Unintended Cultivator

As summer slowly unfolded and the mountain once more teemed with life, Sen’s cultivation followed along in its slower path. While he trained alone or with Uncle Kho’s guidance, he gathered and cycled the misty qi that pervaded the courtyard. Sometimes, he would travel away from the manor and gather the thinner qi from the mountain itself. As he did, he tried to understand why one clearing was strong in earth qi, while another mere minutes away was dominated by wood qi. He let his spiritual senses stretch out from his body, seeping down into the soil and rock, spreading out into the air, or flowing along with the water of the occasional spring-fed streams that slowly cut channels in the ancient stone of the mountain. At times, his curiosity was sated. He would discover that a beast core humming with attributed qi lay unclaimed in the earth below or held fast in the inexorable roots of a tree.

At other times, he remained in ignorance, if not complete ignorance. There were moments when he felt something, but something obscured from the insistent, questing tendrils of his own senses and qi. It felt like sensing a movement in the darkness. He knew something was there, felt some faint quivering of its presence on the very edges of his ability to know and feel. Its true nature or purpose, though, was denied him. Yet, even those failures were not whole failures. He had taken Uncle Kho’s lesson to heart. When he had reflected on it, Sen came to see that failure and success were far more deeply intertwined than he had recognized or been willing to recognize.

Taken at face value, failure was pure defeat. A defeat by the physical demands of a form or the complexity of a cycling pattern or simply by ignorance. It was the certain knowledge that someone was simply not adequate to the challenges before them. That was how Sen had viewed failure for a long time. Yet, over time, he had come to see that view for the painfully shallow thing it was. As Sen had meditated on failure and success, he had seen that failure was also a forge. It could burn away the base metals of doubt, laziness, and fear, leaving only the pure steel blade of determination. In an almost perverse inversion of that principle, he came to see that easy success was like introducing base metals into your work. While the product might look fine on the surface, pressures of any kind would corrode that same blade. Intense pressures would make it crack and fail.

Sen hadn’t thought of his musings on success and failure as particularly profound or relevant to his cultivation, save for the obvious benefits of having strong determination. In the end, he had only meant to revisit them with the benefits of the perspective that Uncle Kho had provided. He had hoped, not in vain as it turned out, to discover a more useful way of viewing failure. While powering through failure in the face of his all-or-nothing attitude had helped him hone that determination, it had cost him something. What troubled him was that he couldn’t identify exactly what it had cost him. Maybe it was something he’d never had a name for in the first place. He thought of it as a sort of softness inside his heart. He didn’t think it was weakness, but rather some intangible capacity that had been diminished. If he could find a better way to see failure, though, he might be able to preserve what remained. Possibly, he might even restore a bit of it over time.

What he had not expected his insight to do was generate one of those sudden rushes of qi that surrounded him whenever he came to some truly important insight. Caught off guard as he was, Sen was also well-trained in the fine art of swift reactions. He’d hastily thrown up a basic defensive formation, courtesy of some formation flags that Uncle Kho had provided to let Sen practice on his own sometimes. Then, he’d taken advantage of the moment to form a few more drops of his liquid qi. Adding to that reserve had been such a slow process that Sen was surprised to discover that his dantian was close to a quarter full of liquid qi. While it was still a ways off, Sen knew he was closing fast on entering into middle-stage foundation building. The gains in his spiritual senses from that additional liquid qi were what had sent him on his private quest to understand why certain kinds of qi concentrated out in nature in the first place.

Sen also concluded that, taken at face value, not discovering why certain kinds of qi prevailed in a spot was a failure. Yet, in that failure, he had sensed the elusive, ephemeral force that seemed to hide behind the mask of the natural world. That was a victory because it didn’t leave him ignorant. He knew that qi didn’t coalesce purely at random in nature. Something made it happen, at least some of the time. Yes, it might take him weeks, or months, or even the rest of his life to unravel what that hidden force was, but the simple knowledge of existence was enough victory for one day.

Even as Sen had that thought, he felt a familiar presence enter into the range of his spiritual senses. Sen felt it as Master Feng recognized Sen’s presence and altered course to find him. The older cultivator had been away for a few weeks on another trip to try to understand some problem on the mountain that Sen truly did not understand. While his master had explained that the spirit animals had behaved very strangely, Sen had seen nothing similar since. He had the occasional run-in with them, but that was almost inevitable living out the wilds as they did. Sen was surprised that it didn’t happen more often. Yet, his master was insistent that he track down the problem. While Sen was free with his questions about cultivation and combat, he normally shied away from prying too much into Master Feng’s personal affairs. He eventually asked why Master Feng was spending so much time and energy on a problem that didn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

Master Feng had been happy enough to answer that question, at least. “Any time you see spirit beasts acting in abnormal ways, it’s cause for concern. It may mean that there’s something wrong with the natural order in the area, which is often the best you can hope for. The other possibilities mostly involve direct interference from someone or something. Regardless of the way, you don’t just leave it to happen if you can intervene. I can intervene.”

Sen frowned as his mind caught on something. “If it’s a problem, why didn’t Uncle Kho or Auntie Caihong take an interest?”

“They did, but we all knew that this problem would take some travel to sort out. Caihong just got back. As for Jaw-Long, let’s just say that it’s better for him if he doesn’t go wandering.”

Sen was thinking back about that conversation and wondering if Master Feng found anything as the man appeared between some trees. He smiled and waved, then froze in his tracks. His head whipped around to look at something that Sen couldn’t even feel with his spiritual senses extended as far as they could go. Sen watched as Master Feng’s hands closed into fists and then slowly opened again three times. It was a mundane act, but Sen got the impression that it was a ritual of sorts. After that short ritual, Master Feng looked over at Sen.

“Do not interfere.”

Sen shuddered. As terrifying as Master Feng had been after killing all those spirit beasts, the man who issued Sen that order was far worse. That man was a statue made of pure ice. There was no emotion on his face. No tension in his body. From what little Sen could sense of his qi, it was as still and smooth as a pane of glass. Finally, Sen sensed what his master had sensed. There were potent qi sources hurtling toward them. A few seconds later, Sen was struck mute by the sight of three men flying through the air on top of swords. Even as part of his mind tried to process what he was seeing, another was analyzing the three men. Master Feng and Auntie Caihong had both put in more than a little time teaching Sen how to identify cultivation stages with at least some accuracy. All three of the newcomers were in the core formation stage. If Sen was reading it right, the one in the lead was late stage, maybe even peak. The other two were substantially weaker, maybe only early stage core formation. Of course, that didn’t really make a difference for Sen. Dead was still dead, regardless of whether it took someone a half second longer to do it.

“You ran away before we could finish our conversation. You wandering cultivators really should learn to respect your betters,” said the one in charge.

He had a hard face with thin lips and angry eyes. The men following him seemed to be cut of a similar cloth. To Sen’s eyes, they looked like they might even be related. Not brothers, but cousins, maybe, thought Sen.

Master Feng’s only response was to briefly shake his head and say, “You should not have followed me here. You doomed yourselves.”

“I think you’re the one who’s doomed. I’d only have crippled you back in the city. Out here, well, I’ll just kill you and the weakling over there for offending the young master of the Diving Eagle sect.”

At a mention of “that weakling” the man gestured at Sen. Sen didn’t understand what he was seeing. Had Master Feng done something to those people? Were they seeking death in glorious combat by challenging a nascent soul cultivator hovering on the very cusp of immortality? None of it made sense. The young master who hadn’t bothered to name himself to Master Feng drew a dao and the other two mimicked the action a moment later.

“You really should run away now,” said Master Feng, wholly unconcerned. “If you can get off the mountain fast enough, you might survive.”

The young master sneered. Then, all three of the newcomers were driven to their knees as though by the hand of an invisible god. A moment later, Sen felt something he’d only felt once before, a very specific killing intent. Once more, his mind was filled with the image of a desolate wasteland. A moment later, a man who burned with a halo of lightning descended from the sky in front of the three newcomers. Sen remembered well the look on Uncle Kho’s face when he’d been arguing with Master Feng. He was wearing it again, and it was no less frightening the second time around. Uncle Kho glared down at the three men.

“I am Kho Jaw-Long.”

Those were the only words he said. It seemed those were the only words he needed to say. The young master burst into hysterical tears, slammed his forehead into the ground, and started begging for his life around his sobs. The other two were seemingly too terrified to even move. The begging lasted for three seconds before a finger of lightning fell from on high and just erased the young master from existence, leaving nothing but a charred spot on the ground. Uncle Kho paused for a brief moment to look at Master Feng.

“They came to your home, not mine,” said Master Feng. “Handle it as you see fit.”

A second finger of lightning fell and left a second burned patch where a person once was. Uncle Kho turned the full weight of his attention onto the last man.

“Return to your sect. Tell them there will be no additional mercy. Do you understand?”

The last man found his ability to move and slammed his head against the ground three times. It was hard enough to make him bleed. Then he all but screamed. “I understand your commands, Kho Jaw-Long.”

“Then begone from my mountain before I decide to wipe the stain of your sect from the world forever.”

The man fled from Uncle Kho’s wrath as fast as his sword could carry him. While Uncle Kho’s baleful eyes followed the man’s retreat, Master Feng walked over to Sen.

Sen offered a bow. “Master, what just happened here?”

Master Feng’s face twisted in disgust. “The Jianghu. I guess it’s time we had that talk.”

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