Unintended Cultivator

Sen pushed open the door to galehouse and looked around. He did that every time he came into the place. He knew that he was looking for changes, but it was a fruitless little bit of paranoia. The interior of the galehouse never changed. Still, it soothed some small part of his heart to find the place as he’d left it, even if he’d only left it for a few days. The tedious weeks of crafting failed variations on the healing pill had left Fu Ruolan stumped. Sen had pounced on that moment when the woman’s imagination failed her and suggested that he take a few days off to replenish what he could of his own plant and reagent stores. She had given him one of those narrow-eyed, lips-pursed expressions that Sen was sure that all women learned as babies. It was the look that said she knew exactly what he was doing. In the end, though, she had conceded that it was a practical use of his time since she wasn’t sure what they should do next.

It had been such a moment of relief for him that he hadn’t hidden the fact well enough in his expression. It had only been on her face for a blink, but Sen could see that he’d hurt Fu Ruolan’s feelings with his eagerness to be away for a few days. That had soured his mood because it wasn’t her, specifically, that he wanted to get away from. It was the constant failure. He’d wanted to go out and harvest plants because it was necessary, true, but also because it was something at which he could succeed. When he’d been endlessly testing different patterns to cycle qi, part of what made it endurable was that he’d done it alone. He’d been the only one to witness his failure. He’d thought it would be the same working with Fu Ruolan, but it wasn’t. Having a witness to all those botched attempts made them cut a little deeper. If it had only been a few or if there had been occasional glimmers of progress, he could have just shrugged it off. With the defeats at the hands of pill refining soaring up to the dozens and then more than a hundred with no progress at all, it had weighed on him. It had been a death of a thousand small cuts for his confidence in alchemy.

While confidence wasn’t a central element in success, it played a role. Second guessing a choice at a crucial moment could make the difference between crafting an adequate elixir or a superior elixir. In the worst-case scenario, it meant the difference between making something that worked and making useful plants and reagents into useless garbage. Sen didn’t think that anyone could rightly be blamed for wanting an escape from something that only ever ended in that garbage-producing option. Yet, it didn’t change the fact that the relief in his expression hadn’t come with that convenient explanation attached. All Fu Ruolan had seen was that she said he could go away from her, and he looked relieved. It was a bad assumption on her part, but it was also an understandable one.

He would have explained it then and there, but he’d spent enough time around people to understand that she wasn’t in the mood to hear it. So, he had taken his leave and ventured out into the wilds. He’d invited Falling Leaf to come, and she’d declined to make the brief trip with him. He’d been a tiny bit surprised by that, but she’d lost that almost obsessive protectiveness she’d had when he’d been dying right in front of her. While he thought that it was probably a good thing, he’d have liked her company. And, she’d made a good point at the time.

“What would I do? Watch you dig up plants? I’ve seen you do that before.”

“I might get in trouble,” he’d said.

She’d laughed at that. “In what way? The last time you got in trouble you killed a dragon. I think you’d have finished that fight faster if I wasn’t there.”

Sen shook his head. “More help in a fight is never a bad thing. I might have finished them off by myself, but it wouldn’t have been faster.”

“If you say so,” she said.

The look she gave him said how very much she doubted those words, but that she appreciated he’d said them. Once he’d gotten out into the wilds by himself, though, he found that there was a value in going by himself. It returned a level of control over his life that had been missing for a long time. He could move at the exact pace that he wanted without giving any thought to how fast anyone else could move. Granted, Falling Leaf could keep up with him, but she couldn’t do it indefinitely. His qi stores were deeper and, he suspected, that his techniques were more efficient. Sen didn’t always concern himself with efficiency. There were times in combat when speed trumped efficiency. When not under combat conditions, he made a conscious effort to refine his techniques. Before his body had started to betray him, that constant striving for efficiency had served him very well. He’d been able to make small improvements on a fairly regular basis.

He'd found that wasn’t as true in the wake of whatever Fu Ruolan had done to stabilize his condition. He’d made improvements here and there but nothing like he’d accomplished before. It was a small source of frustration that he suspected contributed to his poor tolerance for failure with pill refining. In many ways, he felt like he was stuck. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go forward. He had very little say in changing that situation. That made the freedom of gathering in the wilds alone an almost euphoric experience. For a few days, he was his own master again. Even so, he didn’t forget that he’d made a mistake with Fu Ruolan. That was why he’d gone farther than he’d planned. In fact, he’d ventured well beyond the range where her influence kept the spirit beasts at bay. He’d been prepared to do some fighting if he had to, but the spirit beasts seemed to have once again taken to staying as far away from him as possible.

He used the unexpected but welcome lack of distractions to go looking for something that the nascent soul cultivator might want. Even if she did live in the area, Sen knew better than most that the natural world was ever-changing. A place that had nothing of interest six months ago might well contain a full-blown natural treasure today. Just as importantly, Sen thought that Fu Ruolan purchased most of what she used in alchemy as a matter of convenience. With the cavernous storage treasure that she could enter, it made more sense to buy in bulk every so often. Minimally, Sen didn’t think he’d ever seen her go out with the intention of harvesting. With that in mind, he’d tried to find something special amidst the more mundane gathering he did for himself. While Sen wasn’t opposed to rare ingredients, he didn’t lust after them the way some alchemists seemed to do. He preferred working with things that were more readily available.

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It took him most of two days to find that special item. He’d actually been harvesting a root when something tickled the very edge of his spiritual sense. He’d looked in the direction of that faint niggling sensation, as though the act of looking would somehow extend his perception. It did not. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he finished the task at hand and then ventured in the direction of what he’d felt. The closer he got the more confused he felt. He was getting the impression of ice-attributed qi. While he’d felt it plenty of times before, he was quite certain it hadn’t been cold enough in recent days for it to just be a function of the shifting seasons. If they’d been a little closer to winter, perhaps he’d have just thought it was a byproduct of the weather. That didn’t track for him in the early fringes of autumn.

When he pushed through some densely packed undergrowth to see a frozen pond in the middle of nowhere, Sen wasn’t surprised. It was still a sight that made him stop and look on in appreciation. The entire area was covered in a thin layer of ice that refracted and amplified the limited sunlight that filtered through the canopy. If his eyes weren’t reinforced and improved through body cultivation, it might have even been blinding. Instead, he was able to appreciate the way the ice covered still-green leaves and made the nearby grass look like slender blades thrusting toward the sky. As lovely as the spot was, though, it was what he saw in the center of the pond that drew his attention. Resting on the surface of the frozen pond water was a lotus, or at least something that looked like a lotus. Instead of merely being infused with ice qi, the gently curving petals were ice.

Sen had heard of such things from Auntie Caihong, but he’d never seen an example in person before. The qi was so potent that it simply overpowered the plant and transformed it into something that hovered in some strange middle ground between the plant and the qi type. Under normal circumstances, Sen would have expected to face a fierce fight to acquire that lotus. Yet, a sweep with his spiritual sense told him that no spirit beasts were nearby. Happy that a little good fortune was smiling on him, Sen made his way to the center of the pond. Extracting the lotus took a while because he had to work around it’s icy nature. It took a careful combination of fire and water qi to get it free without causing damage to the innate properties of the lotus. The instant he freed the flower from the pond, he thrust it into his storage ring. He headed for home immediately. Just because the spirit beasts were being cautious around him, they might find their courage for a prize like the qi-laden plant.

Stepping back into the galehouse and finding it as he left it let Sen focus on what he meant to do. He left a qi-heavy fruit he’d found sitting on the stone table for Falling Leaf to find whenever she returned. With that task accomplished, he made his way to Fu Ruolan’s home. He felt a little hesitation as he approached. He worried that the gesture might look as if he was trying to buy forgiveness. It wasn’t his intention. He reconsidered his approach and decided that he’d do things in the opposite order that he’d envisioned. Sen found Fu Ruolan tending to her garden, as she seemed to do most days. It looked like most of her efforts were turned to preparing the soil for the winter weather, as most of her small patch of vegetable crops were beyond growing anything new. She glanced at him but didn’t say anything. He crouched down at the edge of the garden, thinking about what he wanted to say.

“Have you ever failed at something?” he asked.

The question seemed to catch the woman off-guard because she stopped what she was doing to give him her full attention.

“Every cultivator has failed at something,” she said. “You know this.”

He nodded. “Have you ever failed over and over again at something? Something you knew was important?”

Her expression went abruptly neutral. “I have.”

“I thought I had as well. Except, I hadn’t. Not really. I failed, but I progressed. I saw where I was making mistakes, or had it pointed out to me, and I improved. I was never just stuck. Not like I have been with pill refining. Until now, if I worked hard enough, strove hard enough, I could master what has been set before me. I’ve worked as hard at pill refining as I’ve ever worked at anything, and I’ve gotten nowhere. Those weeks of trying to figure out what was wrong ate me alive. When the chance came to escape all of that failure, I couldn’t wait to get away from it. I just needed to do something, anything, where there was the possibility of success. The point is, I wasn’t eager to get away from you. I was eager to get away from that relentless pit of defeat. I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s the best way I know how to explain it.”

Fu Ruolan sat there in motionless silence for most of a minute. Sen wondered if he should just go and let her decide when to pick up the conversation. Before he could commit one way or the other, she shook herself a little.

“I see,” she said. “I do understand that feeling. That hopelessness. It can consume you if you let it.”

Sen nodded along. He was just happy that she seemed to understand. He very much did not want her angry with him. That would only slow down any possibility of future progress. Plus, alchemy involved a lot of potentially lethal combinations. He didn’t think she’d kill him, but she could make him horribly sick without trying very hard just by exposing him to certain kinds of plants or mixtures. Even with his status as a core cultivator and body cultivator, it was a real possibility. Ready to call it a win, Sen was shocked when she continued.

“I may have made certain unkind assumptions about you. I… I’m sorry about that.”

Sen floundered for a response to that apology and finally just said something to fill the hole it had left in the air.

“It’s fine. So, no hard feelings?”

She gave him something that could have been a smile. “No hard feelings.”

“Good. Because I have something for you.”

While the shriek of delight that Fu Ruolan let out at the sight of the lotus left Sen half-deaf, he decided that definitely counted as a win.

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