Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 182: Emotions

"So? You are a Yuanjing-trained young master, you might be a better swordsman than I," Wuyi said.

Guan shook his head. "No, it's not about being a swordsman, it's about the power. He is a Qi master. And I feel you are stronger, so most probably your cultivation is higher. I stood no chance."

Wuyi shrugged. "Fine. The way you fought the demonics, I think you are a great warrior."

"That Li Xian imagines himself to be the very best warrior in all of the empire and continent," Guan said.

"Really?" Wuyi said. "How very dangerous."

Guan snorted. "You find that amusing."

"I have a serious side, you know," Wuyi said.

"I never thought I'd be able to chuckle while I told this. He was in Qi armour—I was not." Guan sighed

Wuyi nodded. "He would be, being a foreigner. I have heard some of them don't hold the same noble traditions. They take themselves very seriously."

"I only had a ceremonial sword—by heavens, I make too many excuses. I held him, took a wound, and he easily defeated me. Killed my sworn attendants. They were not just attendants, they were my friends too." Now all the humor was gone, and Guan was somewhere between toneless and sobbing. "I lost all sense of the fight, and he mastered me—pushed me down into the dirt. Made me admit I was bested."

How that must have tasted, Wuyi thought. Because he had imagined doing exactly that to Yuanjing members many times. He sat by the very man's bedside and tried to think what had changed in a few minutes, that now, it seemed impossible that he had imagined doing it to this guy. It was not all their fault; this guy was as clueless as they come.

Just two days ago Wuyi wanted to end the whole clan, there was not fault in clueless naives like these.He felt as hypocrite as he had killed many clueless and naives for his personal gain.

"Then he went into the inn and killed my senior attendant," Guan said. He shrugged. "I have vowed to kill him."

Wuyi had a restless urge to help this poor fellow; something in him was asking him to help his kin who was being sincere. Maybe it was the bloodline that bound him to this guy. Wuyi tried to understand why this guy's vow to kill tied him somehow to hate the person who offended this kin of his. It only worked now, why? Maybe because he connected with this kin or maybe because he said it very sincerely.

This was dangerous. Maybe he should have killed this pathetic kin of his. Or maybe it was just that he cared. He cared to find someone to call his family. And the pain—raw, like a visible bruise—in Guan's voice—he'd only just forced himself to decide in favor of the man, and now he was his confessor.

It was like being a real conundrum.

"Your enemy is my enemy," he said simply, and leaned down, and put his arms around his brother's neck.

"Oh, Wuyi, I am sorry for what you had to go through!" Guan said, and burst into tears. "Wuyi died, Guan," Wuyi said.

Guan dried his eyes. "You have problems of your own, no doubt." He managed a smile.

"Where would you like me to begin?" Wuyi said. "I'm engaged in a siege with an enemy who can deploy any kind of creature, who outnumbers me ten or fifteen or twenty to one, and who are led by a ruthless genius Qi lord it seems."

Guan managed another smile. "You seem to be a ruthless genius too."

Wuyi smiled.

Guan nodded. "You're about to try something insane. I can taste it."

Wuyi looked around, as if he feared an eavesdropper. "He's going to hit us hard, tonight. He has to. Up until now, to all intents and purposes, he's been losing the siege. The way the Demonic Wild works, eventually, someone of his own will see him as weak and take him down."

Guan shrugged. "They're the enemy. Who knows what they think?"

Wuyi returned a grim smile. "I do. All too well."

"So?" Guan asked, after a difficult moment. "Why do you know what they think?"

Wuyi drew a long breath. "Also, they say you curse the heavens publicly. Do you curse the heavens every morning? The righteous path will come for you sooner or later."

"Maybe sometime I'll tell you," Wuyi said.

Guan absorbed that. "The man of secrets. Very well. What are you about to do?"

Wuyi shrugged. "I'm going to try for him. Try to drag him down. The old man that came with you is in on it."

Guan sat up. "You're going for Lud—"

"Don't speak his name," Wuyi said.

"Naming calls." Guan bit his lip. "I wish I were fit to ride."

"You will be, soon enough." Wuyi gave his cousin a warm smile.

"I'd rather be your friend than your foe." Guan patted Wuyi's back gently. "Wuyi! I'm sorry for what our clan did!"

Wuyi stayed by the side of his kin until he slept. It didn't take long.

"I'm not Wuyi," he said to his sleeping half-brother. And then he went to find the woman. But he didn't have to go far. She was sitting on a chair in the corridor.

Their eyes met. Hers said, 'Don't come too close—I'm vulnerable just now.'

He wasn't sure what his own said, but he stopped at arm's length. "You heard," he said, far more harshly than he intended.

"Everything," she said. "Don't offend me by requiring my silence. I hear the confessions of dying men. I care nothing for the secrets of the mighty."

In his head, he knew that her anger was a kind of armor to keep him farther away. But still, he was becoming sensitive to her too. What was happening to him?

"Sometimes, secrets are secret for a reason," he said.

"You curse heaven because your mother and your father abandoned you, and you grew to manhood with the torments?" She spat. "I thought you were braver than that." She shrugged. "Or do you mean that you intend to take a group out into the night and die?"

He took a deep breath. Counted carefully to fifty in High Zenith, and let the breath go. "You have been in the Demonic Wild, you sympathize with them too. Your ancestor who looked righteous was an outworlder, wasn't he? Even if his Qi looked righteous," he said softly.

She looked away. "Begone."

"Liwei—" He almost went to embrace her, and then he stopped,"I have been in your world. On your bridge that flowing river of Qi—it's not demonic, but it isn't righteous. I'm not making judgments."

"I know, you idiot," she spat at him.

He was stunned by her venom. "I will protect you!" he said.

"I don't want your protection!" she said, the anger all but forming frost on her lips. "I am not a suffering princess in a tower! I am a woman of The heaven and righteous, and The heaven and righteous is the only protection I require, and I do not know why my bloodline power does not come from the righteous like others but this bloodline that I don't understand!

I have enough weight of sin on my head without you adding to my burdens!" She got to her feet and gave him a sharp push. "I was born a nomad, a woman lower than a serf. You, it turns out, are some lost real young master. You can, I have no doubt, cozen any woman you like, with looks, money, and power!" She pushed him again. "I AM NOT FOR YOU."

She was not a blushing youth of nineteen anymore. He caught her arm as she pushed him and pulled. He thought she would fall into his arms.

She almost did. But she caught herself, and his embrace was deflected. His arms pinned her, and she said, with all the ice a woman can muster: "Shall I tell Xuanxian Luo you forced me? Young Master?"

He let her go. Just in that moment, he realized maybe he cannot have it all. He could use harmony to make her his own, but that flowing river was something he was not ready to face. He disliked this feeling. He disliked this woman.

Just in that moment, the feeling was probably mutual.

She walked away to the main healing hall, and he had nowhere to which he could retreat except the small healing quarter behind him.

It was empty, and just what he needed, perhaps more than ever before, he needed to understand first with his brother then with this girl. He was feeling emotions. He shouldn't, he knew it. If he wanted he could get the statue of harmony take away all this, but he needed to understand why he was caring. He was selfish; he never cared.

He collapsed into the heavy cushion in the darkened room, and before he knew it, he went into deep meditation.