Unintended Cultivator

Sen spent most of the evening and the night in something that wasn’t quite a cultivation trance but came exceedingly close. He didn’t want to think because that risked him getting caught up in a spiral of what-if contemplations that would do him little good. The absence of good information about the horde and what they would find inside the ruins simply didn’t allow for those what-if scenarios to yield anything useful. All they could do was prime him with expectations that would surely lead him into assumptions. Rather than take that chance, he buried himself in the rigors of cultivation. It was a mixed blessing, as his qi stores were already straining the limits of his dantian, fed as they were by that enhanced double-helix formation. He spent some time considering that strange formation that seemed to provide benefits while accomplishing little beyond pushing him faster toward ascension.

When he grew tired of the cultivation trance, he went outside and fell back on alchemy to preserve his state of mind. He needed calm if he was to face the unknown. Fear and panic wouldn’t serve him. Sen was well aware that danger was imminent, so fear had no place. As for the panic that fear so often brought in its wake, that never served a useful purpose. In Sen’s experience, those who panicked, died. Since dying wasn’t in his plan, he would do his best to ensure that panic couldn’t infect him. Instead, he made healing elixirs. There were other things he could make. He’d become terribly adept at making poisons in his run-up to murdering Tong Guanting back in the capital. But he already had enough poisons tucked away in his storage rings to make him a threat to entire armies of mortals without ever once using a technique. Healing elixirs were familiar, almost like old friends, so he made those. Plus, unlike poisons, he honestly believed that you could never have too many healing elixirs.

He heard the door open behind him but didn’t bother to look back. Part of him was focused on finishing the elixir he was making. The rest of him just didn’t care enough to look back. This entire experience had taught him some things about himself. As with most self-knowledge, it came as something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, he had reclaimed his capacity for patience and tolerance. That was something that had been slowly eroded away from him, but he’d let the erosion go too far. Reclaiming those capacities was a good thing on the surface. Unfortunately, they also made him prone to simply going along. He’d been so focused on being patient with everyone that he’d let simple inertia keep him in this situation. With the last remnants of that patience expended, he recognized that he should have long since put his foot down with everyone involved.

In fact, if he wasn’t so curious about what might be hidden in those ruins, he would just call the whole thing off and let things play out. There was also the less immediate, but nonetheless salient, problem that Auntie Caihong considered Laughing River a friend. That didn’t obligate him, but Sen didn’t want to create a problem where there didn’t need to be one. Sen was aware enough to know that letting her friend die when he could have done something was not a great way to achieve that end. Whether or not those were good enough reasons to stay was an open question to him. He saw Misty Peak in the corner of his eye but didn’t say anything.

“I’m not your enemy,” she said.

Sen glanced at her. “So you say.”

“I know you don’t believe that. I know I can’t convince you. I just thought I should say it.”

Sen used his spiritual sense to gauge the elixir’s progress and removed it from the heat. He bled the heat out of the pot and elixir before he set it aside on a rock. He stood and faced the fox woman. Her usual expression of amusement was gone, replaced by one of tightly controlled concern.

“Well,” replied Sen, “you’ve said it.”

“Like you’ve made it easy for me these last few days?” asked Sen.

Misty Peak grimaced. “I guess I had that coming. I’m just trying to say that I won’t interfere with what you’re doing.”

“I hope that’s true for your sake. The thing is that I get the feeling you and your grandfather are still playing out some kind of fox game here. I also get the feeling that you’ve both included me in the game like some kind of honorary fox. I might even be amused by that in other circumstances and play along. The problem is that I’m not a fox and these are deadly circumstances. So, I’m not playing along. If your game puts me in danger while we’re doing this, I will not hesitate to leave your cooling corpse in those ruins. So, Misty Peak, have I been in any way unclear?”

Her voice was a weak thing when she finally answered. “No. No, you’ve been… You were very clear.”

“I hope so. If you have any preparations to do, you should get on with it. We’re going to make our move at dawn.”

She stood there in silence for several heartbeats before she finally asked, “Why at dawn?”

“Because I don’t want to be fighting that horde in the dark.”

“Isn’t the point of that formation to avoid fighting?”

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“Sure,” agreed Sen, “but I find it best to just assume you’re always going to have to fight. You’ll suffer fewer disappointments that way.”

The fox woman seemed to regain a bit of her composure and almost managed to give him an amused smile. “Well, that’s a dour sort of pragmatism.”

“I’m sure it’s just the human in me. We’re all kinds of dour and pragmatic.”

Misty Peak snorted. After an awkward silence, she retreated inside the galehouse. Sen made note of the watcher and returned to his elixir, depositing it into a stone vial. He watched the small fire he’d built for nearly a minute before Laughing River stepped out of a shadow and sat down across from him. Sen lifted an eyebrow at the elder fox.

“You meant it, didn’t you?”

“The part about leaving or the part about killing her?”

“I suppose I meant both.”

“Yes. I meant it.”

The fox was quiet for a lot longer than Sen expected. He studied the elder fox and wondered just how different fox thinking was from how humans thought. It didn’t seem that different on the surface, but he had seen that it diverged in important ways, even if he didn’t fully understand that divergence.

“I don’t think she’ll do anything in the ruins. Not after that talk. You scared her there.”

“I intended to. She might be willing to die for whatever game you’re playing. I’m not.”

“I think we, my granddaughter and I, both underestimated you a little. I shouldn’t have. Caihong warned me.”

“About me?” asked Sen, a little surprised.

“She said that you were curious. She also said that you could be as hard as the bones of the earth. I listened too much to the first part, not enough to the second.”

“Well, you’re still getting what you want. So, I guess you won in the end.”

“You can get what you want and still lose in the end,” said Laughing River. “Happens all the time in this world. I get the impression that no matter how this turns out, I’ve made an enemy of you.”

Sen thought about that for a while before he shook his head.

“You haven’t made me your enemy, but I don’t think we’ll ever be friends. I don’t like being used. I don’t like being made a piece in other people’s games. You’ve done both,” said Sen, glancing up. “We should get moving. It’s going to be dawn soon.”

“I’ll get the others,” said Laughing River.

A few minutes later, four humans set out from the galehouse. Sen wasn’t surprised to find that the spider was trailing along behind them. He thought about sending it back to wherever the spiders lived, but he couldn’t be sure that the spider would actually listen. It’ll probably go home when we make our mad dash for the ruins, thought Sen. It’s the smart move. When they reached the edge of the forest, it wasn’t quite dawn. Even in the pre-dawn light, Sen could see that horde of devilish beasts and spirits moving around whatever protection was in place around the ruins. The motion reminded him of water splitting around a rock. However, the comparison failed a bit for Sen when he tried to imagine water being a great mass of evil. He glanced over at Misty Peak. She was staring out at the horde with wide eyes.

“You don’t have to come,” said Sen.

“And let you have all the treasures in there. I don’t think so,” said Misty Peak, although there was absolutely no conviction in her words.

Sen shrugged. It wasn’t his job to convince her that everything was going to go well. She invited herself along, so she could convince herself. As the sky grew progressively brighter, Sen reached out with his qi to the formation flag that was planted in the ground near his foot. He could feel the formation humming as if it were eager to spring to life and accomplish its purpose. Sen shook his head to clear away the ridiculous thought. Sen looked over at the other two. Laughing River looked positively grim as he stared out at the horde. Li Yi Nuo’s face was a study in quiet horror. She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked his way.

“You sure you don’t want to come along?” he asked. “Plenty of monstrosities down there for everyone.

A look of pure, unadulterated panic crossed the woman’s face. “No! Why would I want to do that?”

Sen gave her a bland look. “All of that honor and glory for your sect. Wasn’t that why you wanted to stay? What could be more glorious than facing down that horde up close?”

She started shaking her head and moving back from the group. Sen took pity on her.

“Calm down. I’m not going to make you go. It was just a joke,” said Sen. “Well, mostly a joke. Probably.”

Li Yi Nuo’s face contorted like she wanted to be furious with him, but a glance at the horde turned into more horrified staring. Sen found himself very glad that they hadn’t given her an actual job to do in all of this. She was at least a century away from being ready for things like this at the rate she was going. Sen turned his attention back to Laughing River.

“Are you ready to do your part?” Sen asked.

The elder fox nodded. “Yes.”

Misty Peak gave Sen and her grandfather a suspicious look. “His part? What do you mean, his part?”

“His part is verisimilitude,” said Sen, being intentionally and obnoxiously cryptic.

“Why is this the first I’m hearing about his part?” she asked.

“And now we’re back to the fog of untrustworthiness I mentioned before,” said Sen, and he continued before she could get a comment in. “Let’s get this started.”

Sen extended his qi into the formation again and triggered it. Even as the person who designed the formation, the results caught him off-guard. The dim light of dawn was erased as a firestorm exploded on the far side of the ruins. The entire ancient city was lit up with red and yellow light. Simultaneously, there were roars of surprise and agony as the fire enveloped the horde on that side of the ruins. As swiftly as it came, the fire died out and was replaced by blue-white lightning lancing out of the forest and cascading through the horde. Sen locked eyes with Misty Peak.

“Get ready,” he ordered.

The lightning winked out and Sen could hear the muted cries of thousands of people and the thunder of all their feet. He could imagine the army that poured out of the trees and raced toward the horde. A glance at Laughing River showed the fox with an expression of deepest concentration. Sen turned his eyes toward the horde. He waited as the milling mass of creatures seemed to lose all focus and drifted in every direction for a moment before it surged toward the intruders. The horde started to thin out on the side of the ruins that was closest to their position. It was slow at first, and then the ranks got thinner and thinner. When Sen judged it was as good as it was likely to get, he surged forward into the cleared space around the ruins and gave a muted shout.

“Now!”

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