Unintended Cultivator

Sen ended up making breakfast the next day since he was up first, or at least the first to wander out into the main room. It was always hard to gauge how long any given cultivator would sleep because there was no good way to gauge how long it had been since they last slept. He’d been getting regular sleep recently, so sleeping for a few hours had almost been an indulgence. It had been a chance for his mind to rest, though. He was still pondering the problem of Falling Leaf. The casual way with which she’d disrobed had caught him off guard. After a moment of aesthetic appreciation for the lithe young woman, though, he’d gone into healer mode. There was something off about her, something that twinged his cultivator senses. If she did that to him, she’d likely do it to others. It turned out that it wasn’t something physical. She looked like a normal human woman. Well, she looked like a normal human woman cultivator with all that entailed, albeit one with green eyes. Having ascertained that it wasn’t some physical trait he was picking up on in some barely conscious way, he suggested she should put her robes back on.

Her face twisted in unhappiness, and she said, “But they’re uncomfortable.”

Understanding had dawned at that point. No wonder she seemed so eager to undress, thought Sen. He supposed clothing of any kind was still relatively new for her. Not so new that she’d adjust her clothes all the time, but new enough that she’d likely take almost any excuse to get rid of them if she could. He suppressed a laugh before it could form. It wouldn’t do to laugh at her discomfort. He could even appreciate it a little. He remembered all too well how uncomfortable he’d been that first year as a cultivator. Granted, Falling Leaf wasn’t precisely new to cultivation, but she was new to being a human cultivator. He was once again confronted with just how much she’d sacrificed for him. He picked up her robe from the floor and handed it to her.

“It’s not generally appropriate to be undressed with someone of the opposite sex. It’s a culture thing.”

Falling Leaf sighed and started putting the robe back on. “The Caihong said the same thing. I hoped you wouldn’t care.”

“It’s not so much that I care. It’s more that it’s distracting. Undressing that way in front of a man is usually interpreted as a desire to,” Sen tried to think of the right term to make it clear, “mate.”

Falling Leaf stared down at her half-dressed body and grimaced. “Why would anyone want to mate with this? It’s so unsightly.”

Sen did laugh at that, which drew a perplexed look from Falling Leaf.

“I assure you that human men will not find you unsightly. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that already.”

“Screaming?”

“In pain. In fear. We were not gentle with the demonic cultivators. Especially not when you disappeared.”

“I see,” said Sen.

He was a little startled at Falling Leaf’s nonchalant viciousness. Then again, she was a cat at heart. She finished putting her robe back on and gave Sen a look.

“There. Is that less distracting?” she asked, loading the word distracting with seven kinds of doubt.

“Yes. Thank you. I understand that you might have been harsh with the demonic cultivators, but what about the other human men you spoke with?”

“I did not.”

“You didn’t what?”

“Speak with them. I left that to the,” she took a very obvious pause, “to Ma Caihong.”

“You didn’t speak to them at all? Surely some of them must have spoken to you.”

“They did.”

“And?”

“And what? They were not demonic cultivators. They were not you. They were not Feng Ming or Kho Jaw-Long. Why would I speak to them?”

Sen suspected that Auntie Caihong had probably had conversations with Falling Leaf about all of this, but the ghost panther…former ghost panther…had brought most of her personality over with her in the change. She was interested in what she was interested in and absolutely nothing else. She had changed so she could come out into the world and find him. Anything that didn’t relate specifically and directly to that goal was simply beneath her notice. He wondered how many heartbroken young men she’d left in her wake when she refused to even acknowledge their existence. Although, if she’d done that to cultivators, some of them would surely have challenged her.

“Didn’t that provoke some anger? Some challenges?”

Falling Leaf nodded. “It did.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I killed them, of course. What else is there?”

Of course, she had. Challenges in the wilds were almost always to the death unless one of the spirit beasts fled. He wondered how many of those people had died confused, thinking that they’d only meant to prove a point. It was that last thought that lingered with Sen as he made breakfast. He realized that bringing Falling Leaf along with him, and there was no way that she’d let him leave her behind, was going to be a challenge. They would have to have a lot of long talks about what was and wasn’t appropriate. He worried that wouldn’t be enough, though. Certainly, Auntie Caihong had had similar talks with Falling Leaf. If the nascent soul cultivator couldn’t get the ghost pather girl to change, Sen didn’t like his chances. Although, Falling Leaf might also put more stock in his words simply because she was closer to him. He’d always had the impression that she respected the nascent soul cultivators because of their terrible power and strength, but she’d only ever seemed to like Uncle Kho. He worried he might be kidding himself that’d she listen to him more than Auntie Caihong, but it was all he had to lean on at the moment.

It seemed the smell of food was enough to rouse the nascent soul cultivators and Falling Leaf from their rest. Sen prompted some stories from the elder cultivators but quickly discovered that once you heard one sect destruction story, you’ve pretty much heard them all. The details changed, but the end results were mostly the same. He also learned that while Uncle Kho and Master Feng had usually opted for a scorched earth policy if their demands weren’t met swiftly and without protest, Ma Caihong had taken a more subtle approach. She threatened to destroy entire sects and then waited for the demonic cultivators to run. Once they left the sect, they were chased down and questioned. Vigorously. Falling Leaf nodded along cheerfully to those stories.

“I was very good at the questioning,” she told Sen proudly.

Ma Caihong agreed. “I’ve never seen so many grown men break so quickly. I’ve also never seen so many grown men cry.”

Sen almost asked a question then, and quickly thought better of it. He decided he really didn’t need to know how Falling Leaf made men cry during questioning. He had enough bad dreams as it was. As the meal wound down and the stories dried up, Master Feng fixed Sen with a firm look.

“So, now that you’re not being hunted up and down the kingdom, what are you planning to do?”

Falling Leaf perked up at that question, and fixed her eyes on Sen with unnerving intensity. He thought it over for a while.

“The Clear Spring sect first, I expect. Then, probably off to the capital. I need a manual for the Five-Fold Body Transformation. If it’s as dangerous as everyone says it is, I can’t just stumble blindly forward with it and hope for the best.”

Ma Caihong and Master Feng traded a look before she spoke up. “The capital isn’t a good place for you. You’d be a tempting target for, well, for a lot of people. Sects, nobles, and whatever demonic cultivators weren’t on that list. If there are any left, they’ll be in the capital.”

“Why would sects and nobles be trying to kill me?”

“Not that kind of target. Sects will want to recruit you, and you’ll find saying no to them a much more difficult task than you did in Emperor’s Bay. Sects in the capital are large. Most of them have a nascent soul patriarch or matriarch. They don’t like hearing the word no,” said Uncle Kho.

That made more sense to Sen and shuddered at the idea of what an unfriendly nascent soul cultivator might do to him to get their way.

“The nobles will just want to use you in their games,” said Auntie Caihong.

“Or bed you,” said Master Feng.

Auntie Caihong sighed but nodded. “Or that. Or both. They aren’t mutually exclusive activities.”

Sen wasn’t sure exactly how going to bed with someone would be part of a political game, but he trusted that Auntie Caihong knew what she was talking about.

“So, I should seek out Fu Ruolan instead, if the Clear Springs sect doesn’t have the manual?” Sen asked, a little dubious.

“That woman is…difficult, at the best of times. Still, she might actually be the better choice here.”

Ma Caihong gave Master Feng a look that suggested she thought he’d suffered a massive head injury that was affecting his judgment. “That woman isn’t difficult. She’s insane.”

“She’s not insane,” said Master Feng. “She’s strange, but her reason is intact. It’s her emotions you can’t be sure of.”

“Still, sending Sen to her is ill-advised, at best.”

Sen had gotten used to this kind of bickering between the two over the years, but it never led anywhere productive, so he cut them off. “I have three possible options for finding the manual I think we all agree I won’t survive without. The Golden Phoenix sect, Fu Roulan, and the Clear Spring sect. Since it seems like there’s only a slim chance the Clear Spring sect has it, I need a second option. It’s either the capital or Fu Ruolan unless one of you has a line on another place I could get it. Do you?”

There was some hedging and vague talk about possible locations, at least two of which Sen knew were mythical, but the takeaway was that they didn’t have a better plan. At least, they didn’t at the moment.

“Okay,” said Sen, “so given the two options that I realistically have available, which is better? Which carries more risk?”

There was more grumbling and hedging.

“It’s a coin toss,” said Uncle Kho after five minutes of additional bickering from Master Feng and Auntie Caihong. “The risks in the capital are more numerous, but they’re diffuse. No one there is, to our knowledge, specifically looking for you or to cause you trouble. If there is trouble, though, it can come at you from a lot of different angles, all at the same time. Plus, negotiating with the Golden Phoenix sect is going to be troublesome. They won’t want to give you that manual or a copy of it without extracting something very valuable from you. Either some kind of service you absolutely won’t want to do or some kind of nearly impossible-to-find treasure.

“With Fu Ruolan, who is crazy by the way, the risk is very specific and very direct. If you make a bad impression or simply catch her on the wrong day, it’s very likely that she’ll kill you or punish you in some terrible way. If you make a good impression or catch her on the right day, you could walk out an hour later with what you need. Assuming you can find her at all, which is not guaranteed. No one really knows where she lives, just a general area she roams in. So, either option has a high risk of failure as well.”

Sen looked over at Falling Leaf. “What do you think?”

“Insanity is always a danger to avoid,” she said with utter certainty.

Sen waited for more but that was apparently the entirety of her thoughts on the matter. Trying to hide his reluctance, he looked to Lo Meifeng. “How about you? What do you think?”

Lo Meifeng shifted uncomfortably as everyone looked at her, but she plunged ahead. “I don’t know anything of value about Fu Ruolan. I thought she was a cultivator ghost story until today. I mean, honestly, an insane nascent soul cultivator? It sounds like a story you’d made up to scare outer sect disciples into behaving. So, in practical terms, I’d be more useful to you in the capital, but I don’t know if that makes the capital a better choice.”

“Do you know anyone in the capital?” Sen asked.

It had sounded casual enough, a natural follow-up to her statement, but she knew what he was really asking.

“I have some contacts there, but no one I’d consider close.”

Sen nodded and weighed his options. He hadn’t done well in cities so far. It was just a flaw in his personality. He wasn’t flexible enough, not willing to bend enough to suit the whims of those who saw themselves as powerful. He could try to keep that in check if he had some warning, but if someone just started acting like he owed them something because they were breathing in the same vicinity as him, he’d fall back to form. He knew it. On the other hand, his last experience with a crazy person living out in the middle of nowhere hadn’t gone very well, either. Plus, it sounded like he’d only have a fifty-fifty shot at surviving an encounter with Fu Ruolan. That was assuming he could even find her in the first place. Granted, wandering around in the wilds didn’t sound so bad to him anymore now that he wasn’t going to be on the run. Falling Leaf would probably love it. Lo Meifeng would probably hate it, which made it sound more appealing to the small part of Sen that was petty. Of course, the goal wasn’t to punish Lo Meifeng but to get a manual that would help keep him alive.

“I’m going to need to pick your brains about the capital,” he announced.

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