Swift as he was, he soon realized that he had gotten no closer, and eventually lost her in the crowd. Figuring he would have better luck spotting her from above, Bai Guo leaped towards a house three stories tall, scaling the wall in a few outrageous jumps. As his head emerged over the edge of the roof, he found a golden haired beauty standing right where he intended to plant his foot.
Bai Guo shouted and lost his balance. Just as he was about to fall, he found himself suspended in midair. The woman held him by his forearm, neither pulling him up nor letting him drop. Bai Guo planted his feet back onto the wall and finished his ascent. The woman stepped back, letting go of his arm. She was taller than him by half a head, and Bai Guo had never felt his height to be inadequate up until then.
"What are you doing?" She asked, her voice borderline monotone.
Bai Guo broke out into cold sweat, finding himself at a loss for words. He cupped his hands and bowed deeply. "Thank you, senior, for your help."
No response came. Without rising, Bai Guo continued. "For lifting me up." When no response came yet again, he introduced himself. "I am Bai Guo. If I may ask for the senior's esteemed name and the name of your esteemed sect."
His two questions were answered by two more. "Why are you calling me a senior? How old are you?"
Bai Guo felt his throat drying up. "I'm 17 years old. How... how would you like me to address you?"
His words were met with a chuckle, the woman's voice perking up with amusement. "So why did you address me as senior?"
Bai Guo felt he was being toyed with, but continued to respond in earnest. "Because you are my superior not only in age, but in martial arts, too... I only meant to show my respect."
As Bai Guo spoke, he dared to raise his head just a little bit. Both of the woman's long sleeves were by her side. From his angle, he could just barely see her fingertips. The young man suddenly found himself unnerved by the sight. Despite the great length of the sleeves, her arms were still long enough for her hands to be only barely covered by them. He set his head back down, forcing the thought aside.
Once again, the woman laughed. "That's okay then. Say, you are a local here, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Stop talking to the floor." Amusement had suddenly left her voice.
Bai Guo raised his waist, setting his arms at ease by nervously jerking them to his sides. The senior revealed an object in her hand, a black wooden token with the white words "Wuyi" on it, and asked a question. "Do you know what this is?"
"That's..." Bai Guo gasped. "That's the Wuyi Sect's token."
"What is the Wuyi Sect?" The woman followed up without hesitation.
Bai Guo thought the question strange - after all, who wouldn't know something like this? But he decided to answer directly. "The rulers of this kingdom, of course..." He hadn't meant to let those last two words slip out. But the woman seemed to pay it no heed.
"Where is it located?"
"Their main headquarters are in the Wuyi Mountains, but they have many branches, one of them in this city."
"If you could point me in the direction of the Wuyi Mountains, I would appreciate it."
It was now that Bai Guo had finally been unable to answer immediately. He could certainly have given her the directions to the office of the local branch with ease, but this was a lot more complicated.
Sensing his hesitation, the woman asked. "Are you, perhaps, a member?"
"No, ma'am..." Bai Guo answered honestly. An idea had suddenly flashed through his head like a bolt of lightning. "If you would like, I can lead you to their headquarters."
His proposition was met with silence. A small smile slowly crept up on the woman's face. "You aren't a member, yet you know where they're located well enough to lead me there? I don't see any mountains around, so it can't be that close, right?"
Bai Guo clasped his hands and dropped into another bow. He hastily began to explain. "Senior, I went there once when I was younger, to apply for membership within their sect. But my aptitude was deemed insufficient during the trials, and they threw me out. Now I work as a guard at my uncle's inn..."
"Stop talking to the floor."
Bai Guo raised himself again. The woman continued with her questions. "How far is it?"
"About two weeks of travel."
Her smile grew. "And may I ask why you'd be so courteous as to guide me there at such great inconvenience to yourself?"
Bai Guo's throat was completely parched by now. He swallowed heavily, though there was nothing to swallow. His reply came out hesitantly and after a pause. "If I may be so bold, I would like senior to take me on as her disciple."
The woman's smile faded away. Bai Guo desperately continued. "Martial arts have always been my passion, but without the expertise of a true master, my skills have never progressed beyond those of a journeyman."
The senior regarded him with surprise. "Did I, perhaps, get in the way of a similar plan of yours by killing that man?"
"No... Master Wei was part of the Wuyi Sect, and as I've mentioned before, they already refused me."
The rooftop descended into silence. The ruckus of the crowds below them could not overpower the sound of Bai Guo's heart thumping in his ears. Finally, the woman spoke again.
"If you bring me there, I'll consider it."
It was as if a stone dropped from Bai Guo's chest. Bai Guo bowed again, then fell entirely to his knees.
"That's enough of that." The woman spoke with a tinge of annoyance. "We're heading out right away."
"Right away?" Bai Guo parroted as he hastily got back up. "But we need to prepare for the trip... We need food, and... and other supplies... We won't be able to get a horse this late."
"Is there something wrong with your feet?"
Bai Guo was shocked, and waited for her to say that she was just kidding. When he realized that no such thing was coming, he protested. "But, senior, then the trip is going to take much longer than two weeks! Would they even let us past the gates at this hour?"
"Let me ask you something. Do you know martial arts at all?"
"My father taught me a few skills."
"So then are you, perhaps, slow in the head?" The woman turned away from him, walking towards the edge of the roof.
Bai Guo remained in awkward silence.
"The people at the gates are not martial artists. If you can't get past them one way or the other, then there's nothing I can teach you." She stopped at the edge. "From which gate would we be departing?"
"The... the west one."
"I will meet you there. If you take too long, I'm leaving without you." She stepped over the edge and fell. Bai Guo sprinted after her, but when he looked over, there was no trace of the mysterious woman.
Left to his own thoughts, the young martial artist weighed his options.
He was hoping to continue the dialogue a little longer to glean at least some information over what had just occurred in his uncle's inn, but she departed without giving him much opportunity. Was it worth pursuing this matter any further?
Was the risk of being painted as that woman's accomplice worth the possible payoff of being the one who brought her in to the authorities?
Her intentions confused Bai Guo greatly. Without that missing piece of the puzzle, accurately weighing the risk was next to impossible.
But whether by earning himself a spot in the Wuyi Sect, or by extracting a secret from the mysterious senior during their travels, he stood to gain greatly from this situation...
...At great risk to his life.
Although his mind was already made up, he still needed a few minutes to muster up courage. He stood stock still on the rooftop, mulling over what he should be doing next.
"Unless she's putting on an act, she's clueless about the local affairs. She has obviously come from somewhere far away... That senior must have already taken care of all of the travel preparations. I don't have much money on me, and most stores are closed at this time. Going back to the inn is out of the question. My uncle would never let me go through with this... And I can't give him the chance to persuade me because he just might be able to convince me! I should just get going now while I still have the courage!"
With those thoughts rampaging in his head, Bai Guo hopped off the roof and made his way towards the city's west gate. "I just hope she'll share her food with me."
As he left the night district behind, the crowds had rapidly thinned out. Contrary to what the mysterious woman had said, almost all of the city's guards were either martial artists themselves or amateur warriors directly under their employ, which not infrequently meant that they would have some semblance of familiarity with a martial arts technique or two. Although the techniques of the Wuyi Sect, as well as just about every sect that had a name in the world, were a secret, it was ultimately impossible to prevent people from catching a glimpse of them in action and imitating the motions, and even such a half-baked imitation presented a great deal of danger when wielded against a human being.
Therefore, Bai Guo was on guard. He hadn't had the silver tongue it would take to talk his way past the gatekeepers, so his only option was to slink past them under the cover of darkness like a common criminal. He approached the gates both swiftly and silently, taking detours through poorly lit streets and shabby neighborhoods.
He suddenly heard the clopping of horse hooves behind him. From the amount of noise and its erratic pattern, he surmised that there were multiple riders. He questioned why someone would cause such a commotion in the middle of the night, but the answer dawned on him immediately.
"Uncle's men must have reported Wei Qing's death!" Bai Guo disregarded stealth and began to run as fast as he could. If he had not managed to get out of the city before they heightened security, there was no way he would be able to get past the experts that would arrive to lock down the city.
The city walls were a little short of 10 meters tall. Their age and inadequate maintenance meant that, ordinarily, they were easy to climb. Had it not been the middle of the night, Bai Guo would have been over them in just a few seconds. But in this darkness, his footwork skills were too dangerous to use. He had to scale the old-fashioned way. As he slowly made his way up, he had to brush his hands across the wall to fill out loose stones to serve as potential grips.
Even climbing like this, his progress could not have been called slow by any reasonable stretch. But with the watchmen about to put the entire city on high alert, Bai Guo felt his heart sink with every moment he had to waste on seeking out a good grip.
And once he had nearly made his way to the top, his situation had gotten even worse - Bai Guo noticed a moving light around the point he was intending to climb over. Most likely drawn by the commotion from the city, a guard with a pot helm was peering over the streets, an oil lamp in hand. The idea that someone was currently scaling the walls had clearly not crossed his mind, but he was staring idly, and it seemed that he intended to stand about for at least some time.
Bai Guo decided that horizontally scaling the wall in search for a better exit point was out of the question; there was simply no time. "At this point, it's either down or up!" With that in mind, he crept ever closer towards the edge, slower than he had ever climbed before.
Suddenly, bells rang out from the city, quickly growing louder as more and more joined the cacophony. It was at that moment that Bai Guo leapt up, crossing the scant remaining meters of the wall. The blaring alarm had silenced the stones loosened up by his rapid ascent.
Like a bat out of hell, Bai Guo emerged where the light of the lantern was at its dimmest. The guard had finally noticed something in the periphery of his senses and quickly turned.
But there was nothing left for him to see. Nevertheless, the watchman was overcome by a growing suspicion. He had suddenly heard a noise, as if, on the other side of the walls, something fell down. He rushed up to the other edge and shined his lantern down.
But there was nothing to see there either. With that, his suspicion had been contented, and he finally resumed his patrol.
Unbeknownst to the guardsman, in the darkness, Bai Guo was sprinting for the tree line ahead of the city, clutching his arm which he had hurt after a bad drop from the walls. It was not his intention to so boldly descend, but in his panic he had lost his grip about halfway down and tumbled.
Bai Guo hid behind a tree and sat down, breathing heavily not from exertion but from the fear. Now, with the city behind him, it had struck him that, should he fail in his little plot, he might never be able to come back to this city even if he were to get away with his life.
A woman's voice emerged from the darkness. "You made it."
Bai Guo's wandering mind was startled, and he let out a gasp. He recognized the eccentric senior's voice, though he could hardly make out her features in the dark.
"...Yes, ma'am." He answered.