Unintended Cultivator

Completely flummoxed by the outpouring of what Sen assumed was respect, he blurted the first thing that came to his mind.

“Why are you all kowtowing to me?”

The kneeling cultivators traded confused looks with each other before the slight healer that Sen had met before spoke up.

“We wished to honor the master alchemist.”

Sen snorted. “I’m no master alchemist.”

There were more startled looks and confused glances traded. The slight man spoke again.

“If not you, then who? I am considered a master alchemist, and I could not have done half of what you did. I don’t even understand how you did some of the things you did.”

Sen recalled Lo Meifeng telling him that he was setting his bar too high. He’d thought she was being snarky at the time. Maybe she’d just been talking to him, though. Still, he wasn’t a master, he didn’t think.

“My teacher is far more adept than I am,” he said, falling back on his best dodge.

A woman with pure white hair and youthful features piped up with a laugh. “Who is your teacher, Alchemy’s Handmaiden?”

“Who is that?” asked Sen.

“A myth,” said the slight man. “A supposed nascent soul cultivator named Ma Caihong.”

Sen blinked. “Oh. Then, yes. Alchemy’s Handmaiden is my teacher.”

The assembled cultivators burst into uproarious laughter that slowly choked off when they realized that Sen hadn’t even cracked a smile. The white-haired woman, whose face had gone nearly the same color as her hair, finally broke the silence.

“You met Ma Caihong? You actually traded words with her?”

“Yes. How else could she teach me?”

There was another moment of startled silence, then the white-haired woman stood walked over to Sen and dropped down to kowtow again.

“This unworthy Tong Yihan begs you to take her as a student. Any price you name, I will gladly pay it.”

That set off a chain reaction as the other cultivators realized that Tong Yihan had apparently stolen a march on them and put herself up as the front-runner in a race that none of them expected. There was an explosion of noise as the gathered cultivators tried to outshout each other and outbid each other. Gold, jewels, cultivation treasures, rare reagents, and even sexual favors were all thrown on the table as possible bribes. A little part of Sen realized that he could probably make a sizable fortune just for teaching these people some little bit of his, apparently, uncommon knowledge. The rest of him just wanted to flee, as far and as fast as possible to get away from these people. He tried to calm them, but most of them were no longer shouting or even looking directly at him. They were shouting at each other. Arguing over who had the most right to learn from him. A conversation he’d had with Auntie Caihong about how Uncle Kho wanted to avoid would-be students came to his mind. Now, he understood. Some people might like this kind of thing, but Sen hated it. He was preparing to simply fly away when a voice cut through the noise like a whip.

“Enough.”

Every head turned to look. Chan Yu Ming stood behind them, all but glowing with barely suppressed anger. The slight man seemed to remember his manners first and bowed.

“Chan Yu Ming, we were just…”

“You were just hounding a man who has worked without food or rest for the last three days. Leave him be.”

She never spoke the words or else but the hand resting not so subtly on the hilt of her jian did that work for her. The gathered healers, alchemists, and would-be students unhappily exited the little enclosed area, leaving Sen with Chan Yu Ming. He sagged in relief.

“Thank you,” he said with every ounce of sincerity in his soul.

“Small enough reward, I think, for a miracle worker.”

“Miracle worker?”

“Yes,” said Chan Yu Ming. “I heard the word miracle used without irony no less than five times in the last few days.”

Sen sniffed. “There were no miracles. Just alchemy.”

“First-order alchemy. The kind of alchemy you hear stories about. Not the kind of alchemy people actually do. Two of those people who just left nearly came to blows because they couldn’t agree on which of the impossible things they saw you do was more miraculous.”

“Nothing impossible happened. There were no miracles. It was just alchemy,” said Sen in a plaintive voice.

“Master swordsman. Master alchemist. I suppose next I’ll discover that you’re a spear master and a master diviner as well.”

Sen shook his head. “I know nothing of divination.”

“So, that spear you had wasn’t just for show?”

“It wasn’t.”

“Spear master,” she said like she was adding it to a list.

“I never said that,” objected Sen.

“How you would rate your spear work?”

“Adequate.”

“And how would you have rated your alchemy a week ago.”

Sen grimaced. “Adequate.”

“Spear master,” said Chan Yu Ming with bedrock certainty. “Anything else you’re merely adequate at?”

“Probably,” muttered Sen. “Does it matter?”

“I’m not sure, yet. Tell me, are you some secret prince that Feng Ming agreed to train?”

“If I were a secret prince, would you really expect me to tell you?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’re all proud fools, which it seems you are not. So, who are you? Where do you come from?”

Sen shook his head. “I’m no one. Literally no one. I came from a tiny town up north.”

Chan Yu Ming gave him a look of profound compassion and even a little pity. “You were no one. Whatever your original plans were, you are someone now. There will be no escaping it this side of the Mountains of Sorrow. You need to prepare for that. Those fools won’t be the last to seek you out, for knowledge, for training, or to cut down a legend.”

“I’m not a legend,” said Sen in a voice that only barely missed being a shout.

Chan Yu Ming weathered his anger with serene calm. “You weren’t a legend. Although, something tells me that wasn’t only half-true before you got here. Now, though, you will be. The man who stopped a sect war with one threat. The man who struck such fear into the elders that they took eternal oaths of peace. The alchemist who cures the incurable and saves the unsavable.”

Sen rolled his eyes. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Not by much, and less than other people will.”

Sen knew she was right. He just didn’t want her to be right. Looking for any way to take the focus off him, he turned the question back on her.

“You seem to know a lot about all of this. Who are you?”

For the first time, Chan Yu Ming hesitated. It was brief, but Sen noticed. Interesting, he thought. She doesn’t want me to know, or maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know.

“My family is…prominent,” she finally said. “So, I know a bit about how fame works.”

Sen rubbed his face with his hands. If he’d been less tired, he might have pursued the half-truth she’d just offered. As it was, he didn’t care enough to press her about it.

“You know what the worst part is? I never wanted any of this.”

Chan Yu Ming laughed at that. “No sane man would. What did you want?”

“I just wanted to learn about the world. Stand in the ocean. Climb a mountain. See a desert.”

“That’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Not for most people. Maybe the world would be a kinder place if it were.”

“I doubt it,” said Sen, his mood growing sour.

“Why is that?”

“Because people are people.”

Sen half-expected her to ask him what he meant by that, but she simply nodded in understanding. A sharp realization highlighted for him just how tired he was because it should have occurred to him earlier.

“You said I’ve been at this for days. Is your sect still here?”

“No. Most of them are gone. We negotiated more time for you to finish your work with the most wounded. It seems that the fire cultivators have functioning consciences because they didn’t even really press for anything. Honestly, I think seeing my sect packing up and leaving was all they really cared about. A handful of healers and some people recovering from near-death injuries just aren’t that threatening.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would be,” said Sen absently. “One of the water cultivators I tried to help had bad steam burns. Did they make it? Are they still here?”

“I think so. Why?”

“I’d like to speak with them. Take a look at how they’re healing up. Burns are tricky at best.”

“I’ll get her,” said Chan Yu Ming.

“Her?”

“You didn’t know?”

“It didn’t matter at the time, but it was bad. I couldn’t tell.”

Chan Yu Ming got a pensive frown on her face but didn’t speak. She just slipped out of the enclosed area. A few minutes later someone came into the enclosed area. Sen looked up and found himself looking at a hooded figure. They were shifting nervously like they wanted to run away.

“Please, come in.”

There was a bit more nervous shifting, but they eventually came closer and said. “Chan Yu Ming said I should come see you.”

Sen offered her a gentle smile. “Yes. What’s your name?”

“Han Ke Xin.”

“I’m Lu Sen.”

The figure started a little at that. Sen laughed a little.

“What? You didn’t think my parents named me Judgment’s Gale, did you?”

Something that might have been a laugh emitted from the depths of the hood. “I didn’t think about it.”

Sen asked her a few basic questions about her life, her family, and her time with the Clear Spring sect. Anything to try to calm the young woman, and he was sure she was young from how she was acting. After ten minutes of small talk, Ke Xin seemed as relaxed as she was going to get. Sen finally launched into the heart of the matter.

“Burns are tricky to treat. It’s easy to get it wrong or miss something. I’d like to examine you to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

The girl was silent for so long that Sen wondered if she was ever going to answer. When she did finally answer, it wasn’t what Sen expected.

“Can someone else do it?” she asked in a small voice.

Sen thought for a moment before he answered. “I suppose someone else could. Although, I know exactly what I used to treat you and how it was supposed to work. I’m probably the best person to do this. If you’re concerned that I’m not a good enough alchemist…”

“No! No. I heard them talking about you. They say you’re some kind of genius miracle worker.”

Sen throttled the urge to deny those claims. “Then, I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Sen stared at the hood for almost ten seconds before his tired mind finally made the connection. There was scarring. As a cultivator, unlike a mortal, her scars would eventually heal. Although, depending on how bad the scarring was, it could take decades. She thought he was attractive, so she didn’t want him to see her at what she probably assumed would be her worst. How do I get around this problem, he asked himself. She’s a little bit vain, apparently, so I’ll play to that.

“I can probably speed up the healing of the scarring, but I need to know what I’m dealing with first.”

That was met with a long silence before the girl reluctantly reached up and slid the hood back. The scarring was less severe than Sen had expected, so it wasn’t much effort to keep his face neutral and calm. When Sen didn’t visibly react to what he saw, some of the humming tension went out of the girl. He gently prodded the scars with his fingers and his qi. He also took the opportunity to look for signs of infections anywhere else in her body, of which there were mercifully none. He was also relieved that he thought he really could do some things to speed along the healing process. Of course, it was going to mean at least one more moment of discomfort for both of them.

He nodded. “I can help with this, but it's best if I see the extent and severity of the scarring. It’s the only way to be sure that I make you enough of what you need.”

Sen could almost feel the misery radiating off the girl. He could make some educated guesses if she wasn’t willing, but he didn’t like guessing about these kinds of things. Auntie Caihong had always insisted that it was better to see the problem with your own eyes if you could. How he wished she’d never said that to him. Then, he could have spared this girl and himself. But she had said it to him, and if he was going to help Ke Xin, he wanted to do the best job he could. He didn’t push the issue. He let her ponder what she wanted to do while he started preparing his pot and ingredients for a little more work. After a while, he heard the rustle of fabric behind him. Then, Ke Xin called out in a voice that sounded stripped of all happiness.

“I’m ready.”

He turned around. The girl had her eyes squeezed shut. Sen frowned at that. He wondered if it somehow seemed better if she didn’t see him seeing her. Either way, he was quick about the examination. The scarring was as extensive as he’d thought, although much of her back and the backs of her legs had been spared. He spent less than a minute making mental notes before he walked back over to the pot.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was helpful.”

Ke Xin made a relieved noise and, based on the rustling, was putting her robes back on as fast as she could. Sen was already hard at work when she hesitantly stepped up close enough to see what he was doing.

“Can you really help?”

“I can,” he said. “It won’t be overnight, but I should be able to cut the time down to a few months, instead of a few decades.”

The girl swayed on her feet for a moment and Sen grabbed her arm. She took a deep breath. “A few months?”

“Might be a little more or little less, but something like that. You’re foundation formation, so I don’t want to push too hard with it. The medication will be potent as it is. If I make it any stronger, it could affect your cultivation.”

That possibility seemed to bring out the adult in the girl. “A few months is already a miracle. I don’t want to take chances with my cultivation.”

Sen sighed at the word miracle, but let it go. He spent the next few hours making an elixir and a salve that were meant to work together. They would interact with each other over time, breaking apart the scar tissue and encouraging her body to replace it with healthy flesh and skin. After handing them over and reiterating the instructions, he finally felt like he could rest. Then, he remembered, he didn’t even have a tent set up anywhere.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

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