He stared at the box for a while longer, trying to check it from every angle to see if there was anything that would betray his having taken it. But he couldn't spot any arrays on the box itself, and the little cage seemed to have been made solely to try and hide the box.

  Nonetheless, there was something about it that made him think twice. He ran a finger over its surface and felt the dust there, but also a cool metal that felt oily to the touch. It glistened slightly in the little light he had to work with.

  As carefully as he could, he carried the box over to the window and tried to make sense of it. He didn't shake it, but he did hold his ear to it as he walked, taking care not to trip over his own feet, and he heard the soft scraping sound of something moving within it. Rolling from one end of the box to the other, he figured.

  Even in the moonlight, though, Wu Hao couldn't figure out why this box was special. That, in turn, made something clear: the object of interest couldn't be the box, but had to be what it contained.

  He wondered for a moment if he should open it right here, right now, but common sense won over curiosity at least this time, and he turned his gaze up to the higher floors again. The box would wait for later, even later attempts to break in, but he had to see if there was anything more valuable that he could steal.

  His earlier apprehension made its return, with his steps echoing in the dark library no matter how quiet he tried to be. He winced at every sound of the breeze, froze every time the moonlight shifted slightly as a cloud drifted past the half moon. Still, in the quiet and the dark, he had to admit: this was kind of exciting.

  Not fun. But exciting, nonetheless.

  All that said, Wu Hao was disappointed when he'd reached the staircase. It would've been the easiest way to get up to the higher level by far, but arrays had been inscribed on every step. Small ones that would activate if someone stepped on them, he knew now, but the traces of qi ran off into a wall and were hidden from his sight, so he couldn't deduce anything else from them no matter how hard he tried.

  Again, the links here, the connections between the parts of the array were oddly thin.

  Worse, his trick wouldn't work here. Not only was there nothing to pry up slightly to replace the connection with his own qi, but he just didn't have any he could make use of. His lungs still pulsed with the occasional throb of pain whenever he accidentally tried to breathe in too deeply, and he'd need all the qi he could spare from his other organs in order to open the door again on his way out.

  Sure, he could still get another fragment of knowledge, but that'd require undoing all his hard work. If he'd wanted simply to die he'd have grit his teeth and smashed himself into the arrays on the door outside, or tried to force the big doors down below.

  Wu Hao returned to the little table that overlooked the first floor, where he'd placed every single book that had taken his interest, and he began to try and winnow out which ones were interesting. He didn't have the advantage of experience, and neither was he able to really read more than the titles. Even those were more guesses than anything else.

  First to be placed off to the side were the books that were about techniques. He brought them back to the shelves, and though he couldn't recall offhand where each of the books had actually come from, he just placed them wherever and hoped that no one would notice that they'd been missorted.

  That left him with the Unyielding Will Manual. That seemed the most promising, in part because he'd gained improved willpower at some point. It was hazy enough in his memory that he wasn't exactly certain on the details, but he was fairly sure that he'd just had to cut his own throat for that. The Divine Ocean Scripture was set back, as was the Great Jewel Sutra and all the rest.

  He stuffed the book next to his chest, having left the books that Old Qin had given him back in his room, and stood up. His spine popped slightly as he did, since he'd just spent an hour in the silent library hunching over, trying his best to sneak, trying to puzzle out what the books were called. Wu Hao may have been twelve, but he had some idea now of how those hunched-over old men felt.

  The box he clutched in a hand, maintaining a careful grip on it. It wasn't heavy, not really anyway, but it still gave him a certain pressure, and it was hard to carry with his hands as small as they were. It felt like it might slip from his fingers if he wasn't careful.

  So he was all the more careful. The library didn't stir as he made a final check of himself and then began to walk for the nearest balcony. It didn't much matter which one he took, anyway.

  Wu Hao stopped in front of the first heavy wooden door he saw, took a deep breath, winced at the feeling of his lungs straining against his ribs, and calmed himself down as much as he could. He pictured the great wheel, rolling slowly through the sky, not to cultivate but more to try and get himself in the best possible mindset.

  Then, placing one hand quietly on the door, he stared at the dark wood, trying to mentally disentangle the lines of the array as best as he could. He'd left the lock hanging open, but he hadn't been willing to risk leaving the door open or even placing something to try and stop it from closing.

  With his fingers he traced the line that he needed. It was just as thin as the others, easily missed among the dark lines that had grown throughout the lifetime of the tree that had died to make this door.

  Enough stalling, though. Setting himself to push, he grit his teeth and pulled the vital qi from his belly. He felt a spike of dizziness run through him as he did, fighting the urge to vomit, but he pushed that qi forwards at the same time as he cracked the door open just so slightly.

  The connection nearly frayed and his eyes went wide. It wrestled him for control over the array, and he forced himself to concentrate and fight against his own qi until finally it snapped into place just far enough.

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  Breathing heavily, he pushed the door open, bit by painstaking bit, forcing the connection to remain. It threatened to fray another time but he was prepared this time, and he wielded his control like a whip until finally the door was open wide enough that he could slip through.

  Then he let it slam shut behind him again. He stood there for a while and simply breathed, letting the remnants of his qi filter back slowly to his stomach. It had begun to burn, not just with the strain but more, like he was being eaten away at from the inside. That feeling began to fade slightly, but even after he'd gone through a quick check to make sure he still had everything, it lingered.

  There was no time to think about feelings, though. From atop the roof he could see far beyond the walls of the compound, and that showed him that the first lights of dawn had begun to make themselves known over the horizon. He didn't have too much time left until he was supposed to be awake and in his room, so it was high time that he left.

  Although he hadn't planned on trying to make his escape with this slippery box in his hands, so that made things all the more difficult.

  In the end he let the Unyielding Will Manual fall into the grass of the garden below and then, straining his ears and hoping that he wouldn't break the box like a complete idiot, he let it drop as well. There was a dull thud, but there was no sound of something breaking or shattering, so he hoped he hadn't shattered its contents.

  His own descent was as bad, if not moreso. He couldn't lunge for the tree branch that he'd jumped off from, because that hung slightly higher than the roof itself, and trying to jump that would see him crash into the ground below.

  The best he could do was find the spot that looked closest to the ground, let himself hang down from the roof and then drop. The impact of landing sent shivers down his spine and lances of pain up from his ankles to his hips, but he was still alive and he could still move.

  Guarding his aching lungs and his belly with one hand, he shuffled off as quickly as he could, back into the garden where he'd dropped his stuff.

  The box was easily found, but he had to stumble over the Unyielding Will Manual before he found it. Some more rapid dragging-walking brought him to an alley more or less between two of the buildings, where he could finally sit with his back to the wall, keeping sight of the entrance just in case someone deviated from their patrols.

  But as his feet complained, his stomach burned and his lungs ached, he lost his patience and decided to just get on with it. He placed the book next to him and started studying the box again.

  Finally, with a trembling hand, he undid the clasp that kept the box shut and pushed the lid off, slightly.

  The next breath he swore, loudly, as he was utterly blinded.

  If the Three-Seed Peaches had been bright bundles of qi in his sight, this thing was almost a sun. It gave so much light in his senses that he had to squeeze his eyes shut instinctively. He cringed away, could still feel the massive amount of concentrated qi in that ball even through his closed eyelids, and pushed the lid of the box closed again.

  When he did, the qi was gone as if it'd never been.

  That answered the question of the box, then, and why he'd detected the faint traces of qi from it. arrays must have been painted on its insides to hide the massive source of qi from any sensor's senses, and Wu Hao had the vague idea that it'd mess up the rest of the arrays in the library if this thing was just left in the open.

  The questions it didn't answer were what it was or why it had been hidden in the library.

  He stared at the box again, gathered himself as much as he could, and pushed the lid off the box slightly. Traces of qi eaked out slightly, enough to let him get a deep whiff. What he felt was... a sensation, more than really a taste or a scent.

  The feeling of a king at court. The feeling of leaves brushing past easily, the feeling of stalking quietly, the feeling of power expertly contained but absolutely present.

  The feeling of eyes, watching from the darkness, just out of sight.

  He nearly screamed, but he stifled it at the last second, and whirled around madly staring at the blank wall behind him. He was so sure that there was something there, something powerful and wise and inscrutable, that even when his eyes stubbornly told him that there was nothing he couldn't escape the chill blasting its way up his spine. It was a primal fear, the fear of a small thing being stalked through the night by something that far dwarfed it in might.

  Wu Hao shivered and his limp hands let the orb fall onto the stone again, where it rolled just a little over the smoothened tiles.

  He cracked open an eye carefully, and finally he got a proper look at the treasure he'd just stolen.

  The small orb was largely white. Not grey, but the pure white of high-quality mutton fat jade. It wasn't all white, though because three long black stripes crossed over the orb's surface, jagged at the ends, forming circles around it that had a certain natural ruggedness to them. The black was as dark as the white wasn't, forming natural extreme contrast.

  Uncertainly, he crawled forward, reaching out with his fingers to feel its cool surface again. Another blast of fear hit him, but he was better guarded against it now. He still had to muffle another cry, but he bit down on it and lifted the little orb again.

  While he didn't know what this was, or why it was there in the library, he did know one thing.

  This thing had more than enough qi inside of it to push him all the way to the third-grade and then some.

  It was his ticket to power. It was his chance to leapfrog past all of the others here and show his talent. It would make him a martial artist again.

  Most importantly, this was how he'd beat the absolute piss out of Shan Kong in two days' time.