Unintended Cultivator

Sen was a little surprised that he didn’t lose consciousness. That’s what usually happened after a battle where he’d pushed himself that hard and been injured. He certainly would have welcomed an inky blackness that freed him from pain. Then again, he thought, maybe it’s for the best. While he trusted in the best intentions of Captain Chen and his crew, none of them were skilled healers. The sad truth was that Sen was the best available doctor on the ship. He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position as the captain rushed over to him. The man looked frantic and that expression only softened a little when he saw that Sen was still conscious. The man dropped down and reached out a hand to steady Sen when he started to list to one side.

“Cultivator, what can we do for you?”

Sen blinked slowly as his overworked mind tried to process the words. He shook his head and forced himself to focus. What do I need most right now?

“Clean bandages. Somewhere quiet to sleep,” said Sen and then revised his statement at the troubled expression on the captain’s face. “Quiet for the ship.”

“I owe you my life and the lives of my crew. My ship. Is there nothing else we can do?”

Sen shook his head. “I have healing aids. I’ll recover.”

The captain looked profoundly unhappy at those words, but he nodded. Sen found himself placed on a sturdy bit of canvas and carried to a cabin. The captain threatened dire punishments for anyone who jostled Sen or, the gods forbid, dropped him. The threats didn’t seem necessary to Sen based on the expressions of the men carrying him. He saw everything from gratitude and relief to outright reverence on their faces. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with any of that, but he didn’t have the mental energy to try to correct their attitudes. He’d done what was necessary. The captain hustled everyone out of the room and then helped Sen dress the open wounds on his stomach and back.

“You’re sure these will heal?” asked the fretful captain.

Sen nodded as he produced another elixir from his storage ring and drank it. He wouldn’t normally drink two of them so close together, but he thought the injuries warranted that little bit of excess. He knew he was running some risk of toxicity, but that was a far more manageable problem than open wounds or death.

“I just need a bit of time and sleep,” said Sen as he eased himself down onto the narrow bed. “The elixir will do most of the work.”

It wasn’t exactly true, but Sen didn’t think the captain really cared about the technical details of how elixirs worked. The reality was that the elixir would hasten natural healing processes in his body, using its own qi first, and then drawing on his. Fortunately, Sen had plenty of qi for the elixir to draw on. He also had the advantage of body cultivation. His latest advancement had dramatically enhanced his body’s toughness and resilience. He wasn’t sure he would have survived that crystal shard passing straight through him before. Sen knew he wouldn’t have been able to keep fighting, at least not the way he had fought. Just as importantly, it had boosted his strength and speed again. While having the crystal explode in his face wasn’t an ideal outcome, making that block in time would have been beyond him before. He would have tried to do it, and he would have failed.

It seemed that the Five-Fold Body Transformation truly was pushing him toward the ultimate goal of body cultivation. Body cultivators strove to make a truly immortal body to house and protect their mortal souls after ascension. For a dual cultivator like him, the goal was ultimately a perfected immortal body to house his nascent soul after ascension. While those goals were still a distant dream, he was curious about what his body would be like after the final transformation in the sequence. Sen might have speculated about what benefits he might gain, but he never got the chance. With the immediate crisis over and his wounds tended as well as he reasonably could in the circumstances, he finally slipped into the painless oblivion of unconsciousness.

Sen spent two days in that cabin. The first day truly was to let his body heal. The damage done inside him by that shard proved harder to heal than he expected, as though some will to harm lingered in his tissues and worked against the elixirs. The second day was simply to let everything else recover. He wasn’t entirely clear what kind of internal resource he had spent during that fight with the spirit beast, but he had pressed well beyond some limit that left him utterly spent. He suspected it had something to do with that technique he had used to split the wave. He hadn’t believed it would reach the wave in time. So, he had pushed. It had worked, but Sen didn’t know why it worked or what he had pushed with to make it happen. He suspected that learning the answer to that particular question was something he needed to do before he tried to cross the threshold into the nascent soul stage.

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During those two days, there had been a steady stream of crew members who found reasons to come by his cabin. There was always someone who wanted to make sure his tea was hot or to see if he needed something to eat. Sen wanted to send them away, but he understood what was happening. They wanted to reassure him that he was among friends. They also wanted to reassure themselves that he was actually healing. Sen was touched by their concern but it never stopped being awkward for him. Sen had grown very comfortable with his largely solitary lifestyle. It was a necessity for cultivators. People who couldn’t handle being alone for the long stretches of time required for basic cultivation, to say nothing of gleaning insight into their techniques, simply weren’t going to make it as cultivators.

As much as he wanted to simply hide in his cabin for another week, he realized he would have to make an appearance on deck. It would tell everyone that he was not, in fact, dying in that cabin. After cleaning himself up a bit, Sen looked at his robes. It seemed he’d been underestimating the quality of enchantments on the robes Auntie Caihong had given him. The cleaning enchantment had stripped away all the blood that had soaked into them, and it had been a substantial amount of blood. Beyond that, the repair enchantments had mended the holes and cuts that had marred the fabric. Shaking his head at what the garment must have cost, he put it on and headed out onto the deck.

No one noticed him right at first, but then Captain Chen saw him. He gave a curt order to the second in command and walked over to Sen. Sen started to greet the man but the words died on his lips as the captain dropped to his knees and kowtowed, touching his head to the deck three times. Sen was caught so off guard by the action that he didn’t have the wherewithal to stop the captain. The older man stood and looked at Sen.

“I can never repay the debts I owe to you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” said Sen.

“I do,” insisted the captain with a strange light burning in his eyes. “You were injured. You could have fled. Abandoned us to that beast. You could have let that wave wash us away. Many would have.”

Sen took a moment before he answered. “Some might have, but I couldn’t. I don’t believe in honor, but I try to have a conscience when I can. No one with a conscience could have abandoned you to that beast. I did only what I had to do. As I said, you owe me nothing.”

The captain stared at Sen in utter disbelief. “For a man who says he doesn’t believe in honor, yours runs very deep. You may see no debt between us, but I do. Twice now you’ve saved my ship and crew from certain death. I would call you benefactor if you’ll allow it.”

Sen had to bear down hard on his knee-jerk reaction to say no. Saying no would be all about making himself feel better. The captain was doing everything in his power to show Sen gratitude and respect. Letting him do that would let the captain feel like he’d given something back. It was a small enough price to pay.

“Of course,” said Sen.

The captain beamed at him and the Sen noticed the approving looks from the crew. It all seemed like foolishness to him, but he supposed there was no harm in it.

“This ship, this crew, is always available to you. You need simply to call for us, and we will come.”

Sen wanted to flee from the moment of awkwardness. Instead, he buried that feeling and gave the captain a deep nod.

“No man could ask for a finer vessel, captain, or crew.”

It felt like empty flattery to Sen. He didn’t know a good ship from a bad one. However, he got the impression that the captain and crew were people who knew their trade. The ship seemed sound enough. In the end, though, flattery or not, everyone stood up straighter, and the crew all grinned at each other like they’d gotten high praise from the god of the sea. Certain that he could only do damage if he stayed and said anything else, Sen looked at the captain.

“I find I’m still weary from the battle. I think I’ll go rest for a time.”

“Of course,” said Captain Chen. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

Sen thought that the man might have some kind of breakdown if not given a task. So, he made one up.

“If someone could come and fetch me for the evening meal, I would take that as a kindness.”

“I’ll see that it’s done.”

“Thank you, captain.”

“Thank you, benefactor.”

Sen considered it a personal victory of magnificent proportions that he made it back to the cabin without once letting anyone see how much being called benefactor made his skin crawl.

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