Chapter 151 - An Eye For Schemes I

  Hao was outside before he knew it. The one called Yiwei was outside watching him all over again, like he never entered in the first place, but now he had the robes in hand, and in terms of Sect Points, drained and in debt, which he settled with demonic beast claws while Senior Sister Niu Lan Tian was standing over him.

  Even then, all the artificer disciples, including Senior Sister, were surprised. They said, “I can’t believe the Hall Leader is being so kind with the price.”

  Kind? KIND? Hao didn’t let his thoughts escape his mind. He performed his courtesies with a bow, but not a thanks. The transaction was complete. He thought it best to leave in a hurry. If he stayed much longer, someone would rub soot in his mouth and call it a kindness.

  Now that is right, haha! That there is a kindness if I’ve ever seen one. He mocked the average voice of a disciple to himself, faint of breath from breathing smoke, ash, who knew what kind of fumes were made in that cook pot.

  Hao looked back, just for a brief glimpse. He was far enough along the path that the hammer blows were soft taps that drew attention, not chaotic clashes of metal crushing metal.

  The details of Yiwei’s face had faded. His stature and shape remained with the giant Senior Sister Niu Lan Tian standing behind him.

  From here, she made him seem like a chubby, fair-skinned child. When she raised her hand, waving a farewell, Brother Yiwei flinched in surprise, rounding down his shoulder, making him seem even smaller.

  “I won’t forget Junior Brother. If you need anything else, make sure you come to me first. The Hall Leader seems to like you.” She giggled.

  The audacity. Liked? The Hall Leader let go of his beard once after crafting, and in that breath, it looked like he was going to reach into Hao’s robe just to steal some lint.

  Hao’s hand started to rise in a wave before he caught himself. What are you doing? You might as well skip down the path and giggle too while you're at it… He admonished himself. Instead, he gave the expected bow, but a strange glare presented itself when he came back up.

  Senior Sister Niu Lan Tian's bottom lip was pinched in her teeth, while her eyebrows grew tighter by the second. It was almost a disappointed shake of her head. It couldn’t have been, no, surely not, she must have just had some designs on the materials he showed a glimpse of. Hao was a well-paying customer after all.

  The toil and toll were well worth it. Now he had the robes that could make a mortal think that a bed of ice was a nice place to lie down. If the artificer’s eyes were as good as their mouths, then summer sun and fall rain would never be a problem for Meiqi and Zhengqi ever again.

  His walk turned to a run once he was on the path to the Sect’s main courtyard. The nearer he got, the faster he went.

  He passed a few landmarks he hadn’t glanced at in a while. The Bone-Shaking trial’s path, the dull brown back wall of the Arena, all blurred in his motion. He had never stepped on the arena floor. It was better to miss his acceptance ceremony than get crushed by the humiliated First Elder, who had an eye on the Source Stone back then.

  Once Hao was back on the paths he knew well, he got even faster. Slipping into the unconscious rhythm of Seven Colored Steps.

  By the time he reached the steep hill to the old servants' quarters, he slowed.

  He was a boy with gifts in hand who had never given a gift before. Is it really easier to slay another person than to hand a gift over to the women who bathe you?

  At the top, there was a lack of smoke. No scent of a hot wood fire or a steaming stew, the buckets were dry and the axe still in place on the stump near the entryway.

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  Hao crept forward, standing close to the well. He called out, “Meiqi.”

  To no reply. Meiqi had been spending more time with Zhengqi in the medicine hall recently. She wasn’t trained like her daughter. But from what Zhengqi said, they were more amiable than servants in the other halls.

  Meiqi also insisted. She said, “Well, if I don’t have to linger here and clean up every snowflake that falls for the rest of the season, I need something else to do, and I would like to spend that time with my daughter.”

  Her nose was raised, and she went on two more times after that. Each time more demanding. It wasn’t quite a demand; that was just how she talked, one of her three sides, the mom, the teacher, the negotiator—he called that side, the wife once, but it painted too strange a picture in his mind.

  He walked up. The pitched porch groaned as he pulled at the crooked door. This building was their home. This one, not one of the other twenty-five up here, this one was the home they shared, until the new buildings that were his by sect law were built.

  The door closed behind him, and he took in the sight. He wished it were like this when he returned from the Secret Realm.

  Everything was done. Wood piled neatly, fire pit clean, bath basin drained and washed, even waxed after its recent growth of mold. It was clean. As clean as an Emperor's sword. There was some clutter. Ladies' wear was strewn on the two beds that belonged to them, but he didn’t go to that side of the wall often, just to wash up and grab a piece of wood on occasion.

  Hao walked over there today, not to bolster the fire. Just to place down the robes, neatly folded, well, he tried anyway, right at the foot. Meiqi’s robe was placed on the messy bed with the spare servant's robe hanging loosely half on the floor. Zhengqi’s robe was on the bed that didn’t have a thread of the blanket out of line.

  That’s that. That’s good enough. He turned and walked back outside as fast as he had entered. There was not much for him to do on the day but to cultivate.

  The grave markers around the back of the home were as fine as any other place to the Cultivate. Morning ice was still thawing in high places. Water dripped down the gravestones that were steady in the mountainside that wrapped around the courtyard.

  “I got to the third and fourth floors…” he told the old couple that he met at the library tower.

  Hao sat down in the lotus position. It wasn’t his favorite way to meditate, but a common and recommended one. Never failing to bring a rush of World Energy into his palms.

  He didn’t move as the afternoon snow started. Piling on his shoulder until they touched his ears.

  Something else reached his ears, too. The high voices of the two Hao had left a gift in the house. Oddly, Zhengqi was leading the conversation, and Meiqi was on the back foot.

  Have Yin and Yang inverted? He joked to himself as Zhengqi's voice, which was always a whisper, came echoing from the courtyard.

  “I don’t think it matters, Mother. We should let Young Master know.”

  Meiqi let out a loud sigh. “It would just put more pressure on him, after all he has gone through in just the Mid-Summer cave.”

  Her voice broke. “I would have agreed before, but there is no longer a rush. Young Master retrieved us, to me, that is proof enough that he bought us time.”

  Zhengqi was the first on the porch. He could tell because of the loud creak of wood, as she was a head taller than her mother. Her voice didn’t need to echo to reach him anymore.

  “Mother, time won’t be enough. That Beastly Man Taoyi, he is greedy and deceitful, but he is also a coward who bends to everyone from the Peaks above him. This event is the perfect chance to have Young Master rise… Just like you said before.”

  The door creaked open. “Stop it!” Meiqi said. The slamming of the door made Hao jolt, and snow fell from his shoulders onto his lap.

  “Do you love the boy now more than your own granddaughter?”

  Zhengqi’s words were for Meiqi, but Hao felt like he got a harsh slap.

  “How dare you! I no longer wish to sacrifice someone for our gain. Is there something wrong with that?”

  Hao could smell wood smoke. Meiqi was always good at starting fires. It took her only a breath.

  Zhengqi’s voice rang with a hesitant rage, “I want…” Her voice stopped, as if it was stolen from her. “These… are these…” Fractured anger turned back to her normal, gentle shyness.

  Hao listened to the sound of fabric shuffling, the fur of the robes rubbing against itself.

  “They must be the robes Young Master promised us,” Meiqi said. She sighed in the same way she did earlier. “Can you condemn the boy to this world and its ways so easily, the same way I wanted to?”

  “My little girl… Can you throw him into a pit of wolves, and hope he comes out of the one with enough body parts to keep standing?”

  Zhengqi’s bed barked and whistled, “I didn’t mean… I don’t want anything bad to happen. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

  “Shush. I know, Peiqi is my blood too, my one and only granddaughter, more precious than this entire mountain to me, just like you are. But what can we do, other than rely on others? Why make the world harder for someone we’ve already leaned on?”

  Hao stared at the graves of Grandma and Grandpa He. They were killed over a painting he inspired. The water that dripped from them now was slowly growing into spire-like crystals of clear ice.

  “Mother… he will find out anyway. They aren’t going to be quiet about it when they announce it.”

  “Enough, Wu Zhengqi,” Meiqi said, “he will find out naturally then. And without us urging him, now try on that robe. It's warm and comfortable, like it sticks to your skin, just right.”

  The two talked a while longer, and Hao then retrieved water and started to bathe; the smell of wood smoke, soap, and their words spun around him. He closed his eyes. His meditations would have to untangle his thoughts as the warmth of their voice, mingled with soft snow.

  Announce what? He wondered, the face of the First Elder popped into his head, blue eyes without a care looking down at him. It made the snow appear in that colorful void of his meditations.