Wu Hao gasped for breath, hands flying to check himself for fire. There was none, though. His skin was whole and he smelled no smoke - there was nothing that even suggested that he'd ever been burned at all.

  He relaxed, just a little bit, but then had to fight not to shiver in the chill that suddenly blew at him. It felt even colder coming from the burning heat that had turned his skin to charcoal, and it'd felt plenty cold already. They were high in the mountains and the cold wind tore through everything in its path mercilessly.

  Struggling to not rub his hands, he let a little qi run through his body and forced himself to stand up straight.

  Then, because that wasn't enough to take it from his mind, he looked towards the reward that he'd received this time.

  He stared at it bitterly, then released a breath that might have been a sigh.

  Resistance to heat wouldn't do him any good unless he stumbled into more fires, and he wasn't planning on doing that any time soon. Besides, it was marked Fire Resistance I, meaning that it was only the first of many parts. Wu Hao wondered if the complete version would make him outright immune to fire or would just give him a good chance of resisting a fire.

  He also wondered how much use that would even be. He'd heard that there were martial arts that focused on fire or heat, but when would he actually come into contact with anyone from the Diancang Sect or the like?

  He wasn't clear on how Father had managed to track him with that bizarre golden flame, but he'd managed to track him. Father didn't know before he'd cast the technique, that much was certain, but afterwards he'd seemed to simply follow it until it killed Wu Hao. Unless Wu Hao learned how the technique worked and how to avoid its detection, he wasn't going to try to steal another knife from the Honor Guard again. Not without a very good reason.

  In the end, despite trying to deny it or focus on how Father might have found out, he was back to where he had been.

  No tent pegs, he thought to himself. No fire pokers. No using anything else that looked like a knife if you squinted, because Wu Hao had grown increasingly sure that whatever he found, it'd explode in his hands unless he had a proper knife. No taking knives from dead Honor Guards, if he managed to kill them at all.

  What else was there? The cooking tasks were monitored by Uncle Liu, because he needed to put in the drugs which helped in keeping them compliant, so...

  Wait.

  Uncle Liu had knives. Not just those used for cutting up the food or skinning the odd animal they caught - those were mostly blunt anyway - but also for his own purposes. He needed them for preparing his herbs, if Wu Hao recalled correctly. That meant that he'd have to find a way into Uncle Liu's tent.

  The man usually didn't see anyone, though. None of the Uncles did - they were presumed to be deep in cultivation or otherwise working on things too important for the deathsworn to interrupt. They didn't have the same absolute control over the deathsworn as Father did, but they stood in for him occasionally.

  That meant he needed a good reason to enter Uncle Liu's tent, one that might see him distracted enough that Wu Hao could snatch a knife. Or maybe two.

  He knew just the thing, too, and he'd hammered out the details by the time they arrived at the location where the camp was already being built.

  Despite having seen it more times than he cared to mention, Wu Hao looked around the camp again, seeing it with new eyes. The first time he'd not paid attention to it at all; the last few times he'd looked at it knowing he'd be sneaking around it later.

  The thoughts alone proved an insufficient distraction from the fact that he was digging the latrine for the fourth time now. After that, they were made to raise several of the tents, hammer in the fence, and more of the usual tasks.

  Finally, as they were sent out to go collect food and wood from the mountaintops, Wu Hao slowed until he was walking next to 723. The other boy gave him a glance, but it wasn't like he'd engage Wu Hao in conversation or anything. Curiosity had been beaten out of them.

  In any case, it meant that Wu Hao stood next to 723 when the mountaintop was sectioned off and each of the areas was given as missions by 726. 720 was sent to go check out a nearby copse of trees for firewood, 729 was sent to go investigate if there were any animals nearby that they could hunt, and then 726's eyes turned to Wu Hao and 723.

  "Let me handle this stretch," Wu Hao asked. 726 said nothing, but he just turned to 723.

  723 stared expressionlessly, then mumbled in that deep voice of his: "Understood."

  As 723 walked off to cover another stretch of grasslands, the one that Wu Hao would've normally searched through, Wu Hao set himself to searching. He crouched down to his hands and knees, pushing bits of grass aside as he tried to remember what the herb that 723 usually took back looked like.

  It was a sort of mushroom, as he recalled. He'd never learned what it did or why it was such a good find, but he'd caught enough glimpses to know it was a mushroom, even if he'd never taken enough of an interest to know what it looked like beyond that.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Finally, though, he found a mushroom that stood apart from the rest in its group beneath a small rock, distinguished by the brilliant green spots that covered it from top to bottom. Or was that root to stem? He had no clue. It was smaller than the other mushrooms, though, and when Wu Hao grabbed it, it let out a giant cloud of deep brown spores that clung to his clothes and made him sneeze as hard as he'd ever sneezed before.

  "Shit," he muttered, trying to bat the mushroom spores out of the rags that covered his arms, but he had no success. Bright yellow spots dotted his arms and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't get them off of him.

  If this wasn't the mushroom after all, then he was going to rip this thing apart, he decided, and felt like an idiot the moment after he'd thought that. What was venting his anger on a mushroom going to accomplish?

  He walked back, keeping the mushroom at arms' length, just in case it tried anything else. 726 had left to his own tasks, which left Wu Hao to stand there as he waited for anyone else to return.

  The sound of footsteps made him look up to see 729 was approaching.

  729 looked at him for a bit, lips still turned into that cruel grin by the scar that marred his face. Wu Hao knew him, though, and he knew that the grin wasn't just the fault of the scar.

  "You look like a clown, 721," he said.

  Wu Hao stared back. "It's just spores."

  "Let him go," 723 said, speaking up from where he'd just returned from his own search. "That's an important mushroom. Even if he's mishandled it, it should still prove valuable to Father."

  "If you say so," 729 said, and turned away to go get the next mission from 726, walking away slowly and unhurriedly.

  723's serious eyes turned to Wu Hao. "Explain to Brother and he'll send you to the Uncles."

  Then he too began to walk away.

  "What did you mean by mishandled?" Wu Hao asked. "Are these poisonous?"

  All he got in return to his questions was an annoyed grunt, though, so in the end he kept careful hold of the mushroom and got sent back to the camp. Half an hour of walking later he found Uncle Liu's tent.

  He tapped twice at the entrance, wondering if Uncle Liu was even present. Probably. The Uncles didn't have to bother with all the tasks that the deathsworn did.

  "A moment," Uncle Liu called, and Wu Hao heard the sounds of something being put away. "Come in."

  Wu Hao pushed the tent flap aside and walked in, still holding onto the mushroom carefully. As he walked in, he looked around Uncle Liu's tent. At his desk there were a few ledgers that he carried, in which the amounts of herbs were kept track of, but the bulk of the tent was taken up by the herbs themselves.

  Maybe to a trained eye, the thick scent of herbs would mean something. Maybe the sacks of random herbs, the table with cutting boards and knives laid atop, or the jars and pouches and the furnace nearby all had their meaning, which an expert would be able to discern in a single glance.

  To Wu Hao it just looked like a cluttered mess that smelled like slightly burnt grass. Of whatever Uncle Liu had just put away, he saw no sign. On the medicine table, though, there lay a few knives that were stained with juices of some kind.

  "You found this?" Uncle Liu asked, tone mildly reproachful. "You handled it without gloves?"

  "Yes, Uncle," Wu Hao said.

  Uncle Liu quirked an eyebrow, tapped his fingers against his chin, and stared at Wu Hao.

  "You've not felt anything?"

  "Only a mild tingling, Uncle," Wu Hao said.

  Uncle Liu sighed. "Fortune smiles upon fools," he muttered beneath his breath. "Listen. Do you know what kind of mushroom this is?"

  "No, Uncle."

  "This is a Mountain's Breath Bluecap," Uncle Liu said, slipping into a teacher's tone. "It's a mild diuretic, but its main effect is that it has a retardant effect on qi that doesn't have the right attunements. Specifically it prevents anyone who uses low-grade water or fire qi from -"

  He cut himself off.

  "There's no point in telling you this," he said, and held out his hand. "Give it here."

  "Will Father be pleased?" Wu Hao asked, handing it over carefully.

  Uncle Liu scoffed, but then thought better of it.

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, Father will be pleased."

  He turned to the medicine table, then stepped over to a bag set more at the back of the tent instead. He began to rummage around in it, taking out little pouches that were already full of other herbs and had been neatly labelled or little bags that were too small to fit the mushroom.

  Wu Hao crept over to the medicine table as well, hoping that Uncle Liu would've forgotten that he was there. He took almost exaggerated care to stalk over to the table, each step feather-light but achingly slow. With a little bit of luck, he could try to take one of the knives, and then...

  As his fingers inched closer to the nearest of the knives, Wu Hao tried his level best to hurry as much as he could without making any sound whatsoever. Slowly, he managed to pull the knife towards him.

  A quiet clatter and Wu Hao's heart almost stopped, but Uncle Liu showed no sign that he'd heard the sound, so Wu Hao shoved the knife into his rags, letting it hang below his elbow where he hoped it wouldn't be noticed.

  Only moments later, Uncle Liu looked up, having found a pouch to contain the mushroom in. He pried it open, slid in the mushroom and then put the bag back. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air, and Wu Hao needed no other excuse. He made to leave the tent.

  But before he could, a hand clamped around Wu Hao's own only a step later.

  "What did you steal?" Uncle Liu demanded.