Unintended Cultivator

Sen and a weary Lo Meifeng made their way back toward Lifen. Most of the spirit beasts seemed to have decided that the fighting and destruction weren’t worth whatever had brought them there in the first place. For the few that stuck around looking for trouble, judicious use of his killing intent sent most of them scurrying away. The rest were dealt with using jian, spear, and the occasional qi technique. When they finally reached the spot where Sen had left Lifen, he found not one, but a group of three spirit oxen hovering nearby. They weren’t doing anything specific, just being watchful. Sen gestured for Lo Meifeng to wait and approached the oxen. He offered them another deep bow.

“I am most grateful for your assistance,” he said. “Is there anything I might do to repay your kindness?”

The biggest of the oxen, the one he’d encountered before, seemed to think it over before shaking her massive head. Sen inclined his head to the group.

“In that case, I will look for opportunities to be of assistance to you and yours in the future.”

The ox let out a gentle moo and then led her companions away. There was a brief moment of blessed silence before Lo Meifeng spoke.

“I’ll probably hate the answer you give to this question, but why did spirit oxen help out?”

“I was nice to an ox once,” said Sen. “It seems the spirit oxen take that kind of thing seriously.”

“You were nice? To an ox?”

“It’s a long story.”

Sen ignored that and went over to where his formation was still encouraging everything to look somewhere else. He deactivated the formation and found Lifen curled up and asleep at the base of what was left of a tree. It looked like she had actually eaten the roots because her skin had lost that grayish cast, but there was only so much that unprocessed medicinal roots could do for overwhelming exhaustion. Sen collected the formation flags and scooped Lifen up into his arms. It was a testament to just how tired she was that being lifted off the ground didn’t even make her stir.

“Come on,” said Sen to Lo Meifeng. “I think we’ve probably got a little time. Enough that I can do something for both of you before we get moving again.”

The group trudged back to what was left of their campsite. Both tents had been trampled by something at some point, although Sen didn’t notice any obvious rips or tears after a cursory examination. The small fire pit they’d put together had been simply obliterated, spreading ash in every direction. Sen put Lifen down in a relatively clean spot and took a couple of minutes to reassemble his tent with branches he scavenged from all the nearby destruction. He dropped a bunch of blankets into the tent, moved Lifen in, and gestured that Lo Meifeng should join her.

“I’m fine,” said Lo Meifeng.

“Yes, I’m sure you are. Now, go sleep for an hour. It’ll take that long to get everything sorted out, and I need that time to do some alchemy. Go. Sleep.”

Lo Meifeng tried to glare at him, but her eyes kept drifting back to the tent. “Fine, but if anything happens, you wake me up.”

“Of course,” lied Sen.

She gave him a knowing look, then yawned, and finally just accepted the inevitable. While the women took much-needed and well-earned naps, Sen organized his mental to-do list. Lo Meifeng was right that they needed to get moving, but that was only going to work if they could all keep moving for long enough to put some real distance between them and this spot. They’d also need some kind of cover once they got wherever they decided to stop. Sen wavered for a moment before he just picked a task and started. The first thing he did was to neatly fold Lo Meifeng’s tent and blankets. Then, he made a new, if shallow, fire pit and got a fire going. There was so much wood debris around that finding fuel wasn’t a problem. He needed to artificially season some of it, but he’d gotten pretty adept at that.

Once the fire was going, he set up his tripod and pot. He put some water in the pot and let it start warming up while he turned his attention outward. It took a little while to gather up his formation flags. Some of them had been all but buried in the fighting. Most of the flags had suffered at least some minor damage. Some of them had been damaged beyond repair. That hurt because they weren’t that easy to replace. It would have been easier in a large enough town or city. Out in the wilds, though, once something like that was gone, it was just gone. He supposed he could fashion some kind of formation plates out of stone or, if he worked hard enough at it, metal that he dredged up from the ground. He also knew that both of those options would be time and work-intensive. No, what he had was what he had for now.

He stored all of the flags that he’d recovered, even the ones that looked beyond hope. Just because he couldn’t necessarily fix them, it didn’t mean there wasn’t some other use for them. By then, the water over the fire was at a gentle boil, so Sen settled in to do some basic alchemy. He didn’t think any of them wanted to take the time he’d need to craft elixirs designed for each woman, so he fell back on general principles. He assumed that they could probably both use some basic healing, but the main goal was to provide them with energy. He found one of the more potent ginseng plants in his storage ring that was heavily wood-aligned. That would serve as an excellent foundation for both healing and providing energy. From there, he added petals from the dragon’s breath flower for fire, also good for energy, and a few water-aligned leaves from a river fern to provide a balancing component for the dragon’s breath petals. He kept digging through his storage ring, adding things here and there he knew would provide specific benefits, or that felt right for this elixir.

Finally, he took out one of the heavenly qi-infused beast cores that he hadn’t even remembered picking up and crushed it into the elixir. It was something he did on instinct, rather than out of any established principle of alchemy. He suspected that the addition of heavenly qi to the mixture would serve as a catalyst that enhanced all of the other properties that he’d been aiming to give the elixir. Even if it didn’t work, though, a bit of extra heavenly qi would only benefit Lifen and Lo Meifeng. Then, he waited and stirred as the elixir transformed itself from a motley assortment of ingredients into something that transcended all of those components. It happened slowly at first, and then increased in speed as the liquid in the pot converted from a brown sludge into an amber color, and then the heavenly qi went to work on it, and the mixture turned golden.

Sen didn’t need any hints to know that it was done. He removed the pot from the fire and, after a moment of consideration, used his fire qi to bleed away the heat from the pot. He didn’t like to do that with elixirs because, sometimes, that fast cooling could alter the mixture. This time, though, it didn’t seem to have an effect. He strained the liquid into two vials and then discarded the rest. He crawled into the tent and gently shook Lo Meifeng’s shoulder. He only narrowly dodged the punch she threw at him. It was only after he shook off his shock that he realized that she hadn’t even woken up. Sighing, he took another tack.

“Wake up!” he shouted at them.

Lo Meifeng snapped out of her unconscious state, looking around wildly, before thought finally caught up with her. She glared promises of ugly death at Sen until he held out the vial to her. She eyed it dubiously for a moment, then took it. She hesitated for a moment, then downed the liquid. Sen turned his attention to Lifen, who hadn’t even twitched at his shout. He shook, shouted, and finally managed to rouse her enough that he could give her the vial.

“Whas thish?” she mumbled.

“An elixir. It’ll help,” said Sen.

Unlike Lo Meifeng, Lifen just tipped the liquid into her mouth, and almost instantly went back to sleep. Sen crawled back out of the tent. He figured it would take a little while for the elixirs to really hit, so he might as well make use of the time. There were a lot of dead spirit beasts nearby, and he had a feeling that they were going to need those spirit beast cores before this little jaunt through the wilds was over. He moved out from the camp in a spiral, harvesting cores whenever he came across a dead spirit beast. He made sure to keep them separate from his own supply. While he might find them useful, the vast majority of them belonged to Lifen and Lo Meifeng. He also knew that they were valuable. Maybe even valuable enough for Lifen to start that different life she wanted. He had no clue what Lo Meifeng wanted, but he expected that she liked money as much as the next person. He also made a point not to move beyond the reach of his spiritual sense. As long as he could feel what was happening back at the campsite, he figured that he could get back there fast enough to intervene if necessary.

He was tempted to do a more thorough harvesting of the spirit beasts, but it was a balancing act between gathering valuable resources and using time efficiently. He doubted he was even going to have the time to harvest all of the cores in his self-imposed radius before Lo Miefeng and Lifen were up and about. He was right about that. It only took about twenty minutes before he sensed the two women moving around in the campsite. He made his way back. He found them disassembling his tent and folding up the blankets they’d been sleeping on. He took over that duty and deposited a pile of beast cores on the ground.

“Those belong to you two,” he said.

He could tell that they were still a bit tired and groggy because they both just sort of stared at the pile for a while. Eventually, they went over and started some kind of discussion that seemed almost, but not exactly, like haggling. Most of the cores disappeared into their respective storage rings, but a small handful of the cores were left behind. Sen lifted an eyebrow at them.

“For that offensive formation of yours,” said Lifen. “Wealth is great and all, but not if we don’t live to spend it.”

Sen walked over to the cores and found that they were all either fire or lightning-aligned. They would help fuel that formation.

“You’re both sure?” he asked.

They both nodded.

“Alright. There’s one more core I want to grab,” he said, thinking of that bear-cat, “but I’m more than ready to leave this catastrophe behind if you are.”

“Please,” said Lifen.

“Yes, now, immediately please,” said Lo Meifeng.

Sen suppressed a smile and headed in the direction of the bear-cat spirit beast he’d killed. Lifen and Lo Meifeng followed closely behind.

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