Unintended Cultivator

For a long moment, Sen wondered about his own reaction. Why was he nervous about this meeting? As far as he knew, Falling Leaf and Chan Yu Ming had never met, let alone had any bad blood between them. There was no reason why they should be at odds with each other. If anything, Falling Leaf would likely just decide that she didn’t care about Chan Yu Ming at all and not interact with the woman. As for Chan Yu Ming, he didn’t really know her well enough to guess at her thoughts, but she hadn’t seemed insane to him. He suspected she’d be fine as well. So, pushing that dread back into whatever place of false fear it had crawled out of, Sen got on with the introductions.

“Chan Yu Ming, this is Fa Ling Li, my oldest friend. She and my teachers all caught up with me after you and your sect had already gone.”

“Wait,” said Chan Yu Ming, seizing Sen’s arm. “Feng Ming was there? And I missed it!”

“Along with Ma Caihong and Kho Jaw-Long, yes,” said Sen with a nod.

Chan Yu Ming looked like Sen had taken away her favorite holiday, announced that her favorite food no longer existed, and maybe killed her pet all at the same time. Sighing, she shook her head a little.

“Well, I guess I wasn’t likely to ever meet any of them anyway.”

Sen took the opportunity to continue the introductions.

“Fa Ling Li, this is Chan Yu Ming, my…,” Sen paused then, not entirely sure how he should finish that statement.

Chan Yu Ming looked deeply amused. She lifted an eyebrow, smirked, and said in a honey-sweet tone, “Your what?”

Chan Yu Ming laughed before she turned a bright smile on Falling Leaf and gave her a very formal bow. “Fa Ling Li, it is very nice to meet you. I’m sure we’re going to be very good friends.”

Falling Leaf seemed a little startled by Chan Yu Ming’s almost aggressive cheerfulness. The panther-girl shot Sen an uncertain look as if asking his opinion. He smiled and gave her a half-shrug with one shoulder. She was going to have to decide for herself how friendly she wanted to be with the young woman from the sect. Falling Leaf hesitated for a moment before she returned the bow.

“It is nice to meet you, Chan Yu Ming,” said Falling Leaf.

“Good, now that we’re friends,” said Chan Yu Ming, “you must know some embarrassing stories about this unreasonably tall man.”

Falling Leaf hesitated again, casting an uncertain look at Sen, before she finally said, “Not many.”

“Really? How much of his time did he spend training for there not to be embarrassing stories?”

Falling Leaf looked much more confident when she answered that. “All of it.”

It was Chan Yu Ming’s turn to look a little uncertain before she nodded. “I suppose he must have to be as good with the jian as he is.”

Sen took that moment to break back into the conversation and take the attention off of Falling Leaf, who was starting to get a vaguely panicked look in her eye. Sen gestured to Lo Meifeng, who had been unusually quiet for the entire exchange.

“I don’t think you met Lo Meifeng,” said Sen.

“I didn’t,” said Chan Yu Ming. “It’s nice to meet you, Lo Meifeng. Are you also an old friend?”

“A pleasure,” said Lo Meifeng. “And, no, more of a recent acquaintance.”

Before Chan Yu Ming could ask the question that Sen saw forming in her head, he reached back, seized Shi Ping’s robe, and dragged the man forward. He gestured at the very nervous fire cultivator.

“This is the infamous fire cultivator, Shi Ping the Lazy.”

Shi Ping heaved an enormous sigh. “Is that really how you’re going to introduce me?”

“Yes,” said Sen without reservation.

“I have other qualities you could point out.”

Sen considered for a moment and then said, “Some also call him Shi Ping the Gluttonous.”

Shi Ping glared at Sen. “No one calls me that!”

“I do,” said Lo Meifeng.

“You see,” said Sen, “I didn’t just make it up.”

Chan Yu Ming looked like it was taking a huge effort not to laugh at the man, which had sort of been the point. The less seriously people took him, the less perceived honor there would be in fighting him. The less honor there was in it, the less likely it would be that people would come out of the woodwork looking to fight him. Some still would, Sen knew, but not nearly so many. Shi Ping noticed the look on Chan Yu Ming’s face and, after a moment, seemed to understand the backhanded kindness that Sen was offering him. Shi Ping took a deep breath.

“Yes, I am Shi Ping the Lazy and Gluttonous. No bed is safe from my naps, no dinner table free from the fury of my stomach.”

Whatever tenuous control Chan Yu Ming had over her laughter vanished. Her peals of laughter echoed out into the forest. Before long, she was holding her stomach and shaking her head. Sen wasn’t sure how long it might have lasted, but the rest of the water cultivators arrived shortly after that. They cast stern looks at Chan Yu Ming, who wrestled her amusement back under control. After a moment, she inclined her head to the group of core formation water cultivators. Then, she gestured to each of the people in Sen’s party in turn.

“Elders, allow me to introduce Lu Sen, Fa Ling Li, Lo Meifeng, and,” she smirked, “the infamous fire cultivator, Shi Ping the Lazy and Gluttonous.”

The four Clear Spring sect elders went from doing their best to look stern and imposing to hiding smiles and snickers behind hastily raised hands. Chan Yu Ming introduced the four elders, but Sen didn’t do much to make note of them. It wasn’t that they weren’t important, in their way, but rather that he doubted he’d interact much with them beyond this initial meeting. What he wanted from the Clear Spring sect, he’d have to get from the sect patriarch, assuming they had it at all. Sen went through the motions, offering bows and semi-formal greetings. Falling Leaf did her best to not get noticed, which was thankfully easier than Sen might have expected. The core formation elders didn’t seem to care much about the peak foundation formation girl. They gave her a cursory look and then dismissed her from their minds. One problem solved for the moment, thought Sen. They paid a little more attention to Shi Ping, but Sen suspected that had more to do with his absurd introduction than anything else. They were all warily polite to Lo Meifeng, who was on the same cultivation level with two of the elders, and not far behind the other two. Yet, the sect elders reserved most of their attention for Sen. They kept looking at him expectantly, as though they expected him to do something scary or demand something outrageous. The longer he kept not doing anything scary or making absurd demands, the more nervous they seemed to get. When it got to the point that they all looked ready to explode from unmet anticipation, Sen finally relented and asked them to do something.

“Elders, it’s been a long journey. Could I trouble you to guide us to your sect compound?”

With a task finally at hand, the elders all but fell over each other for the chance to lead them to the sect compound. Each of the elders made not very thinly veiled attempts to glean information from Sen about what he wanted at the sect. He deflected most of the questions with vague comments about merely passing through and having one or two minor matters to discuss with the sect patriarch. In fact, when he thought about it, Sen realized he wasn’t even being that deceptive. He didn’t plan to stay very long at the Clear Spring sect and, while gaining the manual was of utmost importance to him, it probably would be a comparatively minor matter to the sect patriarch. The patriarch was directly or indirectly responsible for the lives of hundreds or maybe even thousands of people. What were the needs, however unique, of one man in the face of all of that?

It didn’t take very long for the elders to realize that Sen was either being intentionally cagey about his motives, or there was no inside information of value for them to capitalize on. They all seemed very disappointed by that, but Sen put that firmly in the category of a them problem. It wasn’t his responsibility to meet their expectations or help them jockey for position in their sect. After all, he’d already messed with the politics of the Clear Spring sect far more than he’d ever wanted to do. So, any opportunity he could take to not do more of the same felt like a serious win in his book. When the elders finally gave up on him, Chan Yu Ming slipped into place beside him. He glanced over at her.

“How have you been? Was the trip back uneventful?” he asked.

“The trip back was tedious. It really was like herding cats. About half of the people that I was bringing back almost never leave the sect. So, once they were outside,” she trailed off.

“They weren’t in a hurry to go back,” finished Sen.

“Exactly. In some cases, I could understand it. We were a relatively long way from home, so to speak, so the healers were eager to snatch up some plants that we don’t see around here as much. As for the rest, they wanted to treat it like some kind of vacation.”

“So, you had to keep on them constantly.”

“I did. As for me, I’ve had pleasant thoughts of my impending abduction to keep me entertained. Did you bring rope?”

Sen eyed the smirking woman for a moment. “You do know that I’m not actually going to abduct you, right?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you trampling my hopes with your negative thoughts.”

Sen laughed but continued with his point. “I’m serious, though. I don’t need an entire sect hunting me for kidnapping one of their core cultivators. Plus, I have no idea who you actually are. You could have some big, violent family that would come looking for us if I did that. That’s a kind of trouble I don’t really need.”

“Well, you certainly know how to suck all of the joy out of a fantasy. Are you saying you don’t think I’m pretty enough to fight for?”

“I’m saying there’s absolutely nothing erotic about killing a bunch of people.”

Chan Yu Ming frowned at that. “Well, you have me there. As for the sect, they wouldn’t do anything. I’m not really one of them. I come and go as I please, which frustrates the elders to no end. As for my family, they would come looking for me, and it would be…tense when they finally caught up with us.”

“How tense?” asked Sen.

“Tenser than either of us would want to deal with.”

Sen nodded. It wasn’t exactly what he’d expected, but he wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d thought that there was a high probability that someone would come looking for her.

“That’s too bad,” said Sen.

“Why is that?”

“I do have a rope.”

Chan Yu Ming looked at him blankly for a few seconds before she laughed. “That’s just mean.”

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