Unintended Cultivator

Sen stared down at his own hand. He shook his head violently in the negative. It can’t be that simple, he thought. He had to force himself to repeat the action. He waved his hand through the shadow the tree was casting. His eyes were locked on the snowy ground beneath. The sun overhead made the shadow of his hand crisp and clear as it simply disappeared into the tree’s shadow, and then reappeared on the other side. I refuse to believe that it’s that stupidly simple, he raged mentally. Yet, it was. All of the cultivation instincts he had honed over the years told him that this was the answer he’d been looking for. It felt right. Part of Sen wanted to go and scream at Fu Ruolan for withholding this piece of information from him. Yet, he recognized the futility of that. She had made the point to him, repeatedly, that he was approaching the transition into the nascent soul stage. That transition would require self-knowledge, as well as cultivation insight.

Sen wasn’t certain how much self-knowledge he had acquired through the months of fruitless, dead-end ideas and experiments. It may have helped to reaffirm his willingness to keep pursuing something he knew was possible no matter how many setbacks he faced. He supposed it had reinforced his patience, sort of. But he hated that she hadn’t simply told him. It felt like an almost vindictive act because the answer was so simple. Sen forced himself to take a couple of deep breaths.

“If it were really that simple, you wouldn’t have taken this long to figure it out.”

As it was, he barely felt like he could take credit for figuring out how the shadow walking technique worked, at least in theory. It had ultimately been Glimmer of Night who gave him the final inspiration. Sen had been mostly just been sitting there watching the spider make the latest in a seemingly infinite number of variations on a web pattern. The spider had refused to divulge the actual patterns to Sen with some cryptic statement about Sen’s current position in the web of all things. So, Sen had circled back to a question for which he’d never gotten a wholly satisfactory answer.

“Can you explain to me again how it is that the Great Matriarch’s web touches all realities?” asked Sen.

Glimmer of Night had delivered what Sen had slowly come to recognize as the spider’s annoyed look.

“I have tried many times and many ways,” answered the spider.

“Just one more time, and I’ll never ask again,” pleaded Sen.

He’d never relinquished his belief that the key to understanding shadow walking was buried somewhere in that conversation if he just found the right way to approach it. Glimmer of Night fell silent for long enough that Sen thought that it was the spider’s passive way of saying no. It turned out, the spider had just been deep in thought. He looked at Sen.

The web the spider had been working on disappeared and a much simpler web appeared strung horizontally between trees. The spider pointed at it.

“Our reality.”

Another web appeared almost right on top of it. “Another reality or plane or dimension. Pick the name you like best.”

Another web appeared. Over the next minute, a couple of dozen webs appeared stacked nearly on top of each other. The spider gestured at it.

“Existence in sum.”

Sen frowned but nodded. He understood in general terms that the spider had made a wildly oversimplified scale model of, well, everything as construed as webs. Then, another web appeared, anchored by nothing and to nothing. It was vertical and passed through the middle of all the other webs. Sen watched in fascination as the vertical web slowly began to turn as though it was affixed to an axis. It passed through the other webs without disturbing them, as though they were made of the same material, which Sen abruptly realized that they were. Of course, that web qi had no trouble passing through other web qi. The only real challenge would be making sure the qi didn’t intermingle so much that it lost form.

For someone like Glimmer of Night, with his vast experience, that would pose no challenges. Sen had stared at that construct for a long time, a sick feeling growing in his stomach as he realized the truth. That was when he’d walked to the nearest tree and run his little experiment. Now, he was just trying to stay calm. He’d only figured out part of it. He had the what, but the how was something else. He supposed he even knew that, but only in the big-picture way. He had the feeling that the details were going to matter a lot with a technique like this.

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“Well, you finally got there,” said Fu Ruolan, unmasking her presence and stepping into view.

Sen almost made a jab about her lurking, but it would have just been unwarranted spite talking. Instead, he gave her a level look.

“How do you know I figured it out?”

“Well, if you couldn’t get there after Glimmer of Night’s rather interesting display, I’d have questioned your mental capacity. Also, there’s just no hiding the white-hot anger you’re feeling. Everyone gets that look on their face the first time they realize their teacher kept something seemingly easy and obvious back from them.”

“Then, why do it?” demanded Sen.

“Because it isn’t easy or obvious. If it were, you wouldn’t have struggled for so long to put it together. How many times did you have conversations about how the Great Matriarch’s web touched all reality?”

“Many,” said Glimmer of Night. “Very many.”

“If you were to have those conversations now, it would seem easy. Obvious. But you had to prime your mind. You had to explore the other options and reject them. You had to be ready to consider possibilities beyond your prior experience. Until you were ready to do that, nothing was going to make things clear to you. If you had quit, which most do, then it would have been clear evidence that you were unfit for the technique and unlikely to pass into the nascent soul stage.”

“What?!” exclaimed Sen.

Fu Ruolan gave him a self-satisfied smile.

“Did you think that you were the only one who could conduct tests? Granted, your tests with the mortals have been more straightforward, but they were still tests. As for my tests, why conduct only one when I could conduct two.”

“And if I had failed?”

“I would have taught you other things for the next few years, sent you on your way, and likely never given you another thought. But, as I expected, you did not fail.”

“So, does everyone approaching the nascent soul stage get a test like this?”

“Oh, don’t be silly. Most cultivators who enter the nascent soul stage only have the vaguest idea of why they succeeded, just as most who fail are equally baffled by that failure.”

“But you have a test?”

“I have a method. The test is different for everyone.”

“If this method is so effective, why haven’t you shared it?”

Something cold passed over Fu Ruolan’s face then. It was comprised of old pain, bitterness, and anger. When she spoke, her voice was a metal rasp passing over stone.

“Why should I? Why should I ever help those people?”

Sen honestly didn’t know who she meant by those people. Sects? Wandering cultivators? Humanity as a whole? She could have meant any of them or all of them. Sen also realized that he had unintentionally stepped into one of those areas of Fu Ruolan’s life where he did not want to go. He had ultimately come to the conclusion that Fu Ruolan wasn’t mad in a traditional sense, nor was she sane in a traditional sense. Some things brought out the less sane aspects of her personality, while some things encouraged her more rational side. Sen had identified certain topics that were more likely to bring out this angry, vengeful, and probably unhinged version of Fu Ruolan. He probably could have deduced that his last question would do it. He just hadn’t thought it through before he threw the question out there. However, given that her killing intent was bearing down on him and he could actually feel damage accumulating inside his body, he wanted to calm her as fast as possible.

“Peace,” he said. “It’s your method. If you don’t wish to share it, that is your decision. I should not have questioned your choice.”

Fu Ruolan snarled, “It is my decision!”

Sen just waited as calmly as he could. After a few seconds, Fu Ruolan’s expression became one of pain. She hunched a little as her killing intent slowly bled away. It appeared that the effort of suppressing it hurt her as much as unleashing it had hurt him. When the nascent soul cultivator had regained full control of herself, she met his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was uncalled for.”

Sen hesitated for a moment before protective ruthlessness took over. “Liu Ai is curious. She trusts you. She will ask you questions. What you just did to me would have killed her before she even had a chance to scream.”

The look on Fu Ruolan’s face was undiluted horror as those words sank home. Sen didn’t relent.

“I brought that on myself. I know better than to ask a question like that. I also know how to walk it back. She won’t know better. I can’t put her at that kind of risk. So, tell me now, and tell me the truth, is this something you can keep under control?”

“Of course!” snapped the nascent soul cultivator.

“What if she asks why you don’t have children? What if she asks where you come from? What if she asks why you live out here alone?”

Fu Ruolan looked like she’d just been stabbed repeatedly. She didn’t say anything as Sen’s gaze bore into her. Sen could see her eyes tracking back and forth like she was reading something in her mind. There was genuine pain and distress in her eyes when Fu Ruolan looked up at Sen.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

Sen nodded. “Thank you for being honest.”

“What will you do?” asked Fu Ruolan.

“The only thing I can do. I’ll take Liu Ai somewhere else. I imagine Falling Leaf will come. Glimmer of Night can make his own decision.”

The spider, who had watched the entire exchange with his usual impassive gaze, shrugged. “I’ll stay for now.”

“What of our agreement?” asked the nascent soul cultivator.

“What about it?” asked Sen. “I’ll keep my word. It’ll just be a whole lot less convenient.”

Sen turned to walk away when Fu Ruolan called out after him.

“When will you leave?”

He wanted to say immediately, but he knew that wasn’t practical.

“Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow.”

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