Unintended Cultivator

Sen considered the wreckage of what had once been a gambling den run by the Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate. In the wake of his interrogation of... Sen thought back. He hadn’t bothered to get her name. He reminded himself that he really needed to do a better job of covering the essentials when he was asking people questions. In the wake of that interrogation, the group had done its best to move the operations they could. Unfortunately for them, there were just a limited number of available spaces, even in a city as big as the capital. Under the protection of his hiding ability, Sen had simply walked into the part of the city controlled by the criminal element and asked a few questions. Everyone there knew where the Syndicate had their businesses. Sen had made a mental list. He’d still visited the spots the Syndicate woman had told him about, but most had been abandoned. There had been traps set at a few of those places, but traps were hard to spring on someone you couldn’t see or feel coming. Sen had just left bodies in those locations.

As for the rest of the places he’d visited over the last few days, he’d all but filled his storage rings to capacity with stolen goods, cultivation resources, and money. A lot of money. He’d done his best to return the stolen goods, but it wasn’t always clear where they had come from in the first place. He kept some of the things he was certain he could use. The things he couldn’t return and had no use for, he left at City Guard stations around the city. It was possible that they’d have better luck than he did at getting those things back to their rightful owners. He’d gone through the cultivation resources with Lo Meifeng. He’d been worried that it might include demonic cultivation materials that he just hadn’t sensed. Most of it was, according to her, standard fare for formation foundation cultivators and useless for her or him. Sen knew that Falling Leaf didn’t advance the same way they did, but he let her look through them anyway. She’d poked at a few things and promptly announced that she didn’t want any of it. Then, Sen had let Shi Ping go through them.

“So, what can I have?” asked Shi Ping.

“Take whatever you can use,” said Sen waving at the pile on the floor.

Shi Ping had gone a little bug-eyed at those words. “I can just have whatever I want.”

“Yes,” said Sen.

“I don’t have to pay for it?”

“Shi Ping, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly. Take. What. You. Want.”

Sen had half-expected Shi Ping to grab all of it. Instead, the man methodically went through the pills, natural treasures, and a small collection of elixirs. He picked out about ten things and set them aside. Shi Ping seemed to waver over a few more but ultimately decided against them. In the small pile of things that Shi Ping had decided to keep, there was an elixir vial. Sen walked over, picked it up, and used his qi to scan it. Sen could tell that it was designed to help someone break into the core formation stage, but he was appalled at the elixir itself. It had clearly been made using substandard ingredients by an alchemist who had only been half-trained at best. He looked from the bottle to Shi Ping.

Lo Meifeng came over and plucked the vial from Sen’s hand. He felt her qi examine it. She gave him a quizzical look.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “This is better than most of the elixirs that people use.”

Sen stared at her in horror.

“That’s appalling,” said Sen before he looked over at Shi Ping. “Do not use that elixir. I’ll make you one that doesn’t look like it was made by a monkey and a child throwing things at a cauldron.”

Shi Ping frowned a little and glanced at Lo Meifeng, who was nodding furiously at him.

“Alright,” he said and gathered up the rest of the things he’d picked out.

“And don’t try to break through to core formation here,” said Sen. “When you’re ready, tell me. We’ll go outside of the city.”

“I’m not that irresponsible,” said Shi Ping, glaring at Sen. “I know there’s a tribulation coming my way. I wouldn’t do that in a city.”

“Sorry,” said Sen. “I’m a little sensitive about mortal bystanders at the moment.”

Shi Ping straightened a little and his expression softened. “That makes sense. I guess it is good to keep safety in mind.”

“Speaking of which,” said Sen. “It’s high time we found new lodgings. I consider it nothing short of heavenly intercession that this place hasn’t been burned to the ground, flattened by an earth qi attack, or otherwise destroyed.”

Lo Meifeng sighed but nodded. “You’re right. I just like this place. It’s clean, comfortable, and the owners don’t spy on their guests. That combination of things is hard to come by.”

Sen gestured at the bed and summoned some of his recently acquired wealth. Bags and bags of taels appeared on the bed. “Then go buy us somewhere to live. That might even be better. I can set up permanent or at least semi-permanent protections in a place like that. Certainly better than what I can do here.”

Shi Ping and Lo Meifeng stared open-mouthed at the bags.

“Where did all of that come from?” asked Shi Ping in awe.

“It was a donation from our friendly Shadow Eagle Talon Syndicate neighbors.”

“They just let you walk away with all of that?” asked Shi Ping.

“Let?” asked Sen. “What makes you think that there was anyone left to object?”

“You know that they’re going to come looking for all of this at some point,” said Lo Meifeng.

“I do. All the more reason to spend a bunch of it on something expensive they can’t just steal back. Also, a good reason for us to relocate sooner rather than later. We all knew there were risks to becoming cultivators, but I don’t want mortals getting stuck in the middle again.”

“I never signed on to fight a nascent soul cultivator,” said Shi Ping.

“Has one been bothering you?” asked Sen.

“I, well, no.”

“Exactly. I was pretty sure the rest of the nascent soul cultivators in the city were going to back Tong Guanting up hard into a corner, and it seems they have. Don’t get me wrong. If he can lay hands on me in his own territory, I’m a dead man. But out in the rest of the city, he’ll have to send lackeys. Lackeys we can deal with if need be.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Shi Ping. “You and Lo Meifeng can take care of yourselves just fine because she’s a late-stage core cultivator and you’re some kind of freakish cosmic anomaly. I’m pretty sure that Fa Ling Li can handle most people one-on-one, at least well enough to get away. I’m not like the three of you. If a core cultivator comes looking for me, I’m a dead man.”

“Why do you think we told you not to wander off by yourself?” asked Lo Meifeng.

“That’s not really my point,” said Shi Ping.

Sen looked at the pile of cultivation resources that Shi Ping still held in his hands. “Why do you think I let you take all of that? I’m not blind to the fact that you’re the person who’s the least equipped to face our current situation.”

Shi Ping stared down at the resources in his hands. “There’s no guarantee I’ll succeed at breaking through. What happens if I try and fail?”

Sen almost said something flippant, but there was genuine fear on Shi Ping’s face. He wasn’t just worried about the threats around them, or about not breaking through, he was terrified. It was a stark change from the man who had said Lo Meifeng couldn’t order him around. It seemed that Tong Guanting’s attack had rattled Shi Ping more than Sen would have credited. So, Sen pushed down the glib remark and really thought it over.

“Then, I’ll send you on your way with my blessings.”

“Just like that?”

“What’s the alternative? If you weren’t on the cusp of breaking through now, I’d have already done it. As an initial core cultivator, you’ll have a fighting chance in most situations. It’s not ideal, but it’s not an obscene level of risk. As you are now, it’s less a question of if than when you’ll get killed. And you’re right, you didn’t sign on for that.”

Seeming deeply relieved that there was an out for him if he utterly failed to break through to core formation, Shi Ping retreated from the room. Lo Meifeng gave Sen a curious look.

“Why not just send him away now?”

“Because he’s made actual progress. If I let him go now, I expect he’d be right back where he started in six months. That’s a lot of my time, energy, and training wasted. But I’m not going to make him stay just to die. Especially if things play out the way I’m starting to think that they will.”

“What do you mean?”

Sen shook his head. “It’s just a suspicion right now. There’s no point in spreading it around until I’m more sure about it.”

“So, what’s next on your agenda?”

“There’s another gambling den I’m going to wreck.”

The Syndicate had tightened up their security a lot since Sen began his one-man war of annihilation against them, but he’d been expecting that. He’d started by eliminating the people set to watch, the hidden ones, and then moved on to the ones who were theoretically guarding the place out in the open. All it had taken to clear out the customers was him dragging two corpses through the door and throwing them onto nearby tables. The staff were either more afraid of their boss or more confident than they should have been in their skills. Not that Sen had come out of the fight unscathed. He was sporting a deep gash in his side, several burns, and more superficial cuts than he could count. Still, they were all dead, and he wasn’t. That was the part that counted. He used his wind qi to gather up all of the loose money and direct it into his storage rings, stripped the staff of any valuables, and then took a moment to let his wind qi explore the building.

The discovery that these businesses were using empty walls and hidden spaces to store their money had been the real turning point for Sen. Not that he cared that much about the money, but he did care about hurting the Syndicate. He dashed through the building, scooping up the hidden riches, and anything else of value he saw. He didn’t waste time going through everything, though. Nascent soul cultivators could move very fast. So, he grabbed what he could. Then, he slipped out of the back and into the shadows. He moved away as fast as stealth would allow, but he didn’t go too far. He saw what he expected to see a couple of minutes later. A burly, bearded figure dropped out of the sky almost into what was left of the gambling den. The man stormed inside. There was a moment of silence, and then bellows of rage as the man destroyed the building with nothing but brute strength. Satisfied that he’d accomplished his goal, Sen slipped away into the night.

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