Finally he was allowed to stumble off to the cooking tents, where he was handed a bowl of something wet and lukewarm that might have had meat in it and several bits of vegetable, as well as a clump of rice. The sour taste that came with the drugs he'd long since learned to ignore. He choked it down with shaking fingers, tasting absolutely nothing of what he ate, and then tilted his head to make sure he'd gotten all of it.
When he was finished, he licked the bowl clean, feeling like a beaten dog who had been handed the table scraps. He felt grateful for receiving even that much, but there was an odd twist to that feeling that curled into Wu Hao's chest.
Miserable, still hungry, and cold, he returned to 726, who was keeping watch over the entire group of boys. They had returned from their tasks, which seemed to have been rather less arduous than Wu Hao's. Where he felt dead on his feet they only looked somewhat tired. Their expressions gave nothing away, but he knew their body language well enough that he read the smug disregard they had for him anyway.
He was pretty sure that it wasn't his imagination, either.
Normally he would have shrunk away and quietly joined in with the rest of the group, but now he simply stood there, hiding his shivers in the evening cold and fighting not to have his eyes slide closed.
"721," Brother 726 said, voice still cold. "You're here."
The "finally" wasn't said out loud, but it came through clearly.
"I am."
"It's practice time," he said. "Fall in."
"Yes."
726 turned and walked away. The others followed behind him, and Wu Hao took a place in the middle of the line. They hadn't ever bothered to try and distinguish an order between themselves; there was Father above all, Uncles below him, and each group had a Brother who kept watch on them all. Beneath the level of Brother, all were equal.
Because all of them were worthless, Brothers made only slightly less so by their relative proximity to Father. It was Father who gave their lives and deaths meaning, whereas before they'd had none.
They arrived at a small meadow, with 726 making his way there on some predetermined route. When they arrived, the previous group was standing up, stretching limbs that had gone numb during the cultivation.
A corpse was lying there, also. It was clear from the expression on his face that he had suffered before he died, and equally clear that he had been one of the deathsworn. He had been about sixteen, maybe, with black hair that had begun to peek out from underneath the head-covering he wore and stubble on his somewhat pudgy cheeks.
His heart had exploded inside of him, the pressure building up until there had been no other way for it to go but outwards. Blood and gore covered a section of the grass, which the Uncle supervising was grimacing at with a faint look of distaste.
"Take that away," he said, pointing to the corpse and then at three members of the previous squad. What their numbers were was impossible to say without a look at their dogtags, and it wasn't like Uncle to care anyway. "You, you, and you."
"Yes, Uncle," they chorused, and began to drag their one-time fellow back with them to bring him to the fires where he would be cremated. No other burial ceremonies were permitted, being signs of emotion and therefore of defectiveness.
The Uncle supervising the cultivation rubbed his beard with one hand, then motioned to Wu Hao's group. It wasn't the same Uncle as the one that had tested him earlier in the day. That Uncle had been short and squat, with a series of spots on his left cheek. This Uncle was tall and reedy, with a full carefully-combed beard and moustache covering his chin and cheeks.
"Sit down," he commanded, making no mention of the corpse. None of them ever would.
It was not the first corpse Wu Hao had seen, and that wasn't counting himself at least twice now. This happened every so often - during cultivation practice, small little errors in cultivation would pile up until they became too much to hold back, and the qi reflux would form a feedback loop that always ended fatally, whether it was immediately or after the defectiveness had been noticed.
Father and the Uncles could prevent the overflow from occurring, but usually they saw no need to bother. It had been the victim's own mistakes that had led them here, after all - what fault or problem of theirs was it? Better to have one sword of high-quality steel than ten that were brittle and would snap at the first sign of stress.
So Father said, and Wu Hao had to believe that.
Wu Hao chose a spot quickly, on the opposite end of where the corpse had been. He wasn't squeamish any longer but neither did he feel a need to get soaked in blood and gore without it being strictly necessary. 726 left, moving to another part of the camp to do his own training.
It was a mark of them only being halfway into the third-grade that they had to sink into meditation like this to summon up their qi at all. Those who took the rank of Brother were fully into the third grade and needed no time at all to summon their qi, and therefore they were taught techniques to actually make use of it.
Folding one of his legs over the other, Wu Hao closed his eyes and waited for the Uncle to begin. The man had been in charge of their cultivation practice for years now, as he was for the other disciples. His script must have been hammered out years ago, and he delivered it by rote each time.
"Breathe in for five beats of your heart; breathe out for three.... Hold that for a moment, then breathe in again..."
Wu Hao followed the orders, breathing easily syncing up with that of the others. He focused on the feeling of breathing above all, which brought him deeper into a trance easily enough.
"Focus on your heart and feel every single one of its pulses. Feel them thrum with power - a power that, if you can use it, far exceeds that of the rest of your muscles..."
Recited by rote or not, Uncle's words were true. Wu Hao's heart continually pulsed with qi. The extreme awareness that this sort of meditation brought him let him literally feel it, every contraction of his heart an audible thump and every relaxation only a momentary pause in the beat. He felt an awareness of his entire body and the qi that radiated through it, drawn in constantly with his every breath into his core and then back into his heart, which then pumped qi through his meridians the same way it pumped blood through his veins.
The art they cultivated, the Endless Pulse Art, focused on the beat of their hearts. It was said that every pulse of a master could make his heartbeat sound like the beat of a drum, audible from across a field.
Wu Hao wasn't a master, so the best he could do during these meditations was draw in a little qi and then send it into his limbs, trying to match the timing of drawing in qi with the pulses of his heart. He kept from hissing as the successive pulses of delicious heat flashed through his limbs, washing away some of the horrible soreness and exhaustion he felt. Unfortunately he couldn't send it coursing through his head and take away the headache he felt. Trying to do that would be a very easy way to overload the meridians in his brain, with fatal consequences.
Equally unfortunately, the ambient qi up here might have been thick once, but that had been before several groups of deathsworn had cultivated here and taken most of it with them. Now it was thin or, if it was thick, tainted with impurities. Wu Hao used what he could, which wasn't much.
Finally Uncle's voice finished its meandering speech.
"Wake up," he said, and from the rustle of cloth Wu Hao knew that he'd stood up. "I will now inspect each of you personally. Do not move. Do not circulate your qi any further after it reaches the outermost part of your limbs this cycle. You know the penalties for failure."
From the steps of Uncle's boots against the soft grass, he had started at Wu Hao's end first and would then work his way over to the opposite side. Wu Hao would be one of the first to receive the Uncle's guidance.
He breathed in and out, keeping his attention on his qi. Keeping it in position wasn't really all that hard, but it was like trying to keep a muscle engaged for a long period of time. Qi wanted to move, so keeping it still required a firm mental hold. During the first cultivation guidance sessions, several prospective deathsworn hadn't been able to keep their qi at the point Uncle had commanded, and since that had been contravention of an order they had been flogged for their mistakes.
On the other hand, keeping the qi flow out of the limbs or the body meant suffering the full brunt of the cold or their aches, but that was unpleasant at best, compared to the agony of being flogged.
As he sat there, keeping his back straight and his qi flow as minimal as possible, he heard the same pattern repeating again and again. Uncle stopped near someone, judging by the sound of his boots whispering through the grass stopping. Then he delivered his guiding qi swiftly into the core, stood up again, and moved on to the next. The process took maybe a few breaths per deathsworn.
Soon, it was Wu Hao's time. The boots stopped just behind his back, considered him for a moment, and then he felt Uncle's palm lay itself against the upper part of his back, feeling the state of his qi with small pulses of ice-cold qi.
Wu Hao fought not to grimace at the first touch to his back, then braced himself. Uncle's palm withdrew for a short moment, and he felt Uncle gather qi around him. This Uncle didn't have the same oily, filthy qi that the other Uncle had. His was more -
A spike that held no physical weight slammed into his back like a shard of ice driven directly into his spine, then tunneled through his body until it found his heart and the loop of qi that swirled there.
It touched the circle and felt at it for a moment, before he could feel something like approval flitter through it. Although, no - approval wasn't the right word.
It was more an absence of disapproval than anything else.
That Uncle's qi was like ice, and like ice it began to melt before joining the rest of the circle around his heart. The circle surged for a moment and regained the momentum it had lost over the course of the day.
That circle was his filter. It diluted the qi rushing back from his limbs with Uncle's own qi so that he couldn't access the qi stored outside of his core without first having to break down that loop of qi. On the other hand, the core inside of him had been deliberately starved of high-quality qi, meaning that if the qi from outside did leak back in his heart unregulated, his organs would be overwhelmed and transform into a bomb.
It was an art that had been tailor made for giving to deathsworn, it seemed to him.
If the Uncles didn't deliberately give them only enough qi for the filter to last only a full day and a few hours, if the Uncles couldn't deactivate that filter from a distance by simply ripping back their qi, if it didn't require being nearly emotionless to allow the filter to last longer...
Uncle stood up and, without saying a word, left for the next deathsworn. Wu Hao didn't make the mistake of retracting his qi, though. Until the Uncles gave a verbal command that they could relax, doing so would be punished immediately.
It took a bit of time before Uncle had managed to see to all the deathsworn. He was normally faster than this, but it seemed something must have been on his mind.
"Release," he commanded, and if they hadn't been commanded to never react to anything, sighs of relief would have been clearly audible.
Wu Hao, too, let the qi slip from his mental grasp. It coursed through him, warming his sore muscles throughout his body, but when it came back to his heart following his blood stream, it slammed into the filter that Uncle had placed there. Little by little, very small parts of it came dripping back into his core, but not enough to head off the sudden surge of nausea that always accompanied cultivation guidance.
Was it like that for others, too, Wu Hao wondered. Did other arts feel the same way? He didn't know, and would never be allowed to find out. He wondered why he was thinking, all of a sudden.
"Stand up," Uncle ordered. "Sleep."
As the others stood and accepted the cold blasts of air that ran through the bare mountaintops, Wu Hao's mind was elsewhere.
So far - despite having faced the threat of punishment and defectiveness again - nothing much had changed for the group. Which meant that, in all likelihood, Father would give his speech again. Which meant that Wu Hao would face his death tomorrow after another gruelling march, this time to the battlefield.
That couldn't be allowed to happen. He had tasted death twice now. He felt no desire to meet his end for a third time.
This time, he felt, if he approached Father the right way, Father would listen to him.
Wu Hao received a few looks from the others as he split off from the group, and 726 stared at him the longest.
"721," he said loudly. The next group had arrived already, though, and Uncle was running through his rote script for the guidance again, so no one else took much notice of them. "Where are you going? We were ordered to sleep."
Turning to face 726, Wu Hao gave him a blank look. "Uncle ordered me to fulfill other tasks after cultivation practice."
726 grunted, and Wu Hao knew two instincts had to be warring within him.
On one hand, Wu Hao was bad at lying, and 726 knew that he was being lied to. The other boy gave no real outward reflection, but Wu Hao knew it to be true anyway. It hadn't been a good lie. The thing, then, was to tell one of the Uncles, who would investigate him for defects.
But on the other hand, Wu Hao had phrased it as an order, and orders were absolute. 726 could no more break from that conditioning than Wu Hao would have been able to, before all this had started. Even now, the main reason that Wu Hao was able to resist the Uncle's order to head to the tent and sleep was because he had convinced himself that if he did that he would die, which could harm Father in turn. That would be a greater violation of his orders to never cause harm to Father or let any harm be caused to him.
"Go," 726 said, turning away. "I will notify an Uncle about this later."
"Yes."
Wu Hao turned again and walked up the path that he'd been standing on. His face had remained impassive but his heart had hammered in his chest. 726 would have been within his rights to punish him in Father's place if he'd called Wu Hao on the lie, but he hadn't.
Feeling 726's eyes on his back as he walked, he made his way through the campground. Dusk was falling as he walked, painting the entire site a bloody red. It looked like swathes of shining red had been draped over the tents and the ground, so thickly laid that Wu Hao thought he could almost pick them up. Thinking helped with the pain in his legs and the rest of his body somewhat, not relieving it but allowing him to ignore the hurt.
Father's tent was easy to spot. For one, it was the biggest tent of the bunch. But then - as Father had explained - it had to be, because that was where all of Father's planning happened and where guests could be received. There hadn't ever been guests, but it wasn't impossible there would one day be.
It was a specific group of deathsworn, the Honor Guard, that had the honor of carrying Father's tent and other materials while on the march. Each of the boys in the Honor Guard had the rank of Brother, making them fully third-grade martial artists, and they all slept in a separate tent near Father's. They had bedrolls, whereas the rest of the deathsworn slept on thin tarps or the bare ground in their ramshackle tents.
To mark them as special, each of these boys had a white stripe incorporated in their otherwise black clothing, which they displayed prominently. They had earned a small measure of individuality, which the rest of them had been denied, and they carried daggers on their person.
In a quiet moment, another boy who hadn't earned his number yet then had called these special deathsworn the bed servants, which he took some amusement in. Wu Hao hadn't understood what the boy meant by that then, and he still didn't. The boy had died soon afterwards, pulled from the group for trying to make a joke of some kind. He hadn't returned and no one had ever mentioned him again.
A few of the Honor Guard were standing at the sides of Father's tent, staring balefully at anyone who walked past and was ranked lower than them. This included Wu Hao, and he received a few glares as he walked up to Father's tent.
One of the Honor Guard stepped in front of Wu Hao, holding out one of his hands with a blank look. Nonetheless, he stood ready to fall into a martial arts stance and summon his qi. Wu Hao could feel it brew slightly under the surface of the boy's skin. He was handsome, the way all of the honor guard were, though it was hard to tell under the strips of cloth.
He was also taller than Wu Hao, which meant he had to crane his neck up to look at the other boy.
"What are you doing?" the boy demanded. By the dogtag that hung from his neck, he seemed to have been numbered 648.
"I'm to see Father," Wu Hao said.
"On whose order?"
"I have something to tell him," Wu Hao said, instead of answering.
"On whose order?" 648 repeated.
"I have something," Wu Hao said, "to tell him."
"On whose -"
"Let him in," Father called from within the tent, voice tinged with irritation. "I can't sit here and watch you two argue all night, especially when you're repeating the same phrases over and over again."
Wu Hao stared up at 648, who stared back down, and then the other boy moved aside to let Wu Hao pass.
Pushing open the flap to enter Father's tent, Wu Hao paused for a moment to take in the location the way he had been taught. He could escape only through the front flaps, where he'd probably be caught by the honor guard, and the tent's fabric was too thick to try and tear through unless he had a sharp dagger. Which he didn't, unless he took one from Father.
"Father," Wu Hao said, bowing.
"721," Father acknowledged. He was dressed relatively casually and sitting at his writing table, working on a scroll of some kind with a brush in one hand, while ink and whetstone rested within access of his other. Father's hair had been tied back, and he didn't stop writing as he spoke to Wu Hao. "What's so important that you have to tell me?"
One of the Honor Guard was sitting, legs folded underneath him, next to the desk, holding a rag in his hands to clean the brush with. He stared at Wu Hao, but didn't rise to his feet. A long scar ran across his chest, disappearing into the strips of cloth covering his torso. His nameplate read 589 - in all likelihood one of the oldest deathsworn present in the camp, though he was no more than 18 by the look of him.
"Tomorrow," Wu Hao began, "we go to the battlefield. You will have us try to take a hill."
Father's hands paused in the middle of a brushstroke, then continued.
"That may be correct," he said. "Why are you telling me this?"
"We will die," Wu Hao said. "There will be an expert there who will cut us down easily. We will die, Father."
Father's eyebrows had climbed all the way up. He set the brush aside, then handed it off to the Honor Guard next to him, who began to clean it carefully.
"How do you know this?"
"I - I have... seen it, Father," Wu Hao said. "In my dreams."
It felt childish to say, but what other explanation was there? Even now Wu Hao didn't understand what was happening to him. He had felt clearly and with his entire body the sensations that had occurred to him, but how to describe to Father what they had been? Father had already declared him defective once.
"Dreams?" Father said, disbelief clear from his tone. He half-rose from his desk, looking at Wu Hao with an odd expression. "You are a hardened deathsworn. You may not be an elite, but you have undergone the training that it took me years to devise nonetheless."
"Father," Wu Hao said, with some desperation in his voice. Why wouldn't Father just listen? "I have seen it."
"If you have," Father hissed, "then you dreamt. I have no need of dreamers. I require only puppets whose strings are in my hands. Dolls do not dream, and a doll that does is defective. I judge you defective, 721. You know what that means."
"But Father -"
"Shut up," Father ordered, then rose from his desk, raising himself to his full height.
"Hand me the bell," Father ordered 589, who complied instantly and took a small silver bell from the desk. Wu Hao watched, silent, as Father took the bell in his hands, rang it once, and then set it back down. The tone of the bell was clear and loud, made to be audible from a great distance with a cultivator's enhanced senses.
"Hear me," Father continued, as he walked around the desk. "Even if you did dream, and if you saw the truth, so what? You'll die, you said?"
"I didn't mean that, Father," Wu Hao said, voice coming as a croak. "We will die. Not just me, my entire group -"
Father threw up his hands in disgust.
"For Heaven's sake," he muttered, massaging his forehead. "How did you go under the radar for this long? As defective as you are, how were you not noticed earlier? All I want from you is absolute obedience, and you cannot guarantee me even that?"
"Father, I am obedient," Wu Hao protested.
Father scoffed. "Yet you argue against my words. An odd definition of obedience, and one markedly different from mine. Let's hear from your fellows. 589?"
"Yes, Father," the other boy whispered from where he had been sitting quietly, like Father's living shadow, listening to every word that had been said but not moving even an inch or letting a single sound be heard. His voice was oddly sweet, and Wu Hao had the absurd thought that at one point the other boy might have been a good singer.
"If I were to command you to die, what would you do?" Father asked, his tone light.
"I would ask how you wanted me to die, Father."
"And if I were to command you to kill your entire squad?"
"Then they would be dead, Father."
Father turned back to Wu Hao, an expression of satisfaction on his face. "You understand now? That is true obedience. He defers to me in all things, as is proper filial piety."
Wu Hao said nothing. He had known, of course, that Father's orders had been absolute, and before all this had started he might not have blinked twice at what Father had just told him. Now, though, something inside of him was beginning to rebel against simply accepting his death.
"Know this, 721. Your lives are mine to spend. If I command you to die, you will die in whatever way I tell you to, in whatever numbers I tell you to."
He stared into Wu Hao's eyes, searching from something.
"You have a spark of anger in your eyes," Father commented. "You seem ill at ease at being told to die."
"No, Father," Wu Hao begged. "I just -"
"I knew it," Father muttered. "You truly are defective."
This was a hopeless conversation. Even in the haze of Wu Hao's confused mind he knew, at that instant, that there was nothing he could do to convince Father that Wu Hao was not defective. This entire conversation had been a mistake.
He took a step back, some part of him already searching for a way out. Again his eyes scanned the tent for any escape route, but all he spotted was to go through the flap, the same way that he had entered.
As if on cue, there was a scattered thump of boots landing on the ground outside. This time the honor guard made no noises, allowing the newcomer to walk in without a challenge to his identity. He pushed the flap aside, revealing himself to be the Uncle who had tested Wu Hao earlier with the palm print. His clothing hadn't been properly tied, his hair mussed to reveal his bald spot and his eyes still half-closed from being roused from his sleep.
"Father," the Uncle said, bowing. "You called?"
He noticed Wu Hao, and worse - he noticed Wu Hao looking. With a little smirk on his face as the situation sank in, the Uncle moved to block the entrance.
And, with that, the only avenue of escape had been cut off. Wu Hao was well and truly trapped.
This tent was where he would meet his death for the third time
One moment," Father said, giving the Uncle a look. "Wait until we're complete."
A thought occurred to Father then, and without looking at anyone in particular, he spoke again.
"Hand me a dagger."
589 sprang into action and snatched a dagger from a nearby table with nimble fingers. He spun it around, took the dagger by the edge so that he could present Father with the hilt, and made not a single sound of protest as the knife's sharp edges cut into the flesh of his fingers when Father pulled it from his loose grasp.
Father flicked the dagger idly, letting a fat droplet of blood splatter on the tent floor. It was a fine dagger, Wu Hao thought, and he looked it up and down, finding it oddly familiar until the realization struck. This was one of Father's personal daggers, and judging by the little notch that had been carved into the leather of its hilt, it might even have been the same dagger that he had been compelled to kill himself with during his last death.
Another thump, then another.
Two more Uncles arrived - the Uncle in charge of cultivation guidance, who he had met earlier, and the Uncle in charge of the material for the camp, as well as the drugs and medicine. Not healing, because that was a privilege not given to deathsworn. On his nose were perched thin-rimmed round glasses, and his hair had been neatly parted in the middle as always.
"Father," they both greeted as they entered the tent.
"We have a problem," Father said, turning to them. "Observe."
Then he turned again to Wu Hao, handed him the dagger, and spoke.
"721," Father said, staring straight into his eyes. Wu Hao was struck, most of all, by the awful sense of deja vu. If now it was in a well-lit tent rather than outside, otherwise frustratingly little had changed about his situation since his last two deaths. "Kill yourself."
The dagger in his hands twitched like a living thing.
And, whether it was his exhaustion or that same spite that had kept his feet moving when that Uncle had wanted him to fail earlier - it didn't go any higher than that. His hand remained at belly height, and while he couldn't lower it, he could keep it from raising past that point.
He breathed in hard and he felt his muscles strain to the point of snapping, but even so - he remained in that stalemate.
Father stared at him for a moment longer, then shook his head and snatched the dagger out of Wu Hao's hands. Wu Hao sagged, taking deep gasping breaths as his muscles finally relaxed.
"He's resisting the conditioning," he told one of the Uncles, displeasure clear from his expression. "Why is he resisting?"
The Uncles glanced at each other.
"Maybe it's the drugs?" one asked, the one in charge of the drugs. "I'd heard that Elder Kong made some changes to the formula to make it slightly less expensive."
Father scowled. "That cheap bastard. You're telling me this entire batch might be resistant to the conditioning?"
"It's only slightly," the Uncle said. "Sir -"
"Slightly is bad enough!" Father shouted back, and that Uncle flinched back. "How many times do I have to tell you? There is absolute obedience and there is failure! What else is there? Trust? Loyalty? Friendship? Love? They are chains that hold us down, Liu Xijing!"
"Of course, sir," that Uncle said, his glasses sliding to the tip of his nose as he almost literally staggered back and fell over himself. "I apologize, sir. It wasn't my intention to question you."
Father harrumphed.
"It only seemed like a waste to me," the Uncle said hurriedly, to explain himself.
"A waste?" Father asked dismissively. "A waste is when you lose something that you did not have to lose. If we cannot be sure of absolute loyalty, then there is nothing we can be sure of with this batch. Discarding them then is the only possible solution."
"But the drugs alone aren't our only way to ensure loyalty," that Uncle argued. "We could step up the punishments, no? That might -"
"Father is right," the Uncle in charge of cultivation guidance said slowly but loudly and definitively. There was a warning in his tone. "We do as he says."
"I merely don't want to do anything unnecessarily drastic," the Uncle argued. "It might be a mistake to -"
Father growled, then surged forward. Qi poured from his body like a sudden blast that rocked the tent, setting the cloth to flutter and his desk to heel back slightly from the sudden power that Father had brought forth.
Father's hand clenched around that Uncle's neck and lifted him easily, squeezing so that his fingers pressed deep into the flesh of the man's neck. That Uncle was the same height as Father, but Father just raised his arm slightly without apparent strain so that the Uncle's feet dangled off the floor.
It was not the first time that Wu Hao had seen Father use his qi, but the sheer weight of it still astounded him. Father had to be at least a first-grade martial artist. Possibly he was even a Master. His qi felt, in a word, like light without warmth. Wu Hao tasted cinnamon and it tasted wrong in ways he couldn't begin to articulate.
"I do not merely require discipline and obeisance from the deathsworn," Father said, tone harsh. "Don't argue with me again, or else no one will ever find your corpse."
The Uncle nodded as fast as he could, face pale. "Yes, Father," he croaked. "Apologies, Father."
Father opened his hand and let the Uncle fall to his feet again. He thought for a moment, with everyone else holding their breaths. Finally, he broke the silence.
"Test if the deterrent mechanism still works," Father ordered. "589, hold him. Get started, Bai Jing."
Wu Hao tried to turn, but before he managed 589 threw himself forward like an arrow from a bow, slamming a fist into Wu Hao's stomach. The punch forced the air out of Wu Hao's lungs, and while he was dazed from the impact two strong, qi-enhanced arms snaked around Wu Hao's arms and held him tight.
Maybe he really should have kept that dagger, he had time to think, and then he was being choked.
The left Uncle scowled at Wu Hao. He must have been awakened in a hurry, and he didn't carry his flask of wine, which hadn't seemed to help his mood any. So his name was Bai Jing, and the other was Liu Xijing? Wu Hao had never heard any of the Uncles be referred to by anything as mundane as a name before. What was the third Uncle's name, then?
At the same time, he also didn't know who the other man the Uncles had referred to was either. Who was Elder Kong? What role did he play, beyond apparently being the one in charge of the recipes for their medicine?
"Father," he tried. "I'm not defective..."
Uncle Bai Jing reached out and slammed a punch into Wu Hao's stomach, which would have doubled him over if not for 589 still holding him in position with arms that felt like bands of iron clamped around his own.
"No one's interested in hearing from a defective product," the Uncle said viciously. And with that punch, he had robbed Wu Hao of the ability to speak, as well.
"Stop tormenting him," Father said, scowling. "There's no point to it. Leave your games for the living, not the walking corpses."
"Yes, sir, my apologies," Uncle Bai Jing muttered. He slapped Wu Hao again, though. It stung, and Wu Hao felt something give beneath the Uncle's hand against his cheek. A tooth, maybe.
"Come on," Bai Jing ordered. "This'll get too messy for the tent. Follow me, you."
But 589 looked at Father first, who nodded. Only then did he push Wu Hao forwards, shoving him forward using his hips so that he didn't have to let go of him at any point. Even if Wu Hao had allowed himself to be carried away, orders were orders.
They left the tent, with the tent flap smacking Wu Hao in the head as he was pushed outside. The Uncle was already standing near to the tent and was walking to one of the more open fields where cultivation guidance had happened earlier, and Wu Hao was pushed over there as well.
He was dimly aware that he was going to die here, beyond exhausted and numb. If he hadn't been so tired, then maybe he could have escaped.
Something to consider for the next time, he thought, finding something darkly funny about the thought. Here he was, about to die again. He struggled against 589's arms, trying to find a way to twist around and escape, but the other boy held him in too tight of a lock to do so.
Uncle grunted in an annoyed way and forced his qi into Wu Hao, where it paralyzed him utterly. His heart sank and his eyes darted, one side to another, hoping that there was some way to get free.
"Last words?" Uncle asked, stepping closer again.
Wu Hao didn't stop trying to struggle with as little of his body as he had left to him.
The Uncle scrunched his eyebrows into an expression of annoyance, but then he realized it didn't matter. With a quick little grunt he then gathered himself.
That same thick, oily qi that Wu Hao had seen yesterday began to roil up from his core, surging outwards from his limbs and coiling around his left arm, concentrating into his hand. He turned that to Wu Hao, palm open, fingers splayed. The heavy scent of awful wine roiled through the air.
Suddenly it was like nothing in the world existed except for that single palm. Despite his posture, though, the Uncle didn't strike Wu Hao at all. Instead, all he did was draw his hand back, and the circle of qi that had been buzzing in Wu Hao's chest followed along with him, blasting out of his chest.
And with the filter gone, the rest of his qi came flooding in. This wasn't the regulated trickle of qi that dripped into his core throughout the day, keeping him more alert and fitter than an average boy despite the rough treatment. That had been a droplet. This was an entire river bursting through the dams that had been set up, pouring into his core that had been deprived of the qi it needed for what felt like years now.
In the first second he felt nothing but an immense warmth flooding his chest, a contentment and power like he had never felt before in his life. It felt like a banquet after starving, like a warm fire in the middle of a blizzard. It felt fantastic, and despite his training Wu Hao couldn't stop himself from letting out a relaxed groan slip.
589 let Wu Hao go hurriedly, then stepped back to a safer distance.
But then it kept coming. More and more power that had been locked away poured down until his core was filled to the brim and then kept receiving more, spilling over until it infected his heart and his limbs in a riotous loop that fed upon itself and kept giving him more and more power.
With every heartbeat, the power kept swelling. He tried to control it, vaguely aware that this was more power than he should have had access to, but with the dual effect of the exhaustion he just couldn't manage a decent grip on the power and it slipped. The qi was now pumping through his limbs again and they were reddening with the strain. With his senses enhanced to the limit, he could feel that blood vessels were stimulated until they simply burst throughout his body, and even then the power inside his core kept building without restraint.
It was too much. The qi throughout his limbs finished its first half cycle and forced its way back to his heart to complete it entirely, smashing into the power already there, and causing even more spillage. It grew - another cycle rampaged through his body and grew again - he had only a moment to think that everything was going horribly, horribly wrong -
The bubble of qi that had been boiling inside his core burst, cracking his core and exploding out of his ribcage.
Wu Hao didn't even feel the pain. He just suddenly felt nothing - could control no muscles, felt no injury. Everything was gone, before he could even react. Even with all his enhanced senses and the sudden influx of power that the qi had given him, all of it was immediately gone. Sensation, thought, and his life, all sundered in a single blast.
As if from a great distance, he heard Uncle's voice.
"It still works, then. At least we have that. 589, was it? Get one of the others to clean up the body, then grab someone else from his batch to see how well the indoctrination held up."
Then Wu Hao knew no more.
You have been killed by a qi overload for the first time. Obtained Increased Talent I as a reward.