The man in red raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, defeat someone stronger than you?"

  His tone didn't really change, but he did sit up instead of laying on the ground. His saber fell forward slightly and without even looking the man took it gently with one hand and placed it between his legs, laying his hands on top of its pommel while its scabbard stabbed into the ground. Then he rested his chin on top of his hands, giving Wu Hao all the attention he seemed to be able to muster.

  "In an hour or so from now," Wu Hao said, "I will fight someone stronger than me."

  "Good," Zunxin said, looking slightly bewildered. "Hope you learn something?"

  He snickered, though he hadn't really said anything funny.

  "I will lose," Wu Hao said.

  "Usually happens," Zunxin said in response, but Wu Hao's attention was still on the man in red. His eyebrows had narrowed slightly as Wu Hao had spoken, so he had to know something.

  Finally, though, the man in red shook his head.

  "Tell me more," he said.

  "Oi, Shizhen," Zunxin said, eyes wide. "Tell me you're not actually going to tell him anything?"

  "What's the problem?" Shizhen said. "I'm just bored. It's not like I'd tell him any of the good stuff."

  That seemed to mollify Zunxin a little bit, though Wu Hao's mood sank when he heard that.

  "Never mind," Wu Hao said, doing a half-turn. "This was a stupid idea."

  "Yes," Shizhen agreed. "It was. Now tell us. Hurry up, though. Your fellows seem like they'll come marching in if you don't hurry back."

  Wu Hao purposefully didn't look back at the other deathsworn, but he could almost feel their gazes burning into his back with the weight of everyone wondering what the hell he was doing.

  Still, he'd come this far, what would be the point of not seeing things through?

  "The person I will fight," he said, "is a second-grade martial artist. He wields daggers."

  Shizhen raised an eyebrow. "This other guy, he's part of the Demon Cult?"

  "I think so."

  "Where are you fighting?" Shizhen asked.

  "A gully," Wu Hao said, and then, because that felt like an incomplete description, he added: "In a latrine downhill from an army camp."

  Zunxin snickered.

  "Mm," Shizhen said. His fingers twitched and he let his face fall a little to the side, studying Wu Hao as if in a new light. "Almost makes it sound like you're invading an enemy camp but get spotted by a sentry."

  Wu Hao didn't gape, but it was a near thing. Even Zunxin lifted an eyebrow.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Long experience," Shizhen responded. "That's accurate, then? Good to know. Have you tried sneaking in better?"

  His tone was airy, but Wu Hao didn't need Zunxin's grin to tell him that he was being mocked.

  "It doesn't work," Wu Hao said.

  "No," Shizhen said. "No, I suppose it wouldn't."

  He looked a little contemplative, though.

  "How do you know that?" he asked suddenly. "That it won't work."

  "Long experience," Wu Hao said, and Shizhen threw him a little smile.

  "That's fair," he said, and looked at Wu Hao again, as if studying him.

  Shizhen's fingers twitched a little bit. It had to be a tic of some kind, a subconscious habit.

  "It's an interesting little problem, for how bored I am," he murmured. "Simple enough that a solution is possible, but everything I can think of is things you don't have at your disposal. No preparing the site in question, since you lack both means and time to set up any formations or traps... you've not been taught group tactics, have you?"

  "Group what?" Wu Hao asked.

  "That's a no, then," Shizhen said, without answering Wu Hao's question. "Shame. That could have been promising."

  "Just tell me," Wu Hao said.

  But Shizhen shook his head. "No, if you don't know yet then you won't figure it out when you're fighting."

  He raised one hand, scratched at his chin even though he was beardless.

  "All I can offer is a general tip, then," Shizhen said. "You're a creature of the mud, it seems to me. It'll take less strength to pull down than to push up."

  That made no sense. Shizhen had a self-satisfied air like he'd just said something simple yet profound, but Wu Hao was clueless and in all honestly more than a little insulted. Zunxin was snickering again, but at least he seemed to have understood what Shizhen had said.

  "I don't get what you're even saying," Wu Hao groused.

  But Shizhen only shook his head.

  "Figure it out," he said. "Or don't. I've said my piece. It's about time you get going, isn't it?"

  He raised his hands, catching the falling saber in one and laying it across his stomach again before he lowered himself to the ground again. Shizhen couldn't have given a clearer sign that Wu Hao had been dismissed.

  Wu Hao shook his head, then walked away.

  He was fortunate that the rest still seemed too stunned by the fact that he'd split off from the others to try and pull him back, at least without one of the Uncles being there to report to. A consequence of not being able to make their own decisions, he supposed.

  But 726 was staring absolute daggers at him. As Wu Hao walked up, 726's fingers had dug so deep into his palms that blood dripped down.

  "Thank you for waiting for me," Wu Hao said. "Let's go."

  Wu Hao almost laughed at 726's face when he said that.

  "Explain," he hissed. "Now."

  "Father asked me to pass on a message," Wu Hao said calmly. It was a lie, and they'd discover it as soon as they returned to camp, but what did that matter when they'd never get back to camp in the first place?

  726's eyes narrowed. "And he said nothing about this to anyone else?"

  "No," Wu Hao said.

  "Why?"

  "If you want to doubt Father," Wu Hao responded, "just ask him."

  726 ground his teeth together so hard that Wu Hao could actually hear it, and he was clearly having to wrestle down his anger, but he said nothing after that, and Wu Hao left him behind.

  That said, he couldn't but help but think about what Shizhen had said. What was victory without fighting? He still had no clue, and when they arrived at the gully, he was so absorbed in trying to figure it out that he was able to ignore 726's anger, radiating off him so clearly that the mud must have felt warm from its heat.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  By the time that the cultist showed, he still didn't know, but there was nothing he could do except to draw his knife. Even the clarity that the rush of qi from cracking open the filter told him nothing he didn't already know.

  At least the pain banished the last of the introspective mood that he'd been caught in all day.

  Pushing qi through the knife, he gathered it at the tip and made it spark into a fuzzy Long Hook. His realizations earlier let him extend it, forming into a Void Rip if he wanted it to.

  It didn't help as much as he'd hoped. Wu Hao blocked the first few attacks with the Rippling Net, but then the cultist retreated slightly.

  When he advanced again, it was with that piercing stab that tore straight through Wu Hao's attempted defenses and cracked open his ribcage, exiting out the other end.

  Wu Hao woke up a day before, lost in his thoughts, before finally shaking his head and ignoring the glance 729 sent his way.

  Too much thinking. If he'd thought less and acted more... But then again, the reason he had acess to a knife at all was because he had thought about where he could get one.

  "Let's go," 732 said. "It's our turn."

  Wu Hao followed, letting his feet take the path they'd gotten used to. He spent a bit of attention on making sure he didn't break his ankles, but the bulk of his focus was on the riddle Shizhen had told him, despite having just told himself to stop overthinking.

  That wasn't the only problem, either. His mood made him so distracted that he'd accidentally pinched the Mountain's Breath mushroom too hard and gotten pollen all over his clothes, with some of it even getting in his mouth.

  It tasted of a thick clump of wood, and he spat on the ground as he tried in vain to get the taste out of his mouth, scrubbing furiously at his mouth with a strip of cloth that he tore from his rags. It didn't help much, and now the taste of wood had mixed with the scent of old sweat. Wu Hao gagged, spit again on the ground, and finally grimaced and gave up.

  The mushroom'd been battered a little in the process, and Wu Hao stared at it.

  He could eat it, he guessed. Even if he didn't know what it'd do. It'd probably be best if it killed him instantly somehow, but on the other hand, if it just gave him gas, what would the point be? Uncle Liu seemed excited about it, but Uncle Liu was in charge of the medical tent and knew a hell of a lot more than Wu Hao did about basically anything.

  In contrast, Wu Hao still didn't understand anything that Uncle Liu had told him, and at this point he was barely even listening to Uncle Liu's explanation. It didn't vary at all, and Wu Hao hadn't really bothered to try to get him to talk more. It wouldn't help with stealing a knife, so what was the point?

  He sighed, then got going, the taste still lingering in his mouth. 729 mocked him the moment he saw Wu Hao, but 726 sent him off anyway to go present the mushroom.

  The way over to the camp was quiet, the same as it'd always been. The way that it always would be, probably. Wu Hao passed several patrols of other deathsworn, moving to go do their own tasks.

  He approached the tent again, eyes falling on the tent spikes as he walked. He'd never had to bother to use them again now that he knew how easy it was to steal from Uncle Liu, several lives ago. If nothing else, though, he'd figured out why they'd exploded.

  Pump more qi into something than it could allow, and it would be destroyed, sometimes with explosive results. The tolerance of a knife seemed to be higher than the tolerance of a tent spike, presumably because it was made of steel instead of wood and pig iron. Then again, was that the only thing that mattered? Wu Hao figured that you could probably control what happened when the qi overloaded, if -

  Wait.

  His footsteps stopped, and he stared at the tent spikes for a long moment, trying to connect two thoughts. It felt like he'd just stumbled on something, his tired mind making a bridge between two islands.

  Kneeling down, he placed his fingers on one of the tent spikes. It'd been hammered in pretty deep, so he pushed just a little bit of qi through his arms and down to his fingers, banishing a numb chill that'd settled on the camp in the evening air. Placing two fingers on the flat top of the spike, he ripped it from the ground with a small grunt of effort.

  The tent's fabric shuddered, but then went quiet. If he'd done that during the night, everyone inside would have been awake. Now, though, there were few people in the camp, and even fewer that weren't coming or going on some errand.

  He stood up again, then hesitantly let just a little bit of qi run through the spike. There was a peculiar sense of awareness that he hadn't made a conscious note of before, a sense that there was only a very limited reservoir of power it could handle before it'd crack into pieces.

  That was what had happened, the first time that he'd inflicted a wound on the cultist. He'd managed to hurt the man by having the tent spike explode entirely by accident.

  But it didn't have to be an accident. He could do that on purpose, couldn't he?

  Wu Hao had been such an idiot, trying to fight the cultist on the cultist's terms. From the beginning, it'd been clear that he couldn't win in a contest of skill or of qi. The successes he'd had, those weren't the result of him having pulled himself up to stand equal to the other man's strengths.

  What he needed was to drag the other man down to his level. That was the key to victory.

  Fuck the riddle, he thought. He'd found a solution anyway.