Unintended Cultivator

Aside from pulling a comfortable chair out of his storage ring and dropping it by the fireplace for Li Yi Nuo, Sen did his level best to simply ignore the woman. He kept that up for an hour as he made food, all while pretending he didn’t notice her watching him anytime she thought he wasn’t paying attention. It took a moment of minor concentration, but soon there was a small stone table standing in the center of the common area. Sen put a bunch of food onto the table and finally looked over at Li Yi Nuo. Sighing, he pulled a couple more chairs out of his storage ring and dropped them by the table.

“You may as well come and eat something,” said Sen.

Sen sat down and poured himself a cup of tea while trying to decide what he wanted to eat first. Li Yi Nuo seemed to have an argument in her head before she eventually stood up and joined him at the table. She didn’t seem entirely comfortable, but it didn’t look like every movement pained her anymore. Sen supposed he might have hit her a little harder than he’d meant to. Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes and took a sip of tea. It had been a trying day and he wanted to snatch at least a moment of calm before questions started flying his way. He sat there like that for most of a minute, even as he felt her gaze boring into him. He didn’t bother to open his eyes when he addressed her.

“You’re not eating anything. Do you think it’s poisoned?”

“You aren’t eating anything,” she said.

Sen opened his eyes and gave her a level, unamused look. Then he deliberately took a little bit of everything and methodically ate it.

“Satisfied?”

Li Yi Nuo looked a little sheepish as she put food on her plate. Sen went back to sipping tea with his eyes closed. He was able to bask in the relative silence for nearly ten minutes before the inevitable happened.

“Who are you?

“I think we both know that’s not true. You can wield multiple kinds of qi.”

“So can you.”

“Not like you can. I can muster up a little metal qi to go with my wind qi. You throw around qi like you have an affinity for everything. You could join any sect on the continent and have them throwing resources at you. They’d hail you as a genius.”

Sen opened his eyes again. “Okay.”

“That’s it? Just, okay.”

“What should I say? I’m not interested in joining a sect. I certainly don’t care what they would think of me.”

Sen watched her expression sour at his clear indifference to sects and what he considered their very dubious benefits. He almost expected her to jump to the defense of her sect or sects in general. Instead, she visibly smoothed her face into something that didn’t quite reach friendly but wasn’t actively aggravated. He thought it was an admirable demonstration of self-control given that he’d intentionally poked a sore spot. She focused on the thing he’d initially ignored, although he hadn’t ignored it spitefully.

“And what about being able to use more than one type of qi?”

Sen shrugged. “What about it? You’ve clearly seen me do it. I didn’t think there was anything more to say about it.”

“Where did you learn it? How do you do it?”

Sen gave her an amused smile. “I’m a wandering cultivator, not an idiot. You didn’t really think I’d answer questions like that, did you?”

Li Yi Nuo looked like she desperately wanted to press the issue, but she moved on. “Fine. I guess we all have our secrets. Maybe you’ll be a little more forthcoming about how you can summon qi so fast?”

“Oh, well that’s no kind of secret. Practice.”

Her eyes narrowed in a way that Sen recognized as socially dangerous if not physically dangerous.

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“Very funny.”

“It’s not a joke,” said Sen, lifting a hand in a placating gesture. “I practiced a lot. I pushed my limits as hard as I could. A lot more often than I’d like, I did it under the threat of immediate death if I failed. It turns out that most things are possible if you need them to happen badly enough.”

Li Yi Nuo frowned at him in a thoughtful way. “My master says that peril can drive cultivation but that the risks often aren’t worth the reward.”

“That’s a whole lot of truth, right there.”

“And yet, here you sit. A living, breathing counterargument.”

“No. I’m a cautionary tale.”

“Powerful. Famous. What am I missing?”

It was Sen’s turn to frown thoughtfully. “You’re missing the fear. The dread that goes with being hunted by those more powerful than you. Have you ever been hunted, Li Yi Nuo of the Vermilion Blade Sect? Ever had to flee into the wilds because the possibility of powerful spirit beasts attacking you was a better option than traveling on the roads? Ever woken up in the middle of the night with your heart racing because there was a noise you didn’t recognize, and you were certain someone was there to kill you?”

“No,” she said with a grim expression. “I’ve never faced anything like that.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Sen, trying to think of a way to condense his experiences into something useful. “You’re also missing the sheer amount of death. My path through this world had been littered with the corpses I’ve made. A lot of them deserved it, but I’m also sure that some of them just picked the wrong side, the wrong friend, or simply the wrong day to be where they were. You’re a cultivator and couldn’t have gotten to where you are without doing at least some killing. Still, how much blood do you really have on your hands? I’m willing to bet it’s not that much. So, how much do you want there? How much time do you want to spend wondering if some of it is innocent blood?”

“I… I don’t know how to answer that,” said Li Yi Nuo, her face pale.

“I’d be alarmed if you could. The point isn’t to have answers. The point is for you to have the questions. To be aware of the kinds of mistakes a person can make on their way to becoming powerful and famous,” said Sen, not hiding his contempt for the two terms most people would consider compliments. “Or, at the very least, the kinds of mistakes that I’ve made.”

Sen let silence fall as Li Yi Nuo seemed lost in her own thoughts. He honestly wasn’t sure if he was helping her or not. On the one hand, she was competent and strong. She’d obviously been trained by someone who wanted her to live and go as far as she could on the path of cultivation. Yet, there was also a kind of blind spot in her thinking that he’d initially thought was naivety. The more they talked, though, the more he started to think it might be more akin to a kind of innocence. She’d spoken about her master a few times. Sen wondered just how much the man had shielded her from some of the realities of cultivation. Deciding he’d given her enough time to think, he spoke again.

“There’s one other thing that you’re missing.”

She focused on him again. “What?”

“When you become powerful and famous, or when you get a reputation for it, the more powerful will want to use you or that reputation for their own ends. Most of them don’t careif you’re not interested in helping. Many of them would rather kill you than take no for an answer.”

“The more powerful. Like who?” she asked before understanding dawned. “You mean sects. You mean my sect.”

“For example, but it’s not just them. Sects, nobility, royalty, nascent soul cultivators. Almost all of them have agendas and see people as disposable tools. If you’re not willing to be used, then they see it as a sign that you should be broken.”

“Not everyone is like that. My sect didn’t send me to make you serve some agenda. They sent me because you did something to those disciples. Something no one seems to know how to fix.”

“But they didn’t send you to ask questions, did they?”

“Well, no,” said a perplexed Li Yi Nuo.

“They don’t care if those disciples did something to provoke me into doing what I did. I doubt they really even care if those disciples can be healed. They sent you to bring me back so they can take revenge. So they can restore the slighted honor of the sect. That is an agenda. In fact, I bet you’ve got some kind of suppression treasure to keep me in line, right?”

“For all the good it did me. But what about your agenda?”

Sen blinked a few times as he tried to figure out what she meant. “My agenda?”

“You just said powerful people have agendas. You’re powerful. So, what’s your agenda?”

“Huh. I guess there’s a logic to that,” said Sen as he thought it over. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. If it were obvious, I wouldn’t have had to ask.”

“Then I suspect you’re crediting me with too much cleverness because my agenda is as simple as they come. My agenda is to survive.”

Li Yi Nuo rolled her eyes. “Everyone has that agenda.”

“Yes, but not everyone has come as close to death as I have as often as I have. Those experiences tend to strip away the inconsequential. You stop worrying about things like building a reputation, forging an empire, or protecting the illusion of your honor because you’re too busy trying to make sure that you’re going to see tomorrow.”

“And you think that things like a sect’s honor are inconsequential?”

“I know that it’s completely trivial. But I have no intention of debating the value of honor with you. I’ve already had that very tedious argument with someone, and I’m not trying to convince you of anything. The point is that I stopped caring about those kinds of things about nine near-death experiences ago. I don’t have some complicated agenda or long-term plan that I’m trying to carry out. All that I’m after is to survive long enough to ascend. That’s it.”

“You say that like ascension is a certainty.”

Sen just gave her an enigmatic smile and shrugged.

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