Unintended Cultivator

With the decision made, they didn’t waste any time. Sen spent longer than he probably should have picking the spot where they would leave the road. Then, he used every trick he’d picked up since leaving the mountain, every bit of woodcraft he’d learned from Falling Leaf, to obscure their trail. Then, when he’d done everything he could think of, they started off into the wilds. Sen had decided that, for that night, they wouldn’t go too deep, just deep enough that no one would dare to follow them. There were a lot of reasons for it, not the least of which was that, in Sen’s experience, the most dangerous things hunted at night. Not that things would really be that much less dangerous in the daylight, but they might at least have a better shot at spotting those dangers during the day.

For the first time in a long time, Sen felt like they actually got a little bit lucky. Nothing took notice of them, attacked them, or even seemed to stalk them. When they’d gone far enough that even Sen’s paranoia didn’t think anyone would follow them, and then gone a few more miles, he finally picked a spot and set up camp. He took extra time and care setting up the obscuring and offensive formations. Lifen was already sitting with her back against a rock, nearly asleep, but Lo Meifeng was watching as he planted flags. When he didn’t set up the spike forest formation, she finally spoke up.

“Not doing that other formation? I mean, I know you’re probably tired, but that was a really useful formation.”

“It is useful. It also takes a lot of metal qi to make it work in most places. I mean, if we were camping in a smith’s shop, I could probably make it work with nothing but environmental qi. Out here, I need metal-aligned beast cores to power it. I mostly drained the ones I have making it work that one time. I can maybe make it work one more time. I want to save it for when we know we’re in trouble. So, unless you have extra metal-aligned cores, or you want to go hunting for beasts with that kind of core, there’s not much point in setting it up.”

Lo Meifeng made a vaguely unhappy noise. “I don’t, sadly. Formations weren’t really part of my training, at least, not beyond the basics. How the hell did they manage to turn you into a master alchemist and formation master in what five years?”

“Six years. And I’m no master alchemist. I’m certainly not a formation master. You should see the things that Uncle Kho can do with formations.”

Lo Meifeng lifted an eyebrow at him. “No offense, but you may be setting the bar a little high for what you consider a master. If your baseline for mastery is what a thousands of years old nascent soul cultivator can do, nobody is going to qualify as a master in your world.”

Sen stopped what he was doing, frowned, and then looked at Lo Meifeng. “You may have a point. Then again, isn’t that the kind of mastery we should all be aiming for?”

It was Lo Meifeng’s turn to frown. “Maybe so.”

“You should get some sleep while you can,” said Sen. “We both know that this bit of peace and quiet we’ve got right now isn’t going to last.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just trying to enjoy it for a few minutes,” said Lo Meifeng. “Can I ask you something?”

Sen planted one last flag and ran his qi through the formation to test it. Satisfied with his work, he activated it. He turned to Lo Meifeng.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Feng Ming trained you with the jian, right?”

Sen nodded, a little confused by the question. “He did.”

“Why don’t you ever use it?”

“Oh,” said Sen, finally understanding. “The jian works best in specific kinds of fights. I find it’s best for close-range combat with one or two opponents. All my fights recently have been with groups. The spear helps me keep my distance. Plus, I’ve used it more for lightning. I can channel lightning with it a hair faster. Meaningless most of the time, but,” Sen drew out the last word.

“But any advantage in a fight.”

“Exactly. If I find myself in a duel, though, I’ll use the jian. I killed some outlaw with it a while back. What was his name?” Sen muttered to himself before snapping his fingers. “Cheng Bojing! That was it. I dueled him with the jian.”

“Wait? That was you? I thought some of those Soaring Skies sect punks got him and his gang.”

“I didn’t want to go to their sect to collect the reward. I also didn’t want any more attention. I told them to take the credit. Why?”

“He had a reputation as a swordsman. He was supposed to be quite good.”

Sen lifted a shoulder. “He wasn’t terrible. I mean, he was no Master Feng.”

“Again, you may be setting your bar for mastery a little high.”

“Not really. I mean, I beat him. He couldn’t have been that good.”

Lo Meifeng just stared at him for a few seconds before she started to rub at her temple like she had a pain in her head. “Yeah, that must be the explanation. Alright, I’m going to get some sleep. Are you going to keep watch?”

Sen nodded and pointed at the gently snoring Lifen. “Once I get her settled on something a little softer than a rock, anyway.”

Lo Meifeng let out a soft chuckle and climbed into the small tent that she kept in her own storage ring. It seemed that Sen wasn’t the only person who liked to be prepared for a lot of potential situations. He quickly assembled his own tent and put Lifen onto some blankets, then he settled in to keep watch. Although, keeping watch was a bit of a misnomer. The formations would do most of that work for them. Sen was really there as a first line of defense in case anything managed to get through the offensive formation. Instead, he settled into actively cycling qi. He’d become more and more sparing with his active qi cycling because he was so very close to breaking through again. The last thing he wanted to do was break into core formation and face a tribulation in the wilds. That would probably draw every spirit beast within a hundred miles looking for something weak and injured to eat.

Yet, he found it almost physically painful to not cycle qi. He’d been cultivating daily for so long that it actually felt wrong not to. Plus, there was a part of him that wanted to break through into core formation. That wouldn’t put him on the same level of peak core formation cultivators, but it was narrow that distance a lot. Maybe enough to give him a fighting chance without using Heavens’ Rebuke. That was the real attraction, he admitted to himself. He didn’t trust that technique any more. The sheer destructive potential of it frightened him. Equally important, he didn’t trust himself to use it wisely. Something that could shatter cores was a temptation, as much as it was a tool. It was too easy to think of it as a card he could play if he was desperate. And, as long as that gulf existed between foundation formation and core cultivators, he’d always be desperate in those fights. Good preparation had saved them last time, but he couldn’t depend on there always being formations around to do half the work for him.

Besides, at the rate he was going, the next time, the hunting party would be nothing but core formation cultivators. They couldn’t survive against that. Not as they were. Even as he debated about what was best with part of his mind, the rest of his mind had turned to the struggle to condense environmental qi into liquid qi. Over time, it hadn’t gotten easier, precisely, but he’d just become more accustomed to the demands. It didn’t require every ounce of concentration anymore. He almost didn’t notice when a few more drops of the precious liquid qi were added to the growing store in his dantian. As the last drop joined with what he had been gathering, he knew. It was enough. He could try to break through right then and there. The temptation was so overpowering that sweat beaded on his forehead as he fought it away.

Worse still was the knowledge that the pill Auntie Caihong had given to him for his next breakthrough was just sitting in his storage ring, waiting to be used. It hadn’t occurred to him to use it on the beach with the divine turtle, and he realized afterward that it had been for the best. He’d had ample time to study that pill. He didn’t understand exactly what it was supposed to do, but he had figured out that it was specifically meant to help him advance his spirit cultivation. That realization had made him wonder if Auntie Caihong had known that his advancements would diverge, or if it had simply been a quirk of the pill creation process. Either way, it was there, waiting, almost begging him to use it. He almost summoned it from his ring but stopped himself at the last second. If he took it out, he’d use it. He knew he would.

It wasn’t a decision he could make on his own. It wasn’t just his life he’d be risking by advancing at that moment or in that place. He suspected that both Lifen and Lo Meifeng would tell him to do it, that having another core cultivator improved their odds of survival out in the wilds. They might even be right, but there were the beasts to consider. There were the cultivators hunting them to consider. He’d led them a good way off the road, but his formation wasn’t designed to hide a breakthrough to a core. It’d be like sending up a signal into the air. No, he needed to wait. He needed to exercise restraint. Just because he could, potentially, advance now, it didn’t mean that he should.

Racing headlong into situations without full consideration had caused him no end of problems. It wouldn’t hurt him, for once, to take the slow path. Talk with the others. Make a plan for how to do it in a way that would maximize their safety, and his, before he made the plunge. If that meant he had to put off advancing for weeks, maybe months, he could do that. People waited for a lot longer than that to advance, or so he was given to understand. His own pace of advancement had been abnormal at best, buoyed by excellent training, ready access to good resources, and probably more than his fair share of moments of enlightenment. In fact, he reasoned, waiting might even be good for me. Help me bring my cultivation experience into better balance. While his desperation to advance certainly had some roots in very real and present problems, those weren’t the only reasons.

There was a part of him that wanted to advance simply because he was a person, and all people craved power at some level. For some, it was about safety. More power made you safer, or so people believed. Sen thought it would make him safer, but he couldn’t help but wonder if that was just an excuse. For others, it was about having power over others. Sen didn’t particularly crave power for that reason. He would exercise power over others if it seemed necessary, but he didn’t want followers or lackeys or victims. His experience leading this tiny group of people had proven that to him quite thoroughly. He hated being in charge of things. There was another reason that he craved advancement. For all that Sen kept an iron fist wrapped around it, his curiosity was alive and well. Part of him wanted to advance just because he was curious what being a core formation cultivator was like. How would it change things? What things would remain the same?

He wanted to think that it would change how everything looked to him. He wanted to believe becoming a core cultivator would reshape his relationship with the world, with reality, and with the universe itself. Yet, the last few months had forged and tempered him in the more pragmatic truths of the world. As much as he wanted to believe advancement would prove a transcendent experience, the core cultivators he had met had seemed largely the same as the foundation formation cultivators he’d met. They seemed to possess no additional wisdom, no special insights, except perhaps in their specializations. That truth made holding back on advancing a bit easier. Perhaps the advancement would change him or provide some insight into the world he was lacking, but he suspected that he would be much the same person after the advancement. If he wanted some kind of overwhelming, identity-changing insight, he’d need to do what he’d done for nearly all of the biggest changes in his life. He’d have to put in the work. When he considered that proposition, it wasn’t as disheartening as he expected it to be. Sen wasn’t afraid of hard work. Satisfied that he’d gotten over the worst of his own temptation, Sen relaxed a little.

“Yes,” he murmured aloud, “restraint is the best course of action.”

Sen realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. It was as though the universe had simply been waiting for him to throw down a challenge to its superior judgment and power. He almost felt the cosmos whip its attention around and focus on him. For several, terrible moments, nothing happened. Sen held his breath, silently begging for nothing to happen.

Then, he almost heard the universe say, “Oh yeah? Watch this.”

And heavenly qi crashed down on him like a landslide.

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