Chapter 172: Death & Bitter Medicine, II

"Why are we heading towards the Tang Clan?"

"An errand," Master Shu said. His hands had folded in his lap; he didn't even make an effort to pretend to be reading anymore. Instead he stared, melancholic, out the small window at his side, at the people walking in. The carriage turned and slowed.

"You're sick?" Wu Hao asked. "I thought you were a master. You don't need to eat and you live off the morning dew and all that. Is that a lie, then?"

Master Shu folded his arms. "No, that's true. I don't need to eat anymore. I don't need to sleep. I don't even breathe anymore, unless I want to."

Well, at least that bit of knowledge was still true, then.

"So -"

"I am not sick," Master Shu interrupted. "We are not here for a medicine in the strictest sense. All I'm looking for is an antidote to a powerful poison. Which, just because I can tell you're about to ask, is entirely metaphorical."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that it's a turn of phrase entirely wasted on someone like you, brat, who wouldn't know a verse of poetry from a child's first scribbles onto paper."

The carriage slowed again, coming to a steady, almost unfelt halt. Master Shu didn't waste any more words but instead just grunted, got to his feet, and made his way out to the door.

It opened onto a small courtyard, where dozens of other carriages had been shoved. The coachman had already hopped down from his seat, standing respectfully to the side as the master emerged like a bear from his cave after a winter.

Wu Hao climbed out after him, taking a look around. The courtyard they were in was ringed by trees and fenced, with a few signs pointing to a larger road that led up a small hill.

Up that hill lay what must have been the Tang Clan compound, surrounded by a large forest. It was an enormous building which loomed overhead, which sprouted four branches, one heading in every single direction, two of them straddling the road and the others disappearing into the trees, bits of stonework and wood poking out here and there like some gigantic beast hiding in a thicket.

When he craned his head and walked further up to the road, he could see that at the front of that huge building was an entryway, through which reams of people were streaming. This was where all those people were going, then. He could see a few picking up steam as they finally came close, while others lost steam and had to take a short break leaning against the trees before they could go on supporting or being supported by their injured family members or friends or the like.

"Is that the Tang Clan compound?" Wu Hao asked, staring at the colossal work architecture. It looked large enough to be an emperor's palace.

"That?" Master Shu asked, his boots making little sound on the road's gravel as he moved. "That's just the Medicine Hall, boy. The main compound's split up, but all in all that dwarfs this building easily."

"Wait," Wu Hao said. "We're not looking for medicine, right? Then why did we stop at the Medicine Hall?"

"Come on," Master Shu said, ignoring his question entirely. "I know a side entrance. Follow me."

He made his way forward, not using any movement techniques but simply pushing his way through the crowd. Most of them seemed to simply do as he wanted, though, without even being consciously aware of it: a few people inched forward just enough to where the master could walk through without needing to adjust his tempo all that much. It was impressive, all the more because no qi was involved at all.

Wu Hao followed in his wake, and people very much didn't go out of his way. More than once he needed to push someone out of the way and received nasty looks for it, and more than once someone he passed muttered about the youths of today having no manners.

Honestly, the crowd was so thick that Wu Hao was glad to finally escape, once the master had made his way to one of the sides of the building, where less people stood. It was quieter here, and they didn't need to get past guards or anything like it. Even if they had to jump a small fence, no one seemed to notice or raise an alarm.

Were they here to assassinate someone, then? Death was a pretty good medicine, Wu Hao thought. Certainly made it so you wouldn't get sick anymore, that was for sure.

Master Shu's steps were sure as he slipped into a door left half-open, held it open slightly so Wu Hao could follow, and then made his way down a long hallway. When he stepped out, they were inside the Hall.

At the front of the hall, large, heavy wooden tables had been placed, not unlike those of a clerk. Each of the tables bore a small but similar selection of books, the titles of which Wu Hao couldn't read from this distance. Some of the tables had two chairs, others had three, but there was always a clear divide made between the people in purple sitting at one end and the visitors at the other end.

The officials in purple - both men and women - were all engaged in short conversations. Wu Hao watched one such conversation, which he couldn't hear due to the murmuring in the hall that filled it with an unending constant sussuration, and the official wrote something down on a piece of paper, received a payment from the stout man who was seeing him, and then sent a thin pulse of qi into the air. A messenger boy zipped over using a movement technique, took the slip of paper, and raced over to one of the storage rooms.

The next family waiting at the same desk made a hopeful attempt to shuffle forward. Rows of people in the same situation stretched forward towards the desks relentlessly, filling the entirety of the Medicine Hall, even to the door outside.

Master Shu looked around, as if reminiscing. His hands pulled lightly at his beard.

"This place hasn't changed a bit," he said, a thought which seemed to cheer him. Then, quieter, he repeated to himself, in a lower sort of voice: "This place really hasn't changed a bit."

Wu Hao looked around some more. It was hard, though, because people filled every inch of available space. Next to the overfull benches where old people sat, chairs had been placed, all of them full of families; to the side there was a long slab of wood that had been placed in a way to suggest the counter of a store.

There didn't seem to be any limits on who could come in. Wu Hao saw a whole horde of old men and women, some obviously rich enough to have a coterie of servants around them to guarantee them space and calm. At the opposite end of the cavernous hall, the poor were bunched up dozens of families, some clearly here for a sick grandfather or grandmother. Multiple doorways led out of the building itself, each labelled with a specific sign: the Dragon, the Tiger, the Turtle and the Bird - the four auspicious beasts.

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Pregnant women were led towards the Turtle Hall, it seemed. Wu Hao watched one family being pointed there by one of the guards who was patrolling the hall. It had been decorated with railings the women could grip, if necessary. Not all of the women were there with their entire families, though - several of the women had tears in their clothes, others the suggestive garb of a prostitute.

What the functions were of the other three, Wu Hao had no clue. It didn't really matter that much, either. Still, he wondered why Master Shu had said they needed something here.

Master Shu closed his eyes for a brief instant and then opened them again, turning to one particular side of the hall.

"Come on," he said abruptly. "This isn't why I came here."

He set off again, his steps much less sure than they had before. More than once, Wu Hao actually caught up with him as the master made his way towards a particular section of the Hall. He walked past several guards, who didn't react at all to his presence, and groups of patients made space for him unwittingly again.

The passage that he led Wu Hao to led to a large door. Master Shu passed through without looking twice, and Wu Hao hurried after him. Even the old man's unhurried, hesitant steps still took him farther than Wu Hao's own could without using a movement art.

Then they were outside. It was still an early, cold winter morning. Even if the cold didn't touch Wu Hao, it meant that the woods they were now walking through had a deathly chill to them. With no leaves on the trees and snow on the path they were walking on, the area felt surprisingly desolate after how many people they'd just been surrounded by. It was the kind of area that made it feel like they were the only people on earth.

After walking a while in silence, though, they came to a rusted gate, which fenced off a small courtyard.

When Master Shu opened the gate, though, Wu Hao revised that first impression. It wasn't a courtyard, it was a gravesite. His eyes flicked over to one of the signs that had been placed on the walls surrounding the small courtyard.

Master Shu's movement didn't stop, though he seemed barely conscious of where he was walking. Wu Hao had a sinking feeling about what they had come here to find, now. There were only a few reasons to come to a graveyard, and none of them were all that happy.

They went across a few rows, cut across another small stretch of road that took them past decaying, old grave stones, before Master Shu abruptly stopped in front of a single grave.

Wu Hao peered out from behind Master Shu's back and read the grave inscription. In small but beautiful lettering, it read, simply:

"Shu Xiaoyu. Devoted martial artist, devoted wife."

It didn't take a genius to connect the dots. This was Master Shu's wife's grave.

"I'm home," Master Shu murmured, so soft that Wu Hao's ears barely managed to distinguish the words. His eyes were red with unshed tears.

And then the Absent Sovereign really let loose. The veil that he'd always kept around his qi was ripped off, disintegrating under the sheer storm of his emotions. Power roared in Wu Hao's ears like the waves of the ocean. He could only stand there, trying to withstand blow after blow as a tide of black and white raced out from the master's every pore. The flowers around where he'd stood were instantly wiped of color, leaving only a thin monochrome.

It was as if there were no more colors in the entirety of the world. The trees, the birds, the stream nearby - none of it was any less alive or present, but they were all colorless. There was no green left even in the few trees that had kept their leaves, and there was no brown left in the dirt on the ground.

Suddenly, the world was as if it had never had any color at all. Wu Hao had seen this before, but despite the immense power that was being used to force the world into being this way, the entire process had been surprisingly gentle.

Master Shu sighed and, suddenly, all the qi that had been pouring out of him came streaming back. Color returned as if it had never gone. The world released a breath that Wu Hao hadn't noticed it was holding.

All of that power - power enough to crush a mountain into dust, to rip the water from the seas and leave the rivers dry - was funnelled, almost gently, towards a single point of black ink, darker than even the darkest nights Wu Hao had ever seen. It was the darkest possible black.

Master Shu pointed a single finger. The dot floated forward slowly, until it brushed against the stone just below the inscription calling her a wife. It settled there. It wasn't corroding the stone. If there was a name for what was happening, it was more like the ink was etching itself into the grave marker.

From that dot, a short line rose, growing thicker. It grew more and more and more, and as it grew petals unfurled from its tip - petals silhouetted in black and white and absolutely no shades in between. Monochrome though it was, it was also beautiful enough to take the breath away. It was as if an ink painting of a lily had been plucked from a canvas and placed into reality, anchored to the gravestone.

It was beautiful. Something about the sight inspired a deep, desperate sadness in Wu Hao, though, and it took him a moment to figure out why.

The entire flower formed something like a core of qi. It was built from thin threads of black qi intermingling with white qi, all interconnected and interweaving endlessly, forming a single construct. That same core was constantly running thin pulses of qi - qi that spoke of regret.

Master Shu exhaled. He didn't say anything, but a thin bead of sweat ran down from his face and he pushed himself to his feet. His legs trembled as if the exertion of standing up was massive.

"I've become a Sovereign," Master Shu said quietly. "I hope you're content with this small present, Xiaoyu. You never were the type to care about these little things."

Hesitating at the side, Wu Hao had no clue what to do with himself. He simply stood there, watching, feeling like an intruder in Master Shu's private life.

Then a warm hand was pulling him closer, seizing him by the scruff of the neck.

"I've got a disciple," Master Shu said. "He's a mouthy little snot, but he's talented. You would have liked him, Xiaoyu."

Wu Hao, caught by a sudden feeling, bowed.

"I greet master's wife," he said. Master Shu smiled down at him, though it was a little watery.

Wu Hao watched as the old man looked at the grave marker one last time, opened his mouth, and spoke.

"Forgive me," Master Shu whispered. "Another war is breaking out, despite all we did. I'll be back again, Xiaoyu."

Then he shook his head and walked off.