Wu Hao tore his arm away from Wang Hangsheng's loose grip. The guard's eyes regarded him coolly.

  In turn, Wu Hao regarded him. He didn't bother hiding his hostility - not that he could even if he'd tried, with how angry he felt. At Lady Jin, yes, but also himself, for getting comfortable, for believing that maybe it wasn't all so bad.

  There were no opportunities here except the ones he was given, and he needed to trade away more and more to get those. Lady Jin had already decided that she could take his future. What else did he have left to take?

  No matter how much he ignored the leash around his neck, it was impossible to do so when he felt like he was being choked with it. That much was clear.

  Wang Hangsheng himself wasn't a tall man, but he was wide. Thick arms and a neck that sat on heavy shoulders. A thick red band of ink swirled around Wang Hangsheng's right wrist, which he kept secured to his saber as he walked. His eyes were small and his face bore a long scar that started next to his right ear and stretched over to his temple. Of his massive hands, two fingers were missing joints, both on the left side.

  He looked like a two-bit thug, but there was a certain raw intelligence that shone in his eyes. He was, Wu Hao realized belatedly, one of the men that he'd seen on the first day that he'd met Lady Jin, her aides or perhaps her guards.

  Wang Hangsheng's qi was not particularly thick or heavy. It was the feeling of an old well, not in summer where it might prove refreshment but in early autumn or late fall. It looked deceptively tranquil, but that was nothing but a trap. Something shimmered deep inside that well, a beast hiding itself in camouflage. Wu Hao had a distinct impression of a snake, ready to strike.

  It'd drag its target back down into the water, drown it, and wait for the next. Most beasts struck out of brute hunger, but everything that Wu Hao sensed was that this was a beast that might strike out of simple sadism.

  Also, he was a second-grade martial artist, Wu Hao noted distantly.

  "Boy," Wang Hangsheng said. He didn't have a loud voice, and he didn't have a particularly smooth way of speaking: it seemed as if words might have been a simple chore he didn't want to bother with.

  In that, at least, they were similar.

  Silence met him, and Wang Hangsheng's eyes narrowed.

  "Tomorrow," the guard spoke, enunciating clearly as if he feared Wu Hao was stupid. "We leave at dawn. Be here the instant the sun rises over the horizon, ready for an hour-long trip. If you are not, I will not come looking, but others will. Do you understand?"

  Still caught in the eddies of anger, Wu Hao didn't respond. Wang Hangsheng drove his large fist deep into Wu Hao's belly, doubling him over with the impact and the pain.

  Gasping for breath, blinking his tears away, Wu Hao added Wang Hangsheng's name to the top of the list.

  "The commander is merciful with you," Wang Hangsheng said, his voice still infuriatingly calm. He allowed Wu Hao to rise again slightly, then placed a hand on his saber, drawing an inch of steel from the sheathe.

  His saber was a large and wicked thing, all angular thorns and sharp edges. The blade curved up slightly - the sheathe was probably custom made, because Wu Hao didn't have any idea how else it might have fit.

  "I will not be as merciful," Wang Hangsheng said. "I know where you have gone. I know where you will go. You take even a single step out of line, and I will know."

  Wang Hangsheng's qi rippled outwards slightly, striking against Wu Hao's with a certain feeling to it, something familiar in the annoying feeling that he felt ripple down his neck and back...

  "You," he said. "You were the one that followed me yesterday."

  "Yes," Wang Hangsheng said.

  "Why?" Wu Hao roared.

  Those same dispassionate eyes looked at him. "Orders."

  There was no doubt in Wu Hao's mind whose order those were, either.

  "Why?" he asked again, quieter this time.

  "Why should I tell you? You're a mongrel, boy. A dog, biting at the ankles of its betters. The commander has deigned you worthy of joining the battallion. I look forward to making her see that you are not."

  Wang Hangsheng drew another inch of steel.

  "All I need is an excuse," he said quietly, stepping closer to Wu Hao. "One step out of line and I'll cut you down where you stand. Give me a reason to and I'll be glad to obey."

  Wu Hao breathed in slowly, feeling blood trickle down his throat. He swallowed, and saw from the vaguely satisfied cast to Wang Hangsheng's qi that that was taken as a sign of submission, even though that was not what it actually was.

  "Do I make myself clear?"

  Wu Hao's eyes met Wang Hangsheng's. A second-grade martial artist was a challenge. Not one he hadn't overcome before.

  He had wondered already, if maybe he could win against the cultist now. That man's name he'd long since forgotten, but he remembered the feeling of brute power, of qi clashing against qi, them colliding with technique against technique.

  Wu Hao licked his lips, evaluating Wang Hangsheng as a target. If he set it up just right...

  But no. He'd go ahead with the mission, for now. Even if he did kill Wang Hangsheng, then what? Return here and face Lady Jin again? Wait until he had an opportunity to kill the man without suspicion falling onto Wu Hao's shoulders? How long might that take?

  Wang Hangsheng just smirked, then poured qi from his core into his feet, the patterns turning into symbols that blurred before Wu Hao's senses, and then he was gone.

  Wu Hao glared at where he'd stood, still brimming with an angry energy. He stormed into the dorm, tore through the kitchen, and didn't even bother hiding himself as he ripped several knives out of their blocks and ransacked several bundles of raw vegetables.

  "Hey," one of the chefs said. "You can't -"

  What Wu Hao couldn't do, he wouldn't learn, because he'd ran out of earshot before the man had had a chance to do more than call out half a sentence. He ran up the stairs, kicked in the door of his room, and then let his food and his knives clatter down onto the floor. Then he spat blood onto a rag that he'd torn from some cloth in the hall.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He had to wait until he'd spat out all of the blood before he could eat and even afterwards he felt no hunger, but he ate anyway.

  After that meager dinner he set to etching deep patterns into each of the knives that he'd taken. His fingers sometimes shook with the suppressed rage that he still felt, and he ruined two knives that were nearly finished by carving into them too deeply.

  His qi was responding better than it had before to his commands - almost too eagerly, even. He scowled at another ruined knife that he threw onto the pile, grabbing his fifth.

  When he was done he placed the knife gingerly on the floor next to him. His fingers ached with the dual pains of having forced himself to hold them steady and from attempting to carve straight through metal. He whipped them around, trying to shake the soreness.

  His anger still hadn't faded, but it had cooled somewhat. From the white-hot it'd burned before, he now had more time to think, to breathe, to plan.

  And he had time to think about why he felt the way he did. His future had been decided for him yet again. He could think for himself, for now, but was he actually free, right now? Wu Hao still felt trapped in chains he'd never chosen to wrap himself in. It was only through Jin Qilong's intervention that he hadn't been smacked down into the ground simply for refusing to answer a question, to show his talent.

  He wondered if it was worth it at all, to be part of the Red Saber Battallion. It would be more of this. More missions. More demands. More of others deciding his pace, deciding what he could do and what he couldn't. Determining if he could live or die.

  And there was more. That fury that had taken hold of him wasn't normal. He'd started to hear faint echoes of the tiger's rumbling purr in his chest, like it was poised to strike. He'd thought he'd rid himself of the fear that it'd generated in him, but was it possible that other effects lingered? He couldn't deny that maybe that was the case, and there wasn't much of anyone except himself who'd be able to tell.

  Sighing, he took his aching fingers away from the knives and inspected his work. They'd work well enough, he thought. His knowledge of arrays showed him that there were other things he could add to them, the spaces he had left to work another array into, but that didn't mean he actually knew what. He'd finished carving all the knives that he had, anyway.

  With that thought in his mind he forced himself to his feet, disregarding the scattered food remains around him on the floor. Bits of carrot and something he'd never even bothered to learn the name of littered the bedroom floor, mingling with the steel dust and three broken knives to form a general pile of trash.

  Outside, it was dark. Wu Hao sat in his room and brooded until the servant came to notify him. He'd had plans for traps and the like, but he'd have to shelve those. He just didn't have the time.

  He'd sat there, motionless, for long enough that his legs had started to utter complaints. Finally, the knock at the door. Wu Hao almost ripped the door off its hinges.

  "Yes?" he asked, trying to get his tone under control again - trying to sound cool, disaffected. Bored, perhaps.

  "The young master has called for you at the training ring," the servant said. The same as he'd seen the night before. Wu Hao regarded him suspiciously.

  "Who sent you?" Wu Hao demanded.

  "The head steward asked me to pass a message along," the servant said, caught off guard by Wu Hao's stare. "Why?"

  "Not Shan Kong?" Wu Hao asked.

  "The son of the head of the guards?" the servant responded. "No?"

  Wu Hao studied the man's face, but could spot no lies there. Maybe it was the guileless expression, maybe it was the simple fact that Wu Hao couldn't read the man's qi because he wasn't a martial artist, but in any case he figured the servant might simply be honest.

  "Fine," he finally growled. "I'll go."

  "Yes," the servant said, eying Wu Hao weirdly. "I'll - okay."

  He stepped away quickly, all but running from the room, and Wu Hao watched him go with a blank expression, which barely even twitched when the man muttered under his breath questions about Wu Hao's sanity.

  It might even have been fair. Wu Hao sometimes wondered if he was sane, but he'd long since decided it didn't matter.

  Wu Hao strapped the knives to his belt, slid his bandit's saber into the sheathe, and clenched his fists. Walking outside of his room, he carefully closed the door, shoving a thin plate of iron that he'd carved from a cutting board into the hinges. It was linked by a trail that he'd painted with a mix of blood and iron filings, which would explode when the door opened unless his specific qi was pushed through that same section of wall first.

  He had no illusions that it'd keep out Wang Hangsheng or take out a martial artist stronger than Wu Hao, but it'd mean he would know if anyone had tampered with his room, and there would be no way not to notice.

  Then he shook his head and headed outside. The people inside the dorms were still eating, it turned out, were having animated conversations and drinking. Some of them even seemed to be having fun.

  Wu Hao watched them, lingering on the final step of the stairs for a moment longer, and then hardened his heart.

  His hands didn't shake as he pushed open the door. All the fury he'd felt wasn't gone, wasn't deadened, was still raw. All he'd done during his preparations was form it like he would an array: carve it into patterns like his knives to make it useful, build up a deep well of anger to draw from, and decide who he'd unleash it on.

  Now it was time to kill.