply be a normal door.

  There was nothing for it but to try, then.

  Wu Hao took a deep breath, firmed his spine, and prepared himself to die. The less he thought about it, the easier it was, so before he could think twice he forced his hand onto the doorknob and tried to open it.

  Locked, of course, as he'd thought. He released a sigh and pulled the knife from his pocket. He'd maybe gotten this one from the kitchens again? It was becoming harder to keep track and it honestly didn't matter.

  Sticking his knife into the door, he began to try and push against the lock, attempting to force it open. It would've been a lot easier if he'd had any idea of how the lock worked, but he didn't, so he could only try to literally break it open.

  Wu Hao scratched at the insides of the lock repeatedly, keeping at it until finally he felt something give, and he grinned.

  Then he felt the qi gather at the edge of his senses and he froze. He let the knife fall out, scrabbled back, and stared as the qi gathered itself into a thick clump that bubbled and roiled.

  Oh, he thought. I guess that's the array?

  Belatedly, the thought that he should run occurred to him, and he turned and tried to jump away from the terrace, feeling the ball of qi grow.

  As if angered by his attempt to flee, though, the ball of qi launched itself forward. Wu Hao tried to glance backwards - he saw that it had formed itself into the shape of a saber, what else in this goddamned clan - and then it tore into him.

  No, that was incorrect.

  It tore through him. It was only qi, but it was a lot of qi, and it carried an extremely sharp edge that carved through his chest and bisected his heart.

  He had a few moments to stare at the hole that had suddenly appeared where his organs used to be, and then as blood began to fountain out and he staggered, he saw the saber qi carve a long furrow through the roof tiles before it turned around, as if flying under its own power.

  Then it launched itself at him again, and he was dead before it'd torn his head off as well.

  Wu Hao had barely even had time to feel the pain.