Unintended Cultivator

Sen waited patiently while Lo Meifeng examined the contents of the demonic cultivator’s storage ring. He was pleased to note that she looked as disturbed by the pills as he had been. When she got to the small notebook, though, she looked downright alarmed. By the time she finished skimming through it, she looked both outraged and more than a little afraid. When she turned her gaze on him, he could see a host of unasked questions in her eyes. Yet, to her credit, she focused on the most important question.

“Why show this to me?”

“Because I assume you have faster ways of getting in touch with Master Feng than I do.”

Her brow furrowed for a moment, but she nodded. “Yes, I expect that’s probably true. You want me to get this ring of abominations to him?”

Sen shook his head and handed her a stack of loose papers. “No, I want you to get those to him, along with an explanation of the circumstances.”

She skimmed through the first two pages before glancing up at him. “Alright. I can do that. I can even understand why you want me to. But you can’t possibly be thinking about keeping all of this filth. Especially the notebook. Surely, you see the dangers of having it.”

“I do. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t read it. It’s one thing to know that there are demonic cultivators out there. It's something else entirely to know their names and sects. So, no, I don’t plan on keeping it. Not that I expect that to protect me all that much. I’ve had that ring for a couple of weeks now. Anyone who went looking for that notebook in his belongings will know I had it.”

“So, what do you plan to do with all of this? Destroy it?”

Sen grimaced a little. “No. I’m going to going to give it to the Soaring Skies sect. Well, I’m going to give it to one of their elders. One I’m at least half sure isn’t a demonic cultivator.”

Sen nodded. “I don’t especially like the man, and I suspect that he hates me more than a little, but I think we can probably find common ground with this.”

“Just because he isn’t on this list, it doesn’t mean he’s not one of them,” warned Lo Meifeng.

“I know. But I’ve been this close to the man a couple of times and didn’t get a whiff of corruption from him. Yes, it’s possible he was doing a better job of hiding it, but my intuition says he’s not corrupted. He’s just an ass.”

Lo Meifeng snorted. “He’s a sect elder. Of course, he’s an ass. It’s a job requirement.”

Sen waved that off. “I haven’t met enough to know. I’ll take your word for it.”

Lo Meifeng looked down at the stack of paper in her hand. “You know this changes things, right?”

Sen nodded. “I know.”

“I can’t be hanging back a mile while you travel or leaning in an alley that’s just barely within sight of you. You’re going to be in danger. I need to be close by.”

“Yeah, I assumed you were going to say that.”

“Are you going to fight me on this?”

Sen looked the woman in the eyes. There was no give in her steady gaze, no room for negotiation. She had a job and, as much as Sen was certain she didn’t want it, she was determined that she would do it. A tiny little part of him wanted to argue about it, but that was the same part of him that liked to make bad decisions. The dangers he’d faced before had been hypothetical. He’d known he might face sect cultivators or other wandering cultivators, but they were just cultivators. Likely as not, they’d just want to trade pointers, and maybe burnish their egos a bit. The demonic cultivators on that list wouldn’t come to spar with him. They would come to kill him. As likely as not, they’d come in force. Trying to push aside help from a core cultivator was beyond stupid. In his circumstances, it was suicidal. He was amazed that someone hadn’t shown up to kill him already.

“No, I’m not going to fight you on it. Of course, it does beg the question of where to go next. Part of me thinks that I should go back to the mountain. Any demonic cultivators who show up there are going to regret it for the rest of their incredibly short lives.”

“I thought about it,” admitted Lo Meifeng. “The problem is, I doubt we’d make it there. They’ve had weeks to set up traps from here to Orchard’s Reach. Of course, the road south is equally problematic. If I was them, I’d have traps set up there as well.”

“Are you suggesting we travel cross-country? Through the wilds?”

Lo Meifeng’s jaw actually dropped a little. “Gods, no! Why would you even suggest such insanity?”

Sen shrugged. “I was just asking. What’s your plan, then?”

“We leave on a ship. Or, rather, we leave on ten of them.”

Sen squinted at the woman. “You lost me there.”

“I’m saying we book passage on ten ships, then we pick one of them and get on it.”

“Won’t it be easy for them to tell which one we got on?”

“Yeah, this is where it gets complicated. We’ll probably need your girlfriend to help us out.”

“Girlfriend?” asked Sen.

“Oh please, you’re not that naïve.”

“I just hadn’t really thought that much about it.”

“Have you at least thought about what you’re going to say when she asks to come with you? Because she is going to ask to come with you.”

“I, well,” Sen sighed, “not really.”

“Well, give it some thought because the question is coming.”

“Wouldn’t it be, you know, reckless and dangerous to bring her along?”

“You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t on that one. If you bring her along, you’re probably going to end up putting her in danger just because she’s near you. Of course, if you leave her behind, you’re probably going to put her in danger of being grabbed and used against you as leverage.”

“What’s the third option? Isn’t there always a third option?”

“You stay in Emperor’s Bay and set up shop. It means your enemies know where to find you, but you’ll be around to protect the girl.”

“Except I can’t possibly guard her around the clock,” said Sen. “At least, not and let her have a life here.”

“Yes, you seem to have the reality of things surrounded there.”

“So, three bad options?”

“Better three bad options than zero options at all. It can always be worse. When are you meeting with Deng.”

Sen glanced out the window. “Soon.”

“Well, best to get on with it then.”

***

Sen had arranged to meet Deng at the same tea shop where he’d met Elder He. It wasn’t precisely convenient for Sen, but he knew that they had a private room he could use. He arrived first and set about preparing the room for the meeting. Elder Deng might not care about privacy, but Sen did. He set up a version of his obscuring formation in the little room, modifying it to dampen sound as well as obscuring their qi signatures. It wasn’t foolproof, and anyone could have followed Sen there, but he wasn’t worried about being found so much as he was about being overheard. When Elder Deng arrived, Sen gave him the option of sharing the tea that Sen had ordered or ordering his own. Sen was amused when the elder gave the teapot on the table a distrustful look and ordered his own. Once the new tea arrived, Sen activated the formation. The elder gave the formation an appraising look but opted not to comment.

“Why am I here, boy?” asked Elder Deng. “I thought we’d concluded all the business there was between us.”

“As did I, but I was wrong. The first thing is, well, here,” said Sen, handing over a storage ring.

The elder frowned at him but took the ring. Once he assessed the contents, his eyebrows shot up. “I’m surprised that you’d return these things.”

“Keeping them would feel like keeping trophies and that doesn’t strike me as something that a healthy mind would do. Yet, they’re personal enough that throwing them away seemed cruel and unnecessary. What else was there to do but return them?”

The elder eyed Sen, maybe looking for some kind of duplicity, but didn’t seem to find any. He nodded and tucked the ring away inside his robe. The elder gestured to the formation.

“I assume there’s more. This level of privacy isn’t really necessary to return a few personal items.”

“There is, but I feel like I should give you a choice about whether you want to hear it.”

Elder Deng frowned. “Explain.”

“The demonic cultivator I fought. He had information, information about other demonic cultivators, in one of his storage rings.”

Elder Deng looked momentarily eager, then cautious, and then grim. “Did he?”

“He did. I can tell by your expression that you understand what having that information will mean.”

“I do understand. So, why offer it to me?”

“My resources are limited. My reach is limited. I’m one man. One wandering cultivator. Sure, I can call for aid, but I can’t predict when it will come. Since you’ve survived the exposure of a demonic cultivator in your sect, I have to assume some kind of witch-hunt or culling is ongoing.”

“It is,” said Elder Deng with a stony expression.

“Then, of the people I have immediate access to, you and your sect are the best positioned to do something with the information. Maybe you act on it directly. Maybe you pass it on to others who can do something with it. Either way, it’s more useful than it would be in my hands.”

“And, once you hand the information over, what will you do?”

“I think it’s called running for my life. Just because I handed the information over, I’m still a threat. They aren’t just going to let me go off and live my life.”

Elder Deng leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “At least you aren’t stupid. They’ll hunt you, boy. There may not be a place on this half of the continent where you’d be safe.”

“Perhaps, but catching me isn’t going to be easy. And, even if they do, they may come to regret it.”

“Of that, I’m certain,” muttered Elder Deng.

He sat there for a long time with his eyes closed, seeming to meditate on the problem. When he did finally open his eyes, there was a certainty in them. He held out his hand.

“Very well. Give me the information.”

Sen put the storage ring with the notebook and demonic cultivation resources in the elder’s hand. “There are other things in that ring, pills and the like.”

The elder winced a little at that. “I’ll see that they’re destroyed.”

Nodding, Sen stood and deactivated the formation. He gathered up the flags and stored them in one of his rings. He bowed to the Soaring Skies elder.

“I wish you good fortune,” he said to the elder.

“I don’t like you,” said Elder Deng. “But I don’t think I wish you dead. Watch your back out there, boy.”

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